NATO's War Against the Serbs w/ Scott Horton: Ep. 548

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1:25It's no accident that you and I associate foreign wars. Sort of imperial projects with the Middle East. For my entire life, we have been at war somewhere in the sandbox. To understand the US imperial project, we have to go further back. That's why I brought on Scott Horton to talk about, well, our adventures in the Balkans, both because it's relevant to, well, how we became involved everywhere, relevant to our long term cold war, although we could argue it has gone hot with Russia. And also, well the extension of the Nuremberg system. This idea that there is a special crime against humanity and that when we detect one, no matter how legitimate we must invade, of course, invoked very tactically.

2:29Well, all of those can be found in our interaction with Yugoslavia, Serbia. Look, Balkans politics is infamously complicated. I am clearly not an expert. So no yell at me. I know there's like a couple of serves who are going to listen to this. I tried my best guys. I can't speak your language at all. I can't say the names. And I don't really understand. I have of course a familiarity with it, but bear with me. And if you are like me unfamiliar with this conflict, well, tune in. I think you're going to get a lot out of it and you'll be shocked at how often you have seen these motifs repeated again and again. Of course history does not repeat itself, but well, it sure does rhyme, and we have been hearing this rhyme over and over and over again. This evil, horrible man is genociding his own people. He's the second coming of Hitler and we need to invade. We need to drop bombs. Never mind the details.

3:31Before I turn you over to Scott, these episodes are sponsored, of course by Axios Remote Fitness and Coaching, but also Fox and Suns Coffee. That's an an apostrophe if you're looking to find it. I drink this every day. The guy who owns it keeps sending me coffee, so I've given it out to my friends and my family. My brother-in-law, the guy who rents for me, they're drinking it. They haven't died yet, so I assume they like it. I like it. If you use code J-Bird and it'll get 15% off. Anyway, here's Scott Horton. All right, Scott Horton. Welcome to the J-Bird and show how you doing, man. I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me. I'm glad to have you on. As for usual, I've come on to ask you, well, highly specific questions about geopolitics, specifically because not too long ago, Ratco Maldic, a man whose name I assume I am butchering, passed away. One of the arch-war criminals, quote-unquote, of, well, the siege of Sarajevo.

4:34Given that and kind of the recent conversation about the war in Iran, I thought it would be useful to provide context onto, well, the neocons in their foreign wars. For my entire life and, note out, most of the life of my audience, we have been at war in the Middle East. And so that sort of becomes the default what we assume that all of our foreign adventures are. But we've been at this game for a while. And so Scott, I figured you'd be the best person to bring on to talk about, well, our imperial designs for the Balkans. Okay. Great. Well, I appreciate that. And this is obviously very crucial history that is often overlooked because of more recent history like Iraq War II obviously sucks up a lot of the attention and other things related to that. But the Bill Clinton wars, you know, were horrible and it really did start during HW Bush, American intervention there. The background real quick, we're talking about, when we're talking about the Balkans, we're talking about these little mini-states east of Italy there, right across the Adriatic

5:39Sea. And the Balkans were, you know, they always said, I forgot whose quote it was, the next war that'll start would be some damn fool thing in the Balkans. And then that was, you know, where World War I, you know, began was in Sarajevo in Bosnia. And that was under the Austro-Hungarian Empire there. And so it was only in the aftermath of the First World War and the complete dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that the new nation of Yugoslavia was made, the union of the Southern Slavs. And so it's extremely complicated country, a Balkanized to coin a phrase, right, where you have Catholics, you have Orthodox, you have Muslims, you have all different ethnicities, Orthodox, Slovenians, Croatians, Serbs, Bosians, Albanians, and Montenegrens and all of these things.

6:40And this incredibly complicated history going all the way back. And in the aftermath of the Second World War, the dictator Tito, he was a communist, but he was not directly allied with the Soviet Union. He was independent of the USSR and was not even a member of the Warsaw Pact. And so he was able to play kind of a third-way game between the United States and the Soviet Union. And he was able to hold all of this together kind of in a balancing act through his dictatorial power. You marry this guy's daughter and then you get this business relationship, whatever, Lexidamu saying trying to run the damn place, you know, something like that. Then he died in 1980 and no one else was able to keep it all in balance. No one else had the juice that he did to keep everything the way that they wanted. And then within five years, the Cold War ended and within four more of the Soviet Union completely dissolved. And at that time, this was when America ushered in what George Bush then called the New World Order and the rise of American unipolar power.

7:44And by the way, to be specific, there was a conspiracy version of the New World Order, which is by the John Birch Society essentially champion this, which I used to believe in for a very long time during this time in the 1990s that ultimately the real New World Order is a one-world government, federal government under the UN, where America is subsumed under this new global regime and whatever. Well, that's BS and that's not what George Bush meant. Now what he meant was much closer to just what Paul Wolfwitz or the Neo-Conservatives would have said, which was simply this is America's unipolar moment. It used to be from the time of the end of the Second World War through the end of the Soviet Union or really through the end of the Cold War ended a little bit before the Soviet Union did. But it was what they called the bipolar world where there's America is a superpower. The Soviet Union is a superpower and especially including its allies, meaning all of the Warsaw Pact states of Eastern Europe and until the 70s, their alliance with red China in

8:46the East. And then there was the non-aligned countries in the Third World, but they never had any power or wealth or anything so they were sort of beside the point anyway. We could have proxy battles there, but essentially the world had been divided into major blocks led by Washington and Moscow. Well, with the disillusion of the Soviet Union now, as Darth Vader would say, there's no one to oppose us, right? And so this is the time where if George Bush was going to senior that is, was going to act like what he, you know, the game that he talked about being prudent and careful and he might have tried to preserve the Republic by bringing the Empire home now that the emergency had subsided. Instead, he decided to press for his full advantage. Now it's true that the Neocons were in his administration. They were called the crazies in the basement and Brent Scocraft, the national security adviser, his job was keeping them in the basement. There are a lot of people down Latin America, but they're not allowed to mess around on

9:48the Middle East. And their influence had been somewhat limited, although famously and crucially for our story here too, Paul Wolfowitz was then the deputy undersecretary defense for policy. And under him were his aides, Scooter Libby and Salmei Khalilzat to card-carrying members of the new conservative movement as well. And they wrote what was called the defense planning guidance for 1994, for fiscal year 94. They wrote it in 92. They later re-wrote it slightly after it was leaked to the New York Times and caused a little bit of a scandal. But essentially it remained unchanged and it invoked a little bit more multi-lateralism with our allies in the second version. But the basic policy was America must remain the world hedgemen. We're going to take advantage of this so-called unipolar moment to establish a regime over the earth where America is the dominant political and especially military power on every continent

10:54and such that the other major powers now are completely weakened Soviet Union or former Soviet Union in the Russian Federation and are new, befriended, but also, you know, poor and weak, French-China. They wouldn't even dream in our allies in Europe, wouldn't even dream of attempting to militarize to compete with us because we'd just be so far out ahead of them that we're going to get the rest of the world to essentially accept America's role as the world government. The real world government is Washington, D.C. It's not the world taking us over. It's us taking them over for everybody's own good you understand. And we're just never going to allow there to be a near-peer competitor to us. And so part of solidifying that victory in the Cold War and our unipolar status was not just keeping NATO in Europe, but especially expanding it. But that also meant, you know, right in this time of 1990-91, there's an open question

11:56about just what exactly is going to be America's role in Europe. Enjoy big savings with Red Hot Deals at Vonson Albertons. Next week at Vonson Albertons, baby back pork ribs are 2.99 per pound with membership where applicable limit three racks. And ballpark hot dogs or hamburger buns eight count are 2.99 with digital coupon. Plus personal seedless watermelons or cantaloupe are 1.99 each with digital coupon. Enjoy fresh and delicious savings for every meal. Hurry in, these deals won't last. Visit vonsoralbertons.com for more deals and ways to save. Forboh we understand that even the best of plans sometimes need a little support, so we plan for the plot twists. Every booking is automatically backed by our Verbo care guarantee giving you confidence from the very start. Whenever you need help, it's ready. Before you stay through the moments in between and after your trip. Because a great trip starts with peace of mind. And maybe a good playlist. But we've got the peace of mind park covered.

12:59As per say, compared with Germany, a newly reunited Germany. And for that matter, what's the newly reunited Germany and America's relationship going to be with Britain on one side, Poland on the other, Russia further east. All of this is a little bit up in the air. People have different ideas about how it's going to play out. And while America was distracted doing a rock war one, the Germans took the advantage and pressed for independence in Slovenia and Croatia. And by doing so, they really kicked off the war in the Balkans. And they were doing so attempting to take their advantage. Then George Bush said, senior again, we're talking about now. It says, oh no. The Germans are attempting to create an independent foreign policy from us. But we must be the dominant force in Europe, in Germany.

14:03And the shock collar on all these things. So we hereby recognize the secession of Bosnia then. As like, you know, in other words, they weren't thinking about the long term grand strategic planning of the planet earth. And what's the best way all this could go? And even in terms of the large questions of America's strategic position on the European continent, they were still acting within the very narrow and short kind of time horizon and time preference of who is getting out ahead of who in the former Yugoslavia now. And we can't let them make us look like junior partners. And the Germans are in the lead in determining how things are going to go. And so it was important that America in order to essentially kind of preemptive the Germans take control over Balkan policy at that point. It was also the case that as Senator Dick Luger said, as well as a study from the RAN corporation,

15:09they had both, I don't know who coined the phrase first. I guess RAN may be coined at first and Luger was copying them, or they both kind of made it up together. Out of area or out of business that NATO couldn't just be a defensive alliance anymore because there was no Soviet Union to threaten it. So it needed something to do if it was going to hang together. And of course, this NATO is the linchpin to American policy in Europe. If it's not NATO, then Britain is on the periphery and Germany is dominant. If it's NATO, then America and therefore our bestest friends, the Brits, are still dominant on the continent over the Germans. That was as the British Lord Ismay had said during the foundation of NATO back in 1949, I believe it's when he coined the phrase. He said, the purpose of NATO is to keep the Americans in the Germans down and the Soviets out. And so this is the same thing only now. It's the Russians, but to keep the Americans in on this is the Brits talking.

16:10To keep the Americans in the Germans down and the Russians out. So that's a part of this sort of, in a way, like the office politics, right? Like the politics that are not of just grand strategy, but of who's going to get to implement the grand strategy, the office politics of who gets to make all these decisions in the first place. Now I did skip a crucial part of this, which is that the Yugoslavians are real people. And so there are things going on there, such as they had held referendums, which I believe the Americans had encouraged. I'm not sure say that because I forget exactly that. They did hold these referendums were essentially secessionists, pro-secessionists won in all the major administrative regions of Yugoslavia. But Milosevich won the presidency in Serbia, which was sort of the seat of power in Yugoslavia,

17:11and forgive me some, or some, Bosnian's going to get mad at me for mischaracterizing this. I hope I don't get too far outside of my description and screwed up here, but he's essentially, I believe like the, he's the president of Serbia and he's one of the presidents of Yugoslavia is essentially a situation there. But he's a commie and a right-wing conservative nationalist communist at that, right? He's calling himself a socialist now, but he's essentially from the party of the old breads, but now they're the conservatives. Now it's the, the capitalists in the West are the youth and the revolution and it's the communist who are the old guys clinging on to their old power, just as it was in the Soviet Union as it was falling apart. If that makes sense, even though, you know, he's the leftist. But then that makes him also completely intransigent from the American point of view, just absolutely an obstacle to their stated goal as they put it in their euphemism of expanding the American empire, uniting Europe to the whole thing and make it whole and free. And so how can it be whole and free if this idiot speed bump, Roblox is in the way of

18:16the whole thing, doing what he wants to do instead of what we want him to do? And so, you know, they kind of made him public enemy number one from the beginning there, just because of who he was. But then also inside Yugoslavia, everyone wants to secede, but he's saying no and he's got real reason to. Now, in Slovenia, if you look at the map here, you can see how they are isolated away from Bosnia and Serbia by Croatia, right? So Slovenia secedes from Yugoslavia and there was also a very heterogeneous society where there wasn't too much else at stake there for them to secede. That was one thing. Then Croatia goes with them and when Croatia goes with and really Slovenia too, you can see that now cuts off Serbia from direct land ties to Italy and potentially to trade with Italy and the rest of Europe. So this is, as they say, geopolitics just doesn't just mean global politics.

19:16It means the politics of geography and who's blocking your land bridge to Italy or not, right? So this is crucial and they engage in Slovenian Croatia seceded Yugoslavia launched what was called the 10-day war in which they were, I believe, with German support. The Germans provide a bunch of support to the Slovenians who routed the Yugoslav army and forced them out of there after the 10-day war. Now this isn't too apparent on the map. You can't see it. But if you look at Croatia, it's sort of that backwards seven there, right? So in the top part of Croatia, along the Bosnian border and in the Far East on the Serbian border, this is Western and Eastern Slovenia and the Krojina. Okay? So there's Eastern Slovenia as I can far Eastern Croatia and there's a little bit of a gap

20:19along the bottom of that seven there and that is the Krojina and Western Slovenia. So this is predominantly Serbian population inside what was just an informal, it's not exactly informal, but an administrative zone, right? Not even a state border like states in our union. This has been simply like almost like a county line, maybe across between a county line and a state border previously in Yugoslavia. Now this is being treated as a hard state border. Croatia has succeeded, but now they're taking a bunch of Serbs with them. Serbs who had never been ruled by Zagreb, the capital of Croatia before, they had been put their hundreds of years before by the Austro-Hungarian Empire had moved them in like three or four hundred years before in order to keep the, as a guarantee to keep the Muslims out.

21:21So this is, you know, before our country was formed is how long these Serbs had lived there. And so, but now they find themselves, essentially as a kid-napped minority in the new nation state of Croatia, which had never existed before as an independent nation state. And so fighting breaks out there in the Yugoslavian government, the Serbian government, the Yugoslavian government, intervene on behalf of these Croatian Serbs and fight them to a standstill. And there was, I think, some pretty ugly fighting on both sides there. But two things happened here. One, the Croatians had to back out, but so did the Yugoslav army. And the compromise was they brought in UN peacekeepers instead of either side being the dominant force there. They brought in UN peacekeepers to protect the Serbian population. Again, we're talking about along the southern border of the top part of that backwards on 7 of the shape of Croatia on your map there, where this is a Serbian population inside Croatia.

22:21So, but this also was the start of the narrative that Milosevic is just trying to create a greater Serbia. He's not happy with the Serbia that he's going to have as sort of the rump what's left of Yugoslavia after the rest of the pieces of it are broken off. He wants to go ahead and invade all of these other neighboring areas to expand Serbian influence in this new Serb empire. Well, this is essentially a bunch of crap, right? Like he was reacting against what was happening to that Serb population inside Croatia. And by the way, I cite against interest as they say the American ambassador and the British negotiator and all these type people who are telling the story from their own point of view, oftentimes admitting like in their own memoirs, well, look, I mean, don't get me wrong. The Croatians were sure cleansing these people and that was the crucial fact of the situation. But still the Serbs were the bad guys anyway or what you know what I mean? Like that's all in there. So that's where I'm getting this stuff from is from the very, very official sources.

23:24You'll like my citations when you read it, but believe me now, know it later when you, or don't believe me now, but know it later when you read the book. It's all in there. And so that was the first big start of the war, the 10-day war over Slovenia and then the war over the Krojina and Western Slovona. I think the problem of Eastern Slovenia had already been maybe negotiated, but it was Western Slovonia and the Krojina were the major fighting took place. Oh, no, you know what? Maybe it was in Eastern Slovonia as well. Enjoy big savings with Red Hot deals at Vons and Albertsons. This week at Vons and Albertsons, baby back pork ribs are 299 per pound with membership where applicable limit three racks. In ballpark hot dogs or hamburger buns, eight count are 299 with digital coupon. Plus personal seedless watermelons or cantaloupe are 199 each with digital coupon. Enjoy fresh and delicious savings for every meal. Hurry in, these deals won't last. Visit vonsoralbertsons.com for more deals and ways to save.

24:24McDonald's is putting value back on the menu. Whether you're craving a big mac, McNuggets are sausage egg and cheese, McGrittles, make it a meal and save. Your favorite is now your wallet's favorite too. Extra value meals are back. Get a big something extra. With a big mac or 10 piece McNuggets, fries and a medium coke all for just $9. Limited time only, promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing. Bada bada bada. Because forgive me, I'm a little bit rusty on it. Anyway, then the next major thing here is, as I mentioned previously, the American government, again, this is the HW Bush government, recognizes the independence of Bosnia. And it just held this election, which the Bosian Serbs boycotted because they were supposed to have this rotating presidency and the Muslims were already refusing to share power. In combination with the Bosnian Croatians, that is the Croatians as the ethnic sect there,

25:30not the, well, yeah, not exactly the nationality of them, but in Bosnia now, they were going to vote for independence. And of course, the Serbs did not want that because the Bosnian Serbs did not want that, because now they're part of Yugoslavia with Serbia. Now, they're going to be taken out of Yugoslavia and be a minority in essentially a tri-paratide state. You have the Bosnian Muslims, the Bosnian Croatians and the Bosnian Serbs at this time. It's the Croatians and the Muslims against the Serbs. And so they stand to lose a lot if they are taken out of the country in this way. And so they boycott the vote on secession, but America goes ahead and recognizes the secession anyway. Then when the Yugoslav military pulls out, a lot of guys defect from the military and volunteer to fight for the Bosnian Serbs side and take their guns with them.

26:33So now the Bosnian Serbs who are the side most getting screwed by the new independence are the most heavily armed group and the most capable of defending their interests and then some. You also have as part of the wrinkle of the way the situation was laid out was the Serbs were the agrarian population. So even though they were a minority, they owned 60% of the property, you know, much of it farmland out there, you understand, but still like they owned these huge swaths of territory. And then essentially the thing just all went to hell as everybody's fighting over where the line is going to be. And then the whole thing is completely exacerbated by the fact that the European Commission comes in and starts intervening and dictating terms and now declaring that these administrative borders are now hard international borders. Give me that black magic marker. These are now these hard international borders. Now everybody is who stuck on the wrong side of the line better arm up and either try

27:38to move the line by expelling the enemy population or at least running like hell back to the safe side of the line that you're now stuck on the wrong side. So this was just totally exacerbated this perhaps very natural breakup. There was no Austrian, Austrian Hungarian overlord power to dictate to the Balkan people what to do next. So maybe they were all going to secede and maybe, you know, Croatia and Yugoslavia, what was left of it, Serbia, we're going to have to fight. I don't know, but you had the Americans and the Europeans intervening in such a way as to skew everybody's incentive to make them want to fight even more. And then the cardinal sin of all this and I guess I'll shut up for a minute here was because this would be, this would essentially close out the Bush senior part of our story more or less is that they had what was called the Kutilero plan and this was a diplomat from

28:43Portugal. It's also known as the Lisbon deal. And what it didn't have the final details of how everything was to be finished on the map or whatever, but it essentially had everyone agreeing to live in a tri-national state that will have cantons and you will have right there are all different kinds. It's so funny when you read about this stuff, especially in far Eastern or not far Eastern bit in Eastern Europe, Balkan air stuff. You read about this. You realize depending on who's using the jargon and how you're using it that there's so many different ways of describing states and counties and regions and cantons and nations, republics versus nation states and what depending on who's using the jargon, these can all have very overlapping definitions, very exclusive ones and stuff. You might remember where the Don Bass voted for sovereignty, but that didn't mean they

29:45were voting for independence. It just meant that they wanted more say, right? They were demanding federalism, right? So it can be interesting to see all the ways that these people can conceive of. Oh, we'll look obviously we could never be in one country with you, but we can be in one state and one nation. We'll share a republic, but we'll never be your country. Like whatever man, you know what I mean? I might even be using the wrong words and things, but that's just the example of the kind of thing. It also means though, then, that there's so many avenues for compromise. Of course it's going to be a Muslim majority country, but it won't be a Muslim majority republic where your republic and its nation exist within the country. That's a totally different question of independence and sovereignty and blah, blah, blah. You can bat these things around and use them in a malleable and malleable enough way. Hopefully that there's room for compromise there.

30:46Okay, we'll have a canton. We won't have an independence state. We'll have a canton. We'll have a ban to stand. We'll call it something so that it's okay with you if we call our own shots here, but we'll let you call your shots in your village on the other side of the river or whatever, right? So they had already laid the groundwork that here's how we'll do it. Enjoy big savings with Red Hot deals at Vons and Albertsons. This week at Vons and Albertsons, baby back pork ribs are 299 per pound with membership where applicable limit three racks and ballpark hot dogs or hamburger buns eight count are 299 with digital coupon plus personal seedless watermelons or canelope are 199 each with digital coupon. Enjoy fresh and delicious savings for every meal. Hurry in, these deals won't last. Visit vonsoralbertsons.com for more deals and ways to save. You can't predict the future, but you can prepare for it. Arizona State University is building degrees for what's ahead. Programs designed around emerging fields taught by faculty whose research is shaping our

31:47future. Not just teaching about it. It's why we've been ranked number one in innovation for more than a decade. Your future is worth preparing for and you don't have to prepare alone. Become future ready. Explore more than 400 programs at ASUOnline.asu.edu. That's a degree better. They had agreed on that and the creuations, the Bosnian creuations and the Bosnian Serbs had signed on to it. Possibly the Bosnian Serbs had sworn they definitely would sign. No, I think they had already signed on to it. And then so had the Bosnian Muslims. Is it Begobitch was the name of the leader of the Bosnian Muslims and then the American ambassador Warren Zimmerman told him, don't sign that. Don't worry, we've got your back. We'll help you get your advantage in the next round. And so is it Begobitch essentially unsigned and backed out of the peace deal? This is at the end of 92. I believe after the election of 92 and Bill Clinton's guys are coming.

32:49And no, no, I'm sorry. It was earlier than that because it was earlier in the year than that because they already had a second try by the time Bill Clinton came. So that's where I'll pick up in a sec depending on where you want to go with your questions here. Essentially, in earlier in 1992, the Lisbon deal more or less could have prevented all of the worst of the fighting from happening. Or at least there was a very good possibility for that to be the basis of for the negotiations to really solve the thing. And the Americans screwed it up. I think one of the most interesting things about the Neocons is that they have this magical ability to avoid responsibility for anything. You get this wonderful sort of two-faced nature. I think it was not too long ago that John Podhoritz, for example, said that the Iran War was a mistake and he had been saying that all along. Now if you're intelligent enough to remember, I don't know, longer than about three months

33:49ago, you'll understand that, no, that's not what he said. The part of that narrative is this idea that, oh, back in the past, this kind of rough definition, we did things the smart way. And we were just forced into these conflicts. There was never any bad choice that was made. But if you dig into the details, you see not only where their decisions made, policy decisions made that resulted in these wars, but the moral can't around them. Of casting each one of these men as sort of micro-hitler, a philosophy is a great example. Was always cynical. It was never done in good faith. It was never actually. And of course, there were some people who were taken in. But you don't even have to go to tinfoil hatland. You don't even have to dig into secret wires to realize there's so much more to these wars than kind of the Fox News version, than what you heard on talk radio.

34:51And so it's part of the reason why I wanted to go back to this, why I wanted you to bring context, because this is a pattern that we have seen for almost 40 years now, over and over and over again. And at a certain point, why do you not use God? I know you're not. But why do you keep letting these people skate? Because their track record is horrible, genuinely horrible. And sure, maybe the other states involved have gotten more serious, have gotten more capable of actually fighting back. But the idea that this is a new problem, the history just doesn't bear that out at all. It's the same pattern, obviously, with different human variables. Look, Serbia is different than Iran. But all the same, you see the pattern, and at a certain point, fool me twice shame on you, as a wise man once said. Yeah. Yeah, I can't get fooled again. Now look, and you already know the answer is they just use cheap parts. The word is in politics to switch off back and forth. So that was all the last guy's fault. Why you want to bring up old stuff?

35:52That doesn't have anything to do with anything. And then so it's always a clean slate every four or eight years. And then, you know, nothing is anyone's fault. No one ever has to take responsibility. And they're the these guys that you refer to, this sort of permanent regime in the background, well, none of them are ever held accountable for anything they ever do. It would be, you know, the more famous public-facing politicians are possibly the highest level political appointees, whatever, like, be publicly embarrassed or whatever, if something goes wrong, so the worst ever going to happen to them. But then usually they can always just blame someone in the past. And which is usually always right. I mean, there's a lot of what when the Clinton regime came in, they were facing a bad situation that the Bush administration had set up. And so, you know, that much is true. It's just that that's no excuse to then make everything worse, which is what they end up doing. And I do think it's also really crucial to point out too that it ain't just the neo-conservatives. And I'm not exactly sure how you use that term or exactly how your audience, you know,

36:54in the rudest way possible. But yeah, no, I like, well, rude is fine. But I like to be said again, to me, the neo-conservatives are no more than 100 men or whatever, I didn't exactly count them, but that's about it. And so it doesn't include all the hawks say in the Bush senior administration. Lawrence, Eagle, Burger and James Baker, those guys are not neo-conservatives. They know those guys. Dick Cheney, of course, hired them all, was very close to them, but Dick Cheney, of course, was never any kind of leftist and nor any kind of intellectual. You know what I mean? That wasn't his game. That was what they're into. And so there are people who are very like neo-con adjacent, like John Bolton, for example. You might confuse him for one of them, not understanding. And by the way, and no coded language here, whatever, I'm not saying that you have to be Jewish and he's not one because he's not Jewish. I'm saying he's not one because he's never was a leftist. He's basically a very gold water, right wing conservative, reganite type, just the belligerent

37:56kind, you know, not the thoughtful kind at all. But he just found a lot of common cause within neo-cons and close friendships with them, obviously, and stuff like that. He didn't come from there saying intellectual pedigree, which is what's important. There are, you know, Presbyterians like James Woolsey and Jean Kirkpatrick. There are Catholics like Robert Novak. There were Protestants like Alan Kees, who was Bill Crystal's roommate. He was a member of that set. Of course, they have their pet Muslim Salme Khalil Saad, who I previously mentioned, who was against studied under Strauss. And it was one of their guys and all that. It's, but it is, you had to have been related to these channels either through the national review commies or through the Shachmanite, you know, social democrats, USA and young people, socialists, league, or, you know, through Crystal and Pahoritz and commentary magazine. And later the weekly standard and all of that, the Straussians and the Wall Stetherians

38:57from the University of Chicago. And these are the guys. If you ain't one of them, you ain't one of them. There's them and there's everybody else. And there's a lot of hawks who ain't Neocons. I don't think there are any Neocons who aren't hawks, not really. Although it depends on the specific war. But for the most part, they are, of course, absolutely enthusiastic, even, you know, cultists of American military power. And not just as a cynical ploy to use America to run all of Israel's errands and do all their dirty work for them. But to rule the world, again, for the world's own good. I mean, that doctrine is, if it wasn't for us holding the world together, the whole thing would fall apart and spin all out of control. And then some other horrible, even worse power than us would be trying to take over and manage the thing. And it's better than us, would you really prefer the Germans try again or the Russians or the Chinese or something? It's got to be us to hold them. It's all very self-justified to them, which maybe is a little bit scarier, right?

39:57That they're not just lying all the time for the money or something. They really believe that, of course, America must extend its dominance. And the thing is, is that does. And like, what are the Neocons? Right? The ones who weren't trots, what were, they were Cold War Democrats, right? They were Harry Truman Democrats. So, you know, there's sort of the liberal hippie sort of infection of the new left in the late 60s and the reaction of Vietnam and the civil rights era and all that kind of thing. But overall, on the halls of power in Washington, Democrats stayed war hawks, right? They always were cold warriors. And especially, you know, how center-left liberals are. They're going to be very anti-communist in order to prove what commies they're not. Look at me. I'm still an American patriot. I love the military. I love flag. I love business. And I hate the Soviets. I hate them commies. And, you know, a little afraid of the labor union and whatever kind of thing to prove that they're not leftists, right? And so that becomes, you even see this with libertarians, right?

40:58Like, the more libertine libertarians are the ones who are more likely to support war, because it's sort of a way to prove that they're not leftists. Like, fuck, maybe I do drugs, but like, I actually, it's cool. I'm like, cool with you guys, because, look, I can be a war hawk with the worst of the Republicans, you know, great. But anyway, so that's sorry, a bit of a thinking, you know, behind the people in power there. So like, this just came up in my previous interview. We were talking about NATO expansion overall in Eastern Europe. And a big part of what happened there was simply that Richard Holbrook had decided for whatever reasons that he thought that it was a good idea, probably for some personal reasons, probably others. But the thing is about Richard Holbrook was he was a big guy. And he was a loud guy. And when he walked in the room and started making demands on things, he was like, had more influence than Al Gore, the vice president. And a lot of the time, he was a, just a huge personality. I think a lot of people would use negative terms to describe him. But he was the kind of guy where if it was office politics, he wins, you lose, dude.

42:02And he gets his way. And, you know, there's a lot of that kind of belligerence. And he was never a neoconservative. He didn't need to be. But it was just that those kinds of, um, the economics of politics inside the White House itself can have a lot to do with how these decisions are made and how they go forward in a way where you and I sitting around a table trying to figure out, but how does this make sense on the risk board? We wouldn't necessarily be able to follow their logic, you know? I want to get back to the main flow of the narrative just with a brief, don't know, not at all, a brief clarification. And I say this, I guess, and it's funny because I've done a decent amount of reading on the neocons, it's sort of the fascination of mine. But I guess I was using that in the term where it is sort of the, the two responses from the conservative movement to the end of the Cold War, where you either have sort of the paleo, paleo conservative, we are a normal country again versus

43:05we are going to rule the world. So in exact terminology, my mistake, again, a term that is often used as a slur, even by me, right? I should be more exact. Enjoy big savings with Red Hot deals at Vons and Albertsons. This week at Vons and Albertsons, baby back pork ribs are 299 per pound with membership where applicable limit three racks. And ballpark hot dogs or hamburger buns eight count are 299 with digital coupon. Plus personal seedless watermelons or cantaloupe are 199 each with digital coupon. Enjoy fresh and delicious savings for every meal. Hurry in, these deals won't last. Visit vons or Albertsons.com for more deals and ways to save. Ranked number one in innovation, 11 consecutive years. Arizona State University isn't just ahead of the curve. It's creating new paths to success. Learn from notable clinical and research faculty online. That's a degree better. Explore programs at ASUOnline.asu.edu. But I want to get back to Clinton. Right? Clinton is now in power. He has, should we say, I guess, assumed a role in this story.

44:15So what happens next? Obviously, we've got one side pulling out of piece proceedings. Where does this go from here? Well, this is a really sad part of it, man. Is the negotiations were being led by Lord David Owen from Great Britain and Cyrus Vance. Cyrus Vance had been the secretary of state under Jimmy Carter. And even though he's a Democrat, he's working under H.W. Bush's authority to try to seek the peace deal here. Well, when he was the secretary's state under Carter, his deputy was Warren Christopher. Well, now Warren Christopher is the designated incoming secretary of state in the new Bill Clinton administration. And he ruins his own mentors' peace deal. Right? Me like a Justin Romando had reached a peace agreement and I went and screwed it up. Well, come on, Gordon, what the hell? Well, and it was just because of Bill Clinton.

45:20And I don't even know Warren Christopher. I don't know whether he agreed with this decision or not. But the idea was we're not doing anything the way the Bush people did it. We're taking full responsibility for everything. And we don't want to, if it's a peace deal, that works. We don't want for them to share the credit. We are going to have a whole brand new policy made in our own White House. And it begins with a 120 day review or whatever. So just, you know, drop a grenade into the peace negotiations and ruin the deal that they had on the table, which was the next successor after the Lisbon deal. And they tore it up. And that led to fighting all through 1993 in 1994 and half a 95. And, you know, some were between 60 and 100,000 people were killed in the thing. And, you know, the anti-war people, libertarians and leftists and paleocons had a

46:21interest in telling the truth about what the government was lying about to justify all of this. And so then we end up sort of with a reputation of being on the Serbian side because that's who's being lied against. And so those are the lies that we're debunking. And they go, oh, there are all these tens of thousands of women are being raped and all this. Well, that's just not true, man. And they go, oh, you love the rapist and try to minimize their crimes. Well, oh, yeah, because of just I woke up in the morning going, man, my favorite people are Serbian rapists. That's who needs an Apologia today. No, it's because it matters that you're telling these lies because that's how you justify the terrible things that you do is based on these, you know, gross exaggerations of who your enemy is. As you said, little Hitler over there, you can't abide a little Hitler. You got to do something about a guy like that. And so if there's been a few hundred rapes because war is ugly as hell, then that's one thing. If there's been tens of thousands of them, well, then we must

47:23do something to stop it and whatever. So, you know, obviously the truth matters. So, but then, so contrary to that reputation, in fact, the Bosnian Serbs were not the good guys here. The only good guys in, essentially, any of these conflicts are the innocent civilians. The armed groups of men fighting are almost all committing horrible sins in the name of their wars. And you know, have very little to know moral high ground to stand on. Now, was what was being done to the Bosnian Serbs unfair and were they being stripped of their autonomy and sovereignty and their willingness, their ability, not just to secede from a new country they didn't want to be a part of, but to remain within the old country that they were being taken out of. I mean, yes, the whole thing was completely screwed up. But then did they line up innocent civilians and mass curbs in an attempt to get others to flee and all that in their own ethnic cleansing campaigns? Yes.

48:28The various guys, and I can never, you know, pronounce all of their different names. But, you know, the Serbian siege of Sarajevo absolutely was horrible. You know, the snipers would just kill essentially anybody out in the open. And I'm sure you probably saw the reports that came out a few months ago where you had these rich guys from around Europe were going on, this is just the absolute sickness. If you can imagine this going essentially on canned hunts only for human beings. And they would go and hang around with the Serbian snipers and pay the Serbian snipers for a chance to murder people. And they would collect points based on how good look in the woman was and this kind of thing. Just absolute sickness, what they were doing to these people. And while at the same time, there were horrible atrocities being committed by the Muslims against the Serbs around Sarajevo and also around, you know, different cities in in San Bernice, which was the

49:34worst of the major war crimes committed by the Bosnian Serbs. The whole thing was essentially a set up and the West knew it was going to happen. These were two cities that they had been negotiating about the land swap and the trade because you had these obscenely like, you know, this is not exactly the right word, it just kind of very oddly shaped corridors of sovereignty to get these people to this village way out here and back when it would just make more sense to switch the populations of these villages at this point and that kind of thing. And so they were all ready to do their horse trade. And then what happened was the United Nations forces helped get the women and children out of there, but left all the men behind. And now a lot of the male population of the city had already fled. But many of them and young boys were left behind, minor boys were left behind in a giant convoy that was riddled with also Muslim army fighters as well as Mujahideen volunteers,

50:43which this is a whole other part of it is that this is really where Al-Qaeda became Al-Qaeda in a large sense if you'd like to get back to that. But you had Mujahideen fighters along with the Muslim army all embedded in this convoy on foot, which does complicate it for legal reasons, but for moral reasons it's about as black and white as could be where they just shelled them with artillery, this giant column of men on foot and just massacre the crap out of thousands of them. And I think it was something like maybe it was like 4,000 killed total, like a thousand killed through the shelling or maybe a bit more than that. And the rest lined up and shot, masquered, rounded up and shot. And they were fine in the graves. And there was a bit of confusion even then the numbers were embellished a little bit because there were still graves around from previous engagements that were tended to be lumped in. But I think ultimately the story

51:49was it was something like 4,000 people were killed in the Sebranita thing. But then they doubled that and said that it was 8,000 killed and that it was a genocide when really like it was a really horrible slaughter. But it wasn't even necessarily an ethnic cleansing campaign in the sense that like this was an agreed upon population swap by the leaders anyway as ugly as that is that was how these issues were being resolved over there at that time. And anyway, so I'm a little bit sensitive to the criticism that I wouldn't hard enough on the Serbs in there, the Bosnian Serbs that is. But I think I was. I don't have a dog in that fight. I was clarifying the accusations against them that weren't true. Like that they had masquered hundreds of thousands of innocent people or that they had been raping wind by the tens of thousands in these rape camps that they had as as Roy Gutman from reporting I think for news day at the time claimed that they had death

52:58camps directly comparable to Auschwitz when these were concentration camps is what they were. They were prison camps. They were not death camps who were not being exterminated in there in any sense. And even is it Begevich who made a lot of those claims himself again the leader of the Bosnian Muslims he later admitted on the record direct quotations that like oh yeah no none of that was true about the rape camps and all that we were just embellishing that in the hopes to get more Western support. Of course and you know it's funny because you hear anecdotes like this from Bosnia and later from Kosovo that the Americans told us we need at least 5,000 dead civilians in order to justify the next stage of intervention. Get that number up to at least give me a 5. You know this is the way they do. I got to say I'm sorry I have two separate anecdotes like that in the book one from Bosnia one from Kosovo where they were saying that that was what they were told by their American friends. If you want to justify American democratic humanitarian intervention you need a humanitarian crisis and so they did. And then even in the run-up to the final

54:06intervention in 1995 there were major false flag attacks by the Bosnians by the Bosnian Muslims attacking their own marketplace the Marqueal marketplace they did one in February 94 and then another one in I think it was August or no no no no we've been spring in 95 where they're just dropping artillery shells on their own people in order to cry victim which is you know I know that sounds like what these railings say about the Palestinians and stuff like that in this case it's actually really right and essentially proven beyond any doubt and they use that as one of the final excuses to launch the final air raids against Serbia in order to enjoy big savings with Red Hot deals at Vons and Albertsons. This week at Vons and Albertsons baby back pork ribs are 2.99 per pound with membership where applicable limit three racks and ballpark hot dogs or hamburger buns eight count are 2.99 with digital coupon plus personal seedless watermelons or canelope are

55:081.99 each with digital coupon enjoy fresh and delicious savings for every meal hurry in these deals won't last visit vons or Albertsons.com for more deals and ways to save the new Red Bull Dragonberry Energizer is now at McDonald's made with freeze dry dragon fruit and made to lock in the all new Energizer now at McDonald's forced the deal now in the run up to that they supported operation mistral and and one other one I forget where they were sponsoring the Muge Hiding sending bin Ladenite you know suicide attackers essentially against Serbian positions outside of Sarajevo and then they also launched and this was James Clapper the the bald headed head of intelligence for Obama who um you know helped set up russia gay and all of that he was the deputy director the DIA in charge of hiring a mercenary group to train the Croatian army and I don't mean the Bosnian

56:14Croatians now I mean the Croatian Croatians in order to finally cleanse the western Slovenia and krojina regions of Croatia and they forced 300,000 Serbs out in the largest ethnic cleansing campaign of the entire war even though it was not the most violent of them um but there were still you know thousands were killed and 300,000 people finally ran out of their homes there and then they launched their massive bombing campaign and you might be familiar with the time magazine cover that is this idyllic pristine sort of little village in a very green kind of lush environment and the headline in big yellow all capital bull letters is bringing the Serbs to heal and you'll be able to pull that right up in google images I'm sure it's very controversial at the time and what's interesting about that is well obviously the sickness of what is happening there but also if you read the article carefully you'll see that because the Bosnian

57:20Muslim leader pardon me because of Bosnian Serb leaders had already been indicted for war crimes they were not allowed to negotiate but also slow but on Milosevic the leader of Serbia and Yugoslavia he was sick and tired of their s already too and so he had agreed to negotiate on their behalf and so that was their death now he was going to make concessions that they would not have made and so he was the one who went to Dayton not them and went ahead and signed the final deal and as I show in the book the final deal was much worse than the Lisbon deal much worse than the Invincible deal much worse than there were three or four or five of these different proposals throughout the time there that kept getting canceled and kicked down the road and the final Dayton deal gave more land to the new Republic of Serbska which the others wouldn't but now they officially recognized the many state of the Bosnian Serbs creation of their own many state within

58:24Bosnia the Republic of Serbska and they got more territory in the final deal than they had in any of the other previous versions so the longer they believed in us and the longer they held out the Bosnian Muslims for America to come to their aid the worse and worse and worse position they got in for having us as their allies and making these big promises and they ended up losing a lot of people as well as losing more territory than they otherwise would have an interesting side note is at one point in fighting in hurts the govina in the far western part of adjacent to Bosnia between the Croatians and the Croatian Serbs backed by the Croatians fighting with the Bosnian Muslims and there the fighting got so bad that the Bosnian Croatians almost made a deal with the Bosnian Serbs to fight the Bosnian Muslims but the Americans came in and intervened and made

59:26sure that they would keep their peace and join up and stay at war with the Serbs instead so it's just a horrific kind of a deal and it ended up creating a situation where the entire place is an American you know NATO European protectorate and where it's run essentially by EU and NATO type technocrats who have the final say and I don't even know if that's the right term for them dictators whatever who have the final say over what would otherwise be a completely unworkable situation on the ground there and now if we you know speaking of holding the whole world together they're the ones who broke it right and so now there is a question of if they let go will the Bosnian Serbs and the Bosnian Muslims and or the Bosnian Croatians go back to war over the lines and over the degrees of sovereignty and independence and federalism and all the rest maybe I mean right now you got a lot of people who lost family in that thing who wake up every day

1:00:28and go to work instead of waking up every day and going to war right so they could make a bad decision one Monday but they don't have to but there's a lot of complaints to this day where the Republic of Serbs says that their rights are not being respected by the Muslims and the Muslims are saying these Bosnian Serbs won't you know stay in line and I don't I'm out of touch on what's up with the Bosnian Croatians lately they're palp and I'm just saying that like the the final deal that America constructed was really dependent upon an overriding force staying there and writing heard on the situation the whole time um which really I guess brings us then to Kosovo which broke out three years later well I've really got going in 1998 so just a couple years later but I'll go ahead and take a breath and a drink and let you say something well and this is sort of procedural but it does matter this is I guess Scott what they call a leading question did they get UN Security

1:01:29Council approval to begin this action because that's a relevant part of the story as well no they did not and that reminds me because I skipped a crucial part of the story or what to me is a crucial part of the story about Bosnia and the theory here where you see Bosnia and Croatia Slovenia they all have the right to secede from Yugoslavia under this completely made up precedent that the European Commission decided and it's called UT postidetus which I'm sure I'm saying wrong but it means that which you possess so shall you possess which boy that doesn't sound like the declaration of independence talking what the hell but anyway the precedent came from again this completely made up crap regarding a question of sovereignty after the breakup of the French Empire in in in colonies in west Africa north western Africa

1:02:29and I believe the fight was over the board of between Molly and Burkina Faso or some kind of thing and what they said was constituent parts of empires may break away but ethnic enclaves within those constituent parts of a former empire have no further right to secede and that which the new sovereign possesses they shall continue to possess and so we don't want to hear any declarations of independence out of anybody else the border stay where they are with the dissolution of the European colonies in Africa was that ruling well now they're saying well that's what counts here same same same precedent we're invoking here and we're saying that yes since Yugoslavia was this artificial empire I guess we're pretending Yugoslavia was not the state of all of its parts but Yugoslavia somehow was another name for Serbia and Yugoslavia was just the Serb empire and now like this isn't

1:03:32even online sure they really said said this but this is how you would have had to twist it to make it fit with the their pretended invocation of this law they said so Slovenia and Croatia and Bosnia have the right to secede from Yugoslavia but the Republic of Serbs good does not have the right to secede from Bosnia because Bosnia is not a colony it's just a or a Parmea colonial power it's a brand new nation state in fact and even though they're kidnapping these Bosnian Serbs out of their former nation of Serbia and Yugoslavia or Yugoslavia anyway if not Serbia and and with their ties to their Serbian kin there well that's just tough and why because we say so that's the law that's it it's just this made up crap well now we get to coast of them enjoy big savings with Redhaw deals at Vons and Albertsons this week at Vons and Albertsons baby back pork ribs are 299 per pound with membership where applicable limit three racks and ballpark hot dogs or hamburger buns eight count are 299 with digital coupon plus personal

1:04:36seedless watermelons or canelope are 199 each with digital coupon enjoy fresh and delicious savings for every meal hurry in these deals won't last visit vons or Albertsons.com for more deals and ways to save stop wasting your nights on a mattress that doesn't get you experience the most comfortable mattress in the world the sleep number smart bed at the touch of a button you can personalize your comfort choose firmer or softer adjust cooler to warmer and right now save up to 2500 dollars during our massive Labor Day event hurry into your local sleep number store today because we have your number Kosovo was not equivalent to Croatia and Slovenia and Bosnia in terms of an administrative border within Yugoslavia Kosovo was part of Serbia you know like the Panhandle is part of Texas right

1:05:41this is not a separate thing you could say Texas and Oklahoma are different I hear you but the Pan handle is part of my home state not quiddling about that you know is you know basically that kind of an argument and they just said oh well whatever we don't what are you talking about you de post of what I don't know what he's talking about anyway Kosovo is we can break it off if we want to because the law is because we say so and you teed post adetus we only said that when we were breaking away Bosnia why you got to bring up this old stuff from before that doesn't yeah shut up we want to do this and that's why because we want to and now it is true that you know you've had back and forth for hundreds of years here between the Ottoman Empire and Austro-Hungarian one and during the communist rule during Tito in the post World War II era the commies had allowed the Turks especially to help to increase the Muslim population of Kosovo so even though

1:06:48Serbian society really started out in Kosovo in the city of peck is where their civilization you know claims its origins essentially that southern part of Serbia had become something like a 90-10 maybe was you know 85 15 type super duper majority Albanian Muslim population and best I could find you know including from the New York Times but a lot of others said that it was really they who started the conflict back you know soon after Tito died and in the 1980s in picking this fight then slow bit on Milosevic had actually made his political career running on we're gonna crush those Muslims committing crimes against Serbs in Kosovo we're gonna stand up for you somebody's you know beat up your son somebody's pushing you around well they're not going as long as I'm in charge and that kind of thing and that was kind of how he had um you know as I

1:07:52said he was sort of a commie but sort of a right way nationalist in his way too right like this is sort of how he had helped to build his rise to power in the 1980s and 1990s um and um or late 80s into the early 90s um so now the narrative was that the poor helpless Albanian Muslims are being murdered and oppressed and genocide by the Serbs and only America can help but that's a bunch of crap I mean obviously we know it was going on there if you're just keeping up with that the time you can tell what was going on there the Americans and with the help of the Saudis and the Turks we're backing the Mujahideen the KLA who were essentially crossed between a bunch of you know heroin cartel drug runner businessmen black market businessmen and bin Ladenite Mujahideen left over from so um uh pardon me oh so what happened was

1:08:55they built up this group the KLA now Kosovo's leader before that was a guy whose um forgive me his name is escaping me but he was a pacifist he was like a fancy guy a university guy with a scarf and he always preached pacifism and compromise and um the Americans you know were stuck with him essentially until the KLA could prove themselves as a worthwhile force on the ground and so then they did and the way they did that was by killing cops enforcing the Serbs to respond and then proving that they could hold their own in battles with the Serbs and then the Serbs made the mistake that they were being made to commit which was to overreact and they massacred this important uh Bosnia uh pardon me uh uh Kosovar Albanian family and killed 53 members um in this horrible massacre and then that helped to drive up more recruitment for the KLA and helped to delegitimize the Serbian police forces in response um and so then this is in 1998 and this is you know the

1:09:58the Clinton administration is deciding that actually we can do business with the KLA after all so even though they had called them accurately and i'm sorry i skipped this part we can go back to the to bin Laden in Bosnia if you want because it really is crucial but um they decided to take these guys off the terrorist list and dump in a bunch of guns and help them to escalate the fight against the Serbs and they pretended essentially that the Serbs had launched this massive ethnic cleansing campaign and murder campaign in order to start the war now as a measure of what a hoax that was the actual single precipitating incident was this alleged massacre um and i'm sorry i got the name on the tip of my tongue i'll think of it in a second um uh and you can even find the youtube of this where it was alleged that the Serbs had lined up uh what 35 36 guys and then machine gun them to death and dump their bodies in a ditch

1:11:03and um it was a total hoax and they proved at the time that one there's no bullet casings anywhere to these guys all clearly have been firing guns from the residue all over their hand i mean that they had to do forensic checks for that but they did but then also there's no blood because these guys already finished bleeding before their bodies were moved and just they weren't killed here they were fighters who were killed in battle and there had been some fighting going on in that village earlier in the day then the muzzle side just took a few of their guys and dumped them in a ditch and just called it a massacre and and then the you know the uh american government and media all went for it and blew it up into this giant thing and Bill Clinton you know gave this you know like terrible um you know heartfelt plea like oh just imagine all of these poor people lined up and murdered in this terrible way and and all of this thing when if you can pair this and i'm sorry i'm paged through trying to get the name of this dang stupid massacre oh ratchack ratchack the

1:12:05ratchack massacre pardon me i couldn't remember that i was not going to remember that name the ratchack masqueras what it was called this fake hoax of an idiot massacre and Bill Clinton says like this is the bill Clinton doctrine where genocide and ethnic cleansing are taking place in america's in a position to do something about it we must look everybody 35 guys who died in fighting we're going to pretend that was a man imagine at that standard held for say for example israel in gaza oh in genocide and ethnic cleansing are happening america and america can do something about it we have to do something about it huh bill clinton is that right you remember him calling for america to intervene after they killed upwards of a hundred thousand people in gaza over the last couple of years yeah no me either that was because it was just a fake excuse just like it was a fake massacre as you know for their excuse to go ahead and intervene here and break kosawa away from Serbia so they use that as the excuse his government lied like the damn devil that a hundred thousand kosavar Albanians had already been slaughtered and massacred and were missing in action

1:13:08for zoom k i a n et cetera et cetera et cetera until they launched their war also Madeleine all bright the secretary state see bill clinton the his cheating scandal with monica lewinsky began in the early 1998 and it lasted basically all the way through 98 and then his senate acquittal finally took place in the spring of 1999 and this was all took place right after it as i call that the time was bill clinton's victory lap but another way to put it was that he was very distracted being impeached and tried in the senate and that his secretary state was running wild and their reference of bills who later kind of threw her under their bus and even on the national security council in the white house they called it miss madeline's war she was the one who did this and what it was was they had the service ready to sign on the dot align so then they added another secret annex appendix b that said you have to completely capitulate and allow NATO to occupy every last square inch of all of u islavia no exception for

1:14:10the presidential palace or anything is home anything and total and complete immunity for all NATO uh military and civilian forces throughout and indefinitely and whatever so this was absolutely a poison pill this was an offer they can't possibly accept as opposed to an offer they can't possibly refuse and it was made to be rejected so that they could have the war and then how do they end the war after 78 days of this very short mission can't last more than a week or two before that coward's milosevic capitulates well after 78 days which is two and a half months of this america finally deleted annex b appendix b and went ahead and let him sign the deal he was already prepared to sign anyway so he didn't give in he he had already given in essentially as much as they were demanding uh before the war ever started but then is is really a tragedy that in the case of bosnia and in kosimo the narrative was still that hey that was pretty easy none of our guys got killed

1:15:10you know we lost a plane but none of our guys got killed and um you know is um the simpsons kind of did a joke about where bark goes to military school and the generals given their commencement species is in the future all our wars will be fought by robots on top of tall mountains and whatever in like this kind of just like because you won't have to fight army infantry man because the wars of the future we've just proven what's the color because just proven how easy it is to do a push button war and bond from 60 thousand feet so none of your guys are in danger and you know this and that that was sort of the lesson that they learned and then we'll look if we can do that then we can do a rack if we do that we can do anything and as you mentioned if Bill Clinton can do that with out authority from the united nation security council well then George Bush can and if George Bush can well then Vladimir Putin can enjoy big savings with red hot deals at Vons and Albertsons this week at Vons and Albertsons baby back pork ribs are 299 per pound with membership where applicable limit three racks and ballpark hot dogs or hamburger buns eight count

1:16:15are 299 with digital coupon plus personal seedless watermelons or canelope are 199 each with digital coupon enjoy fresh and delicious savings for every meal hurry in these deals won't last visit vons or Albertsons dot com for more deals and ways to save hi this is Dave Roberts heading into summer without a medical emergency kit that's a risk summer colds can linger and getting sick on vacation can derail everything that's why everyone needs a medical emergency kit it includes doctor prescribed medications to treat common and serious illnesses so if you wake up sick at home or on the road you already have what you need it's like having an urgent care and pharmacy at home say forty five dollars with code blue at urgent care kit dot com slash blue urgent care kit dot com slash blue and this is you know that was the world order that they wrecked was this was the the core of the u n charter was nation states where to respect each other sovereignty and not invade each other and not overthrow each other and these are as all of our conservative friends you know

1:17:20hasty to always remind us unless there's a world state to enforce the world law the world law is just tradition it's just a handshake it's just a piece of paper well I say I would argue that's ultimately the case for all law and look at the dissolution of the Soviet Union just stay home and the whole thing falls apart you know it is a tradition it is a custom it is a matter of mutual respect and when america starts tearing up the treaties that get in our way we claim it's the liberal rules based international order of global governance and cooperation and friendship and law respecting it said oh we don't like the a bm treaty more we don't like the open skies treaty anymore we don't like the intermediate nuclear forces treaty anymore we don't like all other promises against native expansion that James Baker and Bill Clinton made even when he expanded native he promised not to move military equipment into the east but oh well we're just going to do that too and just and on and on and on you know with this belligerent posture you see how essentially

1:18:21they're just digging a grave for themselves for all of us I think you know with short term interest in mind and sacrificing the long term and and even their own right not the interest in the american people in our little little commercial humble old constitutional republic year but their world empire that you know they discredit and disgrace as they implement it and um you know so the seeds of their destruction everywhere that they go and so if the u n chart it was the crowning achievement of the u s dominated world order after world war two then it was you know bush senior and clinton and the policies that they pursued particularly at russia's expense but also you know obviously in the middle east and all of that too that have been the death now you know the the as I know you've noticed the hawks all are loved to blame Donald Trump and lord knows he sucks at being an imperialist but he's really not reckoning on purpose it's just

1:19:23that the thing is already completely in kind of recession mode the high watermark of american power and influence was way back in 2003 when dubious invaded a rock the rest of this is all the frustrated lashing out of a collapsing empire ever since then and um and you could see like man the counterfactuals just in my lifetime i can tell you didn't have to be this way it never had to be built clinton it never had to be dubious i mean i hate to i would hate for anyone to think that i would say this like in favor in any way of al Gore so i actually did test al Gore al Gore essentially is not even a man al Gore is democrat senator action figure in a plastic cellophane wrapper dude right he's just a he's a scarecrow he's a a man again right um if it had been him september eleventh would have never happened dude because he was obsessed with that stuff he

1:20:30was terrified of been lot and and was desperate to protect the american people from the next attack that's the reason that the guy got busted at the uh Washington state british Columbia border in uh early december of ninety nine uh with a bomb and a map to la x and a picture of osama this was a legitimate bin law night terror is tied directly to the bin law night network and the reason he got busted was because al Gore had chaired a deputy's committee meeting and said damn it everyone shake the tree send out a memo tell everyone we are all hereby terrified of mysterious lee sweaty arab's at checkpoints you know be afraid over react see what you can find and then that's exactly what happened well you're pretty sweaty for a cold day why don't you show me what's in your trunk mr. a rat man and then oh my god he's got a picture of osama bin lotten and a stick a dynamite you know uh uh um so history just didn't have to be this way that horrible son of a bitch

1:21:36would have completely prevented september eleventh and then therefore the aftermath which don't make me name the ad infinitum of all that came in the aftermath of that and yet he had joe liberman as um vice president but joe liberman ain't dick cheney and he ain't paul wolfowitz and they would not have been able to do a rock or two there's just no way i mean al Gore would have probably bombed them for eight years straight but there's just no way that he was going to march the third infantry division in the marine core in there the way that w bush was dumb enough to do there's just no way man it's just a different history if different decisions were made same thing with bush tearing up the anti-balistic missile treaty and these are the kinds of things that like amen that was a Tuesday where he thought this was a good idea absolutely did not have to do that set off a chain of consequences that may end up being the death of us all and so that to me is important that you do have these massive forces but i'm a real free will guy too i think there's a lot of these decisions that absolutely could have gone the other way and should have

1:22:41well and on that point i think it's important to on one hand to have a sort of objective standard sort of an objective view when we're talking about the nuts and bolts of this right to get to the factual record but also so many of these actions are justified in this sort of high-handed moral language like oh you don't support this are you a fan of servion rapists i'm like well no but also not only are those claims made disingenuously but what do they do on the back end well they they negotiate a peace deal for a war that they effectively started pick sides and then decide well this is the collection of bad guys and mass murderers we're going to throw in jail forever we're going to kidnap them we're going to put them up in front of this bizarre international court and look if you go through the list of people who have been convicted at the hake it's not your your you know small town pta media they're not good at people

1:23:47but it takes two to tango and it's very difficult to say yes we are on the side of moral progress when you have basically chosen roughly half of the mass murderers involved at any conflict and decided to send them to Switzerland it's a bit rich if you see what i'm saying Scott yeah and in fact i mean even for the tribunals these were ad hoc newly invented tribunals they were not and i'm sorry i'm not the world's greatest expert on all the international criminal courts and all that i know not the icc but that i meant that in the lowercase letter versions of those but i know they made up a brand new one the court system for the former eucoslawia so that they could push through all of their phony convictions and the rest it really was some kangaroo court stuff um i think if you read um rip slow but i'm a low civich by just a remando i think he explains a bit about that in in that article about in his obituary for a low civich who of course died in jail on

1:24:47trial and um you know as i show in the book um the americans essentially admitted at various times um that he was not in on it there was no common plan with the bosnian served leadership for their various ethnic cleansing campaigns and which had been sort of the centerpiece of the allegations against him they kind of just admit in a couple of footnotes that well okay that wasn't really right you know i mean at the time i was just in high school so you know but then again i mean so was essentially the all of american public at the time is essentially getting it the same and we would all more or less thought that malosavitch was the president of all serves and that he was the leader of the bosnian serves as well that would have been essentially the common understanding in the neighborhood or something if there was one um when that wasn't true you know he had as i said he contributed uh to their forces somewhat and all that but there was separate group and um

1:25:52and he ended up sick and tired of their antics and as i said negotiating over their heads at date in in 95 similarly well scott this has been fascinating i always appreciate your expertise of course you've mentioned your book provoked which will be linked down the description uh i actually just bought a copy of it and when i mean just i mean roughly 20 seconds before restarted rolling uh if you're looking it's the one by scott horton not the one with a shirtless guy on the cover that is a different provoked uh i mean it is me though can't release you modeled for that yeah fair enough i mean alien guy with no shirt and the what lizard dreadlocks well scott other than that where can people find you uh well i am the director of the Libertarian Institute i'm the director of the scott horton academy of foreign policy and freedom that's where you get the real deep dives of everything i know about all this stuff um and then of course on the editorial director of anti-war.com i host the scott horton show which is my interview show

1:26:54done 6,000 interviews since 2003 and i'm the co-host with the great dera koper of provoked live every Thursday nights on the youtube's and later on the spotifies and all that and then uh oh yeah and i wrote these books fool's errand about Afghanistan enough already about the broader terror wars and uh as we've been discussing here provoked about the new cold war with russia and the war in Ukraine and that includes major sections on basin and kosovo as well. well i've said on this show multiple times that i only listened to three podcasts and none of them are about the news that is true with the exception of provoked to great show you should all tune into it it is effectively the only news podcast i listened to largely because uh if i listened to too many news podcasts it just becomes this kind of circular chain of me saying what other people have so if that endorsement isn't worth it uh i don't know what it's anyway scott it was great to have you. everyone at home keep your head up good night

1:28:20enjoy big savings with red-hot deals at violence and albertsons this week at vans and Albertsons being back pork ribs are $2.99 per pound with membership where applicable limit three racks and ballpark hot dogs or hamburger buns eight count is $299 with digital Aquabond plus personal seedless watermelons or cantaloupe $199 each with digital Q Send enjoy fresh and delicious savings for every meal hurry in these deals won't last Visit vonsouralbritsons.com for more deals and ways to save.