Consequential Actions Podcast

8 Trillion Dollars, 20 Years, and the Taliban Won

Eight trillion dollars. Twenty years. Nine hundred thousand dead. And in August 2021, the Taliban walked back into Kabul.

Three days after September 11, Congress passed sixty words authorizing force against those responsible. One member voted no. Those sixty words have since been stretched to cover operations in more than a dozen countries, against organizations that did not exist in 2001, and they remain law today — a war power the Constitution gave Congress, handed to the executive and never taken back.

Iraq had no operational connection to the September 11 attacks. The 9/11 Commission said so. But the case for invasion was assembled anyway, by officials who had been arguing for regime change in Baghdad since 1998. What followed was not an honest mistake: it was a dismantled Iraqi state, four hundred thousand armed men put out of work in a single order, an insurgency, a sectarian war, and finally ISIS — a direct and traceable product of the invasion. Then the Afghanistan Papers revealed that the generals and ambassadors running the other war had been telling each other privately what they never told the public: they did not know what they were doing.

The people who got it right were dismissed as cranks. The people who got it catastrophically wrong got medals, think tank chairs, and promotions.

⚠️ This episode gives direct treatment to the September 11 attacks, to torture at Abu Ghraib and the CIA black sites, and to civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is Episode 15 of “Empire of Liberty: America’s Foreign Entanglements from the Founders to the Forever Wars,” a series tracing how a republic that warned against entangling alliances became a global military empire.

The question underneath all of it: did this leave Americans more free, or more governed?

⏱️ CHAPTERS

00:00 - Introduction and Series Milestones

02:02 - September 11th and the Fall of Kabul

06:11 - Al-Qaeda’s Origins and Bin Laden’s Declaration

08:29 - Tora Bora and the Initial Afghan Campaign

10:49 - The 2001 AUMF and the Blank Check for War

14:13 - Mission Creep and the Afghan Counterinsurgency

16:32 - Blurring the Lines: Iraq, 9/11, and the PNAC

20:08 - The WMD Justification and Public Deception

24:27 - Congressional Approval and the Ignored Warnings

26:18 - Catastrophe in Iraq: De-Ba’athification and Disbanding the Military

28:07 - The Iraqi Insurgency, Abu Ghraib, and Fallujah

30:54 - The Human and Financial Costs of the Long War

34:29 - The Rise of ISIS as Direct Blowback

37:11 - The Afghanistan Papers and the Credibility Gap

39:15 - Vindicated Voices: Ron Paul, Patrick Buchanan, and Others

45:53 - Systemic Failure and the Lack of Accountability

48:03 - Five Foundational Lessons from the Wars

51:32 - Overcoming Apathy: Evaluating Congressional Representation

58:05 - Next Episode Preview and Conclusion

📚 Companion article: https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/the-long-war-afghanistan-redux-and-the-iraq-catastrophe

Built on primary sources — Madison’s “Political Observations” (1795), the 2001 AUMF, the Downing Street Memo, Coalition Provisional Authority Orders 1 and 2, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s prewar intelligence and detention program reports, the 9/11 Commission Report, SIGAR’s “Lessons Learned” interviews, and Brown University’s Costs of War data — with recommended reading including Craig Whitlock’s The Afghanistan Papers, Scott Horton’s Fool’s Errand and Enough Already, Thomas Ricks’s Fiasco, Richard Clarke’s Against All Enemies, Joby Warrick’s Black Flags, Chalmers Johnson’s Blowback, and Andrew Bacevich’s America’s War for the Greater Middle East.

🎙️ Empire of Liberty — Episode 15: “The Long War: Afghanistan Redux and the Iraq Catastrophe”

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Consequential Actions is a libertarian, non-interventionist analysis of American constitutional and foreign policy. New episodes weekly.

𝕏: https://x.com/@jkellick

#waronterror #iraqwar #afghanistan #aumf #foreignpolicy #nonintervention #libertarian #warpowers #isis #americanhistory

Empire of Liberty — Episode 14B

This contemporary application episode examines reporting on foreign influence in the decisions that led to war with Iran. Drawing on the New York Times investigation by Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, the resignation testimony of former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent, and the President’s own public statements, the episode applies the founders’ framework — particularly Washington’s Farewell Address warnings about “passionate attachment” to foreign nations — to analyze what has been reported. The episode maintains epistemic humility about classified information while examining the documented record, presenting sources directly and allowing listeners to draw their own conclusions.

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Empire of Liberty — Episode 14

Washington’s Warning About Our Closest Allies

Every nation lobbies Washington. That is normal diplomacy. The narrower question: when an ally’s interests and American interests diverge, whose win — and who pays?

Foreign influence runs through five documented, legal channels: campaign finance, registered and unregistered lobbying, funded think tanks, the revolving door, and intelligence sharing that creates dependence neither side can exit. One test — cui bono, who benefits — applies to every relationship, starting with Britain. Wellington House and the Zimmermann Telegram helped bring America into 1917. Five Eyes binds the two countries’ surveillance apparatus together to this day. Tony Blair supplied the multilateral cover that made Iraq sellable, on a dossier that Britain’s own Chilcot Inquiry concluded was presented with more certainty than the intelligence warranted.

The same test then reaches Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, and Taiwan — aid under the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding, AIPAC’s first direct campaign spending after sixty years of staying out of it, the twenty-eight pages on Saudi connections classified for thirteen years, and a Taiwan commitment that risks war with a nuclear power. Each relationship gets the strongest case for it before the costs are tallied.

📌 A note on method: examining a government’s influence on American policy is not an attack on any religious or ethnic community. No nation is demonized. None is exempted.

The question underneath all of it: did this leave Americans more free, or more governed?

⏱️ CHAPTERS

0:00 — Introduction: George Washington’s Warning

2:08 — How Foreign Governments Influence American Policy

4:04 — Episode 14: The Special Relationship

7:08 — The Five Mechanisms of Foreign Influence

7:20 — Mechanism 1: Campaign Finance and PACs

8:01 — Mechanism 2: Direct Lobbying and FARA

8:42 — Mechanism 3: Think Tanks and Policy Analysis

9:33 — Mechanism 4: The Revolving Door

10:17 — Mechanism 5: Intelligence Sharing

11:51 — Examining the British “Special Relationship”

16:15 — Case Study: Tony Blair and the Iraq War

18:28 — The Costs of British Influence

20:38 — The Israel Lobby: A Controversial Topic

26:45 — Campaign Spending and Primary Challenges

31:13 — The Role of Think Tanks in Middle East Policy

33:38 — The Security Costs of Unconditional Support

36:31 — Diplomatic Protection at the United Nations

41:13 — Gulf State Influence: Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar

43:38 — Taiwan’s Lobbying Operations

45:55 — The Need for Honest Democratic Deliberation

49:56 — Preview of Episode 15: The Iraq Catastrophe

📚 Companion article: https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/the-special-relationship-and-the-israel-lobby-foreign-influence-on-american-policy

🎙️ Empire of Liberty — Episode 14: “The Special Relationship and the Israel Lobby: Foreign Influence on American Policy”

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Consequential Actions is a libertarian, non-interventionist analysis of American constitutional and foreign policy. New episodes weekly.

𝕏: https://x.com/@jkellick

Get full access to Consequential Actions at https://www.consequentialactions.com/subscribe

Empire of Liberty — Episode 13B

This contemporary application episode connects the “indispensable nation” ideology examined in Episode 13 to its economic foundation—the petrodollar system established in 1974. The self-reinforcing loop between dollar hegemony and American military dominance of the Persian Gulf is now being tested by the Iran war. Five weeks into the conflict, the Strait of Hormuz remains under Iranian control operating as a yuan-denominated toll booth, American aircraft have been shot down despite claims of total air superiority, and indicators of de-dollarization are accelerating. The war to save hegemony may be accelerating its end.

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Empire of Liberty — Episode 13

The Peaceful Decade That Planned Every War

Americans remember the 1990s as the interval between wars — the peace dividend, the end of history, the boom. It was the decade the forever wars were designed.

A 1992 Pentagon planning document, drafted under Dick Cheney, set the objective as preventing any nation anywhere from even aspiring to regional power. It was disavowed when it leaked and implemented when its authors returned to office. American troops stationed in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War gave bin Laden his founding grievance. Sanctions on Iraq ran twelve years, devastated the civilian population, and left Saddam in place. The Somalia mission that supposedly ended in 1994 is still being fought by air three decades later, under a 2001 authorization that predates the militia now being bombed. And NATO expanded to Russia’s border over the objections of nearly everyone who had actually managed the Cold War — George Kennan, the author of containment itself, called it the most fateful error of the entire post-Cold War era and predicted precisely what followed.

This is Episode 13 of “Empire of Liberty: America’s Foreign Entanglements from the Founders to the Forever Wars,” a series tracing how a republic that warned against entangling alliances became a global military empire.

The question underneath all of it: did this leave Americans more free, or more governed?

⏱️ CHAPTERS

0:00 — Introduction: PNAC and the Blueprint for War

0:52 — Welcome & The Squandered Peace of the 1990s

3:18 — Madeleine Albright and “The Indispensable Nation”

6:45 — The Defense Planning Guidance of 1992

9:44 — The Gulf War and Its Long-Term Consequences

11:53 — The Crushing Sanctions on Iraq

13:37 — Somalia: The Template for Permanent War

17:48 — Yugoslavia and the Doctrine of Humanitarian Intervention

21:12 — NATO Expansion: The “Most Fateful Error”

27:14 — The Project for a New American Century (PNAC)

30:45 — The True Legacy of the 1990s Interventions

33:16 — Outro & Preview of Episode 14: The Special Relationship

📚 Companion article: https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/the-indispensable-nation-post-cold-war-interventionism-and-the-squandered-peace-1

Built on the documentary record — the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance as first reported by the New York Times, PNAC’s 1998 letter to Clinton and its 2000 “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” Kennan’s February 1997 Times essay, and the National Security Archive’s declassified file on what Gorbachev was told about NATO — with further reading from Mary Elise Sarotte’s “Not One Inch,” James Mann’s “Rise of the Vulcans,” Andrew Bacevich’s “The New American Militarism,” and Patrick Buchanan’s “A Republic, Not an Empire.”

🎙️ Empire of Liberty — Episode 13: “The Indispensable Nation: Post-Cold War Interventionism and the Squandered Peace”

—

Consequential Actions is a libertarian, non-interventionist analysis of American constitutional and foreign policy. New episodes weekly.

𝕏: https://x.com/@jkellick

Get full access to Consequential Actions at https://www.consequentialactions.com/subscribe

Empire of Liberty — Episode 12B

This contemporary application episode connects the Afghan operation of the 1980s to the Iran war of 2026. The same patterns are emerging: arming fragmented proxy groups with competing agendas, the “enemy of my enemy” alliances with forces we do not control, and the absence of any plan for the day after regime collapse. Charlie Wilson’s warning echoes across four decades as analysts, members of Congress, and even the proxy forces themselves ask the question the administration cannot answer: What happens next?

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Empire of Liberty — Episode 12

“Some Agitated Muslims” — Three Years Later

In 1998, the man who designed the Afghan operation was asked whether arming Islamic fighters had been a mistake. He weighed the Taliban against the fall of the Soviet empire and called the trade obviously worth it.

The operation he championed grew from five million dollars to over five hundred million, matched dollar for dollar by Saudi Arabia, and became the largest covert program in CIA history. Pakistan’s ISI decided who received the weapons and consistently chose the most extreme factions. Washington knew and did not effectively object. USAID-funded textbooks taught Afghan children to count with illustrations of tanks and to read with passages praising holy war. Somewhere between twenty and thirty-five thousand Arab volunteers passed through the networks. When the Soviets left in 1989, American aid collapsed, reconstruction was refused, and the country was abandoned to a civil war that produced the Taliban — and the sanctuary that trained the hijackers.

⚠️ This episode discusses the September 11 attacks and Taliban atrocities including public execution.

The question underneath all of it: did this leave Americans more free, or more governed?

⏱️ CHAPTERS

0:00 — Introduction: The Arc of Consequences (1979-2021)

2:04 — Zbigniew Brzezinski and the Mentality of the Cold War

4:16 — Defining “Blowback”

6:12 — The 1979 Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan

8:59 — Charlie Wilson and the Expansion of Covert Aid

10:54 — Pakistan’s ISI and Funding Extremists

12:45 — The Game Changer: Stinger Missiles

14:19 — America’s Promotion of Jihadist Ideology & Textbooks

15:47 — The “Afghan Arabs” and the Globalization of Jihad

17:07 — Osama bin Laden and the Infrastructure of Arab Volunteers

18:56 — 1988: The Founding of al-Qaeda

20:40 — 1989: Soviet Withdrawal and America’s Abandonment

22:43 — The Rise of the Taliban and the Civil War

24:48 — Al-Qaeda Finds Sanctuary in Afghanistan

25:25 — The Warning Signs: 1993 WTC, Embassy Bombings, and the USS Cole

27:16 — September 11, 2001: The Culmination of Blowback

29:42 — Counterarguments: Was it Necessary to Defeat the USSR?

32:35 — The Wheel Turns Full Circle: The True Cost of War

34:24 — What Afghanistan Should Have Taught Us

36:48 — Will We Ever Learn?

39:31 — Outro & Preview of Episode 13: 9/11 and the American Response

📚 Companion article: https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/charlie-wilson-s-blowback-afghanistan-and-the-creation-of-al-qaeda

Built on the documentary record — the 9/11 Commission Report, National Security Decision Directive 166, Brzezinski’s January 1998 Le Nouvel Observateur interview, and declassified CIA assessments — with further reading from Steve Coll’s “Ghost Wars,” George Crile’s “Charlie Wilson’s War,” Lawrence Wright’s “The Looming Tower,” Chalmers Johnson’s “Blowback,” and Scott Horton’s “Enough Already.”

🎙️ Empire of Liberty — Episode 12: “Charlie Wilson’s Blowback: Afghanistan and the Creation of al-Qaeda”

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Consequential Actions is a libertarian, non-interventionist analysis of American constitutional and foreign policy. New episodes weekly.

𝕏: https://x.com/@jkellick

Get full access to Consequential Actions at https://www.consequentialactions.com/subscribe

This contemporary application episode connects the Vietnam War’s patterns of deception and infrastructure targeting to the ongoing Iran conflict. We examine the intelligence claims that justified the war, the media mechanisms that manufacture consent, the return to overt civilian infrastructure targeting, and the constitutional failures that have allowed executive war-making to proceed unchecked

Ho Chi Minh Quoted Jefferson. We Ignored Him

In 1945 Vietnam declared its independence using the words of the American Declaration. Truman never answered the letters. Thirty years later, helicopters were lifting off the embassy roof in Saigon.

American officers had fought alongside Ho Chi Minh’s guerrillas against the Japanese. Then France needed backing in Europe, and Vietnamese independence became the price. By 1954 America was paying most of France’s war costs. When Geneva promised reunification elections, Eisenhower’s administration declined to sign — his own estimate was that Ho would take eighty percent of the vote. The commitment began by preventing an election, escalated on an August 1964 attack that the destroyer’s own captain doubted within hours, and ended in 1975 with a government that had lied about progress for a decade and a country that would never fully trust it again.

⚠️ This episode discusses combat casualties, civilian mass graves at Hue, Kent State, and the long-term health effects of Agent Orange.

This is Episode 11 of “Empire of Liberty: America’s Foreign Entanglements from the Founders to the Forever Wars,” a series tracing how a republic that warned against entangling alliances became a global military empire.

The question underneath all of it: did this leave Americans more free, or more governed?

⏱️ CHAPTERS

00:00 - Introduction: The Credibility Gap and the Pentagon Papers

01:55 - The Fall of Saigon and the True Cost of War

06:30 - Welcome to Episode 11: Graveyard of Empires

08:34 - French Indochina, Ho Chi Minh, and the Roots of Conflict

11:13 - The First Indochina War and Defeat at Dien Bien Phu

12:10 - The Geneva Accords and the Prevention of Democracy

13:01 - Ngo Dinh Diem and the Escalating American Commitment

14:49 - The Gulf of Tonkin Incident: Escalation by Deception

17:21 - The “Global Credibility” Argument and Its Flaws

19:36 - Ground Combat Operations and Operation Rolling Thunder

21:21 - Search and Destroy Strategy vs. Guerrilla Reality

22:48 - Secretary McNamara and Systems Analysis Metrics

25:06 - The Tet Offensive: The Psychological Turning Point

27:44 - The Anti-War Movement and the Division of American Society

30:34 - The Old Right Conservative Case Against the War

31:14 - Guns vs. Butter: The Economic and Societal Toll

32:30 - Nixon’s “Secret Plan,” Vietnamization, and Expanding the War

34:45 - The Paris Peace Accords and Final Collapse

35:38 - The Unfathomable Human Cost

37:07 - What Vietnam Should Have Taught Us

38:52 - The “Vietnam Syndrome” and Our Failure to Learn

43:49 - Outro & Preview of Episode 12: Afghanistan Blowback

📚 Companion article: https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/graveyard-of-empires-vietnam-and-the-limits-of-power-1

Built on the documentary record — the Pentagon Papers in the Gravel edition, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the cable traffic surrounding it, the Geneva Accords, and the Paris Peace Accords — with further reading from Stanley Karnow’s “Vietnam: A History,” Neil Sheehan’s “A Bright Shining Lie,” Fredrik Logevall’s “Choosing War,” and H.R. McMaster’s “Dereliction of Duty.”

🎙️ Empire of Liberty — Episode 11: “Graveyard of Empires: Vietnam and the Limits of Power”

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Consequential Actions is a libertarian, non-interventionist analysis of American constitutional and foreign policy. New episodes weekly.

𝕏: https://x.com/@jkellick

#vietnamwar #gulfoftonkin #pentagonpapers #tetoffensive #coldwar #foreignpolicy #nonintervention #libertarian #americanhistory #warpowers

Empire of Liberty — Episode 10B

This contemporary application episode examines why congressional oversight of intelligence agencies has failed systemically since the Church Committee’s 1975 reforms. We trace how the Iraq WMD intelligence failure—which took the nation to war on false premises—produced no accountability, with Director Tenet receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom. We examine the structural incentives that discourage oversight: 97% incumbent re-election rates, institutional self-protection (as evidenced by the 357-65 vote to bury congressional sexual harassment records), and the absence of consequences for documented failures. The Clapper perjury case provides the starkest example: the Director of National Intelligence—the position created to ensure accountability—lied under oath to Congress about mass surveillance, faced no prosecution, and became a cable news contributor, while the whistleblower who exposed his lie remains in exile. We connect Operation Mockingbird’s media infiltration techniques to present-day coordinated messaging campaigns, including Senator Graham’s admitted coordination with foreign intelligence and friendly media to shape war policy. The conclusion: oversight mechanisms exist on paper but have produced no meaningful accountability in fifty years.

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