Kelley Vlahos talks about prominent Democratic national security official Michele Flournoy, whom she calls “The Queen of the Blob.” The Blob, explains Vlahos, is the group of politicians, advisors, lobbyists and pundits who advocate for the continuation of America’s foreign policy status quo—often greatly enriching themselves in the process. The ideology behind their position, she and Scott speculate, is probably based on the idea that these policies are actually good for the United States and the rest of the world, and that if they can benefit personally, that’s just an added benefit. But the last 70 years of American foreign policy failures should by now have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the centrist liberal and neoconservative establishment has done little but endanger the U.S. and destroy the lives of millions of innocent foreigners.
Discussed on the show:
- “Michele Flournoy: Queen of the Blob” (The American Conservative)
- “How Biden’s Foreign-Policy Team Got Rich” (The American Prospect)
- “The Outpost (2020)” (IMDb)
- “The Outpost Is a War Movie Libs Like, For their Own Reasons” (The American Conservative)
- “In Defense of Restraint” (The American Conservative)
- “Rethinking Restraint: Why It Fails in Practice” (The Washington Quarterly)
- Empire Has No Clothes
- The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World
- “Three Marines, Now Focus of Russian Bounties Investigation, Show the Costs of an Endless War” (The New York Times)
- “Wiping another Country off the Map: Israel does it to Palestine” (juancole.com)
Kelley B. Vlahos is the executive editor of The American Conservative. Follow her on Twitter @KelleyBVlahos.
This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Listen and Think Audio; TheBumperSticker.com; and LibertyStickers.com.
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Scott Horton is director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of Antiwar.com, host of Antiwar Radio on Pacifica, 90.7 FM KPFK in Los Angeles, California and podcasts the Scott Horton Show from this website. He’s the author of the 2017 book, Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan. Visit https://scotthorton.org