Scott interviews journalist Andrew Quilty about his recent piece for the Intercept, which details the horrific violence being carried out in Afghanistan by U.S.-backed militia groups. In several recent attacks, these “death squads” have raided religious boarding schools known as madrassas, and murdered dozens of the boys who studied there. Although these madrassas are sometimes thought to be Taliban recruiting grounds, Quilty explains that this kind of violence only drives regular Afghans closer to the Taliban. Quilty and Scott expect that night raids, drone strikes and support for anti-Taliban militant groups will continue under the Biden administration, just as they ramped up under Obama and increased even further under Trump. Sadly, says Quilty, these indirect tactics tend to be politically popular in America, since their enormous costs are hidden from voters at home.
Andrew Quilty is an Australian freelance photojournalist and reporter. A winner of Polk and World Press Photo awards, he has been based in Kabul since 2013. Follow him on Twitter or at andrewquilty.com.
“If you only read one book this year on America’s unending ‘War on Terror,’ it should be this persuasive and devastatingly damning account of how the United States created the original al Qaeda terrorism threat by its own actions and then increased that threat by orders of magnitude by its wanton killings in one country after another in the name of ‘counter-terrorism.’ Once I started reading it, I couldn’t stop!” — Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower and author of The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner
“Nothing has fueled the abuse of government power in the last 20 years like the ‘War on Terrorism.’ Scott Horton’s essential new book, Enough Already, is the key to understanding why it’s not too late to end the wars and save our country. Three administrations in a row have promised us a more restrained foreign policy. It is time we insisted on it.” — Ron Paul, M.D., former congressman and author of Swords into Plowshares: A Life in Wartime and a Future of Peace and Prosperity
“With outstanding scholarship, research and analysis, Scott Horton’s new book, Enough Already, lays bare the logical absurdity and self-defeating nature of America’s permanent-war establishment. It might have taken its title from a line in the book’s introduction: America’s war policy since at least the Carter Administration has been ‘a policy in search of a reason.’ As Horton painstakingly lays bare, in virtually none of the military conflicts the United States has chosen to fight in since the 1970s was our security ever genuinely threatened. His ultimate solution is the only one that has any chance of preserving American security and giving us a chance to be ready in case we do face a genuine threat in the future: end the pointless and self-defeating forever wars. All of them.” — Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis, USA (Ret.) four-time combat deployer, two-time winner of the Bronze Star and author of Eleventh Hour in 2020 America: How American Foreign Policy Got Jacked Up and What the Next Administration Can Do About It
“This is it! Finally, we have a comprehensive, rigorously researched, beautifully written and unassailable argument to stop the ‘endless wars’ that virtually no Americans outside the foreign policy establishment want to continue. There is no better time for this book to appear and no better person to write it than Scott Horton, who has been the people’s foreign policy expert for decades. If you want to save lives, buy it, read it and share it.” — Thaddeus Russell, professor of history and philosophy at Willamette University and author of A Renegade History of the United States
“I finished reading Enough Already the same week I had to attend the funeral of a sailor from one of my Iraq deployments. He killed himself leaving behind a wife and three boys. Nothing in this book is simply historical or abstract to tens of millions of families. Scott Horton has written an incredible accounting of the wars of the last twenty years. This book should be used to hold accountable those who purposefully committed these crimes and to remember the generations of Iraqis, Afghans, Somalis, Yemenis, Pakistanis, Palestinians, Libyans, Iranians, Syrians, sub-Saharan Africans and Americans whose lives have been forever damaged and destroyed.” — Capt. Matthew Hoh, USMC (ret.), former senior State Department official, Zabul Province, Afghanistan, senior fellow at the Center for International Policy
“Scott Horton is one of the best informed and hardest hitting critics of the War on Terror. His new book is a gold mine for anyone seeking to learn about the frauds and failures of U.S. foreign policy.” — Jim Bovard, columnist at USA Today and author of Public Policy Hooligan
“Scott Horton’s book courageously investigates the deception that is the ‘War on Terror.’ It provides an impressive and wide-ranging examination of the misguided and costly U.S. foreign policy decisions which led to morally indefensible, strategically useless and militarily catastrophic interventions and wars in Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq and other parts of the world. Enough Already must be read by every American who cares about the future of his country because the cost of these imprudent wars has proven detrimental to the nation’s moral compass, global reputation, economic well-being and, indeed, national security. Enough Already is an eloquently written book. Using accessible language, exhaustive research and indisputable arguments, Horton’s latest volume is a damning and impassioned case against war.” — Ramzy Baroud, editor of Palestine Chronicle and author of These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons
“Scott Horton has put together a devastating, deeply-researched account of how the U.S. war system betrayed the American people’s trust in carrying out the so-called ‘War on Terror.’ He shows convincingly that it actually served other objectives and represents an unforgivable treachery that has inflicted incalculable harm on the United States. Readers across the entire deeply divided U.S. political spectrum will find truth in it that they can trust.” — Gareth Porter, Martha Gellhorn Award-winning journalist and author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare
“Scott Horton is a walking encyclopedia of U.S foreign policy, and he has managed to chronicle the entire history of the government’s meddling in the Middle East in this well-written and important volume. Enough Already explains why still today the U.S. government continues to bomb countries at its caprice, long after the perpetrators of the September 11, 2001, attacks have disappeared.” — Laurie Calhoun, author of We Kill Because We Can: From Soldiering to Assassination in the Drone Age
“Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan was by far the best single account of the Afghan mire. Yet Afghanistan is only one of the conflicts unleashed by the U.S. and Western interventions in the ‘War on Terror.’ Scott Horton has now given us Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism, a masterly history of these chaotic, tragic and above all futile conflicts, ranging with his usual excoriating accuracy from Mali to Pakistan, from Iraq to Yemen by way of Libya and Syria. Millions are dead, disabled or languish desperately far from their homes as the direct result of our blunders, bewilderment and outright malicious stupidity. Thousands of our own soldiers have died or are disabled. Hundreds more of our citizens have died in the U.S. and Europe in what Horton calls the ‘backdraft’ of our disastrous actions. Ignore the self-serving memoirs or grandiose academic tomes; if you read only one book on the so-called ‘War on Terror,’ this must be that book.” — Frank Ledwidge, former Royal Navy Reserve intelligence officer, “Justice Advisor” to the UK Mission in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province and author of Investment in Blood
“The United States must end its foolish empire building. In Enough Already, Scott Horton clearly demonstrates the dangers of following those that profit from the deaths of American service men and women fighting in undeclared and endless wars. We cannot wage conventional war on an unconventional enemy. Enough Already!” — Sgt. Dan McKnight, Idaho Army National Guard (ret.), Afghanistan war veteran, founder and chairman of BringOurTroopsHome.US
“There is no better title for Scott Horton’s ambitious new book than Enough Already because honestly, those are the two words that floated through my head the entire time I was reading it. U.S. foreign policy for the last 20 years has been an endless parade of regime changes, useless attempts to ‘fix’ our blunders, extra-legal killing and detention, and military interventions that have made troubled states failed states. It never ends. Whether it be our destruction of Iraq, the illegal drone wars, JSOC manhunting or Hillary Clinton’s last stand in Libya, Scott has expertly harnessed mountains of detail here in a compelling narrative that underscores what a rotten mess the War on Terrorism has become. More importantly it shows that no matter how righteous the mission to go after the 9/11 perpetrators seemed at the time, the American government has managed to twist those goals into something perverse and ultimately more dangerous to the world than the 19 hijackers who changed everything that fateful day. The book is grim but persuasive, and a must read for anyone who is interested in learning how we got to this place two decades later.” — Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, senior adviser at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and contributing editor at The American Conservative
But Judge Curtis Gurley is less than a damned dog. His name is shit forever. His family’s honor destroyed permanently. All of human history will remember his disgrace.
May he bang his knee on something really really hard and it never properly heal. Scum.
Scott talks to Kelley Vlahos about America’s 30-year nonstop bombing campaign of Iraq, and the prospects for ending it. The destruction of Iraq, says Vlahos, has followed a familiar trend: American politicians sell the public on the need to get involved in some country with what looks to be a brutal dictator in charge, then the military intervenes, usually by bombing indiscriminately, and finally the country is left far worse than it was before. In recent memory, America has done this to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, though Iraq is perhaps the most egregious example. And while Scott and Vlahos hold out some hope for Joe Biden’s willingness to make peace in Yemen and Afghanistan, they are skeptical that he will do anything to disentangle America from its role in Iraq.
Kalmen Barkin discusses the deplorable situation of Palestinians in Israel today, a people whose lands and rights are being slowly taken away from them by the Israeli government, while the delusive promise of a two-state solution vanishes along with them. Barkin believes Netanyahu may be in political (as well as legal) trouble these days, though he has been able to survive nearly every challenge to his regime thus far. Even if Netanyahu is replaced by another prime minister, it is unlikely that the project of expanding settlements further and further into Palestinian territory will ever be undone now that it has gotten this far along. The only hope for the Palestinians, it seems, is to gain equal rights as full citizens of the emerging single Jewish nation state.
First step: Label all radical right-wing dissent “terrorism.”
Step two: outlaw the most popular rifle in America.
Step three: ???
Step four: Unity and Stability!
The post 9/11 era is over. The single greatest national security threat right now is our internal division. The threat of domestic terrorism. The polarization that threatens our democracy. If we don't reconnect our two Americas, the threats will not have to come from the outside. pic.twitter.com/ADgGcf7qEo
Scott talks to Bob Murphy about the economic side of all the covid policies this past year. Most obvious are the huge spending bills, which dwarf even the stimulus measures taken after the 2008 recession. Murphy reminds us that this kind of rampant spending really means the federal reserve and the treasury have “created” new money out of thin air. This money enters through the financial sector, slowly making its way through the rest of the economy, where it can cause price inflation, stagnating wages and the loss of the value of savings. But it allows the federal government to spread out the harmful effects of its policies in a way that wouldn’t be possible if it were to raise taxes or borrow the money all at once. Murphy also talks about the way that small businesses have been devastated by lockdown policies, while large corporations have absorbed the losses more easily. These large corporations will survive when the small businesses close, buying up their assets and moving in on what used to be their business. This is yet another way that huge government action benefits big business and the politically connected at the expense of the average business owner, employee or taxpayer.
US News Trump pardoned or granted clemency to several non-violent drug offenders before leaving office. [Link] Twitter banned the account of the Chinese Embassy in the US. [Link] Biden officially invited Taiwan’s ambassador to the US to his inauguration. A Taiwanese...
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You can't stop markets - where their is a buyer their will be a seller. The interventionists (mainly Samantha Power) in the Obama administration (the same ones that now populate the Biden Administration) used the cover of "Responsibility to Protect" to remove the...
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Scott interviews journalist Andrew Quilty about his recent piece for the Intercept, which details the horrific violence being carried out in Afghanistan by U.S.-backed militia groups. In several recent attacks, these "death squads" have raided religious boarding...
Scott talks to Kelley Vlahos about America's 30-year nonstop bombing campaign of Iraq, and the prospects for ending it. The destruction of Iraq, says Vlahos, has followed a familiar trend: American politicians sell the public on the need to get involved in some...
Kalmen Barkin discusses the deplorable situation of Palestinians in Israel today, a people whose lands and rights are being slowly taken away from them by the Israeli government, while the delusive promise of a two-state solution vanishes along with them. Barkin...
Scott talks to Bob Murphy about the economic side of all the covid policies this past year. Most obvious are the huge spending bills, which dwarf even the stimulus measures taken after the 2008 recession. Murphy reminds us that this kind of rampant spending really...
62 Minutes Not Safe For Work Shane Hazel is the host of The Radical Podcast, a Marine Corps vet, former candidate for US Senate and future candidate for Georgia Governor. Shane joins Pete to talk about his US Senate run for the state of Georgia and what it was like to...
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100 Minutes PG-13 Bird is one-fourth of the hosts of the Timeline Earth podcast. Bird joins Pete to go over the foundation of Marxism, dialectical materialism. They then launch into a look at Lenin's main work, "State and Revolution." Episode 521: Myth and the 'Terror...
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On COI #60, Connor Freeman joins Kyle Anzalone to talk about the Iran trap Trump has set for Biden. In his final days in office Trump, through his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, has announced several new sanctions on Iran and accused Iran of being a safe-haven for...
On COI #59, Kyle Anzalone discusses several recent news stories. A new study finds US sonar tests are killing whales in the Pacific. The sonar is for detecting submarines but it likely causing marine life to become beached and die. Several Senators in Guam are trying...
On COI#58, Maj. Danny Sjursen, USA (ret.) joins Kyle Anzalone to break down Ethiopia, Mali, and Biden's foreign policy team. Danny gives a brief history of Ethiopia and explains how the country's conflicts with its neighbors. Danny explains how the Ethiopian Prime...
Connor Freeman, writer at The Libertarian Institute, returns to the show to discuss the Trump administration's decision to name the Houthi a terrorist organization. The Houthi govern most of Yemen's population. The designation will make it extremely difficult to bring...
https://youtu.be/2kabaMyRmkE egalitarians, however intelligent as individuals, deny the very basis of human intelligence and of human reason: the identification of the ontological structure of reality, of the laws of human nature, and the universe. In so doing, the...
https://youtu.be/Bf984AcAmDQ It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, aft er all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a “dismal science.” But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic...
https://youtu.be/6A-h6dyoxRU ...freedom from violence is essential to the development of man’s reason and personality. Murray N. Rothbard Education: Free and Compulsory, p. 10 https://www.saltheagorist.com/ ****Buy a 3D Printer here****:...
https://youtu.be/I5CJv00aojU Minimum wage laws tragically generate unemployment, especially so among the poorest and least skilled or educated workers... a minimum wage, of course, does not guarantee any worker’s employment; it only prohibits, by force of law, anyone...
There are a few rights of passage in law school. Many of them occur in constitutional law. For instance, constitutional law is where most students will learn for the first time that judicial review, the power to declare laws unconstitutional, was not a power granted...
https://youtu.be/nFQuYaFW1aM Some libertarian anarchists view even the act of secession as a political act which creates a new, albeit smaller, state. We examine the libertarian principles at play behind secession and examine the libertarian arguments against...
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https://youtu.be/ZfBebGgBGUQ Jose Galison invited me on his show, No Way Jose! for a recap of this incredibly crazy year. We covered a host of topics and realized that we didn't get to half the stuff we wanted to talk about. I guarantee you we covered a bunch of stuff...
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Tommy is joined by Navy Veteran and entrepreneur Keith Orsag. In this episode they discuss COVID, lockdowns, the election, secession, and Agorism. https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/strangerencounterspodcast/leave_me_alone.mp3