Let's Talk About Not Going To War

Home of the Brave

Scott Carrier

Society And Culture

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 23 June 2019

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For the solstice, the sun tunnels in the West Desert of Utah.

Stories about going to war come from the top down, from media corporations that manufacture consent for war among the people. Stories about not going to war move from the bottom up, starting in conversations between family and friends, people speaking out for no money but just because they feel obligated to speak. In this approach there’s a shift in context where fear is taken out of the narrative—we are not being attacked, maybe these people are not our enemy. Maybe the real enemy is our government and our media that are being controlled by the military industrial complex. I believe bottom up stories can break apart the power structure coming down from above, so this is one of them.

Donate

Scott Carrier and William J. Astore on the house raft in Woods Hole Harbor.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:13.0	Welcome to Home of the Brave. I'm Scott Carrier. Today is Friday, June 21st, the summer solstice. Not that it means anything anymore. Last night, Donald Trump nearly ordered a missile strike on Iran
0:17.0	in retaliation for Iran shooting down one of our drones in the Strait of Hormuz.
0:22.0	When I heard this this morning I went online and
0:26.3	bought a ticket for Dubai which is very close to the Strait of Hormuz. A US citizen can
0:32.2	travel freely there along the southern coast of the Persian Gulf
0:35.9	so it seems like the place to go and see things firsthand and talk to people there
0:41.4	about what's happening and why.
0:43.0	Maybe they don't know any more than we do,
0:46.0	but at least they live there.
0:48.0	It's at least where things are happening.
0:50.0	Somebody should go there.
0:52.0	I should go there. So I bought a ticket leaving the second week of July.
0:57.0	For today I want to play an interview I recorded last week with William J. A Story, who served 20 years in the US Air Force and
1:08.1	retired as a lieutenant colonel in 2005. Not long after he retired, a story started writing essays that were highly critical of the military
1:18.7	and our wars on terrorism. He's written over 60 pieces for Tom Dispatch. Some have been republished by the nation
1:26.7	and Truth Out and other independent social media websites. I wanted to talk to him because he's a good writer who speaks from firsthand experience and gets straight to the point.
1:38.0	That our military industrial complex is too big, too powerful, and is destroying our country and wreaking havoc
1:46.2	around the world. A story lives on Cape Cod, and we ended up talking in a rather ideal location on a houseboat, a house raft, anchored in the
1:56.6	woodshole harbor. It was a bright sparkly day on the water, among sailboats and other house rafts flanked by mansions along the shore.
2:06.0	Would you be okay talking about your past, like how you got to the position you were today is that all right?
2:13.7	Yeah yeah. I'm kind of interested how you went from being in the service in the
2:19.0	Air Force to basically writing about you know know, criticizing the military.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Scott Carrier, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Scott Carrier and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.