Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: I'm Afshin Ratansi and welcome back to Going Underground, broadcasting all around the world from a UAE which has continued to promote peace and dialogue amidst the US Israeli war in Iran that began seven weeks ago today. It started when Trump and Netanyahu assassinated Iran's leader with his son and daughter in law and grandchild. It has now morphed into more than 3 million killed, wounded or displaced Iranians and a further one and a quarter million killed, wounded or displaced Lebanese. Billions have been pushed into hardship. A supply of resources like fuel and the petrochemical chain have been globally strangled by Trump and Netanyahu. And today is Iran's National Army Day. Traditionally that means a military parade and speech from the President. This year it comes days after the President of the United States threatened to destroy Iran's entire civilization in one night and in a week of a fake Trump blockade of Iran along the Strait of Hormuz that only NATO nation propaganda media believed was hacked actually being enforced. The reality is of course that adversaries of the USA government have won through a combination of destruction of US Power and preferential prices. Taiwanese politicians preceded the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi for visits to China. Indonesia's President Subianto was in Moscow after this year's visits there by the UAE's MBZ and the King of Malaysia. It seems that the best funded military in the world striking Iran more than 40,000 times together with the nuclear armed Israel that just committed genocide in Gaza, was no match for 10,000 year old Iran. Joining me from Yarmouth In Massachusetts is 20 year US Air Force veteran, former professor of history at Pennsylvania College of Technology and author of American Militarism on the Military Industrial Complex, Unbounded, uncontained and undemocratic. Retired Lt. Col. Bill Astori. Thank you so much Colonel for coming on going underground. As I said, it's Iran's Army Day today. Regardless of the possible escalation of Trump's blockade against de facto China, the Pakistani renewed negotiations. Why have you said that Iran has won this war on Iran? Obviously when people in the New York Times say that Trump immediately tweets out his hatred of the relevant journalists. But why have you said Iran won the war on Iran?
[00:02:27] Speaker A: Well, I.
Right.
Well, I'm not sure Iran has won quite yet, but it certainly is the case that my country, the United States has been losing this war.
When you think about. Well, part of the confusion with this war is that there were so many different rationales that my country put forward for this war, so many different reasons, whether it Was regime change, the elimination of the nuclear threat from Iran, if it's just destroying ballistic missiles and so on, and none of that has been accomplished. So the war aims that my country says of the reasons why we went to war, those have not been achieved in the slightest. Meanwhile, Iran itself is more unified than ever and is a bigger world player now than it was before my country, along with Israel attacked it.
So we don't know what's going to happen obviously in the immediate future, but right now I'd say very much so that Iran is winning.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: And so as a historian, you see long term consequences for the actions of Trump and Netanyahu, whatever happens.
[00:03:45] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely right. I mean, right now we don't know what those long term reactions are. But I, but I can say that I see this as another sign that my country, the United States, is in further decline. And we see this because of the enormous amount of money that we are expending on the Pentagon and the military industrial complex. You know, I thought a trillion dollars for the Pentagon was obscene, but now we're talking about 1.5 trillion, another 500 billion more in the next fiscal year. And one of the ways that we're justifying that is of course this war with Iran, which there was no reason for. Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States, certainly no existential threat from the Iranian perspective, its nuclear armed Israel and nuclear armed America, that poses a potential existential threat.
So the long term consequences of this, well to be determined. But for me it's witnessing the decline of the American empire and the decline of democracy in my country.
And it deeply saddens me to see this because this war against Iran is another unconstitutional war. It's a lawless war.
[00:05:16] Speaker B: Yeah, if we put law to one side. Alas, there's a headline here in the Financial Times, Goldman Clients Glad for Iran Diversion. That's Goldman Sachs.
Could you be seeing it wrongly in one way? Which is this is actually business as usual.
This is recycling the military. Keynesianism is back with a vengeance. What you are saying about a bloated defense budget is actually amazing for the rich oligarch class of your country, some of which will trickle down to the poor and the masses in your country. And this is actually business as usual and it needed a kickstart after the failed wars of Afghanistan and Iraq.
[00:06:00] Speaker A: What really trickles down to the American people is unfortunately not money, more on the lines of propaganda.
So yeah, in a way it's business as usual, but it's war business even more extreme. And so we're used to Pentagon budgets continuing to increase, but that increase has been maybe $40 billion here, maybe 100 billion. So anywhere from 5 to 10%.
Now we're talking about a 50% increase in America's military budget. And this is a budget very much deployed for imperial purposes to dominate the world. It's not a defense budget. The one thing I'll give Trump and Hegseth is at least they're honest about calling it the War Department now, because that is exactly what it is.
It's a department for perpetual war around the world.
And we're seeing this right now, I mean, not just in Iran, but I mean, I've lost track of the number of countries that President Trump has struck in the last year or two, whether it's Venezuela, Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen.
And now we're turning our attention to Cuba.
He wants to dominate and seize Greenland. I mean, there's just no end to the appetite of the American empire.
[00:07:31] Speaker B: But then do you perceive there the roots of how Trump has changed his opinion on eternal war then elected, of course, as he was as an anti war president, that now he realizes fully that a combination of the petrodollar with this military Keynesian idea of policy is the way to improve the fortunes of the United States as it lags behind China on an international GDP PPP scale.
[00:08:06] Speaker A: Right. Well, if he thinks that, he's exactly wrong.
Because when he was running again for the President, I think he got a lot of support from people who are simply Americans who are tired of these wasteful, wanton, expensive and disastrous wars. I mean, we need, if we're looking for American revival.
So called military Keynesianism is not going to revive America at all. All it does is is increase the authoritarianism in our country and also probably at some point going to generate blowback here in the United States. I mean, we already see here in my country the expansion of homeland security, the execution of Americans in the streets just for exercising their constitutional right as freedom of speech.
And you know, this is just when you see the way in which our country has changed over the last 20, 25 years. You know, I see, you know, militarized police. I see MRAPs, which were those big mine resistant armor protected vehicles developed for the Iraq war. Now they're police vehicles being used to intimidate Americans in the street. So not only are we exporting war abroad, we're bringing it home to our own streets.
[00:09:38] Speaker B: Yeah, and you've written about the fact that this singling out of Trump as being a outlier is arguably not the right way to comprehend this situation. It was a long time coming, and Trump is merely one man in a long line of presidents that have overseen this.
[00:09:59] Speaker A: Oh, sure, yeah. I mean, Trump is the culmination, so to speak, of this whole warrior mentality, the idea of military lethality as something that America should be proud of. I remember a time when America was known, at least to a certain extent, for democracy, diplomacy. Now, we know from American history we have a lot of sad and tragic chapters in our past.
America has been a country made by war. But nevertheless, you know, I think there were times, certainly during the Cold War. I'd like to think so, when I was serving in the US Air Force, where we were helping to maintain a certain amount of democracy and freedom of speech and rights.
[00:10:50] Speaker B: That's the great thing, though, isn't it? With Trump, we get the transparency rather than needing historians to say that even when you were in the Air Force, not all was the way we were being told about those wars.
[00:11:03] Speaker A: Right, right, true. I mean, Trump is very scrutable.
You know, he comes right out and says he wants to eliminate the entire Iranian civilization, which is completely unhinged and reprehensible. And, you know, I was very glad to see recently that the Pope of the.
Has come out, and the Catholic Church here in the United States has said that this is an unjust war and it needs to stop.
And I was raised Roman Catholic, and often the Roman Catholic Church has been very careful not to take positions against wars. It is really encouraging to me to see the Pope speak so plainly and so bluntly that we should be heading toward peace, not perpetual war.
[00:11:54] Speaker B: But, of course, Vice President J.D. vance ended up lecturing the Pope bizarrely. And of course, he is a Catholic.
[00:12:01] Speaker A: Right.
But J.D. vance has no understanding of Catholicism in the sense of.
Vance was basically saying, hey, Pope, do not talk about war and morality. Well, what is the Catholic Church for? I mean, we have. We have a commandment against thou shalt not kill. You know, Jesus taught us to love thy neighbor. He didn't teach us to go, you know, carpet bomb your neighbor or to. Or to assist Israel in a genocide in Gaza. You know, this is. This is totally inconsistent with. With ca. With Catholicism and with Christianity and with Islam as well.
[00:12:44] Speaker B: Come to think of it, you mentioned Pete Hegseth a little earlier. I don't know whether you've sent your book, American Militarism on Steroids to him to make him perhaps understand why the war hasn't gone along the lines he said it would at those Pentagon briefings.
[00:12:59] Speaker A: Right, right.
No, I didn't send my book to him. It's a great idea.
I'm not sure that Pete Hegseth is open to that kind of a reason.
He's very much, in a way, a stuffed shirt. You know, he takes pride in his toughness as he perceives it. He sees the sort of military posturing in doing push ups, getting into, you know, tough physical shape.
This is something that Hegseth associates with his vision of a lethal military. But that's not what militaries are for. I mean, at least the United States military, we are dedicated to defending, supporting the U.S. constitution and the laws of the land and the freedoms that we enjoy as American citizens. And so the idea that this is something advanced through lethality and warriors around the globe prosecuting wars, this is completely nonsensical and antithetical to the ideas of the founders. I mean, here in America, we're celebrating our 250th anniversary this year. And all of this is about declaring our independence from the wars of kings like King George III and fighting for the rights, you know, the idea of equal rights. Even though obviously we didn't, we didn't come up with the perfect Constitution and the perfect country in 1776, nevertheless we were on the right track and now, you know, we're very much off that track.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: Colonel Bill of Story, I'll stop you there. More from the 20 year US Air Force lieutenant colonel after this break.
Foreign.
Welcome back to Going Underground. I'm still here with the 20 year US Air Force lieutenant colonel and former professor of history, Colonel Billistori.
Colonel, we were talking about Hegseth towards the end of part one. I know he has his daily prayer meeting.
Probably not the same God as Netanyahu's. Although Netanyahu isn't very religious, is he? Do you believe then that Israel is a greater national security threat to the USA right now than Russia, China or Iran?
[00:15:31] Speaker A: Wow. Yeah.
That's an interesting question.
I certainly think that Israel and the influence that it has in the United States government and the way in which this war with Iran is very much, to a certain extent, I'd say, to a large extent, orchestrated by Israel and Netanyahu, I would say Israel does pose a threat to US national security. I mean, not in, not in the way that we think. Right. I mean, we tend to think, as an American military officer, you tend to think of threats as a country attacking you. Right.
So Russia has nuclear weapons.
Russia could conceivably attack the United States and wipe out most of our country. With those nuclear weapons, we deter Russia with our own nuclear arsenal. And so in that sense, Russia, because they're saying people as, as Sting once saying. As. As Sting once saying, the Russians love their children too, you know, which is something he got into a lot of trouble in back in the 1980s.
You know, we can deter Russia, we can deter China, and whatever threats those nations may pose. But the Israeli threat is more subtle, it's more insidious in the sense that we see Israel, or at least many people see Israel as America's greatest ally, that Israel is friendly to the United States.
Yet when you stop and think about the amount of influence that Israel exercises over US Foreign policy, particularly in the Middle east, when you look at the Iraq war, when you look at the Iran war and you see the extent to which these wars are being fought for Israeli imperatives, then you have to sit back and you have to question, is Israel really a friend to the United States?
And I would say that we here in the United States need to.
Well, we need to look at that very closely.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: Clearly, polls show that there's greater and greater recognition by ordinary Americans that that is the case. You mentioned Russia, actually.
I mean, when this war is over and perhaps when the war in Cuba is over, who knows how has it been covered, the Ukraine conflict? Do you feel as perhaps the world turns back to the war in Europe after the ending of this war in West Asia? Do you think people have got a fair opinion and fair understanding of that war?
[00:18:25] Speaker A: Right, right.
Well, you know, it's, it's funny. The, the, the war in Ukraine has largely left the front page of, of American media coverage. So, you know, I take a look at my mainstream media sources, and obviously most of it's about the Iran war, the, the, the genocide in, in. I mean, just to say that, you know, the genocide in Gaza has left.
Are our mainstream media, it's left to front page. So I hear very little about the Ukraine war. Now. The basic coverage here in the United States is that Ukraine is holding its own against Russia and that Ukraine continues to deserve the support, the military support and financial support of the United States.
That is the message that we were getting here, at least in the mainstream media.
[00:19:26] Speaker B: I suppose there might be a return to it afterwards. I was actually sort of getting at the root of why the United States was subsidizing the war in the first place to such an extent. Billions and billions of dollars, as Trump said when he was inaugurated. And in fairness, Trump did start some kind of negotiation process, however, it failed.
[00:19:49] Speaker A: Right, right. Well, as Trump memorably boasted that if he was reelected, which he was, he was confident he could end the Russia, Ukraine war in a day.
Obviously, that did not happen.
And that is the type of negotiations that we need to end the Russia Ukraine war. Well, it's very difficult for the United States to have any kind of significant role in them because we are obviously biased. We've been supporting Ukraine with weapons. Those weapons and intelligence. Those weapons have killed tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Russian troops. So how is Russia supposed to see us as any kind of a disinterested, you know, diplomat?
They don't. You know, and so whatever efforts that Trump has put forward so far have completely failed, just as our efforts with Iran. You know, when you have our Secretary of War Hegsets saying that diplomacy is all about bombing, well, you can't have real diplomacy. And why should Iran trust the United States when we've already betrayed them twice with negotiations?
[00:21:12] Speaker B: Are you surprised about that? Are you surprised that they have gone as far as trusting the United States for negotiations in Pakistan in the first place, given their experience of previous negotiations ending with bombing and assassination?
[00:21:28] Speaker A: Right. Well, I don't think they trust us at all. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't blame them. I mean, I don't trust the news coming out of my own government. So why should Iran trust diplomats?
I mean, we don't even send diplomats. We send Trump's son in law and we send a friend of Trump and a real estate developer.
So we don't even rely on the professionals within our own State Department.
But I think Iran is being prudent. Iran recognizes, I think, as sane people do, that diplomacy is better than a forever war where tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people may end up dead. What's so worrisome here is that we Americans and our president doesn't matter if it's Trump or a previous president.
They all talk about short wars. They all talk about mission accomplished moments. Oh, yes, the war will be over in a few weeks, maybe a few months. I mean, we heard the same kind of rhetoric during the Vietnam War that once we sent troops in 1965, that war would be over once American troops hit the ground. Well, that war stretched for another 10 years and we ended up losing that war. So this is always the rhetoric. And what I worry about the Iran war is that, yes, we'd like to think the war will be over soon, but we also thought the Russia, Ukraine war was going to be over in a matter of weeks or months. And now it's more than four years.
I perish the thought that the Iran war could last a year or two or three. It would catapult the world into something like a Great Depression.
[00:23:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, the financial press is already, I mean, given the IMF and World bank are usually wrong in their forecast. Maybe it's good news, they said this week, but global economic outlook darkens. It's all over the so called mainstream corporate media of NATO nations. Are you surprised there isn't more organized opposition now to U.S.
policy given that, you know, the Strait of Hormuz is capitalism's greatest choke point?
And basically the United States has threatened, it has threatened everyone on earth with their war.
[00:23:59] Speaker A: Right, right. Well, I would expect to see more organized resistance as the ripple effects from the closing of the strait, whether they be the lack of oil or the lack of fertilizer, inflation, higher prices and so on. I think you'll definitely witness that. I mean, I suppose one of the few reasons for optimism is that President Trump's always boasting about the performance of the stock market under his watch.
So maybe if stocks start to plummet again, the President may come to his senses as a besotted capitalist and actually, you know, commit to some real diplomacy. We shall see.
[00:24:47] Speaker B: Maybe, maybe some of those military stocks are indestructible. Who knows, as the war continues? But I've got to ask then about something else you might find optimistic is that over the years since you began writing on these matters and working on these matters, clearly there is way more recognition amongst the American people of the arguments you've been making.
This is an unpopular war across the United States and across all classes. Do you think the military industrial complex will respond to failure in this war with more censorship and media censorship? Because clearly the message of the military industrial complex is not getting through to the working classes of the United States anymore. They are believing you over believing what Fox News says,
[00:25:35] Speaker A: right?
Yes. The short answer is yes. I think we're already seeing more censorship. I've written before about how Americans are kept isolated from the costs of war.
So what we tend to see here when we turn on the news is a lot of video game footage of war. We don't see 165, 175 slotted Iranian schoolgirls.
We don't see any coverage about that. What we see is American Tomahawk missiles or we see laser guided bombs or GPS guided bombs hitting their targets. And it's all an antiseptic video game. But I think we're beginning to recognize that this war is just going to continue to be a disaster for us. We're seeing it in the various cuts to domestic services here in the United States.
Now whether or not that will galvanize some kind of an anti war or protest movement here in my country, that very much remains to be seen.
But as you said, I think the response of the deep state or the military industrial complex is going to be more and more censorship.
[00:26:53] Speaker B: Connell, a story. Thank you.
[00:26:56] Speaker A: Thank you, Afshan.
[00:26:57] Speaker B: That's it for the show. Our thoughts are with all those bereaved by the Israeli US War here in West Asia. On Monday we'll be speaking to another Iraq war combat veteran who is senior advisor to Robert Kennedy Jr. Now in Trump's cabinet. Until then, keep in touch via all our social media if it's not censored in your country and head to our channel goingundergrandtv on rumble.com to watch new and old episodes of Going Underground. See you Monday.
