Scott interviews Cato’s John Mueller about why it’s time to leave Afghanistan. Fundamentally, the Taliban cannot be defeated at any remotely acceptable cost of American lives and U.S. dollars, says Mueller, and at the same time military interventions has only made the Al-Qaeda problem—America’s original enemies—even worse. Fortunately, it seems like President Trump might see ending the war in Afghanistan as a possible path to reelection.

Discussed on the show:

“Overcoming Inertia: Why It’s Time to End the War in Afghanistan” (Cato Institute)“Life under the Taliban shadow government” (Overseas Development Institute)

John Mueller is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a senior research scientist with the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at Ohio State University. He is the author of Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them , Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda, and many others. Follow his work at the Cato Institute.

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; Washinton Babylon; Liberty Under Attack Publications; Listen and Think Audio; TheBumperSticker.com; and LibertyStickers.com.

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Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS-----Following is an auto-generated transcript of the episode.sorry I'm late. I had to stop by the wax museum again and give the finger that f d r. We know Al Qaeda. Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria. Are we supporting Al Qaeda in Syria? It's a proud day for America. I got kicked Knut Gnehm syndrome once and for all. Thank you very much, I say. And I see it again. Bin are trying to simply deny things just about everybody else except as fact Saud died way Kila, Bayh, Armey Khaleeq Illing Maale way Bol Beito like, say, I'm a Bin Say it say it three times the meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world. Then that's going to be an invasion Id Dohuk. All right, you guys introducing John E. Mueller from Kato. And, uh, he's one of the greats in their foreign policy department there he's the author of Overblown and Atomic Obsession. Terror, Security and money. Capitalism and democracy. That's interesting. Um, policy, An opinion in the Gulf War. Boy, I wish I could take a summer off and catch up on all this stuff. Ah, How are you doing? Welcome back To show, John. Thanks. Nice to be here. Happy to have you here. And especially on the occasion of you and John Glaser, my good friend writing this wonderful thing about. Well, if I could quote from your subtitle here Time to end the war in Afghanistan. Boy, that sure sounds familiar. Uh, we found a book called Fools Hrant, which is very helpful in various places. Oh, that's good. You looked at that, huh? All right, well, so you guys sure have a ah Minni book length sort of treaties here. Policy analysis, overcoming inertia. It's called, and we're running it at antiwar dot com, I think today. Great. Um and, ah, course. John Glaser, former editor in antiwar dot com. Good friend of self. Um, and you guys start out with Barack Obama saying, Hey, it's pretty easy to imagine a situation where I leave it on auto pilot for the next guy here. You're saying that in 2010 time is up. Yeah. Um, all right, you know what? So let me try to do this since, uh, you read my book and I read this thing. I didn't read the whole thing, but, ah, the the HTML version you have here not the pdf, but, um, let me start with, uh, Andrew McCarthy over at the National Review saying that you know what?