Are We Being Dragged Into War?

Well, an interview between Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz, or should we say a couple of clips of a two hour interview between Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson are going viral right now as Americans and specifically MAGA or the right. debate over what does American first policy look like and what would it look like with respect to the current conflict taking place between Israel and Iran. And I'm going to tell you right off the bat, I'm tired of it.

I am tired of this kind of binary that I see developing where you're either a warmongering neocon or you're a derpy pacifist isolationist that just thinks we should.

get out of everything. And it's like, those are not the only two options. Those are not the only two options. And I do think that we have to look at this as foreign policy national defense can be complex it's not always as obvious or as easy as it's made out to be but by the same token we've just lived through 25 years of arguably some of our worst foreign policy in recent history

And people are tired of it and understandably tired of it. And if someone who has lived at the business end of what I would argue was bad U.S. foreign policy, I'm very eager to see that we don't repeat it.

By the same token, we also understand that there has been a certain order that has taken place and there's been positives from it and there's been a whole lot of negatives from it. And the question that we have to ask is not, what's the solution? The question we got to ask is, What are the trade-offs that we're now going to start to consider an American foreign policy that will help us define an American-first foreign policy that...

take seriously real threats that we may have to respond to, but is not eager to go around trying to set up parliamentary democracies in places that don't want them.

All of that and more on this episode of Making the Argument. Again, my name is Nick Freitas. I am your host today, a current member of the Virginia General Assembly, but not for much longer. As I've announced my retirement, we have a great replacement in the form of Karen Hamilton. But before that, I actually did a lot of work as a...

as a Green Beret when I was in uniform and then also working in the field of counterterrorism, unconventional warfare and counterinsurgency. So this is kind of a topic I've spent a lot of my... time on. In fact, the whole reason why I got into politics was because I was very angry about US foreign policy and wanted to hopefully one day

impact it in a positive direction. With me in the studio, my beautiful bride, Tina, queen of the bees. Hello, everybody. And then we have our resident historian, political prognosticator, the Oracle of Virginia, Christian Hines. How are you doing? I'm doing well. Okay. We're going to go ahead.

and jump right into this. But before we do, we have to say a special thank you to our sponsor of this episode, True Classic, as you have heard me mention before. Guys, it's important that you look good. You look good. And one of the reasons, one of the ways that you look good is by wearing stuff that actually fits you the way God intended. And look.

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Let's go into the first part of this, man, the right wing divide. I mean, I feel like right now we're not even the left has not even been invited to the chat anymore on this conversation because we already know that they have a anywhere but America first foreign policy. In fact, they have an. anywhere but America domestic policy, right? As was evidenced in LA where they're the ones standing in favor of the people rioting, waving every flag except our, well, that's not technically true.

They did realize that the optics were bad and they started waving American flags, but people got confused and started setting them on fire because, well, it was a left-wing riot. But on the right... Pretty much across the spectrum everyone at least claims to care about the United States and wants a domestic and a foreign policy.

That actually makes America stronger, but there is a big fight going on in the right right now. And you have, you know, again, the classical divides are people like, you know, Lindsey Graham on one side who, you know. goes home at night and plays Civ-6 and bombs innocent civilizations. And then on the other side, you've got people that seem to think that

First of all, any sort of foreign intervention the United States gets into is automatically our fault and we're stupid and we're evil and we're the cause of all the problems that we're trying to fix. And it's almost this kind of blame America first. But it's crafted in a way that says, well, we want a better country. Well, in between those two views are a pretty wide spectrum of what I would say are very reasonable concerns and objectives.

And unfortunately, no matter what you say, the moment it doesn't fall neatly into the every American enemy has to be invaded and turn into a parliamentary democracy or. We're the source of our interventions, the source of all the problems that we just need to forget all of it. And if you don't, you're a neocon warmonger that just wants to nuke children. If we can't get out of these two binaries, we're just going to disintegrate and eat each other up.

And this is a topic where we can't afford to do that because I will point something out that is near and dear to me. A lot of the people pushing us into one of those two binaries have never been the sort of person that had to get off a helicopter, jump out of a plane. jump off of a landing craft, and actually fight the wars they're so passionately arguing about. So they got a lot of opinions with not as much of the practical experience as I would like to see.

And one of the fascinating things I've noticed is that I look at a lot of my counterparts that we've served in the military. And by the way, serving in the military does not make you a foreign policy expert, but it does give you some relevant experience. You mean Pete Buttigieg is not a... foreign policy expert. And what I mean by that is this. I'm actually seeing a lot more well thought out nuanced arguments coming from the people that paid the highest price for bad foreign policy.

than I am the people that, in many cases, paid little to no price. And so what I'm hoping is, is that as we go through the discussion today, we can point out some of the good arguments that were made by Tucker Carlson, that were made by Ted Cruz, that were made by other people within this conversation in the hopes that we actually get to something that makes sense.

And not just for one side or the other, but every second look at it and be like, you know what? I don't agree with everything, but that's a reasonable part to start the discussion. Let's get into it. And apparently we're going to have to do this by starting off with some clips from the Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz two-hour interview. I think just about everybody has seen probably four minutes of this interview.

I'd be curious to see how many people have actually saw all two hours. We'll be talking about the same exact portion everybody else is talking about right now. Well, we're going to have to cover it. We have to. So go ahead. All right. So listen to this.

If fallen, I would use economic sanctions and I would use moral suasion to try to effectuate if you topple. OK, so you topple there's human by whatever means. What happens then? How many people living around, by the way? I don't know the population at all. No, I don't know the population. You don't know the population of the country you seek to topple? How many people living around? 92 million. Okay. Yeah. How could you not know that?

I don't sit around memorizing population tables. Well, it's kind of relevant because you're calling for the overthrow of the government. Why is it relevant whether it's 90 million or 80 million or 100 million? Why is that relevant? Because if you don't know anything about the country. I didn't say I don't know anything. Pause there. What's the ethnic?

Pause there. Okay. Right off the bat, right off the bat, Tucker is actually beginning to bring up a good point. And part of that point is, is that... Ted Cruz is answering a previous question about what would he do to overthrow the regime. And you'll notice Ted Cruz didn't say at this part, well, I would send in 40,000. 19-year-old Americans with M4s and tanks to kill tens of thousands.

18-year-old Iranian conscripts. He doesn't say that. He talks about things like economic sanctions, moral suasion, again, just trying to make a larger argument. He's talking about doing things like that to try to affect a regime change. Now, here's the first question I have to ask.

Is it reasonable to dislike the Iranian regime, regardless of what you think about Israel, regardless of what you think about any of those other stuff, which has kind of formulated a lot of this debate? Is it reasonable to not like and wish... for a regime to go away, which regularly holds political rallies where everyone shouts out death to America.

Yeah, I think it is. I think it is reasonable to say I would prefer that that regime not be in place. And presumably, you would want that regime to be replaced by a better one. But one of the lessons we need to learn, right? And what I think Tucker was starting to get at with this question is, okay, but what's the probability you get a better one?

Because we've already been down this path before. What could be worse than Saddam Hussein? He's giving death benefits to terrorists, and he's cheering on the 9-11 attacks, and he's got WMDs, and he's gassed his own people. What could possibly be? If you don't believe in toppling him, then clearly you support that sort of behavior. Well, no, it might be that whatever comes after him is worse.

And if I don't know what comes after him and I can't be reasonably assured that it's something better, then toppling him right now might not be a good idea. That's a perfectly reasonable position. It's perfectly reasonable to say, I don't like Saddam's regime. I don't like Iran's regime. And it's also perfectly reasonable to say, OK, but before you go about taking active measures to replace that regime.

How much do you know about what's going to replace it? But instead, Tucker did this whole thing. Because they've had a fairly pleasant conversation for an hour and a half up to this point. It's like, how many people, by the way? The thing is, is he did it as a by the way, even though he planned this question, he he looked on Wikipedia before talking about this. Like he knew the answer to the question and he did it like, oh, and by the way.

like just just and then oh look it even i know the answer to this and it's like we all know you were freaking googling this right before the interview and you were planning a way to tuck this in here tucker anyway i i just think that um i think that he kind of hurt himself a little bit because what what it seemed like he was trying to do and to me this is a very left-wing tactic um in left-wing journalism

They try to do a gotcha question and pretend that every average person would know this information. So how could you, someone who can actually affect the situation, how could you not know? Well, can I say one thing to that? I think...

I don't think Tucker was necessarily suggesting that everybody knows the population of Iran. I think what he was suggesting was if you as a United States Senator that has influence of the president of the United States are going to suggest toppling Iran, you should have. this basic information about the population. I understand, but he did it. He did it by trying to demonstrate how easily he could pull that number.

And he knows this information. You know, who knows? Maybe Tucker does just keep the populations of countries in his mind. I'm sure. That when everything heated up between Iran and Israel, he was researching everything because he knew he was going to need to know this stuff. So it could be that he was. was totally flabbergasted that ted cruz didn't know but but it it seemed to me more like it was a little bit of a gotcha question to try to discredit

The idea that Ted Cruz had because how could you trust someone who doesn't know this number? I think that's fair. I think the other thing, too, that irritated me about the way Tucker worded it was he didn't just go with. You don't know the population is probably going to know. He's like, well, if you don't know anything about the country, you're going to, okay, wait a second. He expanded it. Again, this is the, and this is the part where we're going to start the Mont and Bailey tactic.

Christian, you kind of want to run us through what the Mont and Bailey tactic is with respect to debate and how the left is usually the one that uses it? Yeah, so what this basically means is that you have a position that's... you know, politically toxic, right? But that's actually your real belief. That's your ideological commitment. That's what you call the mod, right? It's...

Well, actually, no, sorry. Let me flip that around. That's the Bailey. That's the position that you want to advance. But it's not easy to defend it, even though that's what your goal is. So when the other side is assaulting your castle, you retreat from the Bailey. and you you climb up the hill to the mott where your more fortified position is and you say well i'm just trying to do x or yeah i'm just asking questions or i'm just defending y

But in reality, you're not actually just asking questions. You're not just trying to do X and you're not just defending Y. You have a. Depending on your persuasion, a more nefarious position or a more. in-depth position that you're trying to advance, but you're using a more defensible set of polemics and rhetoric.

in order to advance that position that you can't actually usually lead with because you're probably not going to convince people i'll give an example real quick i had one i wanted for me wait a second i don't I know which example you're going to use, and that's going to get us in a hold of it. Let me just give a popular example that everyone's aware of, right? Going out there and actually implementing critical race theory in school systems.

And then when you point out you're pushing critical race theory in the schools, retreating back to, you just don't want to teach about hard history or slavery in America. You don't think our kids should learn about slavery. It's like, well, wait a second. No, I didn't say that. So now what you're doing is you're conflating one thing that you know everyone already believes with and you're pretending as if that thing is the other thing that you were advancing. Yeah.

So the Bailey is like the outer perimeter of what you're really trying to push toward. And then as soon as you get challenged, you rush right back to the thing that everyone else believes in and pretend as if, well, that's all I was saying. That's all I'm trying to do.

And again, it's a dishonest tactic. And the problem with what I think Tucker was doing here is that he turned, you don't know the current population numbers of Iran into, you don't know anything about the country you want to topple. And again, I don't think that's fair. I think Ted Cruz knows quite a bit about a lot of the things that Iran has done with respect to Hezbollah or with respect to Hamas or with respect to mining the Hormuz Straits and hitting our ships.

with respect to funding terrorist organizations that resulted in our Marines getting killed in Beirut. There's all kinds of things that you can know about Iran that are relevant to this topic and relevant to the discussion on whether or not there should be regime change.

no bearing on the population. But the population does become really important when you start to talk about, okay, what comes next? How will the people respond to this? How many refugees might we be dealing with? How many people might be targeted by the regime? So that's my frustration with this is like, man, there was the potential. There was the potential for a pretty good conversation about this topic. And instead we turned it into a gotcha moment.

Because let's face it, the gotcha moment will get millions upon millions of views and a well thought out nuanced conversation probably wouldn't. Now, and to Tucker's credit. One of the things that I think he's done, and I think he's done quite masterfully, is he has pointed out some of the inconsistencies with Cruz's position and the broader, arguably neoconservative position, because it's not just Cruz.

Tom Tillis came out today and said, you know, I want to give the president whatever authority he needs in order to bring about regime change. We all know what Lindsey Graham believes and we're going to play a clip from him later. Like, it's not just Ted Cruz. There is an entire group of Republicans and some Democrats in D.C. that are all about doing this. And, you know, at the very beginning of this interview, very start.

Tucker asked Ted Cruz, he's like, so what does regime change actually mean and look like? And Ted Cruz said, well, somebody else is in charge. And Tucker. pressed on that and he's like okay but what does that mean like like somebody else is in charge could be anything right what are you gonna pluck some random guy off the street and be like you're now in charge of a wrong like who's replacing the existing regime yeah great question replacing the ayatollah

What does that actually look like? You can say all day long, I don't like the current regime. There's very few people, unless you're a leftist, there's very few people out there that, oh man, I really like the Ayatollah. Huge numbers of Iranians don't even like the Ayatollah. I mean, you know, right before Nick and I were talking on this podcast, we were having a really in-depth conversation for like an hour about this. And I actually brought up, and this is kind of a ding on my own side.

philosophically i was like you know a lot of this reminds me of the post-liberal critique of the liberal system that's been around more or less since since john long and You can point out all day long, the post liberals, the reactionaries, the neo reactionaries, they can point out all day long. And I'm increasingly one of them about the flaws within the current liberal system.

and how it you know masks theology under the framework of politics how it tries to depoliticize and deneutralize things but it doesn't actually it smuggles in an agenda through the back door about how it um is giving birth to wokeism like all of that stuff i think is true and i think it's important to point it out but it goes back to the old quote from the stanford encyclopedia about schmidt's critique of liberalism and and that quote is basically that you know

he leveled the most devastating critique imaginable against liberal democracy but there's no doubt that his cure was worse than the disease well the same thing apply i bring this up because the same thing applies with the um regime change crowd when it comes to iran people can point out critiques of the ayatollah all day long and there's no shortage of a list on that right i mean look at how they they treat their own citizens it's an oppressive regime look at how they treat women like

There's a million examples. I mean, look at their shouting death to America. You brought this up at the beginning of the podcast. All of that can be granted. We can all be on the same page on that. The thing that divides us on the right is, okay, what replaces that? And your critique of the current system does not mean that what replaces that is going to be something guaranteed to be better than the current system. Well, it's not just what replaces it. We differ on the strategy.

for toppling first of all yeah uh some are very hawkish they want to get boots on the ground they want to bomb the crap out of them and then there's other ones that like what Cruz was saying they want to use sanctions they want to use basically Non-military methods to squeeze them in order to do it And so you've got to divide there and then once the toppling Happens you well, then you've got another divide

where it's okay then who's in charge and should we have done it in the first place yeah so it's your first divide is should we topple should we not topple then it's how do we topple And then it's who's in charge again. So we've got all of these forks in the road and we disagree on every single fork.

On that front, do you want to go through some of the other clips? Because it's not just between Cruz and Carlson that exemplifies this divide. Yeah, we're going to look at some of these other ones because I also think that there was something that was kind of used against Tucker that was...

Probably a little bit inappropriate. Can you go in and click that one? Yeah. So this Ted Cruz tweeted out, wonder what change it says, Tucker. And this is an article by Jeffrey Goldberg in 2012 in the Atlantic. where the quote is tucker carlson quote i iran deserves to be annihilated and so this was kind of put out as like oh well you know who's tweeted that yeah yeah um it's like oh tucker was all you know gung-ho about invading iran and now he's not it's like

Okay, but that might be because he watched what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan and came to the conclusion that, oh, this is not such a good idea. But I think what it also, again, the potential for a good conversation is to recognize that. Both Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson have at least at one point both agreed that the Iranian regime is horrendous.

Not just for us, not just for other people in the region. The Saudis don't like the Iranian regime. The Egyptians don't like the Iranian regime. The Emiratis don't like the Iranian regime. Why? They're hyper-aggressive. They fund totalitarian terrorist organizations. destable the region and they have a desire to play the dominant role within the Islamic world to the extent that they can, even though there's far few Shia than there are Sunni. Okay, but...

Again, to the points we've just been making, desiring something and bringing it about with a healthy degree of confidence that you're going to get a better result. Those are very, very different questions. Very, very different questions. And that is a conversation that needs to be had because...

We're going to get into this in the next segment, but talking about what are the limitations of what we can actually achieve? Because there is kind of this American idea to say, well, just because it's difficult, does that mean we shouldn't try?

Well, no, but we can look at some things and go, okay, the trade-off here is probably not worth it. Yeah, the juice might not be worth the squeeze on this one. Juice might not be worth the squeeze. All right, what's another? So on the other end of the, arguably of the right is.

dave smith who did the most libertarian thing imaginable let's just play the clip let's just play the clip It was in 2007 that the Pentagon told George W. Bush that we cannot go to war with Iran because we do not have escalation dominance against them, essentially meaning that they can hit all of our bases and embassies in the region.

And we are very vulnerable to them. And we we've already seen demonstrated since the pause. I, this is the, this is the part where I have some confusion with David, Dave Smith. Right. And, um, It gets better. Don't worry. Well, listen, I'm not one of those people that think that, oh, because Dave Smith was not in the military, he can't have both an informed and correct opinion on this. He can.

I am a little skeptical of this idea that, oh yeah, no, no, the Pentagon told George W. Bush, we can't attack Iran because we don't have escalate. We could wipe Iran off the face of the earth, Dave. In the 1980s, we absolutely attacked Iran. In fact, we sunk half their navy in eight hours. Wait a second. And they didn't have escalation advantage on us.

So this is the part where Dave will throw things out there that seem very authoritative. And it's like, okay, if you mean that Iran has the ability to, you know, do car bombs at various bases across the United States and that it would be difficult for us to, you know, okay, but. You're framing this in a way that I don't think is very accurate to reality. And did the Pentagon actually do that? He's saying it with authority like the Pentagon told him this.

Okay, but where's your source for that? And I hate to be one of those people where it's like, source. Do you have a source? But I do want to know, like, what makes you so sure? That the way you just framed that is the way that went down. There's a big difference between. I find it ironic that Dave Smith is appealing to the experts. And the Pentagon. And saying that, you know, their judgment is final on this. Yeah. When it suits his political purposes. Because usually.

libertarians are the type that question the thought i mean we've all been through years of well you're not allowed to have an opinion on that because you're not a credentialed expert what is a credentialed expert somebody that agrees with us on the left politically like And he's using that tactic, which we all increasingly despise on the right, which is hijacked credentialism equals authority, but only insofar as it's in pursuit of a specific ideological endpoint.

Like we've, we've been through this, these motions enough that like we're calling BS on this now. And I do find it interesting that Dave is, again, he's doing the appeal to authority right there. Oh, this thing from almost 20 years ago, these experts from 20 years. Since when do you believe the Pentagon about anything?

Dave probably is very skeptical about the military industrial complex. If Raytheon came to Dave and gave them their assessment on something, would he just run with it and be like, oh, well, the experts have weighed in on this, so therefore I'm going to argue X, Y, and Z. Now, the flip side. If I might, I can't believe I'm going to defend Dave on something because I actually really don't like Dave. I view him as the George Carlin of libertarians. And I don't mean that as a compliment.

The flip side is I do think that there is a huge difference between sinking a few fishing boats in the 1980s and blowing up a mountain. Oh, there's no, okay, real quick. There's no question. There's no question. What I don't like is that, again, Dave will reference the Pentagon. The Pentagon told George Bush, you can't attack Iran because we don't have escalation.

No, no, I agree with you on that. No, no, I get it. That's fundamentally untrue, Dave. Anybody, I don't need to work at the Pentagon to know that's not accurate. I just don't. Now, it would be fair to say that... If you attack Iran in this manner, they're going to respond in this manner. And do you want to escalate that? Again, is the juice worth the squeeze? That's perfectly fair, right?

In my opinion right now, with the way it just presented, it's not being done that way. But let's listen to the rest of the clip from Dave. Israeli attack, that the missiles that they sent last year toward Israel, as many of us guessed, that wasn't really their best. They were intentionally making an attack that wouldn't really hurt anybody, that wouldn't really lead to a war, which Iran has done over.

and over again. But now we've pushed them to the point where they probably don't feel that they have the option not to respond. And Donald Trump telling them to come back to the negotiating table now is a joke. I mean, what a impotent leader to be sitting there talking about... back to the negotiating table. It's like sitting after Pearl Harbor and telling FDR, now's the time to go negotiate with the Japanese. Pause. Again, this is the part where I'm looking at what Dave's saying. It's like...

You cannot be this ignorant of history. Trump telling Iran to come back to the table and negotiate when the United States possesses overwhelming military force and dominance, not to mention economic pressure to say that that would be the equivalent of the Japanese telling FDR to come to the table when the United States was vastly.

from a population perspective, economic perspective, and an overall military capacity perspective, greatly dominant to the Japanese. But again, he's using this as like, isn't this the ultimate gotcha? No, Dave, it suggests that you don't understand anything about the power dynamics that exists between us and Iran and that existed between the United States and Imperial Japan in 1941. It gets worse. Yeah, it gets worse.

Negotiations are over now. The time for negotiations was before this. And so, yeah, Donald Trump looks, and man, I supported him this last year. I apologize for doing so. It was a bad calculation. At the time, it seemed like the right one. He should be impeached and removed for this one. And not on some ridiculous Nancy Pelosi. Of course, the Congress will never do it because they're all a bunch of corrupt hacks. This is the one thing they support. Pause real quick.

You get why I mean, like, he's the George Carlin of libertarians. What is he impeaching Trump over exactly at this particular point in time? Israel launching an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities at IRGC? But we shot down a few of the Iranian... missiles that were sent back were a participant in this conflict. Oh, and also we fund these. I mean, I'm just making the argument. These are what they're going to say. We fund the Israelis. The Israelis answer. It's funny how.

On one hand, we argue these these type of people argue that Israel owns us. Yeah. And Israel is the dominant partner in the relationship. But then when it suits them, then they flip around and say, well, actually, we're the dominant partner. when it suits these people ideologically. There is no... Wait a second. I want to back this up just a little bit. Because I'm actually going to defend Dave here.

I do think Dave has influence. And I think part of the reason why Dave has influence is because Dave has actually been seen as being morally consistent in a way that most people talk on these topics have not been. My problem with Dave is I think he's morally consistent to a worldview that is not so much libertarian as it is this libertarian contrarianism, right? It's this idea that I have a deal. I have an ideal in my head and it has to.

It has to achieve that. And again, I'm going to support Donald Trump because I think he won't go to war and he'll let out the guy that did the Silk Road website. Ross Ulrich. Yeah. But the moment he doesn't... And he did do that. Yeah, and he did. But the moment he does something I don't like, I will stay consistent to my views. And I think a lot of people find that appealing. The problem that I have is that I think some of the things that Dave picks as lines in the sand...

don't ultimately make a great deal of sense, right? Had Trump said, we are now launching a full scale invasion of Iran and Dave Smith said, I don't support the guy anymore. I want to impeach him. I'd have been like, I get it. I get it. This is a corner point for Dave.

And he was absolutely adamant about it not taking place. And now it has. And it looks as if we're going to get ourselves right back into another forever war. If Trump invades Iran, I will abandon my support. Do you see what I'm saying? I'm saying that ahead of time. It's like, what is the threshold?

for doing this, but I've seen some of Dave's arguments on these things and they don't make, they don't make a great seal of sense to me. I don't see moral consistency when he's talking about like Iran versus Israel. I see him trying to take a contrarian position and it's not that he doesn't occasionally bring up good points about problems with Israel or, or practical realities for Iran. He does.

But then he uses that to frame the entire argument, and then he does these things. The Pentagon said that we don't have escalation power with Iran. That's obviously false. Well, this would be like telling FDR to go to negotiate with Japan after Pearl Harbor. No, it isn't. It's not. And I'm not saying this because I'm an American and I want America to win. I'm saying this because I understand something about the power dynamics. I understand something that the chief admiral for the imperial.

Japanese Navy Yamamoto was begging them not to go to war with the United States because they didn't think we could win it. Right. That's a very different realm. And not only that, but calling President Trump impotent when it comes to negotiation, like. Again, this is something where I'm watching a bunch of hyperbolic language form the debate. And what it does is it causes me to look at someone at some point and be like, you either have a worldview, which...

does not take into account practical realities of individual decisions, right? Or you're doing this for clicks. And it's not an either-or proposition. Maybe it's both. I don't know. I don't think Dave is just a shill or a fraud or anything like that. I think Dave has tried to remain morally consistent. I have a problem with some of his underlying morals, and I certainly have a problem with some of the...

historical analogies that he uses or the things that he asserts to supposedly justify his position. But again, Dave has come to Dave has come to, in many respects, encompass. kind of the popularization of this view, right? No wars, no more foreign intervention, no more supporting allies that we think get us involved in wars. And all of those things sound good as the mont.

But then when you look at some of the practical considerations of what we're talking about, it's like, Dave, you're not just advocating for what you claim to. You're actually making a lot of hyperbolic claims that don't make much sense. Let's go to the...

Let's go to the other side of this with the Lindsey Graham. Now we get to see something where actually, you know, even though I just spent the last five minutes attacking Dave, now we get to watch something that I think Dave and I will both be. equally mortified of um so our good friend Lindsey Graham who has never met a war that he hasn't that he hasn't fallen in love with um I don't think he's been this excited since the previous war. Yeah. So here he is in his own words.

Blood on their hands. I hope it's eliminated. I would like to see this regime fall, but I'm going to leave it up to the president as to what to do and when to do it. But I do know this. If we don't take out their nuclear program now, we'll all regret it. We're very. close, be all in, Mr. President, in helping Israel finish the job, and let's see where we're at after we neutralize our nuclear program.

Let's see where we're at afterwards. I know where Lindsey Graham will be at in a very nice home in the safe state of South Carolina where a bunch of 19-year-old infantrymen could be at. is fighting a war in incredibly difficult terrain in Iran if Lindsey Graham had his way. Well, I think that Lindsey Graham wants to bomb these sites.

No, he called for regime change. He wants regime change, which is a much bigger and more complex operation and one that's incredibly difficult to facilitate without troops on the ground. That doesn't mean you get a good result with troops on the ground. It just means that it's when you're talking about a totalitarian state. and Iran in many respects, is that there's a reason why Israel targeted the IRGC. Some people think IRGC stands for Iranian Republican Guard Corps.

It's the Islamic Republican Guard Corps. You need to understand, you are dealing with a totalitarian Islamic state that will beat your 17-year-old daughter if she exposes her hair in public. And they have the means to do it. Now you're starting to see more resistance to these sort of things within the Iranian population. You're starting to see them get a little bolder.

Please understand that you are dealing with a country and with a regime that has infiltrated the vast majority of its cultural shaping, educational media institutions. with with almost this ideological military like we're not used to that in the united states we have one throw a homosexual off a building yeah we we have we have one military it's the united states military and it's there to serve on behalf of our elected representatives

They have a regular, what you would call maybe a regular army in Iran. They have a state within a state. And what you'll notice is the Israelis didn't do a lot of targeting of generals or senior commanders. The very senior commanders, yes.

But in the regular army, they didn't do as much targeting of that. But when it comes to the IRGC, the Islamic Republican Guard Corps, which essentially is the one operating Hezbollah, is the one operating with Hamas, is the one that was responsible for the U.S. embassy bombing in Baghdad. They went after them.

hard so you know again there's that understanding there but I look at Lindsey Graham and it's like dude you're I don't care what the conflict is I always know what Lindsey Graham's position is going to be And to some of the questions that we've got that we're going to address in this next session, Lindsey Graham's always for regime change.

And in part because I don't think it's almost like to me, Lindsey Graham refuses to learn any lessons of history. And in part, I wonder it's because, well, has he ever had to pay a personal price for any of it? Because. one of the things that teaches you to stop doing a particular course of action is pain associated with it. And I just don't think Lindsay's ever had to face any of that pain. So this is where we're at in terms of the discourse, right? And by the way,

Believe it or not, Dave Smith and Lindsey Graham are moderate voices on this. The extremes on this are out there. Like, I mean... The discourse that you can see on the internet, but not just in the internet, in prominent places is... I'm not willing to accept that there are the moderates on this issue. I think they do represent... Put it this way.

There's a sitting member of Congress right now today, a Republican from Florida who got elected in a special election today, Randy Fine, who has gone out there and said a couple things. One thing people were criticizing. I mean, Randy Fine is very pro-Israel, more than the typical Republican. And he was like tweeting to people. He's like, for everybody who's upset about APEC supporting me, I just want you to know they got me for free. And then it was like a few days ago.

he gave an interview, I think it was like a CNM, and he said something like, you know, we should consider, I'm paraphrasing, of course, but he said something along the lines of like, you know, well, I mean, Unfortunately, we can't use nuclear weapons because the fallout might actually drift over into Israel. And he's talking about Gaza. Yeah. Like he's a Republican congressman talking about nuking Palestinians in Gaza. And his concern is not.

well, think about all the innocent lives that would be killed from that. His concern is, well, my only reason to not do that is because the fallout would affect the Israelis. Like, I'm sorry, that's just... Absolutely reprehensible. That's like the extreme version of the Lindsey Graham neocon. And on the other end of the issue, not to pick on Tucker too much, but...

I mean, I'm probably going to make so many friends today when they listen to this. On the other end is Daryl Cooper, the historian that Tucker interviewed. And Daryl Cooper basically tweeted something along the lines of, you know, we're starting the wrong war. We shouldn't be bombing Tehran. We should be bombing Tel Aviv. Yeah.

And so, like, do you now get why I said that Lindsey Graham and Dave Smith are actually, in some ways, the moderate representations of the... extent of the overton window on this conversation on the right because on the right you have on the left you've got oh they're they're they're the left they're america last well they they also on the left want to wipe

Jews off the face of the earth. I mean, they are very anti-Jew. But they're also very anti-American. They are. And let me give you an example. Whoopi Goldberg, just yesterday, she took a little bit of heat for... basically saying America and Iran, the way that Iran treats gays and women and all of that.

is pretty much exactly the same as the way Americans treat the black population. And she doubled down and even tripled down on that. Look, look, real quick. I'm going to take this over because, again, I... You know, we got a hard, we got a hard stop today. I want it because we've kind of addressed, we've kind of addressed where the, where, where the extremes are, where kind of the more popular voices are within those, that, that binary.

And what I want to talk to next in this next segment, and I want to get to some of the questions that we have, is why has this formed? And I think part of the reason why it is formed is because, A, I hope everyone can agree there are genuine threats in the world. There are genuine threats in the world. I hope everyone can also agree that the United States has had its fair share of destructive, counterproductive foreign policy.

And lately that foreign policy is oftentimes the most obvious versions of it have been Iraq and Afghanistan, where in Iraq, okay, yeah, you don't have Saddam, but you have a regime that's essentially... I don't want to call it vassal state, but it's largely beholden to Iran. That is not an improved situation geopolitically for us, for the region, and for many of the Iraqi people, although some might argue it's better.

You look at Afghanistan, we spent 20 years fighting and dying and spending treasure to replace the Taliban with the Taliban. Well, there's no way you can argue that that was a victory. You can certainly argue that the American military performed incredibly well in combat operations, but ultimately what became the objective wasn't possible.

I want to go over some of these, the forever wars. This has become a war without end. Well, why do we get into these? Well, we start off with some sort of maybe legitimate threat or concern, right? Osama bin Laden running planes into the Twin Towers is a legitimate concern that deserves military intervention. And initially what you saw in Afghanistan was a heavy deployment of CIA.

Army Special Forces, and it was working in conjunction with the Northern Alliance. So you had people already on the ground in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban. so we worked through and we became a combat force multiplier for those entities and they overthrew the taliban in relatively quick time like it was it was amazing it made me want to be a green beret

watching what the Green Berets were doing over there where they're fighting from horseback, leading airstrikes and just decimating the Taliban with the Northern Alliance. I'm like, holy crap. I mean. You cannot have a better example of limited force projection achieving completely outsized military gains. Where if your goal was to help existing population centers defeat an organization that is clearly an enemy of the United States and to do so with a limited footprint.

And with only soldiers that are highly trained, professional, mature, like the whole deal, like none of this, like, you know, 19 year olds with M4s. And I'm not bashing 19 year olds with M4s. It's just, we make it, we make a distinction. And then all of a sudden it's like, nope. This is not just about hunting bin Laden. This is not just about degrading Al Qaeda or the Taliban. We're going to make Afghanistan a pillar of democracy in this part of the world. Are you freaking kidding me?

Like, are you free? But again, all the moral indignation was there. Look what we're doing for women. Look what we're doing for minorities. Look what we're doing for, look at all these Western values that were coming in to compete with what? like a thousand years of Pashtun Wali. And we're not imposing them. We're liberating. We're liberating. We're liberating. We're making the world safe for democracy. And then all of a sudden it was you're making the world safe for, you know, transing the kids.

And the next thing you know, we're out of there. And okay, great. That 14-year-old girl that was in school, is she in a better spot now? I'm not saying she would have been in a better spot if we had never gone in, but... The answer wasn't degrade the Taliban or degrade Al Qaeda working through. It wasn't. It wasn't do nothing or try to set up parliamentary democracy in Afghanistan. We had actually been doing something that was achieving our limited objectives that made sense.

And then we expanded it into a moral crusade. We had mission creep that turned into an ideological crusade. Yeah. Honestly, this is my biggest issue with... liberalism as a foreign policy it's it's the wilsonian approach we've been doing this for a century now yeah people have you know nick you and i've talked about that at some point we want to do a podcast specifically about what they call the post-war order and

and its relationship domestically internationally why it might you know we're 80 years into this and why it's starting to fall apart and i think that that's going to be a really interesting conversation when we get around to it yeah but One of the, you know, I guess like early, you know, tidbits about that, right, to just briefly wade into that is this.

it's actually not really a post-war order right it kind of got cemented after 1945 but this has been going on since at least the first world war when wilson said you know we're going to intervene on the side of the allies because

The central powers are monarchies, they're authoritarian, and we're going to make the world safer democracy. That was basically Wilson's argument. And so we've been doing this for 100 years, and I would argue that it's... it's built on on on a lie this idea we in the us have this idea that everybody wants to live the same type of life that we have everybody wants english liberalism or american libertarianism no they don't yeah

They don't. And it's hard for us to conceive of other forms of living that aren't just totalitarian. We think that that's the default, that everybody wants our constitution. Everybody wants our worldview. That is not the case.

It isn't. And you know what's interesting is that, look, there are some people from those cultures that do want that, and there's an immigration process, right? But that doesn't mean we have to export it to people that clearly don't, because if they wanted it so bad in their own country, they'd probably...

do things to affect in their own country and if that includes fighting wars in their own country on behalf of their own country that's what they would do we had to do it right so this idea that no no it's it's the obligation of us to help them do it Okay, well, help takes on varying forms. Erica in the chat says, question, why is America addicted to regime changes?

I think there's two reasons for that. I think it starts with what Christian described, and that's this idea that American foreign policy was no longer going to be non-interventionist and specifically worried about our sphere of influence in the world and our space in the world.

It was going to be dedicated to this continuation of the French Revolution, right? Where we were going to help overthrow monarchies and overthrow the old order and usher. Again, what he did was he created a moral crusade for essentially. liberal ideology is that we were going to be part of the the armed group, the arsenal that was going to help make the world safe for democracy because after all, isn't this what everybody wants? Isn't this the morally superior position to assume?

And I think what we have is 100 years of figuring it out that is there some limited role for that? Maybe. But have we taken it to this? asinine extreme that makes little to no sense? Yes. But I'll tell you where it, I'll tell you the one area of history where I think it made the most sense to the most people, the Cold War. Because you really did see this idea of the Soviet sphere and the American sphere, the Western sphere.

And we didn't want to see Soviet takeover because we saw how inherently expansionist it was. There is nothing about Soviet or communist doctrine that is live and let live. I think what we also need to recognize is there's nothing inherent about Islamist doctrine. That is live and let live. That's why it's appropriate to look at those ideologies as potential threats. But to then say, well, the only response to Islamism or the only response to Soviet expansionism.

is western liberal democracy is verifiably false There are plenty of people that would like to fight against that mechanism that might not want the exact carbon copy of the United States, but still have a system that happens to work for them. Do you know a great example of what you just brought up? What? Is Vietnam. You told me not too long ago, this was a really interesting fact, you told me that one of Ho Chi Minh's favorite documents was the Declaration of Independence.

There is a very strong argument to be made that a lot of the figures, not all of them, of course, but a lot of the figures in North Vietnam that became communists viewed communism more as actually an... contradictory in a way but viewed it more as a nationalistic struggle to simply get foreign powers out of their country and then a lot of these people

became ideologues later on, but they didn't really start as ideologues. They were simply using a movement as a means to expel the French or expel the Americans. For some of them, they were going to the place that was willing to give them arms and munitions. In order to fight their war, right? And it was the Soviets or it was whatnot. But I think to that whole question of forever wars and why did we find ourselves in that situation is I think that we started with this grandiose notion.

of what was going to be what was best for us was therefore best for the world and because we were a dominant player in that scene we had some sort of moral obligation um in order to make it happen and i think we've demonstrated how there is there are some There's some limited capacity for that. You can see a violent totalitarian system. that ultimately wants to consume yours and you can ally with others in order to try to defeat it. But you should be very, very cautious about defeating an enemy.

and insisting that the only way it can be defeated is if everyone adopts your particular system of government or moral framework.

I think that's one. The other thing I want to talk about here, and this kind of gets in to some other questions as well, is the military-industrial complex. Because this gets brought up a lot, and both sides have recognized that we have a problem here. But I want to point something out. I am perfectly comfortable and have engaged in critiques of the military industrial complex, which by that, what do we mean?

We mean arms and munitions producers within the United States. We mean companies that are largely arranged and which benefit when we're at war because they're the ones producing the bullets, the missiles, the planes, the everything else. Here's what I get frustrated at. It's the idea that, oh, this is just Lockheed Martin gambling with the lives of 18-year-olds.

Can I ask an honest question? And again, this is one way you get put in a camp. Oh, you're just a warmonger now. No, no, I'm not a warmonger. I have acknowledged that the military-industrial complex is problematic. How do we produce munitions for our military? Do you just want to nationalize that industry? Do you want to outsource it? Do you want to outsource it to foreign industries? Are all of our tanks now going to be made in China just like all of our pharmaceuticals? Wait a second.

Because the first thing I want people to realize is that the critique is sound. We have created a perverse moral incentive for companies which make money almost exclusively. off of us being at war and therefore have an inherent incentive to lobby for, donate to, do all of those things, which potentially put us in a position where we're addicted to things like regime change. We're addicted to foreign military interventions, but it's not as easy as we'll just get rid of it.

Oh, okay. So now the United States doesn't have the capacity to make the most highly tech. So now when you do have to go to the ward, what do you, do you not have the means to do it? Do you want your kids that are fighting the war now to not be outfitted with the best mill? I want people to understand that we need to be cautious of the excesses of companies making munitions while at the same time recognizing that...

We have to have a domestic capability for making munitions. So let's talk about how do we understand that this is fire and we don't want it to burn us. We want it to equip us. So how do we do that? Well, you know, I actually talked a little bit about this topic in my master's thesis. Different context, of course, right? I was writing about...

late 19th, early 20th century Austria-Hungary. But it's the same story. The reason I bring this up is because I think that there's this element of the right that thinks the military-industrial complex is a new... late 20th, early 21st century phenomenon that is unique in its control over American military and foreign policy. And it's not. The idea of a military industrial complex...

has long predated the late 20th, early 21st century. One emerged in Austria-Hungary at the end of the 19th, beginning of the 20th century. And I know this because that's kind of one of the central pieces of my master's thesis was about Austria's naval policy. People forget that they had a navy, but they did because they owned Croatia back then. And they weren't a huge issue.

After the unification of Germany, because Austria did not have a strong domestic manufacturing base to build guns, artillery, ships. bullets and so they lost the wars of german unification to prussia and then they were forced into a junior partner type relationship with the german empire

Because they simply didn't have the type of industrial capacity that the Prussians, later Germans, possessed. And so one of the things actually Franz Ferdinand did was he encouraged the growth of a domestic, basically...

military industrial complex in order to facilitate austria-hungary's rearmament program at the very end of the 19th beginning of the 20th century you know about a generation before world war one now this created problems of course because they were ripping off the government they were All the same type of problems. But it was necessary in order to allow Austria to develop their own domestic defense industry. It's not why they weren't reliant on the Germans. They didn't want to be in this.

lopsided relationship with berlin they wanted to be treated as a great power in their own right but they couldn't do that without a Yeah, domestic. Well, let's look at it this way. We all understand why it's problematic that our steel industry or that our. microchip industry or our pharmaceutical industry be outsourced to other countries, especially ones that are hostile to the United States. So it makes even more sense that our arms industry would be domestic in nature.

The question is, is how do we deal with that? And I readily admit that I don't have a comprehensive solution right now, but what I would like people to do. is start saying like okay what what are the limitations that we place within this environment so like for instance one of the things that we've used to do to support our own arms manufacturers but it also supported our own foreign policy objectives was we would

allow for export versions of our military equipment to be sold to allied nations. Not just anybody, allied nations. Well, what did that mean? Well, it meant that if we ever had to go to war with our allies like NATO, we had interchangeable parts for a lot of our equipment, or we all use the same sort of, that's why you have, it's why it's called the NATO 556.

you know by 4-5 round. It's like almost everybody in NATO was using a main service rifle that used similar ammunition, either 5-5-6 or 7-6-2 by 5-1. And so it made sense. The other thing that it did is that it created an environment where no matter who we were selling weapons to, we knew the exact capacity. and capability of their weapons systems. And it also somewhat made them dependent on our own logistics.

And so we had this perpetual thing that our arms industry could make money doing something that was not necessarily fostering more war, like not inevitably, it definitely could. I want people to understand that there was a logical thought process that went into a lot of what we were doing here that was supposed to be good for U.S. national defense. Particularly during the Cold War.

particularly during the Cold War. Now we're running into an issue where, again, when companies grow, they don't want to decrease. It's like the bureaucracy. It makes sense for a private sector company to want to grow. And then what do we do? And then those companies go and they lobby Congress. It's like, oh, no, if we stop making this particular jet, the plant's going to close down in your district. And now you're responsible for lost jobs. And I think part of what needs to take place here is.

I don't know how you would do this with respect to people who have offered campaign finance reform, or there's certain industries which should not be permitted to donate to political causes. Maybe. Understand, though, if you do that, they're going to find ways to do it. It just won't be as transparent, right? But there's questions that we should tackle on that while at the same time understanding that we absolutely want a robust domestic munitions and arms producer.

And I don't think that we want to completely nationalize that and just make it the government bureau for arms production. But I do see it as a particular realm that probably sits a little bit outside just the pure private sector. Because it's so dependent upon the U.S. government for its existence.

coming up with certain rules which govern that existence. And again, I say this is a big free market, right? But it might be appropriate for this particular industry. But we got to be able to have an open conversation on what that looks like. Another one that we need to talk about is the idea of, and this can go back to, if we understand that, okay, we don't want forever wars, but military intervention is sometimes necessary. Another one that I'm big on is,

When do we get back to actually declaring war, right? And under what conditions is that necessary? Now, some people will act as if any sort of military engagement should require a declaration of war. I'm not there. That's not where I stand. And the justification I use for that is we didn't have a congressional declaration of war against the Barbary pirates.

But we did launch limited military engagements in order to protect our own shipping and to degrade their capacity to engage in piracy against the United States. I'm open to discussing on whether that should have required a declaration of war, but I think we can go back and say that if... you know, Jefferson, Madison, these were guys that were not unfamiliar with the constitution and yet believe that there was some capacity for the chief executive to engage in limited military operations.

for the purpose of degrading an enemy capability. What about letters of mark and reprisal? How come we can't, why don't we use those? I think it's one of the, I think it's because it's almost like the word militia. It has taken on a popular connotation to where whenever I say Letters of Mark and Reprisal, everyone goes, you want to bring back pirates? Letters of Mark and Reprisal is not just about...

piracy. What a letter of market reprisal is, and I think it's something that we should actually consider for certain threats, is you're allowing the private sector to engage in aggressive operations toward a clearly identified enemy. within certain criteria so it's not just release the mercenaries right it's saying the united states will either allow for financially support, provide a bounty for, or allow you to keep the proceeds of what you take.

If you engage in certain limited military operations against certain military targets. Let me give you a perfect example. Let's say you wanted to engage in robust cyber attacks against a foreign entity. Let's say you wanted the Russian mob.

The Russian mob continually engages in cyber attacks, fraud, things of that nature. You want to send the Russian mafia a notice. So you say, we're going to issue a limited... letter of mark and reprisal against any sort of entities associated with the Russian mob, which means if you want to raid their bank accounts or something like that, or you want to...

you know, basically use their own tactics against them to the extent of engaging in fraud against Russia. You can, and we will create a legal category where it is permissible in the United States and we will protect you, which is to say that in so far. as you take this money and you put it into a bank account in the US, we're not going to confiscate it.

That would be an that would be an example. I'm not saying we're going to do that. That'd be an example of a letter of market reprisal that might be very, very practical in dealing with a with a serious threat that doesn't include the United States going, well, the only way to get these Russian mobs is by.

Invading Russia, right? Like, no, there's other ways that there's creative ways that the private sector can actually, Sir Francis Drake was a perfect example of the English going, we have a letter of Mark against Spanish shipping or against French shipping. And hey, Sir Francis Drake, you got a ship? Great. You're now working for the crown and you get to keep a percentage of what you take on the high seas. That's why people used to get wealthy when they went to war.

Yeah, so there are other mechanisms that we can deal with these things. Erica Ray said, question, does the industrial military complex compete against competitors or are they guaranteed U.S. production contracts? So there are foreign industries which actually compete. So, for instance, the M240 Bravo machine gun. is a Herstal. It's a FN.

FN Herstal company. It's a Belgian company. So they can compete against foreign producers. It just kind of depends. There are certain contracts that based off of the clearance level required, they can be guaranteed that they're the only ones that can compete. So there might be a certain set of... companies. They're U.S. based. They're the only ones that can compete for certain contracts. Okay, let me see here. What's another? I'm trying to get to another question that we had in here.

uh regime change oh question this is a good one and darth we actually christian and i have actually had this debate he goes question

Pakistan is a radical Muslim country that is less stable than Iran. They have nukes and haven't nuked anyone yet. Do you think Iran would act differently if they had nukes? This was something that Nick and I were debating off camera for the last couple days, actually.

Do you want to summarize that? Let's just summarize it real quick. So first and foremost, it's a good question, right? It is a good point to bring out. Here we have Pakistan. And we can't argue that Pakistan is a Western democracy which shares our values. Oh, they claim to be a democracy. They're not a Western world. Pakistan was actively supporting Al-Qaeda, right? They were allowing Osama bin Laden to hide out in Pakistan as we're going all over the world searching for him, right?

So why is it, why is them having news? And they're a sponsor of terrorism. And they're a sponsor of terrorism. They're totally a sponsor of terrorism. All of those are true. And so this is where we get into the nuance. So what's the difference? Well, for a while we actually sided with the Pakistanis because they were much more anti-communist than India was during the Cold War.

And India was allied with the Soviets. And India was allied with the Soviets. And so there was this interesting real politic consideration that, hey, our biggest threat right now is the Soviet bloc. The Pakistanis are actually helping the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. rack up a lot of Soviet casualties in the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan. Okay, hey, they happen to be in our sphere right now.

And that's, I believe, when they also developed nuclear weapons. The other reason why Pakistan developed nuclear weapons is because They have a very, very hostile relationship with India. There's been multiple wars between India. There's a lot of animosity because they are an Islamic state against a state that's primarily Hindu.

And they were legitimately worried about their ability to be able to protect their regime and prevent invasion from India. So here's what I would say is that while the Pakistani government is not exactly what I would call stable or friendly. um they had they didn't develop i think it's it's fair to say they didn't develop nuclear weapons because they were they were desperate to um get back the caliphate or, you know, advance the intifada.

They had a really real threat with a bordering country that is significantly bigger than them, significantly more powerful than them, and theoretically in a straight-up conventional war could take over. And so the defense deterrent associated with nuclear weapons for Pakistan certainly made a lot of sense from the Pakistani perspective. And at the time that it was being developed.

We didn't see Pakistan having nukes. I don't think we saw it as necessarily a good thing, but we also didn't see it as posing the same sort of threat to regional stability or to U.S. interests as Iran having a nuke. And so I do think even though there's similarities that we can easily point to between Pakistan and Iran, there's also some pretty marked differences.

that make Iran getting, in my opinion, that make Iran getting a nuclear weapon significantly more dangerous to overall U.S. interests. And by the way, a lot of people say, oh, it's because they've threatened Israel. I want... No question. No question that we tend to see Israel as a friend, if not an ally in certain respects. But please understand that Israel is not the only country in the Middle East that is terrified of Iran getting a nuclear weapon.

Saudi Arabia does not want Iran to have a nuclear power or to be a nuclear weapon. Egypt doesn't want that. UAE doesn't. In fact, every single one of what you would call our Arab allies or Arab friends within the region. Again, we're using this term broadly. They don't like the idea of a nuclear-powered Iran. They don't like that either. And Iran is one of the countries that is the most responsible for standing in the way of the Abrahamic Peace Accords.

Saudi was coming to the table. UAE was coming to the table. Egypt and Jordan have already recognized Israel. We were on the cusp of one of the greatest peace deals. that had been struck in the Middle East between Arab countries and Israel.

Iran is the one that stands to lose the most from that sort of deal going forward. You can imagine what this means if now Iran has the ability to use to have nuclear weapons and they've demonstrated that they are more than willing to use terrorist organizations to destabilize the. And if there's one thing, again, you actually have Emiratis saying, be careful about sending your kids to Western universities. They might come home as religious fanatics. Think about that for a second.

So I think it's important to understand that it is not just Israel or the United States that is worried about this. We have a lot of, again, friendly nations that we regularly do business with that are concerned about this. Now, Saudi Arabia might not be able to lobby against it as much as everyone else, but they are. Darth said, when did the Iranians want nukes to defend against Israel? Oh, man, they want nukes to defend against more than Israel.

They wanted as a deterrent. They wanted as a deterrent. There's no question. Look, let's just acknowledge something. It is perfectly rational for Iran to want nuclear weapons. That doesn't mean it's good, right? It doesn't mean it's good for us. But here's the other thing that I would say is if you were looking at...

You know, Israel, like Iran saying, well, we're really, really worried about Israel. Would it be, would it be, would it make sense for Iran to be worried about Israel if Iran did not have as part of its... national objectives, the ultimate destruction of Israel. Does Israel have any burning desire to destroy Iran because it believes in expanding Israelis' borders to Tehran? No. It's the same thing.

It's become a cliche thing to say, which is the cliche thing to say is. If Israel, if like the Palestinians put down their weapons. They would live in peace. If the Israelis put down their weapons, they'd all be wiped out in a massive genocide. That's become cliche. That doesn't mean it's not true. And I think I think the same thing is true of Iran. Like if Iran said tomorrow, look.

We don't like Israel, but we're going to recognize its right to exist, and we're not going to actively participate in trying to overthrow Israel. I think Israel's immediate response to that would be like, fine, we agree. We will not try to change the regime in Iran. We will let Iranians deal with Iran. You're going to let Israelis deal with Israel. If there was some sort of like piece of West Ophelia sort of agreement in the Middle East, I think you would see Israel.

incredibly eager to adopt it, but that's not the status. And so I, I have a problem with, um, Iran saying that, you know, yeah, Erica raised a question. Why is Tulsi's report that Iran was not making newts being largely ignored or dismissed?

Erica, from what I understand, I know that that has been pushed out a lot on social media. From what I understand, that is not... I've heard other people say that that's not a fair interpretation of the report that the DNI put out. From what I understand, the DNI was talking about specifically stuff with policies of the Ayatollah. That doesn't mean that there is another information out that says that Iran is actively producing a nuclear weapon. The other thing that you have to look at is...

The question of, are they enriching uranium, and does the uranium that they're enriching have any other purpose other than producing a nuclear weapon? So theoretically, this is the part where it gets a little bit nuanced. Theoretically, Iran could be engaging in operations which would lead to the production of a nuclear weapon in one field, but not in other fields. So I can look to one thing and say, okay, they're not developing certain technology that would be necessary.

for a ballistic missile, but they are developing, they are enriching uranium, which doesn't seem to have any other purpose. And so I don't think we should, I certainly don't think we should disregard what Tulsi is putting out because I actually have a lot of faith in Tulsi. But I also think that it's, again,

This goes back to Christian's point of, oh, okay, so we're listening to the intelligence community when we like what they have to say, but we don't listen to them when we don't like what they have to say. I think we need to understand that there's limitations to what we can know. But to the extent that we're actually making decisions.

Yes, we should be relying on our domestic intelligence agencies to be able to inform those decisions, but we should also take in a healthy – I think one of the reasons why I trust Tulsi in that position is because she has a healthy skepticism for our capacity to actually –

gain actionable intelligence. So it's, again, it's just, it's just difficult. Junior VanClaer said, never floated this, but if an Israeli city was leveled, considering how the entire world might react, wouldn't this cost the United States tremendously? Seems like helping an ally conserve USA first. This has been the whole concept of NATO and other things is that...

If U.S. is a good ally, well, then it encourages people to seek friendly relationships with the United States. If we are not a dependable ally, then why should they trust us? And as someone that went through special forces training, where we did a lot of work with indigenous forces, one of the things that was a core component of our training was having to overcome the indigenous population saying, why should we trust the United States?

You'll get into it for your own reasons and then you'll leave and then we're left holding the bag. And so we had to overcome that within our training because we were going to deal with populations that have lived on the business end of that.

And so that's the part where he gets back into, okay, so how do we develop a comprehensive American first foreign policy that actually takes these into account and doesn't get us involved in situations that we shouldn't be in long-term because that actually does more damage to us. And that leads us. very quickly to our third segment where we're just going to talk about does Trump deserve any leeway here? I'm just going to give you my argument on why I think Trump deserves some limited leeway.

I do not think that Trump should be able to invade another country with thousands of U.S. troops without a declaration of war. I don't care how much I might like or trust Donald Trump. I think we have a constitutional process. when it comes to escalating beyond a certain point. Now, I think we need to have a conversation on where's that point. And I think a very clear line, and maybe it's not the only one, but a very clear line is if you plan to put conventional boots on the ground.

We're not talking about limited special operations or intelligence operations. If you're going to deploy a major U.S. division, I want a declaration of war from Congress because we've now elevated this to a point where you're committing conventional U.S. forces. This is no longer just limited operations. So that's a limit I would put on Trump.

But I also think Trump has demonstrated in his first term whether it was dealing with the Iranians and the IRGC. I mean, I'm watching Dave Smith go, oh, you can't go back from this. Donald Trump. essentially personally executed the head of the IRGC after they bombed our embassy in Iraq. And you want to know what Iran's response for the rest of the Trump administration was? Cool. We're going to sit here and not mess with you anymore.

So Trump demonstrated this. You notice that Russia didn't invade Ukraine during the Trump administration. You will notice that we managed to destroy ISIS. without relaunching a massive invasion of ground forces into Syria or Iraq. I think Trump has demonstrated the ability to engage in limited military operations. And this part's so important. Please hear me out. with very limited and well-defined objectives. And then once those objectives are met, he disengages.

Hey, Iranians, you greenlit the attack of our embassy in Baghdad. I don't care if I don't think we should have been in Baghdad. You don't get to attack sovereign U.S. soil. And instead of killing a bunch of 19-year-old Iranian conscripts by bombing random military targets, he killed the dude. responsible for it. Which, by the way, are the only people in Iran that care about casualties. They care about their own. And I don't mean their people, I mean themselves.

That was a very, very good limited surgical use of U.S. military power in order to achieve a limited objective, stop screwing around, and there you go. So here's what I'm willing to say. I'm not giving Donald Trump, in my opinion, I'm not giving Donald Trump a blank check to do whatever he wants. But I do think he has earned the right for some leeway.

in part because he has had multiple chances where he could have expanded U.S. military involvement in a very inappropriate way, and he didn't. So if we understand that this is a complex and nuanced environment, I think we say, look, Donald Trump, we don't want another forever war. We don't want nation building. But we also understand that there are violent organizations out there. There's dangerous organizations out there that might need to let me put it this way. They might need to wonder.

what Donald Trump is authorized to do and what he will actually do. And as long as they have to wonder that it impacts the way they make decisions. And to Erica's thing before, like, why would we bomb someone? Why would we bomb someone that we're negotiating with?

Because we're on the sixth round of negotiations. And what Iran was doing at that part was not negotiating. They were stalling for time. And so sometimes when you have a country that does that, you then show them what you're willing to do. or what you're willing to allow to happen. And then you say, are you ready to come back now that you know we're serious? Trump's famous for this. Trump is famous for this. And so...

That's what I'm going to say. I think we need to, first of all, I think there needs to be a much larger discussion on what American first foreign policy looks like. I don't think any president is entitled to a blank check, but I will say I trust Donald Trump. to judiciously use military and economic force specifically for things that are relevant to the United States more than I do, you know, George Bush or Bush senior or.

Mitt Romney or John McCain or Lindsey Graham or Barack Obama or Bill Clinton. And so, again, I think he's earned that to a point. I hope that makes sense. I hope that makes sense. I've got something to... We got one more thing we got to do because then I got to take off. Yeah, I've got something I want to show you. Yeah. You might get a kick out of this. So here's a recent article from...

A guy named Mystery Grove. And this is a screenshot of it. We need a new right-wing party based around historionic middle-aged social media addicts proposing that we let liberals win whenever setbacks are encountered. Real or imagined. Yeah. Highly recommend that you go to subscribe to Mystery Groove's sub stack if you get a chance. He pops up and then disappears on X. He'll reactivate his count and then deactivate it all the time.

His general thesis is, like, look, guy, you know, he's a member of, like, the trust the plan crowd. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Instead of the panikins. Yeah, yeah. He's a trust planikin. But, like, his general argument, though, is that, look.

If any time you run into a controversy, a setback, something isn't going... perfect and then you just you panic you throw your arms up in the air and you're like oh i can't believe trump betrayed us it's over the west has fallen yeah like if you go full chug yeah you know chug chug jack or whatever the meme is like like you're not not you know to continue the memes nothing will ever happen yeah um if you have a set of goals and objectives and you stick to it now that doesn't mean that you

might not run into circumstances where you will have criticisms of the way that things are done. A good example is actually, and this almost entirely happened on social media, was the blow up over H-1B visas. in December last year. There was this talk for a while that like, oh, certain members of the business community have gotten Trump's ear and they're going to encourage more legal migration.

Right after we had an election where migration and borders was arguably the number one issue alongside the economy and the right came together on social media and they did not let up. They went after Elon Musk. They went after Trump. They were like, we do not want this. We adamantly oppose this. And guess what? Trump and Elon backtracked on this. And they did the same thing recently.

There was this huge blow up over like, well, Trump's pausing deportations on farms and hotels. Yeah, he's going to give the business community all the illegal labor. And again, the right came came mostly through social media was like, no, we don't want this. And guess what?

Trump reversed course. Yeah. He does this thing every now and then. You can see every now and then Trump will tweet something. And what he's doing is he's trying to see where public opinion is. If he's getting a big enough pushback, he will then reverse course. And so don't blow your bridges with this guy and burn everything down and be like, he's the enemy. Now he's betrayed us. We need to impeach him. No, what you do is you firmly, but.

without treating him like an enemy, say, no, this is where my position is. This is why I voted for you. And I expect you to do this. And we have seen multiple instances where when we do that, he will then reverse course. And there's a huge difference between making your voice heard and burning your bridges down and treating him like an enemy.

And so I think that's what Mr. Grove is trying to get at in some of his Substack articles. And it's just, we just need to remind ourselves about that. No, and you know, and Erica and Jacob make good points too. It's again, I'm, I'm, I always say, I, I, I put my faith in Jesus. all else must show ID, right? Like there there's, there's limits to, um, there there's limits that.

To what I will allow even a president that I generally support and voted for in the whole deal, because there has to be, because we're not ultimately a nation purely of man. There are principles and there are rules and there is law and all of these things. And I do think that's important, but I'm just saying that I think what I hope comes from this and all the frustration that we're experiencing is

Let's come up with something that seems like a reasonable American first policy that takes into account the complex and nuances issues evolved. Let's also try to, let's also try to.

recognize that we're not always going to agree on every single incident, but we should be speaking and talking with one another about it because I do think that there's shared principles with respect to wanting to put America first and wanting to make America the priority with respect to our foreign policy and not getting drug into war. Being very judicious on how we use force and when and where and for what purpose. Along with taking into account...

second and third order effects. We need a lot more historians engaging in the chat when it comes to properly understanding what could happen as a result and realizing that

You can dislike a regime all day long. Getting rid of them doesn't mean you get a better one. And if you really got to the point where you need a better one, then we need to recognize that that could be a huge commitment. That could be a multi-decade process. And what's the trade-off, man? What's the trade-off? What are you willing to risk?

I think David Brog asked a very important question on that. He's like, if you can't explain why young men and women are going to die for this, and you can't explain that there's a reasonable path to get to this at the end and how it makes us better off. Well then, look, you can sit back and you can be upset about what's going on in the world, but if you don't have the real practical means to make it better, well then, by gosh, don't spend a bunch of money making it worse.

We need to understand that. So anyways, I've got to take off. I think Christian and Tina are going to continue on here a little bit. Wish me a safe flight. Hope you found this useful conversation. There's a lot more we could have talked about and a lot more I'm sure we will in the future. But for right now, I'm pretty happy with the summary that we've done and the direction the conversation went and asking real questions, not just jumping onto one side or the other, the bandwagon.

and taken from that perspective. But in the end, man, we need people to recognize that we've been through a lot and that is going to shape the way that we view these things. But there's going to continue to be challenges in the world.

And I think we're at a point where we need to focus a little bit more on the domestic issues that are impacting our country. Because until we get those fixed, it's going to make it really hard to deal with outside issues. But every once in a while, threats will emerge. And we need to have a coherent...

and comprehensive strategy and we need to have people that are actually looking at that strategy and are capable of executing it faithfully and once we get more of that I think more people are going to be more people are going to be

willing to deal with the nuance and to give a little bit of leeway. I think Trump's earned a little bit of that from us. Not all of it, but a little bit. And I hope it works out the way it should. Once again, thank you very much for joining us. I'm going to hand it over to... Christian and Tina, who will be joining us also for the postgame session. That's right. Did you know that this podcast has a pregame and postgame?

For some of our most loyal viewers who ask us really difficult questions and sometimes take us to task, if you've ever thought, man, I would like to chew that Nick Freitas guy out, well...

The pregame and postgame is the place to do it along with some of the other private chats that are only for our members. If you're interested in actually joining our community and being a part of that more elaborate, more in-depth discussion where Queen of the Bees says all kinds of things that we get as banned from YouTube. please check out the link in the description. We'd love to have you. Once again, thank you for joining us. We'll see you next episode. All right.

I'm going to be out there and now we're going to move to post game, but I've got to leave. Thank you guys. I hope that was valuable. By the way, by the way, Darth Amalgamation asked a question about Israel. You're eight minutes late.

Darth Amalgamation asked a question about Israel and whether or not they should be an ally. I do have an answer for that. I apologize. I can't give it to you right now. I really do apologize, but I would be happy to discuss it more. So we'll have a larger conversation about that in the future. Once again, thank you guys. We'll see y'all later.