*Trailer* Bridges Over Bombs: The Fight Against Foreign Wars w/ Austin Dyches

This is the trailer the full episode that will be posted on 4/29!

In this in-depth interview, host Carlos Childs engages with, veteran and democratic socialist candidate Austin Dyches to discuss his military service, foreign policy views, and the urgent need for systemic change in the US. Topics include US imperialism, Palestine, Cuba, Venezuela, immigration, and the role of veterans in activism. In this intriguing interview, Austin Dyches shares his insights on American politics, systemic racism, the Democratic Party's challenges, and the fight for leftist change. 

Austin Dyches:

• Campaign website 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

And I think it's even more powerful for you to say that because you are a uh veteran. So you come from the military. And a lot of times we on the left, speaking broadly, we kind of look at veterans as like, okay, y'all are like too far gone, but you need veterans who are like able to call it out and and speak to other veterans who may be, maybe not too far gone, but gone a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

One kind of thing as we're closing out the military part is what are your thoughts on what's going on with Cuba, Venezuela? As we see right now, the US has basically shut off, like capped all support that uh Cuba could be getting throughout throughout the world. They're they're going through uh blackouts. We had brigades of humanitarians throughout the world go to Cuba, delivering aid. Uh, some people were actually arrested, like uh Chris Smalls, one of the um I saw him union leaders, things like that. What are your thoughts on what's going on? And just how would how would you kind of try to move forward?

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Yeah, I I was very um saddened to see Chris Smalls get arrested, uh, because it seemed like no one else did, you know, on the way back. So I was tracking uh all the influencers, Hassan and everybody else coming back and uh are doing their thing. Well, first of all, with Cuba, uh, we should absolutely end the embargo today. We should end the embargo yesterday. There's no reason to embargo this nation, there's no reason to blockade this nation. We've been starving these people for 40, 50 years now for no reason whatsoever, except red scare. You know, the pervasive red scare continues to haunt America, and Republicans and Democrats have used that in order to justify this action against these. And so I would absolutely I would end in the blockade. I would, you know, there I would go so far, the same with anyone in our territorial waters. We these should be you said earlier about going, you know, removing like Venezuela and Cuba, and it made me think about how we've changed from our soft power stance to a hard power stance and how devastating that is for all of us. And but it does illuminate the contradictions a little bit more in showing that whereas before Cuba was blockaded, we just weren't that aware of it. We weren't, but now we have people who are advocating for the destruction of a small island, and it's like, no, that's not who we are, that's not what anyone ever advocated for. Even even my, you know, the aunt and uncle still living out in Oklahoma somewhere, who are certain that Che Guevara is still alive and still runs Cuba, you know, or whatever, you know, and Castro is still there, even they say this is unnecessary, right? Why are we doing this to these people? And I again have never heard a justification for why we should be doing that. It's just a we're punishing them the same way we punish Haiti for having the gall to stand up for themselves and having the gall to throw off their colonial chains. I believe that is why we punish Cuba. And with Venezuela, Venezuela, I think, is the clearest example of a foreign policy failure where this is the act of a nation that does not have the requisite authority anymore to be able to pass off its violence as justice. Instead of being able to say, well, the the Venezuelan people were under duress and we helped them and now they're liberated, we simply say, no, we're just killing their, we're, you know, capturing their leader, killing his guard and taking them out. We own your stuff now. But that degrades our power. That shows that we are that paper tiger, that we can do some things, but why did we have to do that? We had to do that because Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the in the world. And China is beating us to Sunday with every single piece of renewable energy. And so now we're stuck in the situation where we actually have to run foreign wars of aggression to fulfill our need for hydrocarbons. So instead of changing our trajectory early on, like China was forced to do, we simply refused to do it and said, we'll just, you know, take over someone else's oil. And at some point, like you see with Iran right now, we're getting a bloody nose, right? We're getting a bloody nose. We're having to take a step back. We are, I don't even know what we're negotiating anymore. It's like, no, you closed the street. No, I closed it. No, I closed it first. You know, like I don't even understand what you know. It was clear to everyone that they had no justification, they had no clear incentive in the beginning, but now we just have to do it because we are beholden to the state of Israel who funds or has compramot on our politicians or something to which they feel compelled that we must go out and you know actually spend blood and treasure for these, this, this folly, right? It doesn't, I don't there are lots of people that I talk to every single day deep within the in the intelligence community who are like, what are we doing? What are we doing? No, and there are certainly people that are like, you know, who have said, no, that's fine. They they're, you know, they're gonna, they're gonna get a nuclear weapon. Oh, okay, sure, you know, fine. But but a lot of folks, especially the intelligence is a little bit different. We're supposed to be the ones who know better. And that's something that, you know, intelligence was always interesting to me because I wanted to be the one that was in the room when the decision was made. I wanted to be there to say we have a moral compass, we have a bedrock of principles, we can make the right decisions. And what is true is that those all of those facts are still known, but now we don't have anyone in place to stop Trump. We don't have anyone in place who will actually be a voice of reason. Or if they are, they're immediately removed by people.