Crashing the War Party

This week Kelley & Dan talk to Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU National Security Project, which focuses on unconstitutional policies (think drone war, PATRIOT Act, torture) in U.S. policies, particularly in its Global War on Terror. Shamsi describes for us the evolution of Washington's targeted killing program through Obama and Trump, and up to the latest lethal drone strike that killed 10 civilians in Afghanistan. In the first segment, Kelley & Dan talk about Biden's plan to sell nuclear submarine technology to the Australians in another bid to build a security alliance against China.More from Shamsi:20 Years After 9/11, We Have a Roadmap Toward a More Just and Equitable Future -- September 10, 2021Trump’s Secret Rules for Drone Strikes and Presidents’ Unchecked License to Kill -- May 5, 2021 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crashingthewarparty.substack.com

In this episode of Crashing the War Party, Kelley and Dan talk to former Marine officer Jeffrey Groom, author of American Cobra Pilot: A Marine Remembers a Dog and Pony Show. Groom left the service in 2018 disenchanted with what he saw as the institution's contradictions, waste, and hypocrisies, and worse the growing failure of the military to respond and adapt because of sclerotic thinking and messed up priorities at the top. We talk about why we lost in Afghanistan, and whether men and women are still willing to join the service and sacrifice their lives to defend the nation. We also talk about the Aug. 29 U.S. drone strike that killed an aid worker and his family in Kabul, a parable for our failed war on terror.Read more from Jeff Groom:Will US military failures touch off a ‘revolution from below’?-- Sept. 15, 2021Marines take fight to the sea, targeting China dollars -- April 2021.Increased Military Suicides Aren’t Necessarily About War -- February 2019 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crashingthewarparty.substack.com

On this special episode, Dan and Kelley discuss the 20-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and the government's use and abuse of that horrifying event to advance its goals of military primacy, not only in Afghanistan and Iraq, but across the Middle East and at home here in the United States. They talk to Chris Coyne and Abigail Hall, authors of the recent books Manufacturing Militarism, and Tyranny Comes Home, about the use of propaganda after 9/11, the growth of the massive surveillance state, and the domestic war on terror.More from Coyne and Hall:9/11 militarized law enforcement and made every American a suspect -- September 2021The Military-Big Tech-Complex -- January 2021 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crashingthewarparty.substack.com

Living as a young writer during 9/11 and its aftermath in New York City, Spencer Ackerman's career as a news reporter soon followed the expanding national security state, with all of its attending domestic and foreign war policies and metastasizing law enforcement powers. Twenty years later, he is looking back and examining the real horror of it all and the impact on American society. Today, he talks to Dan and Kelley about his new book, Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump . In the opening segment, we discuss Israel's continuing meddling in U.S. attempts to get back into the Iran nuclear deal and whether it is finally having an effect.Read Dan's review of Reign of Terror in Responsible Statecraft hereMore by Spencer Ackerman:McChrystal: ‘Impossible to Argue’ War on Terror Was Worth It -- The Daily Beast, 8/21/21Donald Rumsfeld, Killer of 400,000 People, Dies Peacefully -- The Daily Beast, 6/30/21 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crashingthewarparty.substack.com

The U.S. is ending its 20-year war in Afghanistan and conventional wisdom now holds that it was largely a failure and a waste of more than $2.5 trillion and countless lives. In 2010, Wikileaks published a massive trove of classified documents that exposed the American government's lies about the war. It was a colossal brief against the war state, but instead of thanking Assange for his service to the truth, he remains imprisoned in London, fighting extradition and prosecution in the U.S. Kelley and Dan talk to journalist and Shadowproof managing editor Kevin Gosztola about the current state of the case against Julian and the press freedoms at stake as the government is determined to make him an example. We also talk about the role of whistleblowers during the post-9/11 wars, as well as the crisis surrounding the current withdrawal of Afghanistan. More from Kevin Gosztola:The Afghanistan War and the dissenters we should've listened to -- 8/17/21Drone whistleblower Daniel Hale receives 45-month sentence for releasing drone documents -- 7/27/21 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crashingthewarparty.substack.com

Kelley and Dan talk to Richard Hanania, president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology and a Defense Priorities fellow, about the developing news in Afghanistan, the blame game in Washington, lying generals and government officials, and whether the Blob can succeed in making the defeat in Afghanistan an indictment against foreign policy restraint and the antiwar movement. We think not. More from Richard Hanania:Trump could gain from Biden's decision to delay withdrawing from Afghanistan -- NBCNews.com Richard's Substack newsletter This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crashingthewarparty.substack.com

Kelley and Dan talk this week with Emma Ashford, an expert at the Atlantic Council's New American Engagement Initiative. Her experience spans the Middle East, Russia, and Europe, and she spends her time swatting down attacks from the Blob as she seeks to change minds about old liberal internationalist order and American primacy. In our first segment, we pay tribute to the loss of two greats in the defense reform community: Mark Perry and Pierre Sprey.More from Emma Ashford:Reality Check #4: Focus on interests, not on human rights with Russia -- The Atlantic Council, with Mat Burrows.Remembering Mark PerryRemembering Pierre Sprey This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crashingthewarparty.substack.com

Mary Dudziak, the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law at Emory University and co-editor of Making the Forever War: Marilyn B. Young on the Culture and Politics of American Militarism, joins Dan and Kelley this week to talk about the late historian Marilyn Young and her decades-long research into the pathologies of American war-making. We zero in on the popular support for wars, the integration of romantic mythology, and the country’s inability to learn the lessons from each previous conflict. In the first segment, Dan and Kelley talk about the growing national security bureaucracy under Biden, whistleblower Daniel Hale, Israeli nukes, and the troop shell game in Iraq.Read More Mary Dudziak here. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crashingthewarparty.substack.com

Kelley and Dan talk to the Quincy Institute's Middle East expert Annelle Sheline about Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's seeming efforts to "reform" the Kingdom's authoritarianism — and whether those efforts are real, or not. In the first segment, we reunite with our old Empire Has No Clothes comrade Matt Purple to discuss recent violence in our own hemisphere: the recent assassination in Haiti, protests in Cuba, and the U.S. role in both.Read more from Annelle Sheline:The Saudi blockade on Yemen is a war crime, and only civilians suffer from itHow the growing UAE-Saudi rivalry could pay off for the United StatesRead more from Matt Purple: Not A Cold War But An Ideological Argument This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crashingthewarparty.substack.com

Barbara, Dan, and Kelley talk to GWU professor Samuel Goldman, author of After Nationalism: Being American in an Age of Division, talking about what defines the country today, and how we might re-orient our exceptionalism towards being a model rather than a missionary. In the first segment, Kelley and Dan relive the Donald Rumsfeld of 2002 and 2003, and his Iraq War legacy.More from Goldman:America Has a Ruling Class: Why do members of the political elite insist that they’re not? -- New York Times This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crashingthewarparty.substack.com

Kelley, Dan, and Barbara pick former Congressman Ron Paul's brain on the Biden administration, the Trump effect, and what inspires him after all of these years to fight Washington and the intractable military-industrial complex. In the first segment, we talk about the June airstrikes and how the White House can bomb anyone, anywhere, whenever, without Congressional approval —and say it has the authority to do so.See Ron Paul's daily Liberty Report The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crashingthewarparty.substack.com

On this week’s episode, we talk to Ben Freeman at the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative about how Washington think tanks — particularly foreign policy and national security institutions — are taking hundreds of millions of dollars from the government, foreign countries, and the defense industry. In many cases, they aren’t disclosing it. How is this affecting policy, more specifically, is it feeding the threat of inflation keeping us on a continuous war footing? In our first segment, Dan, Barbara and Kelley talk about the pressure on President Biden to keep a military presence in or around Afghanistan. Ben Freeman’s latest: The Saudi Lobby in 2020 (May 2021)Restoring Trust in the Think Tank Sector (with Eli Clifton) (May 2021) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crashingthewarparty.substack.com

In this week's episode, Kelley, Dan & Barb talk to Marine Corps veteran and Project on Government Oversight defense analyst Dan Grazier about the boondoggle F-35 fighter, and how the anti-China threat inflation is driving procurement in the Pentagon. He gets into how the sausage is made in the Pentagon budget, and we got close to losing our appetite. In the intro segment, we talk about Biden's recent trip to Europe and NATO's new "China mission."Dan Grazier's latest article, "Inflating the China Threat to Balloon the Pentagon Budget" This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crashingthewarparty.substack.com

Historian Greg Brew talks about his upcoming book, "Oil and the Cold War: the Iranian Crisis of 1951-1954," which fleshes out the CIA-backed 1953 coup which toppled the elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. He offers some new and provocative insights on the incident, which is a stain on U.S. foreign policy and in many respects the foundation of the fraught relationship between Washington and Tehran ever since. Barbara, Kelley, and Dan also talk about today's imperial behavior on the high seas: U.S. ships interdicting Iranian ships in international waters.See Greg's latest here: "Panic at the Pump and the Real Threat to National Security" (War on the Rocks) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crashingthewarparty.substack.com

Barbara, Dan and Kelley talk to George Washington University lecturer and Defense Priorities fellow Ben Friedman about the stakes of provoking greater conflict with Russia in Ukraine. Recent Biden administration rhetoric via NATO suggests that Washington will continue to put it’s thumb on the scale without really planning to fight for Ukraine militarily. We also talk about Biden’s puzzling decision to not renew the no-brainer Open Skies treaty. Ben’s latest in NBCnews.com: “Biden doesn't like Russia's meddling in Ukraine. But he's not prepared to stop it” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crashingthewarparty.substack.com

On a very special Crashing the War Party, Barbara, Dan and Kelley 'want to believe' …that our government will finally come clean with what it knows about UFO sightings dating back to the 1940s. We interview Gideon Lewis-Kraus about his exhaustive piece in the New Yorker, “How the Government Started Taking UFOs Seriously,” which reveals that while believers and sightings by Americans were being mocked, the government was studying the phenomenon all along. He also talks about the new legitimacy around the issue in the media and on Capitol Hill, and about the Congressional task force set to release its new findings this month. Don't miss!(“The Day the Earth Stood Still” (1951)(Screenshot/You Tube) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crashingthewarparty.substack.com

After violence exploded in Israel and Gaza last month the Biden administration helped broker a ceasefire, but is it enough? Kelley, Barbara and Dan talk about the new and growing opposition to Washington's "blank check" to Tel Aviv with nothing in return. Also, we talk to Jason Paladino from the Project on Government Oversight about Pentagon secrecy, and how we still don't know how many troops we have in the world's hotspots. The latest from Jason at POGO:The Navy Wants to Throw Its Internal Auditor OverboardHow a “Small Business” Kingpin Wins Billions in Defense Contracts This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crashingthewarparty.substack.com

In this episode, we talk to Win Without War's Kate Kizer about President Biden's pledge to stop assisting Saudi Arabia in their devastating offensive operations against the Houthis in Yemen. But have we stopped? Is Washington using some loophole to continue arming Riyadh in this war, when will it end? We also give our thumbs up -- and thumbs down -- to Biden's foreign policy moves in his first four months on the job.Kate Kizer’s latest’s writing on Yemen: The Biden administration can follow three steps to becoming a credible actor for peace in Yemen (March 2021) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crashingthewarparty.substack.com

Investigative journalist Eli Clifton joins Barbara, Daniel, and Kelley to talk about the corruption and hypocrisy that makes this city go, starting with the dark money and blatant corporate, foreign, and government funding into think tanks and lobbying for a preferred interventionist agenda. Plus, crazy Beltway headlines that will make you cringe (and your pocketbook shrink)!Eli is a senior advisor for The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and investigative journalist for Responsible Statecraft.His latest issue brief, written with Ben Freeman of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative, on Restoring Trust in Think Tank Sector can be found here.Other recent articles:Weapons biz celebrates declining ‘state of humankind,’ cold war with ChinaWeapons biz bankrolls experts pushing to extend Afghan War This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crashingthewarparty.substack.com

So what what does it feel like to be vindicated by history? We ask radio host Scott Horton, author of Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan and Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism about his 20-year fight against U.S. war policies, which are largely considered a colossal failure. Kelley, Barbara and Daniel also talk about anti-Russia hysteria carrying over into the Biden Administration. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crashingthewarparty.substack.com

This week, Kelley, Barbara, and Dan talk about Yemen: how it was so easy to get into this war six years ago but so difficult for Washington to get out. Then we talk to Trita Parsi, author of Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy and Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States, and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He talks to us about the damage done after President Trump ripped the U.S. out of the nuclear deal with Iran (JCPOA), and how President Biden’s attempts to get back into it are going, despite resistance from the Gulf States, Israel, and the hawks in Washington. Trita’s latest article in Foreign Policy magazine:Why Mohammed bin Salman Suddenly Wants to Talk to Iran This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crashingthewarparty.substack.com

It's been nearly 20 years and it looks like we will finally be leaving Afghanistan -- can we believe it? Barb, Dan, and Kelley talk about realistic expectations for ending the war. Then we interview FEE writer, author, and podcaster Brad Polumbo about the nation's militarized police, anti-war Republicans, confronting the military-industrial complex, and the Blob's fascination with the "China threat."See Brad’s latest on FEE:Biden’s Labor Secretary Just Threatened Independent Contractors This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crashingthewarparty.substack.com

Barbara, Kelley, and Dan aren't invited but they are crashing the party anyway. In this first episode, they will get it off their chests: the Beltway Blob is corrosive and toxic, lacking in self-awareness and helping the U.S. bumble and stumble into back foreign policy decisions while marginalizing voices of reason and restraint. We'll talk, too, about the war hangover and how to start cleaning up the mess. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crashingthewarparty.substack.com

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