My Ramblings About Geopolitics

I know some things about many things. I know a little bit about law, I know a little bit about social conservative issues. I know a little bit about Fresno news politics, things like that. I'll admit I don't really know much about international geopolitics, and I will echo, oh, the sentiment of Agent Squares, I'm just simple country boy out here trying to make a living. I guess I would say I'm just simple suburban boy out here trying

to make a living. And with that declaration that I know nothing, I want to talk a little bit about the raging debates about Ukraine and the Trump administration's sort of posture as far as negotiations and negotiating a settlement in Ukraine, where maybe this is a problem of me subscribing to National Review, which I do. I find that they are a useful source of news and information and opinion, which basically I think it's good fodder for this show.

I'm not saying it's good fodder for every show, but I find it's kind of good fodder for this show. And let's my show be a little bit distinct as far as the kinds of things I talk about. But they're all very upset. They're all very upset. All these writers at National Review, well most of them other than Michael Brendan Doherty, whom I'd really recommend to all of you. They're all very upset about the way that Trump has been talking about Ukraine and Russia. That Trump has said

basically if basically a little bit of victim blaming. They're arguing with Ukraine. Trump saying that, you know, if if if we hadn't had discussions about NATO expanding, we wouldn't be in this. If I were president in twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two, Russia would never have invaded. He's called the president of Ukraine a dictator or something like a dictator because Lensky has not had elections. They're they're they're

delayed on having a lot elections. And the retort is, well, how can they have elections when so much of the country is under attack and they're in the middle of war. I don't know, we had an election in the middle of a civil war once, so I don't know what their excuse is. And the idea that we're doing all this quote for the defense of democracy, and meanwhile the democracy that we're defending is not allowing democratic elections to take place. It kind of strains credulity a little bit. Also,

you have the testimony for Marco Rubio and JD. Vance that Zelensky is sort of talking out of both sides of his mouth, says one thing to them in private during negotiations, and runs to the pres and says other kinds of things, which really ticked off Rubio in Advance. But the whole posture seems to be President Trump is being too mean in and how he talks about Ukraine,

how he talks about them. The money is still flowing, but he's being too mean, and how he talks about Ukraine, and that the idea that he's going to have some settlement with Russia, gaining territory, He's going to make all these concessions to the Russians is terrible. The general thought is it's terrible that Trump is going to make so many concessions to Russia in this deal. Why is he talking to the Russians first rather than with the Ukraine?

All Right? I just feel like so much of it is criticizing the sizzle rather than the stake Trump wants the war to end. I've looked at maps of basically there are only three maps that you need to look at as far as the progress of the war in Ukraine. So there's the map of how far the Russians had advanced within the first six months, and there's a lot of territory that they'd taken, territory sort of in the southeast of Ukraine, and then at a bunch of chunks

of territory sort of in the northeast of Ukraine. Within six months of that, the Ukrainians, with a lot of American funding, pushed the Russians back. Most of the games the Russians made in the northeast were pushed back. The Russians were driven back in the northeast, and the Russians had only really taken a lot of territory in the southeast. Two years later, there's no difference, there's no change. Basically, the map as it exists now is more or less the same as the map at the start of twenty

twenty three. The Russians have taken a big chunk of land in the southeast of Ukraine. So we've had two years of fighting, two years of the United States pouring in money, and we're now at the point where America is given a total of about two hundred billion dollars to Ukraine, which I remember the first time, Oh, fifty billion dollars just to help the Ukrainians completely doestimate the

Russian military. That's a great deal. And then it was, oh, one hundred billion dollars to help the Ukrainian military doestimate Russia. That's a good deal. You know, fifty billion here, fifty billion. They're eventually you're talking about a lot of money. Basically, the war just is at a stalemate. The Ukrainians clearly can't get the funding or the man power. Really, it's a man power situation. Ukraine only has so many men. Russia has way more. Ukraine can only get so much money,

so much manpower. They're not going to drive the Russians completely out. They're just not gonna. Short of the United States coming in, putting boots on the ground and starting a major offensive against a major world power, a major geopolitical foe, it ain't gonna happen. So the Trump administration is realizing, well, we don't want to keep funding this indefinitely. This seems like a horrible situation just on it from a humanitarian perspective, and the way Trump talks about it,

he says, I think this war is terrible. I think this is terrible from a humanitarian perspective. I want there to be peace. Well, you're not gonna conclude a peace by talking about what a terrible monster Vladimir Putin is. Is he a terrible monster? Yes? And by the way, he has a Secretary of State who said it repeatedly. Trump has been far less eager to say, just out loud that Vladimir Putin is a terrible guy. But clearly he wants this to stop. Now. Can you criticize Trump

for his rhetorical choices? Why are you so harsh on Zelensky? But you treat Putin with kid gloves. Well, appeasing Putin in order to conclude a piece might be a slightly more important thing. Maybe you disagree with the strategy, but the notion, I mean, yes, just Trump is a consistent criticism that Trump is consistently pretty nice publicly to Putin. Yeah, but it's also the case that Putin clearly respected Trump

is more of a threat. I don't think it's coincidence that Putin waits until Joe Biden's in office before he starts a military offensive. He didn't try anything when Trump was in office. Trump took a different, more tough posture or where I think countries were afraid to tangle with him. Why is he having this? Why is he having negotiations first with Putin rather than with Zelencia. Well, let's be real,

Ukraine is our proxy. The only reason they've had any ability to stay in this war is because we funded them. I'm sorry. Do you think of bilateral negotiations are going to happen between Zelenski and Putin? No, They're gonna happen between the United States and Putin. That's how it's gonna happen. It's not gonna happen with Zelenski and Putin? Do we want this war to stop or don't we? I think that that's the other big question that I have for

some of these critics of the Trump administration's posture. What do you want to happen? What is your preferred outcome? No one can sort of say that Ukrainian victory, what is that? What does Ukrainian victory look like? Not one Russian boot on one piece of Ukrainian dirt, because that ain't gonna happen. That's never gonna happen. Short of the United States invading, that's not gonna happen. So what do

you want? Then? What is the end goal? Like if Kamala Harris had won the election, what would we be doing with Ukraine? Not pursuing a peace agreement? Just keep going on, just keep on chugging, just keep having the meat grinder of war grinding up more and more and more Ukrainian and Russian men, more and more Ukrainians or Russians making snuff videos with drone footage showing people dying.

But you do a Google search for drone attack Ukraine and you'll see a bunch of snuff videos of people dying. It's wild, it's barbara. It's honestly barbaric that all these videos are online just for people to, oh, well, look about Russian getting smoked. So I guess my thought is everyone's everyone on in the foreign policy sort of soft right is like so critical of Trump for everything. He's saying, how come he how dare he say this about Zelensky.

All Zelensky's trying to do is protect his country. All Zelensky. Okay, Yeah, Zelensky's trying to protect his country. That's fine, that's fair. But Trump can be more realistic with Zelensky, has more of an ability to be realistic and point out problems and positives and minuses with Zelensky than he does with Russia. He's not gonna convince Putin to have free and fair elections.

He could convince Zelensky too, though, And I think he's saying, hey, if we're giving all this money for the alleged defensive democracy, maybe you should have your elections or otherwise, what are we doing here? I mean, that was the whole motive for coming in here in the first place. So I guess I just failed to see the meat and potatoes

problem with the way Trump is trying to conclude this piece. First, the fact that he's trying to conclude peace at all, I think is totally noble and worthwhile clearly nothing is happening in this Ukraine Russian stalemate, and the only thing we get is because well, because America is not funding it enough. How much do you want us to fund it? What's the number? A trillion dollars, two trillion dollars? What is the number that people on this sort of Ukraine

hawk side want. I mean, we can give him all the money in the World's not going to replace manpower. And at a certain point, I mean, do you actually want American troops over there? I think that's honestly what some of these people like. What some of these people want, They just can't say it because they know the American electorate is like, hell no, we don't want any American troops fighting in Ukraine, no way. So is that the thing?

I just don't understand. It seems like every criticism of Trump's posture like, and I'm not saying Trump's infallible or that Trump is perfect. Yeah, I think it's weird that he doesn't that he's not willing to say more negative things about Putin. But on the other hand, I don't know. Putin's a difficult partner to have to negotiate with. Maybe you can't talk about him the way you would talk about normal people. I guess it's almost like there's this

desire on the part of the pro Ukrainian hawks. Does iire for some sort of Oh, he needs to be more morally clear that Putin is bad? How much clearer do we have to be about Putin being bad? When Trump himself, throughout his first administration and still in his second administration, is still providing military funding to the Ukrainians to fight off the Russians. Oh, but he's not messaging it well enough. He's giving them weapons and military training,

et cetera. Like I guess, I just don't. It's all about sizzle, seemingly, and no one's talking about the steak. The steak is that this is not a war that the Ukrainians can win, and that if you want to have some sort of resolution to it, guess what, The Ukrainians are going to have to give up stuff. And it sucks and it's unfair and it's unjust, but you're dealing with a bad hand and you're trying to make the best of a bad situation. You've been dealt a

terrible hand. Russia unjustly aggressively invaded Ukraine. And I'll admit I think some of the Tucker Carlson arguments about it's Ukraine's fault that Russia invaded, it's the fault of NATO that Russia invaded. And I'll say, I mean, okay, Russia didn't want NATO to expand further east towards countries on its doorstep. Maybe there was too much sort of you know, playing foot see with the idea of Ukraine joining NATO, that Russia viewed that as a threat to itself, and

thus Russia invaded. Okay, that's a reason that Russia invaded. It's not a sufficient reason, it's not a legitimate reason, it's not an excusable reason. No, Russia still shouldn't have invaded Ukraine. It was an evil thing to do, a murderous, evil thing to do. And also I don't really believe that NATO was the only reason. The messaging from the Russians is Ukraine is legitimately a part of Russia. Ukraine has no actual independent cultural existence apart from Russia. It

is rightly part of Russia. I mean that they have a bunch of weird imperialistic motives that they have. The Russians have publicly messaged about it. So I'm not like in the Tucker Karlson camp of thinking that like Russia's And maybe I might even be overstating the Tucker Carlson position, But at the same time, I just feel like Trump is dealing with reality as it is. This is not a winnable war. It's not a winnable war short of

the United States directly fighting it, and that's a bad idea. Really, you want the United States involved in a direct military come conflict with a nuclear power, No, thank you. I don't want my little brother, Lieutenant Joe Girardi dying for Eastern Ukraine. Sorry, Like, I just don't know. I just don't think that is a thing we should do, and

it's not something I would have voted for. And by the way, we elected Donald Trump, Okay, we didn't elect I don't know who's some more pro hawkish Ukraine Republican politician. I don't know. This is not the party of the Lindsay Grahams and the whoever's anymore Donald Trump's the president. Clearly, this is the mandate he has from the American people to conclude that to handle this situation the way he thinks is best to handle it. And he ran on the platform of I want to bring a peace deal

to Ukraine. The notion that he's evil, because oh, he's not saying Putin's evil often enough and loudly enough. I just find to be silly when we return a couple thoughts on Israel and Palestine, just so I can talk about as many things I don't really know a lot about as humanly possible on this show. That's an accent on the John Gardy Show, continuing the theme that I'm just a simple child of Suburbia out here trying to

make a living, riffing off of Agent Squires. I'm just simple country boy out here trying to make a living theme of talking about stuff I don't know a ton about. I want to talk a little bit about Israel and Gaza. Just been hitting my just been noodling about it, thinking

about it for a little bit here. In the last few last week or so, it seems that a lot of the world got to a point of being sort of sick and fed up with Gaza, well with Hamas certainly specifically and Gaza as a whole, even like Middle

Eastern countries, like they're of fish head. Representatives of the Muslim religion from various countries, like imams and sort of leaders within Islam from a lot of different countries like Saudi Arabia and other countries looked at Gaza with kind of disgust when Hamas threw in Gaza like this party, this like public ceremony party thing for handing over the bodies of four Israeli hostages whom who had died under their watch. They claim it was from Israeli air strikes.

Evidence indicates that Hamas murdered these people, including direct physical evidence from the bodies of some of the bodies that they gave over. Two of these people were babies, like a four year old and it looked like a three year old and a one year old, babies who autopsy of their bodies showed that they were strangled to death, and then their bodies were they manipulated the bodies to try to make it look like it was something else.

It's so personally specifically evil that I can't even think about it too long, especially having little kids at home and seeing the pictures and videos of this family that it was like the mom and the two babies, where all three of them kidnapped, and not actually kidnapped apparently by Hamas militants, it was just random citizens, random civilians I guess from Gaza, who just kind of grabbed them

and kidnapped them. And it's horrific. And it's gotten to a point where I, I don't want to make broad generalizations about a region with like three million people in it, but gosh, I don't know how you actually conclude some kind of peace with these people. I'm gonna dig more into it when we return. I'm realizing now I have more thoughts than this segment allows. More on the Gaza

situation after this, This is the John Girardi Show. More John Girardi meandering on international geopolitics topics that he doesn't know a lot about. All Right, I want to think through this whole Gaza story, especially the story a few weeks ago where we're in this ceasefire that's been concluded between Israel and Gaza. A lot of people thought that this ceasefire stunk, that it was like something that Biden team was happy about and the incoming Trump team was

happy about. But it was like a fraction of the Israeli hostages were being handed over in exchange for a ton of Hamas terrorists. Seems like it was just a dog breakfast dog's breakfast of a deal. Trump then made about a week or two ago some threat that if all the hostages weren't handed over, that there'd be hell

to pay. And I'm not sure what's come of that threat, but anyway, as part of this cease fire, some Israeli hostages were handed over, not all of them, not all of them, and in some cases it was just the bodies of dead Israeli hostages, and Hamas has been cagy about how many people were actually dead. And as I mentioned the last second, they had this ceremony, probably most of you have seen it. I'm a little late to the game, but it provides I don't know, I think

I've had some time to mold this over. They had this big ceremony handing over the bodies of four Israeli hostages, a mom for two babies, and one older man whom they had kidnapped. I don't think was related to the other three. The bodies of the two babies literally like a looked like a three year old and a one year old or something like that, were found to have been strangled to death and then their corpses to have been desecrated, manipulated basically to try to make it look

like it was something other than strangulation. The body of the woman was not actually the actual body of the woman.

And this is a big deal for the Israelis, and in Jewish practice, like they put a huge priority on getting the bodies even of dead hostages back for appropriate burial like that they it is a huge priority for the Jews living in Israel, and historically this has been something that the Israelis have done in negotiations with terrorists within the Israel Palestine conflict, of giving up these incredibly lopsided exchanges where the Israelis will give up tons of

terrorists whom they've kidnapped and not executed, and in exchange they get a pittance as far as a few hostages back or a few bodies of hostages back. But the Israelis, i guess, feel so strongly that this is such an important religious priority for them to provide proper burial for the bodies of their own that and it it becomes sort of a thing. Israel being a democracy and its

political leadership having to be accountable to its people. It's such an important thing for the people, for the families involved, that those kinds of exchanges why of happening, including this most recent exchange, this most recent ceasefire that the Trump well, it was sort of during the transition between Biden and Trump that this deal was agreed upon. Now again, the Hamas has this party for the handover or they're filming it. They've got what looks like couple. It looks like maybe

a thousand plus thousand people gathered at this thing. Thousand plus people gathered at this thing, look like nor ordinary citizens, people bringing their children to see this exchange. It's insane. It's genuinely barbaric, and it makes me wonder a couple of things. First, I think there's often this polite fiction that we engage in with geopolitics that is some times

true but not all the time true. That when the United States is dealing with some foreign adversary or there's some bad actor on the international stage, the polite fiction that we indulge that we indulge in is you know, Iran is doing bad stuff. This is not a criticism of the noble people of Iran who yearn for freedom under the yoke of oppression. And throughout the history of the Soviet Union, it was always we stand shoulder to shoulder with the Russian people who who yearn for freedom

under the yoke of Soviet imperialism. And sometimes that's true. I don't think it's true all the time. I don't get the sense that the people in Gaza, maybe even still are that unhappy or that much in disagreement with Hamas. Let's sure. I mean, the the only data point we have for Hamasa's popular support was in granted, it was a long time ago. It was I believe it was two thousand and two thousand and six or two thousand and eight was the last time Gaza held elections, and

the elections were between Hamas and Fatah. Fatah is the other kind of Palestinian kind of political party. Political All these parties have political slash religious elements to them and then seem to have some kind of security things, real kind of jack of all the Swiss army knives of political parties. They do a lot more stuff than American political parties do anyway. They had these elections in Gaza, a couple million people living there. Hamas won the election Fatah,

which is a little bit more secular. That was like Yaser Arafat's party, a little bit more secular, a little bit less crazy, a little bit less dogmatic Muslim. Fatah lost, Hamas won. Hamas then proceeds to have a mini little war in Gaza to drive all the Fatah leadership out by force. Hamas has installed no elections since then, but it doesn't seem like there was much public resistance to what was going on under Hamas. One of the things Israelis did was, hey, if you can provide any lines

of communication were open. Telecommunication lines were open, Messaging was sent from Israel into Hamas. If you have information about hostages, if you can give them up, we will give you cash rewards, we will you know, blah blah blah. And they basically got no takers. Now, you might say, well, if someone gave up an Israeli hostage or gave information to the Israeli government about hostages, they'd probably be assassinated or killed. Well, yeah, in France in nineteen forty two,

if you were hiding a jew underneath your floorboards. To save their lives, you would go to jail or die. And people did it because they were heroes. And there doesn't seem to be much of a display of heroism going on here in Gaza. And I don't want to make this like, I don't know. I'm sort of teetering on the edge of like, I don't want to make this blanket statement that everyone in Gaza in Gaza sucks.

And I also, though, don't want to have this naive idea, Oh, the good people of Gaza just unfairly oppressed by Hamas leadership, whom they all hate, and then just keep them under their thumb. I don't know that they dislike Hamas leadership. I don't know. It doesn't seem like they're that upset. Hamas got elected in the mid two thousands. They were in control and for seventeen years, instead of putting money

they got into economic development. They used it to build up militia fighters and dig tunnels all underground throughout Gaza for their terrorists to hide and station their you know, military assets near hospitals and schools and mosques, deliberately to with the deliberate strategy of maximizing civilian casualties in order

to make Israel look bad. So I don't know. And again, the whole, well, the whole idea of Hamas, like some of their fundamental ideals, are rooted in certain long standing interpretations of Islam, rooted in Sharia law that basically, if territory was once owned by Islam, it's supposed to be Islamic territory forever. And thus that the modern nation state of Israel has no right to exist and a two state solution. They're not doing a two state solution. That's

the thing. I feel like the diplomatic American foreign policy blob as some people call it, they're still in on this whole two state solution thing. Well, two state solutions the only path forward, the only path forward, I agree. The problem is one of the two parties doesn't want a two state solution. They want a one state solution with Israel gone, the Jews gone. They literally, like it's in Hamasa's like founding documents that they're gonna hunt down

every Jew behind every rock and every tree. They want the stones and the trees to shout out that there's a Jew hiding there, and they're gonna kill them like that. That's that's how Loco and Laca Beza they are, that they're not gonna agree to a two states solution. You can, you can want a two state solution until you're blue in the face, but if one of the two states

doesn't want two states, it's not gonna happen. Furthermore, furthermore, going through puberty on the radio, they've so either Hamas has so thoroughly indoctrinated the people who live in Gaza, or the people in Gaza or such are so poorly educated or whatever it is, like they've done public opinion polls where there's this basic, unbelievable ignorance on the part

of average citizenry in Gaza. So the nation of Israel, the nation of Israel has about nine point four million people, that's the total population is about nine point four million people, most of whom are Jews. So the Jews constitute about seven point two million of the total nine So Jews are about seven million. There's seven million Jews about two million Arabs who live in the modern day nation state of Israel. So it's a country of nine million people,

seven million of them are Jews. You do public opinion polling in Gaza. They think that there's a huge percentage of the population in Gaza that believed that they were like less than a million Jews living in Israel, or they were like a million to two million Jews. They have no sense of how many people actually live in Israel. They genuinely think it's like a few people and that if you just drive them out, you could just win. That they think they can win. They have no sense.

They're so total excuse me, they're so indoctrinated or ignorant or whatever it is that they don't think any Jews even live in Israel, or that the numbers are way smaller. They have no sense of the scale. Like I think, they genuinely think that if they have enough, like October seventh, they can push all the Jews out. I don't know how you rationally deal with a partner like that. Now.

On the other hand, I see like whole cities in Gaza that are completely leveled, and there's a part of me that has to say, Okay, well, I know there are Christians living in Palis and living Gaza who are not very thrilled with Israel's conduct at all. A lot of the Christian communities are are much more harshly that are in Palestine, are much more harshly critical of Israel of its conduct throughout this whole thing than American Christians are,

or that the American right is. And I do have to take that into account, But at the end of the day, I just can't get over how fundamentally screwed up Hamas is and seemingly a lot of the population of Gaza, and I don't know how you fix that. And there's a part of me that's sort of saying, well, you know, Trump had this idea of moving everyone out

and let's develop Gaza whatever. And the response from Rubio when everyone says that's a terrible idea, Rubio's saying, well, we challenge countries in the Middle East, you come up with a better plan. I think that's exactly the response we should take. I'm tired of this being our fault, our responsibility. I don't really want to keep militarily funding Israel. I want nothing to do with that whole part of the world when we return the idea of still being

hung up over nineteen forty five population moves. Next on the John Girardi Show, the whole root of the Israel Palestine conflict, and the thing that activists and modern day Muslims still who are are very agitated about Israel's position with Palestine is premised around nineteen forty five the creation

of the modern state of Israel. A bunch of Israel, a bunch of Jews from Europe displaced by the war move into the modern region of Palestine, which resulted in the displacement of a certain population of Palestinians Palestine lived there, forced out of their homes. Some injustices happened there. I'm not denying that some injustices happened there. Here's what I don't get. Do you know how many populations of different peoples, different ethnic groups were displaced as a result of World

War Two? The Volga River Germans were all deported by the Soviet Union to Kazakhstan, that's really far away. The Soviets deported a bunch of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians. I don't have to go through the whole list, but a bunch of peoples were displaced by World War Two. It was unjust, it was unfair, and for the most part, we just don't care anymore. We're not fighting wars over it.

I don't understand why the injustice, that particular injustice there is still held up as the greatest injustice that's ever been, that needs to be militarily vindicated. That'll do it, John Girardi Show, See you next time on Power Talk