➡ Scott Horton, a foreign policy expert, discussed the situation in Iran, suggesting that Trump was dissuaded from attacking Iran due to concerns from Netanyahu and Arab countries. He also highlighted that the American public is increasingly against war, with a poll showing 70% of the population opposing an attack on Iran. Horton criticized the media’s tendency to label those questioning war narratives as apologists for enemy states, and encouraged skepticism towards government narratives. He ended by expressing optimism for peace in the long term.
➡ The text discusses the complexities of international politics, focusing on Iran and its relationship with the United States. It questions the credibility of information sources and the motives behind protests in Iran. It also discusses the potential consequences of foreign interference in domestic affairs, using examples from American history. The text concludes by suggesting that the Iranian people’s support for their current leadership may be rooted in a desire for independence from foreign influence.
➡ The text discusses the concept of freedom and how it can be perceived differently by different cultures. It also criticizes politicians who support wars and conflicts for their own interests, while appearing to care about the people affected. The role of social media in shaping public opinion about military engagements is also discussed, highlighting its importance in providing alternative views. The text ends by emphasizing the need for trustworthy sources of information.
➡ The text discusses the role of alternative media in shaping public opinion, particularly in relation to U.S. foreign policy and military actions. It criticizes the mainstream narrative that supporting the troops means supporting all military actions, arguing that true support means opposing unnecessary wars. The text also highlights the plight of veterans, who are often neglected and left homeless after serving. It calls for a more thoughtful and critical approach to military engagements, emphasizing the need for peace and self-defense rather than aggression.
➡ The speaker discusses the manipulation and betrayal of American soldiers by the U.S. government, which sends them off to fight in wars under false pretenses. The speaker respects the soldiers and feels they are used and abandoned, much like a homeless Vietnam veteran. The speaker also discusses the U.S.’s relationship with Israel and the potential consequences of Israel pushing the U.S. into a war with Iran. The speaker suggests that Israel might be risking the support of the American public, especially the younger generation, by pushing for such a war.
➡ The text discusses the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, criticizing Israel’s actions and the U.S.’s support for them. It suggests that Israel’s claim to the land, based on religious beliefs, overrides the natural rights of the Palestinians who already lived there. The text also criticizes the U.S.’s foreign policy, suggesting that it has a history of breaking agreements with other countries. Lastly, it questions why countries wouldn’t want to upgrade their military in response to U.S. actions.
➡ Countries that possess weapons of mass destruction, like nuclear bombs, are less likely to be attacked or controlled by powerful nations like America. This is evident in the survival of North Korea’s regime, which has nuclear capabilities, compared to countries like Iraq and Libya, whose leaders were overthrown and killed. The possession of such weapons guarantees a nation’s independence, as seen with Russia and China, who are not under American influence due to their nuclear arsenals. Therefore, nations fearing conflict with America may seek to acquire nuclear weapons for their protection.

Hello, my name is Evan demarsch. I’m here with Scott Horton, the director of the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom. He’s also the editorial director@antiwar.com. you can follow him on X. That’s Scott Hortonshow. We’ll have a link below so you can check him out there. Scott, thank you for joining the Trends Journal. Thank you. Good to be with you again. I wanted to get right into what’s going on in Iran, Scott. Right now the most updated story that I saw was in the New York Times and it said that Netanyahu and Arab countries in the Gulf talked Trump out of striking Iran.

That’s what the New York Times was reporting up to the minute. What do you see happening? Why do you think that the claim was that they’d be concerned about any kind of response Iran would take to a US Attack. What’s your take on that report? Is that something that you see as legitimate, impossible? Well, yeah, it’s been pretty widely reported about the Gulf states advising against it. I would think Netanyahu is behind the whole thing in the first place. Although I guess it’s within the realm of possibility that someone in his own national security establishment said, you know, we really are not ready to take on an incoming barrage of missiles like that.

Although you didn’t thought that they would have figured that out beforehand, you know, and base their policy on the reality there. You know, I think there were some reports that that was a concern by the American military as well, that they were low on thads and all of this stuff. And so. That very well may have been their concern. And then, you know, the Gulf states, of course, they just want stability. They, they don’t see the profit in having a full scale regime change in Iran. And then, you know, all of the potential side effects of that, you know, so, you know, what’s notable about those stories with or without Israel, right, is the American people had less to do with it than foreign powers.

Although, you know, there’s a Washington Post story that said that actually Trump is very concerned about his base and their opposition to the war and what it would mean for him if he did it. So that’s very important that the anti war right keep the pressure up and make themselves heard. You know, there are a few prominent pundits who want to climb on board for, you know, whatever horrible policy the, you know, their president happens to support. You know, Thomas Massey tweeted out a poll this morning that showed 70 of the population of the country is against attacking Iran.

And that includes a majority of Republicans. So regardless of the hype, they’re sticking with no, we voted for this guy because he promised no new wars. We are. That’s what we wanted. And so, you know, the people don’t have the power, but. Or at least, you know, on the margin we do, but just on the margin. But more and more, the people are getting it right, and. And the people own the narrative out here in the country about whether we should be doing this stuff, whether we can afford it, whether it’s likely to work out for our interests, whether the Israelis are, you know, conniving us into it, or whether this has anything to do with protecting national interests.

You know, it’s sort of like people, you know, believed in W. Bush and the Iraq war right up until they didn’t anymore. They believed in, especially on the left side, but people believed in the masks and all the COVID stuff right up until Ukraine. And then all they just dropped it, right? Like that Kurt Metzger joke that the invasion of Ukraine is terrible, terrible, but at least it cured Covid, you know, so it’s like this is the kind of thing where support for just American tough guy, you know, faux macho belligerence, like W. Bush kind of posture.

People just don’t believe in that anymore. That’s stupid, man. It’s. You know, there’s obviously a time to kick butt and not be a wimp and let your enemies, you know, walk all over you, but America is the enemy. Going around picking fights with everybody all the time. And anybody can see that now. You know, I think with the breaking of the. The spirit of monopoly control of the media anymore, too. You know, I mean, it’s like where. It’s just maybe a generational change where, you know, alternative music becomes mainstream, that kind of thing, you know, where it’s just alternative media is now mainstream media.

And an alternative media, you get more mileage from being a skeptic than towing the party line. You know what I mean? And. And the. The party line is always such a bunch of crap that when, you know, independent voices are left to have at it, they. They tear these talking points apart. I know you see it on Twitter every day. It ain’t just the algorithm. I mean, it’s a lot of people coming against these narratives from so many different directions. It just can’t stand up. It’s debt. They have all the money and power, but it’s death from a hundred thousand cuts from out here in the country where people just don’t want to go along with the war party anymore.

So that is the big news. And by the way, as we’re recording this, you know, early Thursday afternoon, Trump did not bomb Iran last night. And, you know, the announcement is, as you said, this is due to, you know, pressure from the, you know, regional allies. But, and again, the Washington Post said his concern about what his base will think and probably his own concern about how he’ll look if something goes wrong and Americans get killed in the thing, that kind of deal. So overall, I’m bullish on peace. No, it’s, that’s over the long term. I mean, we don’t have the money and the power.

And Trump is still very hawkish, and he could change his mind on a lot of things, but there’s no good reason why we gotta be doing any of this stuff. And that’s gotta count for something. Hey, Scott, are you surprised? And I’m still surprised to this day, like journalists, not to sound sanctimonious, but journalists are supposed to keep politicians and elected officials, keep them in check, keep them honest, and challenge their, their, their positions. And do you notice that if you’re a journalist and you do challenge the, the accepted narrative, you’re considered an apologist for Putin, you’re considered an apologist for the Iranian government, and you’re actually looked at, you’re tarred and feathered as a reporter, you’re considered the adversary.

You’re doing the propaganda work just by questioning whether or not it’s a smart idea to bomb a country like Iran again. Do you get that sense, too, from your standpoint? I know anywar.com does a lot of great work. And do you ever get frustrated reading the media, seeing the posts from people in the media about these things? Yeah. Well, yes, you’re right. And it’s always the same thing. Oh, you love the Taliban. I mean, how much sense does that make that anyone in America just loves carrying water around for Mullah Omar and the cavemen from Kandahar? No.

Oh, you love terrorism, you love Osama bin Laden, you love Saddam Hussein, you love Muammar Gaddafi, you’re an Assad toady. But look at who you’re talking about. You’re talking about a bunch of Americans who don’t have a dog in any of these fights other than wanting to weaken our own government so that we can be free. And recognizing you can’t have a limited republic and a global empire at the same time. It’s kind of one or the other. And so for any of these, I would just encourage people and they feel that Pressure, you know what, just straighten your back a little taller and say, no, screw.

You know, they always lie. They always lie. And so no, we are not obligated to go along without what with whatever the US government says the narrative is. Why, look, everyone, here’s the highest casualty count we think we can estimate without your head exploding. Buy that? No, I won’t buy that, thank you very much. And I’m in no way feeling social pressure to go along with Bari Weiss’s CBS Newses most extensive claims of Iranian atrocities against their protesters and whatever. Just forget that. No one can shame me into going along with what’s obviously a bunch of crap.

And, and that should be the same for everybody else. And that doesn’t mean that you got to be out front saying, no way. I know for a fact the casualty count is only this. At the very least, just hold your horses and just wait and see or you know, bring things up in their proper context. You know, Reason magazine this morning goes, oh my God, the numbers could be as high as 20,000, but there’s no mention in there anywhere of, there’s obviously a giant scop going on here and there’s obviously a huge faction of Israeli and American backed monarchists and you know, mek cultists and all kinds of kooks who have an interest in pushing these narratives.

There’s Iran International News Organization. Oh, that’s interesting. Just heard of it. Google it. Oh, it was founded by the Saudis, the same people who publish all Arabia who lie about Iran all day and then, you know, they’ve done nothing but push pro Israeli narratives this whole time. And then the Wall Street Journal goes, oh look, there’s this new group called Human rights activists in Iran and we just believe whatever their numbers are. But who are they? They’re based in Fairfax, Virginia. So yeah, no, that, thank you. We could just. You don’t have to apologize for the aola and you don’t have to believe what, what his government says.

You also don’t have to believe what Reuters says his government says. That’s what say, well, it’s at least 2000. Because even their government says that. Oh yeah, how do you know that? Well, that’s just what Reuters claimed. But there’s no Iranian source that’s actually saying that anywhere. And, and I’m not saying it’s definitely less than that. But again, am I, am I, or, or should anyone in your audience or anywhere else in this country feel some kind of obligation to go along with the party line? Because whatever it is, they’re Saying about the foreign country is probably right.

No, it’s probably not. I mean, look at Muammar Gaddafi. Nobody thinks that he was a benevolent dictator. Only in comparison to everything that’s happened since he was deposed when America backed Al Qaeda to overthrow that government. Now Gaddafi looks pretty good in comparison in retrospect. Right. Like that’s what the one economist says to the other economist. How’s your wife? And the other economist is compared to what? Right, so yeah, the aola. Oh, he’s such a bad theocrat. Yeah. Compared to Al Qaeda suicide bombers, compared to Kurdish communists and aeri saboteurs and Baluki head choppers. And you don’t know what might happen next in Iran if we had a real regime change there, the Ayatollah Common who has kept them out of war since 1989, when of course it was America that sponsored Saddam Hussein’s attack against them.

He might very reasonably be seen as a steward of basic security and independence, if not liberty for the people of Persia compared to what comes next. And so you know, even when people say rightly and depends on exactly how you mean this, that like, look, it’s up to the Iranian people to decide, not us. That’s true. That still only goes so far. Which Iranian people to decide what and by how bare of a majority, and you know what I mean? Like, like in, in our system, we can’t have a constitutional convention unless 3/4 of the states agree to have one.

Otherwise piss off. Or maybe it’s 2/3. I think it’s 3/4 of the states have to agree. That’s not. Oh, it’s up to the people to decide by some bare majority whether we’re going to overthrow the constitutional, so called constitutional regime in Washington or not. That can only happen if the 50 states, or if, you know, whatever, 35 of the 50 states or whatever the number is, 37 or whatever, agree to do it, to come together and rewrite the national government’s charter. So, and then again, if we do that, and this has been, as you may know, this has been a huge controversy in America for many years of whether we should have a Constitutional Convention or not.

And it’s, there are different factions on the right and the left who have pushed it and who have vociferously opposed such a proposal over the years. And there have been times where we’re just a few state votes short of actually having one. There’s a new book out, I’m forgetting the book’s name. There’s a new book out about the Constitution and The amendments, it’s by a New Yorker, I think Lepore, Joel Lepore, just wrote a book about the Constitution and amendments. It’s very interesting. Yeah, because we stopped amending it is the thing. Yeah. We just let. Amended by fiat and legislation and executive order and whatever.

Now the danger of a Constitutional Convention, of course, is that everybody now is more status than the founders then. So the new Constitution will be worse. Right. The. The Bill of Rights will have fewer protections in it and overall it’ll be much more socialism and much more government control of the economy and much more just horrible. Everything is. That’s to me, is my worry. I. We have a hard enough time enforcing the constitutional limits that we have now. And I would just think there are others who say, well, what the hell, if the current Constitution is a dead letter, then we might as well like try to do a thing.

Anyway, I, I lean hard against it, but I guess I’m willing to listen to arguments. But back to Iran, like what American is to say what the process should be in Persia for how they decide what their government should be? You know, for that matter, why should we believe anytime that there’s a protest, even a massive protest in Iran or even in many major cities around Iran, that the goal of all the people out there is to see the Ayatollah hanged and the regime overthrown? I mean, they didn’t say that. You got some people saying, oh, death to the Ayatollah or something somewhere.

But just because people are protesting doesn’t mean they’re trying to achieve a revolution. Think how many protests we have in the United States of America where no one for a minute is considering that the local constitution that creates their state government or that the U.S. constitution and that the three branches and all of the court systems and everything, that all that is in question of whether they’re still going to be the sovereign around here or not. No, no, no. They’re just protesting for. Against the war, for. Against abortion, for. Against this leader and the horrible thing that he did.

And then, Scott, imagine the US Reaction if a country like Iran or Russia or China came out and said, we stand behind these protesters. The US Better not touch them. We don’t like what we’re seeing happening in Minneapolis. We’re watching you US and lay your hands off these protesters. Can you imagine the outrage from Washington if they made such a comment? They interfered like that. Yeah. Or even go to like say, during Occupy Wall street. If you had the Chinese come in and, and funding the young leftist kids demanding more, you know, nationalization of the economy or during January 6th or like tea Party stuff.

If you had the Russians coming in and supporting the right, just think how much that would discredit them. If they took a dime from a foreign power. Think of what a scandal it was, rightly so, that the Chinese helped bankroll Bill Clinton’s election in 1996. And you know, if you know how well people remember this, but it was a huge scandal. But you know what they did? They did what’s called the limited hangout where they admit part of the story just to make you feel satisfied, but they, they omit the worst of it. So what they did was people couldn’t tell these people apart.

So they, they hung the whole scandal around the neck of Johnny Chung and Charlie Tree. And these were a couple of fundraisers who raised money from kind of like American Chinese diaspora to donate somewhat illegally in some, in some cases to the Clinton Gore campaign. But that wasn’t where it was at, man. It was all about a guy named James Riadi, who was a Chinese banker from Indonesia and his right hand man, who was a guy named John Wong. And they funneled in hundreds of thousands of dollars to the campaign. And then they had a direct quid pro quo where John Wong was given a job in the Commerce Department licensing missile technology transfers to China, which he did.

And this allowed Laurel and Hughes to teach the Chinese how to launch three stage rockets so they could get their satellites up there and which the authority used to belong to State and Defense to authorize those licenses. And Bill Clinton not just hired John Wong, James Riotti’s guy, but then transferred the authority from State and Defense to Commerce. So this is just huge. Anyway, I just like telling that story because I hate Bill Clinton so much and other people don’t hate him enough. But the real point being that. What the hell do you mean? There were even hundreds of thousands of dollars at, at all in bankrolling an American politicians campaign for President, re election for president in this case.

It’s absolutely outrageous. And it’s absolutely outrageous that the Clintons took the money. And so as like in your hypotheticals here, imagine anyone, any major faction in America trying to participate in politics where everybody knows that they’re getting bankrolled by the Russian version of the Ned here, right something. Or the, you know, the Chinese version of USAID on our shores. It’d be absolutely intolerable. And, and you ask yourself how could anyone support the Ayatollah? Well, maybe because he’s a symbol of their independence from our world empire and they value that higher right. I mean, if you like hypothetically, if America could parachute the Shaw back in there, yeah, he’s going to re legalize miniskirts and disco dancing and whatever.

So like if that’s the height of freedom and how you define it, that’s the most important value, then he could give more personal freedom, guarantee more personal freedom to the suburbanites of Tehran. But you could see how others in the country might value their independence as a sovereign nation outside of the dik of the so called international community as a higher value than, you know, wearing skirts above your knees or whatever it is that’s supposed to be the greatest blessings of American freedom, you know, for them. And so that, that is the answer just the way Americans if for here’s another analogy.

Let’s say that it was true that the Russians had helped Donald Trump to steal the election, even though that was 100% false. And I totally debunk it in my book provoked. But anyway, so a lot of other people, but if that had been true, then that still would have been our problem to solve. If Hillary Clinton had called for the Chinese to come and oppose his Russian installed ass, we would all still be opposed to that. There’s no way in the world that we would tolerate, you know, even as a tit for tat, this still it’s our problem to solve and maintain our own independence.

And hell, that could be the rest of this conversation about kicking Israel and Saudi and UAE and England and everybody the hell off our shores. You want to want to lobby the US Government, talk to the ambassador and that is it. It is intolerable the amount of foreign money that gets thrown around, you know, to, to kind of absorb and, and take up all of the, the momentum in, in the conversation, right, that over American foreign policy. It’s, it’s a, a hell of a situation that they’ve gotten us into because so there’s so much power at stake that of course all those countries are willing to do whatever they can to have as much influence as they can.

One, just to protect themselves, but two, to take as much advantage as they can if they can. Scott, I wanted to hear your opinion on this. One of the things that struck me is that if you checked out X and you saw politicians, it seemed as though the more they support the Gaza genocide, the more they supported the starvation campaign, the more they’re suddenly humanitarians when it comes to the Iranian protests. You see people like Randy Fine, who truly cheered on the suffering of innocent Palestinian Palestinians in Gaza, truly celebrated on X. Coming out as a freedom fighter for the Iranians, how do you square that? How do these politicians.

Wouldn’t you have at least the modesty to. Not if you’re going to come out strongly in favor of a genocide in Gaza, would you at least not have the sensibility to say, maybe I could encourage this without posting on social media to look like a complete hypocrite? Could you? Could you Morally? And here’s I guess the question, is there a moral difference in your view that you could support what happened in Gaza and support the protests in Iran? Is that such a thing? Am I missing something there? No, look, I mean, they’re just Zionists and, and Israeli agents to one degree or another is all that’s going on there.

And yeah, I think it’s hilarious. I mean, you got Ben Shapiro and Lindsay Graham and Ted Cruz and Randy Fine. Oh, they’re the ones who care the most about the people of Persia because they’re trying to get America to start a war against Iran and kill many, many, many more people. And oh, they’ll cry their crocodile tears and cite Bari Weiss’s fraud that 20,000 people have already been killed. I mean, what a complete h. This is how Barack Obama did Libya, said Gaddafi’s putting down this insurgency. He’s killed low levels of thousands so far, all fighters.

Just wait till he gets to Benghazi. He’s going to kill every last man, woman and child in Benghazi if we don’t stop him. First we got to protect the protesters from the evil tyrant. And now this is the leadership of the Republican Party. But someone’s like, yeah, I just encourage it. The more Ben Shapiro supports this, the more everyone else can see what it is, for what it is. You remember when Jonah Goldberg and all the losers at the National Review did their big Never Trump spectacular in in of that magazine and had all their names on the front.

We’re the leaders of Conservative Inc. And we say Never Trump. And I, as soon as that broke, I sent a tweet to Jonah Goldberg mocking him and said, how much is Trump paying you to do this? I know you know how much we all hate you. And if you’re against Trump, that’s probably the best reason I’ ever heard to support the guy. And so yes, Ben Shapiro, self appointed leader of American conservatism, says sign your boy up to go fight in Persia. You ready to swallow that? That sound right to you? I don’t think they could afford a better spokesman.

Randy finds another one. Ted Cruz and Lindsay Graham, the these are the leaders of the American war party, they’re all that’s left. Who else could stand with these men? Not many. You know, how, what, what kind of a role did social media play in all this? I mean, if we didn’t have alternative views and alternative news and, and, and opinion on places like X, on places like YouTube. I mean, can you imagine what, what the public would think of, of, of a military engagement with Iran right now? It would be, I think, I think it’d be different.

Yeah, absolutely. Right. Listen, you know, there’s, there’s been a lot of good, strong opposition to this policy for a very long time, the threat of war with Iran for a very long time. But it’s also true that, for example, they were able to get away with just kind of pretending they’re just ignoring the non Proliferation Treaty right out of existence. I mean, you could have listened through the entire W. Bush and Obama years and well, whatever, yeah, things change after, you know, Obama’s nuclear deal at the end of his presidency. You could have listened to basically all of Bush and Obama and they talked as though the NPT didn’t exist.

They talked as though Iran was not a signatory, that they did not have a safeguards agreement with the IAEA that as far as anyone knows, the Ayatollah is going to have a nuke tomorrow. And they just lied that way for years, year after year after year. And you know, I used to drive for a living a lot and I’m a AM radio junkie kind of a guy. I’m old, forgive me, but man, have I heard a lot of top of the hour AM radio news blasts and whether ABC News or Fox News, whatever, radio at the top of the hour from on your local channel and oh my God, I couldn’t tell you how many times I heard on there that Iran’s about to have a nuclear bomb.

And I know that just under the category of American men who drive for a living, they have been under the impression that Iran is making nukes basically this whole time. Unless they personally have stopped and went, well, wait a minute, you think they’d have some by now or something, you know what I mean? But like, but they’re never going to hear a contrary view. And that was the history of when we all just were stuck with TV and with radio and with the Times and the Post is, and still it’s true to a terrible degree that we are all essentially stuck with the Post, the Times and the Journal and the big TV companies because that’s who the government talks to.

Whether, you know, dissidents or, you know, just who the government is, want whatever they want you to think or whatever. So we are, in a way, still very kind of enslaved to those avenues of information. On the other hand, it seems like overall, the public attitude is much more like mine, where it’s like, yes, we have to suffer the Wall Street Journal. We read them, but we hate read them, and we know that they hate us and we don’t trust them. And. And so we read between the lines and we, we try to figure out what’s their agenda, what is it that they say that we can trust and what is it that we can’t.

So, but overall. But then who do you trust? Well, Dave Smith, because he doesn’t lie. You know, he maybe would screw something up sometimes, but he never gets up there to make people believe something that ain’t true because somehow he figures that’s better for him. That’s just ain’t how his show is. And so he has earned the trust of all these people. It’s the same thing with Tucker Carlson, and it’s the same thing with a lot of people, with Joe Rogan, with Theo Vaughn. Yeah. You know, these comedians, like, that’s part of it in a way.

Right. Is even John Stewart, even Jon Stewart’s. His show is pretty amazing, what he does. Yeah. Well, and definitely, like back in the Bush years, he was really something to appreciate in a lot of ways then. But yeah, like, being a comedian means looking for that phony comparison. And once you start doing that, once you start seeing through those eyes, boy, yeah, whatever it is, compares to a lot of weird stuff. You know what I mean? The jokes kind of write themselves and so, but anyway, I just think, like out there in the world, you know, people, the, the.

Maybe the information still comes to a great degree from the top down, but the interpretation, people hold their horses. I see in the comments section, people say, boy, as soon as I heard this news, I thought to myself, boy, I can’t wait to hear Dave Smith’s take on this. Because they know it’s important, but they’re not exactly sure the context. They know that he’s going to have an explanation. He’s going to make this bit in what you need to understand about what’s going on. And so I think. And he’s just one example. I pick on him because he’s my buddy, but.

But there’s a lot of them like that much more and more. And I think, you know, a lot of guys kind of did some backsliding on Venezuela and this and that. But, like, I don’t know, man, you say America first 5,000 times, you kind of, it’s, you know, as they say, attitude follows behavior. You said you typed America First 5,000 times. You have to kind of mean it now. You can’t just backslide on Venezuela and Iran. Come back to where you were two weeks ago. Damn it, we’re not doing this. We don’t support this stuff. And, you know, forget tough.

How about smart? We don’t need to be doing these kinds of things anymore. And I think overall, that kind of interpretation, the alternative media take on the information is, you know, more and more the real dominant narrative. And, and that is, is, you know, to our great benefit. As I said, unfortunately, the American people don’t decide. But on the margin, right, the, the major power factions on American foreign policy are the arms manufacturers, the generals, the bankers, the Israel, the Saudis and the Qataris and the Brits. That’s who determines American policy, not the American people. But on the margin, if people are pissed and they’re stomping their foot and they’re saying no, then, yeah, that matters.

It absolutely does. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s so interesting because, and it’s easy for these outlets to, to kind of frame it that if you don’t support these engagements, you’re somehow against the US Military. You don’t support our troops. We’re sending them there. And if you don’t support us sending them there and engaging in Iran, you don’t, you’re, you’re, what are you, you’re not a proud American. You don’t support our troops. Our troops are over there fighting, and we sent them, but you don’t support them. You know, I mean, this is totally how it was, especially in Iraq War two, Afghanistan as well, especially in Iraq War two.

And like, just on the face of it, think of the Orwellian double think involved. Just on the face of that, we’re sending these guys into harm’s way to kill people and to get killed. And if you don’t support that, you’re against them. Huh? Well, all I was saying was you’re not supposed to send them to kill people and get killed unless you absolutely have to, unless you have no choice but to defend yourself from aggression. Otherwise, our Constitution presupposes peace, not a permanent state of emergency in a world empire. So, you know, it’s supposed to be the absolute exception.

And think of all the guys, and I’m sorry to say I told you so, but I did. We lost 7,000American soldiers and Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tens of thousands more wounded, tens of thousands more suicides and for nothing. And everyone who supported the troops bears their own share of the responsibility for that, which is admittedly a minor, a very minor share, depending on your station in life. But that was the wrong thing. The American people should have said, no, we support the troops. That’s why we refuse to let Bush and Cheney use them for unnecessary wars.

It wasn’t the Taliban that attacked us. It was Al Qaeda. And it wasn’t Saddam Hussein that attacked us. It was Al Qaeda. So, yes, you have a writ to kill them. No, you do not have a writ to kill other people. That was the proper respons. And there are plenty of people who did know that, and there are plenty of people who did say that, and they were shouted down with support the troops, which is a mindless slogan that ended up getting those troops betrayed. Right. And for all the hype about, oh, we love the troops so much, those are the same troops that were completely abandoned and had the entire country and the government turn their back on them when they got home.

You know, they weren’t spit on and called baby killer and whatever. Like in the stories about Vietnam, which I don’t even know if that’s true, but at least those are the stories about Vietnam. But homeless veterans are everywhere. Like, if there’s a young working age guy out there on the street, he’s almost certainly a veteran of the terror wars and. And they just abandon him. All these people who love the soldiers so much. Yeah. Support them in war, betray them when it’s over, you know, and. And we should all know better than that now. And, you know, when I was a kid, I’m 50, I’m almost.

I shouldn’t say that. I’m 49, dang it. For another few months here. But I just. 44. I’m sorry, I just turned 44 January 5th. Okay, there you go. So you might even still be a little too young for this. I’m not sure how much we overlap on this, but when I was a boy, so many of the homeless guys on the street corners were wearing their olive green Vietnam veteran army jackets, and that was who they were. And I just knew that my whole life growing up, it’s like, what does it mean to be a homeless guy? These are war veterans from the terrible, terrible Vietnam War.

Like, what’s Vietnam? Where’s Vietnam? Like, I was raised in that. The. The word was on people’s lips still a lot. I was born in 76. Right. You know, a year after the whole damn thing finally all fell down, you know, two years after the withdrawal of American forces there. And, and that’s who all the homeless guys were was. They were veterans who were used up and then spit out and abandoned by the government. It’s one of the main reasons why I’ve been anti government, anti war my whole life is just because I saw that up front.

How much does Uncle Sam really care? How much does big green army really care about their, their privates and their specialists? Not very damn much. Okay? And. And I saw that. And then I remember at the time of Iraq, the idea was this isn’t going to be like that because George Bush, he really loves the Army. He really cares about the army, and he’s. Boy, he’s giving everybody a raise. He’s doing really good stuff for the army, and, and the army really is a family now. And that. And we’re going to go and do this great heroic mission and free the world from Saddam Hussein and then come home and have a wonderful time and all of the wonderfulness and, and all of that kind of belief.

And then it didn’t pan out. And look, there are some VA hospitals who do a great job, and there are some programs that help veterans get homes and things like this. But there are a lot of guys who are very much used up, chewed up, spit out. Go find a homeless in your town and ask for a show of hands who’s been to Iraq, in Afghanistan, you know, and the same thing with this suicides. People don’t want to talk about this because it’s all wrapped up in shame and all of these things. But, like, there was a guy at the street from me who I don’t really know, but I’m about 90% sure that he killed himself.

He clearly was a vet of Iraq and Afghanistan. Lost his legs. And he was a mean old guy. I wanted to talk. Not old guy, young guy. I wanted to talk to him, but he was so standoffish and just, you know, kind of enemies. Everybody in the neighborhood’s house is kind of not enemies, but just, you know, kind of really cold to people. Seemed like he was drunk a lot and, and his house kind of adjacent to the mailboxes. You know, he’s always kind of mad, dogging everyone there. You’ve lost both legs. Lost both legs? Yeah, lost both legs, man.

And then the last time I saw him, he’s like saying some drunken stuff about, you know, I think it was his dog. I was like, his dog got out and I was returning it to him and he’s just like angrily, whatever. And then the next thing I know, all of his belongings are out on the front lawn and he’s gone. And I mean, everything is out there, you know. And then I had heard that he had died from a neighbor said, or whatever, but like, I’m pretty sure that he’s just one of those man, you know, used up, spit out all alone and, and man, if you go back and think about the hype of just like it’s, it’s.

I don’t know what it would take to encapsulate it. The lightning in the bottle of whatever or the, the hype of the era of 2002 and 2003 and how badly we have to do Iraq and after that, 2, 2003, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, why we have to stay. We can’t leave now, we can’t cut and run now. We’re fighting the terrorists. And all of the pressure, all of the hype to make that thing so important and the demand on the American public that anytime you see a soldier, that soldier is a hero, as though he personally like saved women from the World Trade center or whatever.

And you have to tell him that, like this is more important than any part of any other aspect of our civic or other religions is thank a soldier today. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your service. All this essentially, you get it, it’s begging the question right there. It’s like, what color is the Corvette we’re going to put in your driveway this afternoon there, boss? You want the red one or you want the yellow one? They’re arguing past the sale. They’re getting you to skip the part where was any of this justified at all or not? And, and it was just a guilt trip is all it was.

It’s just a psyop. And, and it’s completely inane. And the thing is, is I quite sincerely respect American, whatever, men and women of all stripes and including those who join the army, especially enlisted people. But there are a lot of good people who are officers and then whatever later see the light too. I tend to look at it more like the enlisted are the people and the officers are the government. But like, whatever, like I get it as far as even the officers go. And almost all these people mean well. And unlike regular civilian government employees, military government employees tend to really take their oath to the Constitution dead seriously and sincerely because they’re putting their life on the line or at least other guys are getting killed for it.

Or risking their lives over it and whatever. So it’s much more meaningful. And they take that stuff seriously. So. And, and they know, like any veterans who’ve read my books and whatever, they know I don’t pander to them, but I wrote the book just with pure sincerity, essentially about what these wars were about. And so many veterans have read those books and heard my shows and whatever, and they take it as a favor to them. I might as well have written those books for them because I’m not like, disdaining them and cursing them for what they did and that kind of thing.

I’m telling the truth about a lot of what happened over there, but I’m explaining to them the context in which they were used, in which. In the context which they were denied. Right? So, like, if you served in Iraq between 04 and 06, in this and that region, like, what difference did it make? Whose side were you on? Why were you even there in the first place? And what did it all result in? You might not know the answer to any of those questions. And so, you know, none of what I’m saying here should be taken as disrespect to the troops.

I get nothing but respect from them because they can tell how I feel about them too. I feel like they got completely screwed. They. They to me, are all that homeless Vietnam veteran on the side of the road, used up and abandoned by the U.S. government, you know, and including, no matter how gung ho they were at the time, I assume they just had no idea what they were doing or who they were really shooting at, and, and that kind of thing. And that’s for later anyway. You know, a lot of the time they, you know, I know we were all raised on this stuff where your job as a soldier is to follow orders, because.

Especially because this is not some hereditary monarchy. This is America, the world’s oldest constitutional republic, where the adults talk things over under their First Amendment free speech, and decide and choose the best leaders to make the best decisions, the best they know how to do. And so if you’re in the army, you can trust them to use you only as you should be used to protect the lives and the property and the liberty of the American people. That’s what you took your oath to. That’s what you assume that is the job you’re volunteering for and that they would send you on.

And so the whole thing is just a giant betrayal. I mean, the, the empire itself is a betrayal of the entire society as, just as well as the fighting men that they send off to do these things, which is why they have to lie to us from morning till night, because otherwise we just wouldn’t go along with this stuff anymore. More, which already fewer and fewer of us are willing to. I want to get back to Iran and Israel. I had a quick question, Scott, because so much of what’s on, or at least should be on Netanyahu’s mind are the young Americans and how they view Israel and the US Relationship with Israel.

So my question to you is if Israel did, if it seemed as though Israel played a role in getting the US Involved in a war with Iran. You mentioned the Quinnipiac poll that Massey shared that showed 70% of Americans are opposed to an engagement in Iran. Doesn’t Israel risk another example of why Americans would be suspicious of that relationship? Why is Israel so, like, why are they not taking it a little bit slower? Do they feel that this is the time to strike now that you have Trump in the White House and this will be the best opportunity we have to.

They said decapitate the snake Iran. Yeah. And they’re risking an entire generation of. Of Americans that see this as another. And if Americans start dying at bases in the Middle east and there’s a big war, I think, you know what, speaking of Dave Smith, I think he pointed out that in fact, they know they’ve already lost the American public and especially the younger generation. They’ve got some baby boomers now. And so therefore that’s why to go for it now before it’s too late, before they finally lose what’s left of American support. And, you know, they’ve made major headway in killing the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah.

They’re charismatic and very influential leader, whoever’s replaced him, I don’t know who, but he’s not as magnetic a personality as far as, you know, leadership abilities over those people. So. And because of the airstrikes and, and the pager attack and whatever, Hezbollah’s been severely weakened. The Assad regime in Syria has been finally overthrown in the end of 2024 by bin Ladenite forces there. So that is in favor of Israel because it breaks that Shiite arc of power, as they called it, from Tehran through Baghdad George W. Bush through Damascus and on to Beirut. So there’s two good scores for the Israelis there.

And then their third major score was the severe setback to Iran’s nuclear program. And I think that this is. You framed it right. The calculation is essentially one of time preference. Right. Do we go ahead and go for broke now? Use and abuse the American people to the nth degree, one last good time so that we get what we want. We get rid of the Ayatollah in Tehran and put an end to that part of the threat to Israel for the long term. And then in that case, not really have to worry whether they have American support anymore because they’re armed up well enough and their enemies are weak and divided enough, they’ve succeeded in making friends with most of the close in Arab states, at least for the time being.

And so is it worth it or is it not? I’ve long been fascinated by Israel, the Israeli government’s, you know, short time preference, right, as the economists would call it, where they’re going to get away with bloody murder now and then. If this causes like you’re saying, just overall resentment, a lack of support for them in the sentiment of, for example, the American people or all that that, or American politicians even that their attitude seems to always be, we’ll just worry about that later. We’re going to get away with what we’re going to get away with.

You know, like this is the iron law of the universe. It’s always easier to ask forgiveness than permission. Okay, but maybe not always, right? Like maybe you’re gonna find that no, you’re not forgiven. We’re really pissed off this time. And for me, I’ve been like this since Iraq War ii because Israel played such a huge role in lying us into that war. And I never really had taken the time to learn very much about the Israeli Palestinian conflict, basically because I bought the propaganda that, well, it’s just a fight over God gave this land to us.

No, God gave this land to us and whatever. And then. So I don’t think anybody really has a legitimate claim there. So I just don’t care enough to really learn all the ins and outs of it and whatever. Then once they helped lie this country into Iraq War ii and the neoconservatives were just the Likud in America, basically the vanguard of the Israel lobby in the United States and the role that they played in lying us into that war, well then I was motivated to learn much more about who’s occupying who over there and come to find out, no, the Palestinians have plain old natural rights just like everybody else in the world.

It’s the Israeli Zionist Jews from Eastern Europe who claim to have this supernatural property right according to their religion that cancels out the property rights, the plain old exact just natural human property rights that people who live there already possessed. And so it’s Not God gave this. Gave us this land. No, God gave us this land. It’s my great grandfather gave me this land. No, God gave us this land as like the pretended trump card over natural law and natural rights, which is completely absurd and preposterous as any pile of crap ever shoveled, if you ask me.

But so, so, yeah, and there are people who are gonna never. I’m telling you, man, I’m one of them too. There are people who only just got started in the last couple of years who never knew. But you know, as I say this, I’m sure it occurs to you, the images you have in your mind of all of the dead children, women and children that they killed in Gaza over the last couple of years. I mean, there’s images I’ll never forget of guys carrying their dead children’s body parts in plastic bags of, of the. The wailing of the women and the gnashing of their teeth over their dead grandbabies.

The. The footage of collapsed buildings where you can hear the babies, the, the toddlers stuck in the void spaces in there crying for help, buried alive who are gonna die over the next five days of dehydration because nobody’s coming. There’s no way to get them out of there. They’re buried alive with their leg pinned or whatever in some void space in there. They’re just going to suffocate in the dark, alone. And nobody cares. No international reaction. No international reaction, but Americans who will never forget it and Americans who now understand that Israel is the worst thing about the United States by far.

There’s nothing that compares to it. It’s, and it may be the worst thing about the world. It’s the most barbarian society, the most criminal, barbarous government on the planet. They make the Chai comms look like whatever, I don’t know, whoever’s not that bad, and the chicoms are. But, but there’s just. There is no tyranny like the Israeli tyranny over the Palestinian people on this planet today. It’s just absolutely disgusting. And if this kind of thing counts, and I think it does, this goes down in history books forever. That America has aided and abetted this since the end of World War II.

There’s just absolute crime against the people of Palestine and ongoing. There are just utter enslavement under circumstances that are akin to, to Soviet Communism or Maoist Communism. Just the most abject human slavery is. It is, you know, almost beyond comprehension. It’s certainly beyond forgiveness or beyond toleration. And, and it’s coming to a head. And you know what? The Iran war might just be the last straw. You know, it could be that they already pulled their last straw there, or that’s the wrong metaphor, but it could be they already, you know, we’re already past that point and that that’s part of what Netanyahu is afraid of, too, just defending Tel Aviv, but gives a damn.

He should, that one good last American, you know, war on behalf of Israel might be the end of that state, because it’d certainly be the end, it certainly could be the end of American support for them overall. I joked before, I, I, I meant it at the time. I don’t know. It was a joke. I says right before Trump was inaugurated a year ago that Trump may be the most Zionist president in the history of the United States of America, but he might be the last one. And it might not be the case that presidents can get elected, kowtow into Israel anymore.

The balance may very well have shifted. Money’s money. But at the end of the day, you got to win these votes. Florida, but the rest of the country, still the rest of the country. J.D. vance might be seeing that. You see him kind of taking a little bit more of a sheepish support of Israel recently to a degree. You know, he’s leaking at least. He’s, he’s telling his friends to tell the papers that he’s the most reluctant guy on the Cabinet right now, for what that’s worth. My last question, Scott, I know you, we don’t have very much time.

I appreciate you taking some time to sit with me. We have a few minutes left. If, if you’re a country and you know that the US Is not your ally, not, not that really, you know, what country would say US Is fully their ally after the whole thing that’s going on with Greenland right now. But if you’re a country, aren’t you interested in getting as many weapons as possible, upgrading your weapons stock as much as possible after seeing what happened in Venezuela, after seeing the bullying of Iran right now, why every country, I mean, talk about politics through the end of a gun barrel? I think Mao said that every country, if you were a leader of a country that didn’t count out the United States, would you not be upgrading your military as fast as possible? Yep.

Look, I have a, that’s one just kind of long paragraph in my book Provoked, where I just run down how George W. Bush tore up his father and Richard Nixon’s treaties with the Russians and tore up Bill Clinton’s treaty with the North Koreans. Barack Obama came in and he tore up W. Bush’s, I shouldn’t say trees. These aren’t all trees. Let’s say agreement. Some of them are trees, some of them are agreements. W. Bush came in and tore up Bill Clinton’s agreement with North Korea to keep them in the non proliferation treaty. What’s the difference, Scott, between.

What’s the difference between an agreement and a treaty? Just standpoint, okay, so like, I mean we have like a full arms control treaty, like SALT or START 1, START 2 new START. These arms control treaties with the Russians or with the Soviet Union. These are the highest level agreements that nation states can make ratified by our Senate and by their parliament and that kind of thing. And the highest level of official dumb. Whereas like for example, Bill Clinton made an agreement with North Korea called the Agreed Framework where he said, just between you and me, it’s not ratified by the Senate, it’s not a full treaty, but we promise to sell you light water reactors and fuel oil and give you some welfare money if you promise to stay within the non proliferation Treaty, the treaty.

And they said, okay, fine. And then W. Bush came in and tore that up and, and there’s more to it than that, but essentially kicked them right out of the treaty. And then what they do, they made nuclear weapons and nobody’s messed with them since. Right now Barack Obama comes in. W. Bush had made a treaty with Muammar Gaddafi. Give up your nuclear technology, which he didn’t have much, it was in crates, really didn’t have a program. But give up your nuclear tech and I’ll bring you in from the cold and we’ll be friends again. Gaddafi went for it.

Seven years later, Barack Obama hired Al Qaeda mercenaries to murder him to death and overthrow his government. Right? So now Saddam Hussein, well, sorry to keep on that same track. Barack Obama makes a deal with Iran on their nuclear program. They already were part of the npt, but he said let’s expand your safeguards, agreement to expand your inspections and roll back your nuclear program some. And this kind of thing, they went for it. Then Donald Trump came in and he tore that up. That was again not quite a treaty, the jcpoa, but it was an agreement made with Iran and with the rest of the UN Security Council powers and all of that.

And so Donald Trump came in and tore that one up. And now, so nobody ever had an agreement with Iran, with Iraq, they just buffaloed us right into that one. But so if you look at the axis of evil states, you have Saddam Hussein put his Hands up, we just rolled right in there anyway, Gaddafi gave up his nuclear attack, we murdered him. Assad gave up his chemical weapons, murdered him or overthrew him. And Iran said, hands up, we’re making, we have civilian nuclear tech, but we’re not making bombs. We’re making, but we got a latent nuclear capability, don’t shoot.

And we went ahead and bombed the crap out of their latent nuclear program. So the lesson, the objective lesson for any nation in the world who’s even worried about ever coming, you know, into America’s crosshairs by hook or by crook, you’re sitting on some oil or some minerals we might want. Get yourself some A bombs. The kin dynasty is still in charge in North Korea. The Ayatollah is counting his days, his hours. Saddam is dead, Gaddafi’s dead. Assad lives in the suburbs of Moscow in exile. And so yes, weapons of mass destruction guarantee your independence. Ask Putin, ask Chairman Xi, they’ll tell you the same thing.

Why do American sock puppets not rule Moscow and Beijing? Because they have hydrogen bombs and they’ll use them and we know it, that’s why. And so, and, and again, same thing for North Korea. They don’t have H bombs, although they have tested boosted atom bombs that are sort of like a half assed hydrogen bomb. It’s like a boost boost with tritium, which is, I don’t know exactly. Like where’s the line between a boosted A bomb and a full fledged H bomb. But they’ve at least toyed with that stuff. And they claim to have tested a hypersonic missile, the North Koreans.

And so which means cannot be shot down by American defensive systems. So that’s why North Korea maintains its independence. That’s why they’re not even under threat compared to any of the rest of the Axis of Evil states, which you’ll note were all just enemies of Benjamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon was the axis of evil. And how in fact, the only reason they threw in North Korea in that original speech was just because if they had made it Syria, you would have went, wait a minute, this speech was written and tell a thief Washington what the hell is going on here? They threw in North Korea just to be like, oh, I guess this is about weapons and delivery systems instead of Ariel Sharon’s national security strategy.

Well, Scott, on that note, it’s not a pleasant note, but it’s always great to see you, Scott. I appreciate you taking some time to speak with the Trends Journal. Scott Horton, he’s the director of the Scott Horton Academy and Foreign Policy and Freedom editorial director@antiwhart.com we’re going to have a link for all this, all these things below. So I encourage everyone to check that out. Scott, thank you for joining me. Absolutely.
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