Kal Raustiala 0:06

Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Kal Raustiala, Director of the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations. And I'm really pleased to welcome you to our final event of the term and of the fall, and of the year, which is with Spencer Ackerman, the author of I'm gonna hold it up for you Reign of Terror. Some of you have probably seen Spencer, read Spencer's work. He has written for a number of different outlets, including the New Republic, Wire, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, he currently writes on Substack Forever Wars, which I recommend, and he was the recipient along with the team, surrounding the Edward Snowden NSA leaks to the Guardian, back in 2014, of the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service Journalism. So he's worked for many, many years, really, since the beginning of the era he talks about in this book, around issues of national security, the connections between the War on Terror, issues at home, other international events abroad, and so forth. And he weaves all of those together in this book. So we're gonna hear a bit more from Spencer in a moment. I'm going to welcome him on the screen. I'm going to get off the screen, and we'll come back and have a conversation after he presents a bit to us. So Spencer, glad to have you.

Spencer Ackerman 1:26

Now, everyone at UCLA and the Burkle Center, thank you so much for having me. Really honored to speak before such a distinguished audience. So thank you for that introduction. Let me talk about the book very briefly, because the fun part comes when we get into dialogue. But just to sort of set up what I outline and present in the book, it's helpful to talk about what the War on Terror is. Very often we talk about the war on terror, in terms of its more easily digestible component parts. That is to say its operations, the Iraq War, the Afghanistan war, CIA torture, drone strikes, Guantanamo Bay, indefinite detention, all of these things, mass surveillance, all of these things are critical and critically important aspects of the war. But very often, by focusing on the war on terror in terms of its components, we tend to overlook the broader picture of what the war is. And first and foremost, this is an operation that's lasted an entire generation, spanning not only abroad, but here at home as well. And abroad, its consequences are the best way to describe the war on terror. Those consequences were best summed up recently by the Constant War Project at Brown University, which by using very analytically, conservative means, determined that the war on terror has killed an estimated 939,000 people that is, by its own admission, assuredly an undercount. It has also produced 10s of 1000s of refugees, the human impact of the war on terror, I believe, is the truest assessment of what the war on terror is. We should also recognize that the war on terror has been here at home in the United States the whole time. It is the post 911 apparatus of bulk surveillance set up by the NSA accessed by the FBI for warrantless surveillance on Americans. It's the counterterrorism effication, shall we say, of immigration, the bureaucratic context for transforming immigration from a process to produce more Americans into a process that threatens Americans that are already here. It's FBI roundups of people that take place after 9/11. And then the mapping of entire communities without suspicion of a crime that happens in Muslim communities since 9/11. And ever since 9/11, the NYPD, the largest police department in the United States, bringing on CIA retired even at times current personnel to transform it into something much more like a secret police whereby informants and agents infiltrate Muslim communities around New York, the FBI did this around the country as well, including violating people's places of worship. Informants are placed inside mosques, and somehow for well, we understand what the somehow is. But this is never considered fundamental violations of the First Amendment of the Fourth Amendment and the Fifth Amendment. As well recall what the politics of the War on Terror have been as well as the culture of the War on Terror. From the start, the War on Terror politically, is a reactionary enterprise. It's one that reaches into the most nativist and racist currents of American history, and gives them new license under the guise of patriotic emergency, to have a path back to power. We see this very clearly in not only who the War on Terror applies to, which is to say, Muslims, at home and abroad, but especially who the War on Terror never applies to, which is to say, the apparatus of white political violence in this country. The comparison to Oklahoma City, just six years before 9/11 is very instructive. They're both in the aftermath of a white supremacist, committing the worst act of terrorism on US soil to that point. All of the political journalistic and cultural response to Oklahoma City obscures the white supremacist motivation of Timothy McVeigh. It doesn't look beyond McVeigh and his direct coconspirator at any sort of broader network, either ideological or operational, beyond McVeigh and his his colleague, Terry Nichols, for this crime. And as well, it doesn't seek to criminalize those who might share in, you know, vague ideological as opposed to operational affiliation with McVeigh. In fact, the principal legislation emerging from Oklahoma City explicitly exempts white supremacist and other forms of domestic terrorism, which is to say it focuses only on foreign emanating terrorism, which is also to say, is a euphemism for at the time and context, looking just at terrorism that emanates from Muslims abroad. This is the precursor to what after 9/11 will be a body of law, particularly supercharged by the Patriot Act, known as material support for terrorism that only exists functionally speaking, for Muslim terrorism with an overseas connection, none of it for white supremacist terrorism here at home that, of course, feeds into and helps get us back to the politics of the war on terror, which is one that assiduously throughout American history, exempts and normalizes white political violence and considers non white political violence to be a threat to the state. Finally, the 9/11 era is complete with delusions, lies, evasions and euphemisms that conceal the enterprise that are sort of central to it, from Saddam Hussein phantom ties to al Qaeda to his current possession of weapons of mass destruction, to bringing democracy to Iraq, to the CIA treating torture as what it calls enhanced interrogations or drone strikes is what it calls targeted killings, or broad suspicion was bulk surveillance is what the NSA calls the terrorist surveillance program. These are big lies, and are the ways in which atrocities get normalized. But here's the other aspect of the war on terror that really very often doesn't tend to get focused on which is that there are political consequences to the way that it yields neither peace nor victory, which is to say, the elites that launched the war on terror that valorize it as this grand national enterprise this reassertion of American power onto the world stage that will produce the enduring stability that they believe 911 demonstrated America was no longer possessing. Instead, it demonstrated American weakness in the most agonizing possible ways, not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, but beyond in the ways that the war on terror sprawls to all of these new undeclared battlefields, but still gets no closer to victory even after President Obama opts particularly after President Obama opts not to declare victory After killing Osama bin Laden. What this leads to is this cognitive dissonance amongst the people who are the most fervent believers in the war on terror. Those who believe the messages from their leaders about this civilizational danger that something Islamic poses to the United States. In that experience of cognitive dissonance, there is simple opportunity for people like Donald Trump to explain how it is that all of this violence, all of this expense, all of this bloodshed, has led not to security, but into in this case, and in 2015, when he started making this argument, the emergence of ISIS. That was not an explanation that said that the War on Terror was doomed to failure doomed to replicate the mistakes that prompted it make all of them worse, which is to say, the application of American global dominance and policing of the Muslim world, but instead that the incompetent elites that created and maintained and justified the War on Terror were insufficiently brutal and insufficiently civilization we focus. That was how Donald Trump simultaneously escalated the war on terror, while posing rhetorically as its critic, and also getting to something closer to where these these political trends converge, which is in the summer of 2020, where Trump declares in the face of widespread protest for black liberation after the police murder of George Floyd, that those protesting are in fact, terrorists themselves that anti fascists and Black Lives Matter supporters are terrorists that as he has Attorney General William Barr, perform, that the joint terrorism task forces, which are state, local, federal law enforcement partnerships, look at those protesters. In a counterterrorism context. It's how the Department of Homeland Security launched drone and other aerial surveillance over 15 cities where protesters were on on the streets. It is how, during the protests in Portland, DHS and Justice Department officials were snatching people off the streets and putting them in unmarked vans to detention using less lethal rounds on protesters, which is to say rubber coated bullets, taking headshots at them, and keyed it up essentially as if they were fighting an urban counter insurgency. As all of this coalesces, the war on terror has not reached its final form yet, even though President Biden has withdrawn from Afghanistan. And I would you know, right as we go into questions, just just leave everyone with an understanding that it is important to pay attention to how the war on terror provides all of these authoritarian possibilities, that it provides all of these justifications for authoritarian usage, that as we saw from the last year of the Trump presidency, and then from January 6, that all of these opportunities once on the table are very likely to be used. It is not frivolous. It is rather central that the Q Anon conspiracy theory views itself, fantasizing about locking up Trump's political enemies in Guantanamo Bay, the war on terror are accustomed to see this as a possibility as a potentiality. And that is why ultimately, Trump uses the opportunities that the war on terror provides. All of these are life potential going forward as we enter what appears to be this sustained period of domestic emergency for our democracy, and I look forward to our conversation. Thank you.

Kal Raustiala 14:24

Great, thank you, Spencer. And let me first say, having read the book, and having lived through this period, as I think many of probably the listeners and watchers, to this, to this event have, it's still very illuminating the way that you bring back things that either I had forgotten or really had not fully thought through. And you very expertly weave together, all of these events, which are really disturbing in a lot of ways as you made clear in your opening remarks, but sort of putting them together in a single package makes them even more powerful. So it's a very good book and I recommend it. With that in mind, I want to sort of align myself with the general thrust of the book and then press on a few points, where I just want to understand more what what your argument really is or how you see the big picture in particular. And maybe I'll start with where you just ended, which is the the phenomenon of Trump, which I know interests, a lot of people on the left, and a really across the spectrum a lot. And so you make the claim, even in your title, that the the war on terror, the 9/11 era produced Trump, and you just I think pointed to some of the ways in which you sustain that or try to sustain that case. And is it is it fair to say that you think the reason that the 9/11 era produced Trump was the valorization of authoritarian acts and tendencies and a set of tools that were not available before is that is that sort of a fair characterization?

Spencer Ackerman 15:56

Not really, um, more accurately, it's that the war on terror, it's not the only thing that produces Trump, of course, what it is, is an atmosphere of emergency for all of the other tendencies that produce Trump, the nativism, the racism, all of these things that are that are just, you know, beneath the surface, frankly, of typical American life, but find themselves with this opportunity. Once all of this civilizationally focused, normalized violence is politically acceptable and accepted and as its own dictates, and then also, the structures of the War on Terror provide all of the opportunities that authoritarians would ultimately want. It not only weakens the institutional architecture that's supposed to protect American democracy and each of our liberties, but institutionalizes the exact opposite, rather than strengthening due process, for instance, we have states of exception, we have Guantanamo Bay, we have the CIA black sites, we have even you know, the black site-ization of immigration detention, which the War on Terror stretches throughout the country, it is where it is the thing that creates ICE, for instance. So So there we have, both in terms of of culture, in terms of politics, and in terms of institutional presentation. That is what produces Trump from the war on terror, I would just add one final thing. You know, think about birtherism, the conspiracy theory that holds that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, but was a Kenyan Muslim. Well, the anti black racism of that really screamed so loud, that it can tend to drown out what the rest of that you know, what the rest of the force of the conspiracy theory is doing, which is to portray Barack Obama as an enemy of the United States, because he is foreign because he is Muslim, because the War on Terror had for nearly 10 years up to that point, told the country that was the sort of person who was a terrorist, and that your political adversary, who you might think is Barak Obama, and who you might think is his coalition is not your political adversary at all. They're your enemy, and they are here and they have power and what will you do in response to it? It is, in that sense that we get Trumpist polemicistations, like one, shortly before the 2016 election by someone who would go on to be the spokesman for his National Security Council, calling the 2016 election, the flight 93 election, which is to say that unless, frankly, an act of martyrdom took place under which a whole lot is justified, then the entire enterprise of America was going to be destroyed. This is the wages of the war on terror. And we can see from the way you know, just this week, Lauren Boebert, the Colorado GOP Congresswoman, called her colleague, the Minnesota Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a suicide bomber, that this is all still a very live aspect of American political life.

Kal Raustiala 19:37

I'm glad you raised Obama because one of the things that's most interesting about the book and I think most important, especially for what I'm going to guess is your kind of natural viewership and readership and probably most of my students as well, is the role that Obama played. And I want to get back to that, but I just want to press you on this point. Did the 911 era also produce Obama If so, how do you explain that? And if not, what's the distinction between the two presidents? We'll leave Joe Biden for a moment.

Spencer Ackerman 20:09

Well, um, well, you said Joe Biden as well, or will kind of know

Kal Raustiala 20:12

what we can leave by now. Or you can include him if you want. But I guess the real question is, does the same cause explain we have very different presidents. Now, you point out helpfully in the book that Obama's less different than many people might believe, especially most Democrats, I think, don't appreciate the degree to which Obama stepped up the drone program, for example, continued Guantanamo, despite pledges to do the opposite. Because I think you've very helpfully showed, there's actually much more continuity than people tend to think. But all of that said, the rhetoric, the style, and even the substance of Barack Obama and Donald Trump are quite different. But the same ear is in question. So I'm just asking, how do you see the connection, especially with regard to the big thesis of your book?

Spencer Ackerman 20:58

Sure, so some of the antibodies politically speaking of the 9/11 era, explain Barack Obama, which is to say, the abject disaster of the Iraq War, which is pretty much the reason why Obama could be elected in the first place. The problem is that the 9/11 era explains Barack Obama in a different way, which is within the context of liberal acquiescence and even complicity in the war on terror. Remember, the, you know, the famous speech that Obama gives in 2002, which is, you know, by contemporary political, political terms, incredibly brave speech, the state senator, he's rejecting the Iraq war at a time in which the entire Democratic establishment and he talks about it as he was less noticed. Let's

Kal Raustiala 22:03

just back up for one second, we lost you there for about 30 seconds or maybe 10 seconds, is more accurate. I don't know if the Wi Fi is a little shaky, but just go back to you were talking about the speech. Just start back at that point.

Spencer Ackerman 22:18

Oh, sorry. So real quick, Barack Obama gives a famous speech in 2002. At a time in which the democratic political elites are, you know, rallying around Bush for the Iraq War and embracing the Iraq War. Obama's doing the opposite and calling it a dumb war and signaling as opposition. What's less often noticed about that same speech, which is to an anti war rally, is he's describing it not as a disaster on its own but a disaster for the war on terror. That Obama's critique of, of the Iraq War, is that it is a distraction from the war on terror, a detriment to the war, we took our eye on not yet, not that the war on terror is itself a dumb war. And that in a lot of ways, foreshadows the way in which Obama would govern as president in which he takes an abolitionist perspective about only the Iraq occupation, and CIA torture. Everything else, he's flexible of it.

Kal Raustiala 23:28

Just to continue with that, first of all, it's an interesting tangency that both Trump and Obama characterize Iraq, as I think Trump calls it a stupid war. You just quoted, I think Obama calling it a dumb war. They basically had the same reaction, which I think many of us do now that you're absolutely right. At the time, it was widely, widely supported within the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. What's the international dimension of all of this? I want to again, come back to Obama a little bit. But when we look around the world now, we certainly see authoritarian tendencies and authoritarian practices in many democracies, many countries are wrestling with similar issues, France, other parts of Europe, certainly Eastern Europe, etc. Do you see a kind of larger phenomenon? And could you imagine your book and your reporting is obviously focused on the United States and what happens here? But do you see a deeper kind of trend or set of trends that link together all of these disparate political histories?

Spencer Ackerman 24:27

Well, certainly the war on terror. You know, it drove mass refugee flows from the Middle East and North Africa into Europe, which prompted this wave of reaction. That reaction was already underway to a lesser extent after 911 as right wingers on the continent, used it as an opportunity to talk about Muslim immigration or simply Muslim minority statuses in their own countries is basically a prologue to what we understand now here in the United States as replacement theory that these populations were not there to be part of a broader culture, but to undermine that broader culture from within, that's normalized now in the United States, as well as on the European continent. Beyond that, um, you know, there were documents from the Chinese Communist Party that were leaked in the New York Times in 2019, about establishing and justifying the apparatus of Uighur cultural genocide in Xinjiang, and among the very striking aspects of those internal documents was how they referenced how they could use the American reaction to 9/11 as a template. Which is to say that America at the time of 9/11 is the unchallenged global hegemon. Now we are challenged global hegemon, but nevertheless, that is the case. And what the United States decides to do is exempt itself, from what it calls the rules based international order or to put it differently, in order that it establishes after World War Two through which to channel its hegemony and through which to work for its hegemony. But now after 911, it's it's it's unsatisfied even with those meager restrictions. Other countries, when they reach moments of similar opportunity for their own, either outwardly aggressive or internally repressive opportunities are, as well we see this manifesting, take that opportunity shown by the American example and say, if it's good enough for them, why not for us. Vladimir Putin does this when he both threatens Georgia in 2008. And then when he invades Ukraine in 2014, and is very quick to read the United States, it's back to its recent history of unprovoked aggression. And if it's good enough for the United States, why isn't it good enough for Russia? The United States doesn't have a good answer for this, because there isn't a good answer for this.

Kal Raustiala 27:14

Do you see a pattern? Well, let me back up. You talk about Obama and Biden as well, a little bit at the end. And in both cases, one of the things that you show is that this phenomenon of the war on terror, shaping the politics and really, as you put it destabilizing the politics of the United States is a bipartisan enterprise. So again, there are obvious differences. But it's fundamentally a bipartisan enterprise. And you don't really see an enormous difference between Democratic or Republican presidents in this regard. And I think I'm certain things that's absolutely right. On other things, less so but, but that's a smaller kind of debate. The book doesn't have a lot of, I guess, either prescription in terms of what can we do now? Or maybe kind of deeper historical perspective, you kind of start at 911, you tell the story forward. So I'm just curious if you want to respond to either of those time periods. So one, one sort of answer that touches on both, or one, one tangent we could take would be to say, really, the problem stems from the American obsession with the Middle East, and that if the United States had not been so deeply embroiled in the Middle East for decades, we wouldn't have seen 911 all the different ways that it arose through connections to Saudi and elsewhere, coming from the Gulf War even earlier. And likewise, if we were to disentangle ourselves today, from the Middle East, which perhaps we're doing that certainly rhetorically, often said, inside the beltway, we're starting to do that we will be better off. So you can run with either of those perspectives, or connect them as you wish. But how do you see that playing out?

Spencer Ackerman 28:53

Well, I guess what I would say is that, you know, American involvement in the Middle East is is an example of the broader phenomenon, which is that America decided, after the fall of the Cold War, that it was a global policeman. It was the case that as it acted like a global policeman in in the Middle East, in South Asia and in North Africa, it generated massive amounts, well, massive, it's probably it generated very intense resistance from a very small group of people and probably passive acceptance of that from a broader cohort. Which is to say that America responded to the critique of how he treated Muslim life exceptionally cheaply in the Middle East with treating it exceptionally cheaply on a much grander scale. And that is ultimately the predicament that America finds itself in after having done all that and telling itself it's its own justification for why can't end these enterprises, because it would ultimately mean too great a danger is generating that very danger by fact of its enterprises by the way in which the War on Terror continues. As a historical matter, when you look at the operations of the war on terror, particularly around torture around surveillance around detention around child separation, the historical view shouldn't start with 9/11. It shouldn't start with 1991. It shouldn't start with the post World War II international order either, it should start with 1619. When the pirate ship the White Lion arrives in Jamestown in August of 1619, bearing the first kidnapped African people to be brought into enslavement in the United States, they are being held in what as a post 9/11 observer would recognize in stress positions. Right, John Yoo when he is writing a memo about the treatment of detainees in military custody for a very interested Pentagon, he references an 1873 memoranda by the contemporary attorney general who was justifying the imprisonment and massacre of the Modak people after they decided they were going to leave the US reservation for them in Oregon and return to their land in what United States now calls Northern California. Similarly, something like 26, out of 30 of the generals who command the counterinsurgency in the Philippines, after 1898 are, which is the first place that American troops start waterboarding people. They are veterans of the Indian Wars. You see all of these continuities very deep throughout American history. The 911 era is an inflection point, but it's nothing new. I describe it, I try and describe it as a doorway to all of this exceptionally ugly American history given this atmosphere of patriotic emergency. All of this stuff is very deeply embedded within America and redressing it will require asking us asking ourselves some very hard questions about precisely how deeply we have to examine all of these continuities and what we end up building, instead of. You ask that I don't have a lot of prescriptions for how we get out of this era. I kind of just have one big one, which is that the only way you end the war on terror, is to organize. Elite politics, Democratic and Republican have proven over 20 years, they will not end the war on terror. They will only reproduce it in different ways, some more obvious than others. It has to be movement politics in America. You would you mentioned the continuities about some of Trumps coalition's antipathy to the war on terror, as well as Obama's I think that demonstrates that the war on terror has never been substantively politically popular. There have been enough elite lies to drive up enthusiasm for enterprises like the Iraq War or the Afghanistan war. Ultimately, when we look at it over a 20 year period, those periods of enthusiasm are brief, and they lead to a broader antipathy. If the war on terror is going to end. It will not be because presidents ended, it will be because presidents are compelled to end it by the American people.

Kal Raustiala 34:05

I mean, I have to say, I'm not sure I agree with that last part that the what you're right to say if you ask people that was the war on terror popular? I think it's probably correct that it's not. But if you look at just take one example that you spent a lot of time on, which is Guantanamo, which is very interesting and important one, there's no appetite in Congress, or in the White House for ending that, despite really compelling reasons to do it. And so I think you're right, but I think the Americans if they were relying on the American people to end it. I don't think it's ever going to end because people really are fearful of terrorist attacks. And I

Spencer Ackerman 34:44

Yeah. Yeah. I think you're confusing the American people with the American Congress.

Kal Raustiala 34:49

Huh? I don't know. I mean, I guess we'll find out but

Spencer Ackerman 34:54

you're certainly right. That varies enough elite antipathy to closing Guantanamo Bay. It is also quite structural similarly important military antipathy to closing the Guantanamo Bay

Kal Raustiala 35:08

Right not an easy problem to solve.

Spencer Ackerman 35:10

It's it's certainly not and it's a very easily demagogued one. But that is not the same thing as public enthusiasm for Guantanamo Bay, it is a reiteration of what incarceration always demonstrates, which is that you lock people up long enough, the broader public will forget about.

Kal Raustiala 35:30

Yeah, no, I agree with that. I guess it's more the fear of some kind of attack. The thing that motivated so many people in the years after 911, as you know, was the was the the fear that there's going to be another attack. And you know, you and I are both on the left side of the spectrum, we're generally going to agree I agree with your with your book and your arguments, overall, even if I might, you know, as in this conversation, take issue with certain things or pressing on certain things. I'm on the same basic side. But obviously, if we had Dick Cheney on this discussion, he would say, look at all the things that didn't happen, look at how safe it's been, which is a sort of double edged sword, you use that in the book to say, well, maybe a lot of this wasn't really necessary. Or you you imply that at certain points. Maybe this wasn't necessary. It's it's continuing well past its expiration date for various reasons. And you're not the first person to say that. But that sort of counterfactual is very difficult to make. We don't really know we don't know what was if you ask a John Brennan, as I know, you've spoken to John Brennan, I've spoken to John Brennan, many people have and people like that will tell you, Oh, yes, there's so many things you don't know that we stopped. And again, we can ever prove that or disprove it. So there's sort of this fundamental uncertainty, and I think political life, or politicians are driven by a fear of the uncertainty. And the notion that if we let people out of Guantanamo, and they did something bad, say the same about prisons, that's going to be on my watch, and I'm going to suffer for that. It's very motivating to them. So that's why I'm not that optimistic. I'm not saying you are optimistic or should be optimistic. But I don't find I don't find this an easy exit at all, even after 20 years.

Spencer Ackerman 37:09

No, I don't I don't mean to say that is an easy exit at all. I I take your point about the ways in which, you know, this is so easily demagogued. I mean, I think that's that's kind of a central point of the book, I think you've got to ask in that circumstance, 939,000 people at a minimum are dead, because of the war on terror. 9/11 is always going to be an exceptional event in the history of terrorism, to judge the war on terror, as well, as long as there's no second 9/11, then it's a success is a way to transform 939,000 people into 939,000 courses. And simultaneously. Every time as a reporter, when I've gotten into the internal documentation, as I have of the NSA and the CIA, about their counterterrorism operations are really getting the same thing with the military, a really consistent threat emerges. And it's not just me, it's also all of the disclosures that we've seen from inside, of course of the last 20 years, which is to be really blunt about it, that they were lying, that everything they said about the necessity of these operations, or the efficacy of these operations in preventing terrorism is very often either a lie or a self delusion. And Dick Cheney will and John Brennan, for that matter, will say as much as they want to ensure that they, their political and bureaucratic prerogatives are preserved when it comes to the war on terror. But that's not the same thing as the truth.

Kal Raustiala 38:58

Let me make sure we get some time for questions. And there's quite a few audience questions. I'm going to turn to that. So the first question, really the first one out of the gate, which is an interesting one is What do you say is the most important lesson you've learned from your research for this book? And then the part two is how do you think we can avoid electing another Trump but that's not necessarily connected to the first part? So answer either or both.

Spencer Ackerman 39:21

Sure. Um, so I think the most important thing that I learned in writing this book was the ways in which American history has these currents run through it so often, you know, in reaching back to, you know, the White Lion, you know, when you start looking at when you start looking at the operational practices of national security, one of the things that you kind of learn as a reporter really quick is that, you know, so much of this relies on institutional muscle memory. So then it's incumbent upon you as a reporter to go back and like, well, where have those muscles been flexed before? And you can see throughout, you know, a lot of CIA torture, as you can read in Greg Brandon's book, Empires Workshop, comes right from the CIA's Dirty Wars in Latin America. A whole lot of the war on terror, his political life is something that owes a tremendous amount to Cold War, anti communism, certainly in Italy formulations. So looking back on American history, from the perspective of 9/11, you really learn a lot of continuities, if you are willing to trace them. How to not elect another Trump? Well, first of all, I will, of course, argue that whether you will elect another Trump or not, it's really important to strengthen the institutional safeguards of democracy because there's always going to be another figure like Trump, it's how vulnerable you are as a country, to the damage that structurally a president like that can inflict, I would certainly argue that a really good idea in the advent of another Trump or similar presidency is that there not be a forever prison open, like at Guantanamo Bay, because pretty soon someone's going to fill that prison. They will fill it not necessarily, with just the people that were considered America's enemies on 911. But through a redefinition of what terrorism is understood to mean, which is going to be, you know, broader and broader cohorts of Americans who aren't, you know, we have a maggot agenda. So, I would say, in terms of not electing another Trump, that's going to be a question for the political reporters, of which I'm not

Kal Raustiala 42:04

just asking your answer to the first question about the lessons that you learned several times in the conversation, you've I think, rightly pointed to continuity going back, as you said, even to 1619. Certainly through the Cold War and Indian wars of the 19th century, and so forth. So you also talked about China and Russia and other countries? So I'm just curious, do you think there's something inherent in a great power being a great power that entails this kind of behavior. So in other words, China is doing many of the same things, in fact, on on steroids compared to what we're doing? What's happening to the Uyghurs is enormous, and on a scale and scope that makes Guantanamo seem like nothing. So I'm not I'm not trying to defend what we're doing. I'm just pointing out that it is it is a huge problem that transcends the US. Do you think there's something simply about like, Are there great powers who don't engage in this? Is there something simply is it inevitable? In a certain sense, can we ever

Spencer Ackerman 43:01

I start I mean, Empire is really bad, right? This is why Empire is really bad, because all of the people whose lives and dignity is trampled on the road to constructing those empires, I certainly think that's true. I think the particulars matter, because they show where those avenues of conflicts are and where those kind of tendencies within the particular empire to act in those in those specific ways are so you know, most definitely.

Kal Raustiala 43:37

Yeah, I mean, of course, our values are very different. And so I

Spencer Ackerman 43:40

Are they they though?

Kal Raustiala 43:42

I do, I would, I certainly think I'm not going to defend China's actions in any way. But, you know, the values that are espoused by the Chinese Communist Party are pretty different. And I, you know, I think in some ways that makes our actions more worthy of censure. Though I think both are worthy of censure.

Spencer Ackerman 44:04

I would disagree with that. I don't think our actions are what we say. I think our actions are reflected in what we do. Of course,

Kal Raustiala 44:13

we tend to be there's more of a disconnect between our values,

Spencer Ackerman 44:17

We tell ourselves that we have these values, we like to portray ourselves on the international stage as having these values and we like to portray ourselves to one another as having these values. And I would argue that the United States does not have those values. The United States has the values of Guantanamo Bay, the CIA black sites, and on and on down the line that you know, America so consistently acts in these ways that it reflects what its values and its interests truly are and and I don't put a lot of stock in a lot of the, I think exceptionalist discourse that comes with pretending that the Constitution is America's values because the Constitution is not what America follows.

Kal Raustiala 45:06

I want to get back to the questions, but I'll just say I think the rest of the world does see it differently. And in fact, the question I'm about to read reflects that. Maybe the best example is the blowback for China from its you talked about abuse of Muslims in the past, or Muslim life being treated as cheap by the United States was one of the reasons that gave rise to 911. But what's interesting is how little blowback China has had for it's much more egregious acts. And I think one way to explain that no one really has a great answer to that. But one answer is that the world does see us as different. And so when we do those things, even at a smaller scale, they're viewed as much worse than than when China does. And that's one reason China has seen virtually no cost for its actions. But I don't want to get off on a tangent. Let me go to the next question, which is sort of related. So this question reads the following. Despite these abuses by the "police state" that Mr. Ackerman has described, the US continues to be highly sought after as a migration destination, why the disconnect?

Spencer Ackerman 46:10

Because the United States is rich. Like people aren't coming to the United States, just because like they like the rhetoric of American political freedom. They're coming to the United States, because they're, you know, in economic need, as well as in many cases, political need of coming to the United States. And when they're in political need of coming to the United States. Right now, as well, as you know, in many, many periods of American history starting, you know, especially in 1920, they are denied access to the United States for those political reasons very often, as they come from places that the United States has politically and economically destabilized. I live and I'm from I'm born and raised in New York City. It's an immigrant city. And you really just can't escape this, that people come to the United States, because wealth is increasingly being hoarded around the world in places like the super rich of the United States. That is what primarily drives migration. I take the the questioners point, which is that the United and yours as well, that the United States definitely espouses these values, and they're attractive values. But they're not really what the United States does.

Kal Raustiala 47:30

Next question, what needs to change in mainstream politics to end this meaning, the war on terror, presumably, in the all of the the kind of ills that you described, and what's the most important thing we can do as citizens?

Spencer Ackerman 47:41

I think, organize, I think this is, you know, not just a solution to the war on terror. But a necessary activity of citizenship, particularly as our democracy comes under increasing threat, go to more meetings, organize your neighbors get more active with one another. Because the concerted acts of Americans for justice is the not only most powerful thing, in American political life, it is the only thing in American political life that has ever changed America for the better. It also shows how, despite all of these continuities that I've talked about, with American history, that there's another side to American history as well, which is working with one another to overcome these sorts of atrocities, to redress them, materially to stop them from happening in the future. I think no matter what the United States, even if it were to end, the war on terror, tomorrow, would be obligated to pay reparations to those people who lost their lives. And were emiserated by the war on terror. We can, you know, leave that aside. There are obviously different understandings of what justice requires. But I would just say this is not a hopeless story. This is not a picture whereby we are fated to live in this destabilizing world of forever wars, but it is very important that if we don't want to live in those in those worlds in a world in which a rapacious capitalist super elite destroys the planet, and increasingly relies on state functions, that are primarily repressive, more than in any way benefiting the peoples of the world, that it's necessary to organize against that and take the power back for ourselves.

Kal Raustiala 49:53

How important in that organizing is electoral politics. So in other words, we have a you know, midterm coming up, we've got a presidential campaign not that far away. Is it important that people who read your book and agree with you support the Democratic candidate? Does that? Is that sort of electoral politics a little bit beside the point? Because it really doesn't matter. What's your take on that?

Spencer Ackerman 50:16

I don't, I don't think it doesn't matter. I think I think supporting a Democratic candidate doesn't get you the work you're looking for. What does is forcing those candidates, particularly Democratic candidates that seem like they might possibly be more open to this, but this is also the case for Republican candidates as well, forcing them into a binary choice between retaining political power and retaining the War on Terror that's being a little bit you know, 30,000 foot about it. I don't want to say that electoral politics is unimportant. It's the way politics is conducted in the United States in terms of determining who serves in government and how power is meted out, as well as who has to suffer that and who gets to enjoy the benefits from it. Just that American electoral politics is not particularly democratic. I think a lot of people are seeing that now, perhaps more than in recent years, and in order to make them democratic, is not a process that happens one day, in November, every other year, or depending on what state you're in. It is a process of organizing to strengthen democracy from the grassroots up. That's just one reporter's opinion.

Kal Raustiala 51:41

Great. Next question. Could you say more about the connection between European Islamophobia and US replacement theory? Eg the ties of the far right, so kind of transnational far right? Rhetoric and politics?

Spencer Ackerman 51:54

Yeah, basically, it's a great question. The continuity there, basically, with Europe being something of a leading indicator of where the American right would go very quickly. In Europe after 9/11. This kind of latent hostility toward Muslim immigration ramps up with this opportunity that the 9/11 era poses, which is to say that it considers open societies to be simultaneously what we need to most defend, and also internal threats to themselves on the other. You see this in figures. I'm terrible with pronunciations of this. So I apologize for this, but like Dutch figures, like Geert Wilders, I believe I'm saying his name correctly, he speaks at the so called Ground Zero Mosque disaster in 2010, encouraging the United States encouraging Americans on the right not to replace New York, with new Mecca. The Europeans are very accustomed to this over time, particularly, as they have dealt with the wages of decolonization, which is this horror internally understood amongst White Europeans, that the people that they formally dominated are now coming back to the Metropole, and demanding rights and opportunities that they never intended to extend to them in what had always been a fundamentally extractive relationship. The American right at first is somewhat tempered by this because of the kind of unique positioning that as you mentioned earlier on in our discussion, the United States, you know, likes to employ in order to portray itself positively on the world stage and positioning itself as benefiting not only the elites of allied countries, but the peoples of it as well. The longer that the war on terror persisted, in a circumstance of producing neither peace nor victory against a non white enemy, that it never precisely names, the greater the opportunity for the frustrations of that to be visited on ever more civilizationally understood enemies. And so the American right over time, becomes more and more reflective of what the European right had had been starting from the very beginning of 9/11.

Kal Raustiala 54:32

This is probably our last question, but it relates directly to the issues of the right that you were just discussing. So the question is, intelligence agencies have identified right wing extremism as the greatest national security threat? Not 100% sure, that's true. But let's let's assume it is. Do you think a greater focus on right wing extremism could divert attention away from the war on terror? Or do you worry it could reproduce on a smaller scale the war on terror?

Spencer Ackerman 54:57

I'm very worried about it reproducing that I think it is very alarming that in the response to January 6, we basically have no real political response at all. We have a securitized response, aimed not at the people who prompted, you know, who sounded the call to insurrection, but by the people have targeted the people who answered that call, which is to say that, of course, anyone who committed a crime on January 6 ought to pay a price for that crime, but that we've learned from the war on terror, that security solutions to political problems are doomed to failure, they're doomed to making those political problems worse, right now, what you hear from the American right is a language of pretext that will justify ever more repressive measures when the right returns to power. You hear this so often throughout the war on terror, but now especially this is the meaning of Stop the Steal, right? This is the meaning of saying the election has already been stolen from us. So a coup is justified in order to get the quote unquote, real Americans, you know, people like us, you know, wearing that MAGA hat back in power. This is an incredibly dangerous phenomenon. It is also a dialectical phenomenon that the war on terror can feed, but it can never in fact extinguish.

Kal Raustiala 56:29

Great well, Spencer, thank you so much for coming on. All of you paying attention still there is a link I should have mentioned this earlier on in the chat for the book. Spencer's book is available in I think every bookstore around and we really appreciate you having you on Spencer and I hope you come back.

Spencer Ackerman 56:46

Thank you so much for having me.

Kal Raustiala 56:48

Yeah, take care everyone.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai