The White House blames Iran-backed militants for a deadly drone attack early Sunday on a U.S. base in Jordan near the border with Syria. Three Americans were killed and at least 30 injured when the drone strike made it through the base s air defenses.
00:00:42.480And we're putting them out every single day of the week.
00:00:49.980This is what happens when the fourth turning meets fifth generation warfare.
00:00:56.660This is why we don't listen to the Senate Republicans.
00:01:23.740This is why House Republicans have done a really tough job and a hard job of trying to find consensus amongst Republicans.
00:01:31.240Throughout his tenure as Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro N. Mayorkas has repeatedly violated laws enacted by Congress regarding immigration and border security.
00:01:41.280In large part because of his unlawful conduct, millions of aliens have illegally entered the United States on an annual basis, with many unlawfully remaining in the United States.
00:01:50.700The White House blaming Iran-backed militants for a deadly drone attack early Sunday on a U.S. base in Jordan near the border with Syria.
00:01:59.600Three Americans at Tower 22 base were killed, at least 30 injured when the drone strike made it through the base's air defenses.
00:02:07.900The very first strike that hit, you punch and you punch back hard.
00:02:11.680What they should be doing is going after every ounce of production of those missiles.
00:02:17.420Wherever those missiles are, you take that out.
00:02:47.900Putin's illegal occupation of Kiev and the impending ground operation in Iran has created a two-front national security crisis that requires more troops than the volunteer military can supply.
00:02:57.740I have received guidance from General Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, that the recommended way forward will be to invoke the Selective Service Act, as is my authority as president.
00:03:09.640Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard today's edition of Human Events Daily here live, Washington, D.C.
00:03:15.640Today is January 29, 2024, Anno Domini.
00:03:24.180It's buried there in the dirt of Abbey Gate, and it's buried there now in the dirt of Jordanian soil, the Kingdom of Jordan, where three American soldiers have lost their lives, an entire U.S. barracks, a shoe, struck by a Shia militia drone manufactured by Iran while they slept.
00:03:46.040And this Wall Street Journal report that comes out is absolutely damning because what it states, and this was the question that I had all weekend, talking to sources, talking to people in the industry, talking to people in the intel community, how could this have happened?
00:05:28.740Let's show this map of where all the attacks have taken place.
00:05:31.020Because maps cut through the rhetoric, boys and girls.
00:05:33.240Understand that in every single one of these instances, our boys are sitting ducks in the shooting gallery of the Middle East right now.
00:05:43.140And they've already proven that that air defense doesn't work anymore.
00:05:47.220You know how they used to say, go outside the wire, stay inside the wire, call somebody a fobbit if they didn't go out, etc., etc., all that stuff.
00:06:04.240They're there as a tripwire because Joe Biden and Victoria Nuland and the people in this crooked administration want them as human meat shields, as the tripwire to trigger a larger, wide scale, more escalation of a war in the Middle East.
00:06:50.560All right, Jack Posobiec back live, Human Events Daily.
00:06:54.040I'd like to tell you a little bit about today's sponsor, Allegiance Gold.
00:06:56.380And if you're part of the Human Events Daily audience, you're aware of the disaster that the Biden regime has made of the American retirement system.
00:07:03.420Overspending and overprinting of money are the two main reasons American retirement accounts have lost 25% over the past five years.
00:08:43.040For some reason, the headlines are not talking about this.
00:08:45.920For some reason, the mainstream media isn't talking about this.
00:08:49.400The New York Post decided to put Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey above the fold on the cover, and the troop deaths were put below the cover.
00:09:03.460In a day where, because of this tactic, we've seen potentially what I call the end of the 20th century.
00:09:09.740Darren Beattie from Revolver News joins us now.
00:09:12.700He's an expert in geopolitics, an expert in the regime.
00:09:16.740He was probably, I think, the last Westerner to interview Imran Khan, the former prime minister of Pakistan, before his arrest.
00:09:23.800Darren, as we look at this situation and we're getting reports now that the Biden administration promises an unprecedented response to these U.S. drone deaths.
00:10:09.900No, it is a great filler word that somebody put in his mouth, so I'll give him that.
00:10:15.020But, you know, it's a very serious development.
00:10:17.520And, you know, you're rightly contextualizing it in sort of generational terms, or even more broad than generational terms,
00:10:28.120the beginning of the 21st century, you know, we've heard this thesis, you know, when COVID came.
00:10:35.620And there are a lot of things that I certainly think there's a case to be made that the true beginning of the 21st century is in the 20s.
00:10:44.020And the 20s are shaping out to be a uniquely unpleasant decade, at least in recent American history.
00:10:53.580And this is certainly in keeping with that, because it's very dangerous.
00:10:58.180And, you know, it forces us to ask, you know, very important questions that don't seem to be guiding policy and planning at the highest levels.
00:11:09.180You know, what are our people even doing there?
00:11:12.720You know, what is the purpose of this base to begin with?
00:11:17.440You know, this relationship, this specific kind of relationship with Jordan, with these bases and activity there,
00:11:23.480goes back to 2011 in the Syrian civil war, which is presumably over.
00:11:28.780And there's a lot of interest in containing these Iranian proxies, which, of course, only really have the weight that they have because of our previous Medivh splunder, which is the Iraq war.
00:11:41.200And then I think maybe the most important point that you made earlier, which is well worth repeating, is the function of these troops and these bases is precisely to serve as a tripwire.
00:11:55.560That's the security guarantee, and it's not unique to that region, by the way.
00:12:02.080That's a large reason we have so many troops in South Korea still, is that it's an implicit security guarantee, because if North Korea does something, it's not just South Koreans who die.
00:12:15.420We want to basically manufacture a situation such that if North Korea attacks South Korea, American soldiers will die.
00:12:24.740And therefore, there's a high probability, if not certainty, that the American population can be goaded into a war for that.
00:12:32.000That's that's the nature of the security guarantee afforded by the physical presence of our troops.
00:12:38.100Same thing with Taiwan. And so I think this kind of mechanism is lost on a lot of people.
00:12:44.680I think there were some I forget who exactly, but somebody on the campaign trail said, oh, you know, we'll sort out our semiconductor independence with Taiwan and then we'll get our troops out.
00:12:58.500Well, that sounds perfectly logical in theory, but it kind of misses the point as to why our troops are there.
00:13:06.120Our troops are there as a security guarantee, you know, for for for China and Taiwan.
00:13:12.960So this is, I think, very much what we're seeing there.
00:13:16.520And it's a very dangerous type of guarantee because we're right in the backyard of all of the mess that we created in large part, again, because the reason Iran has so much influence in the region is is allowed to gain that influence in the aftermath of the Iraq war.
00:13:32.260So all of this mess really kind of forces us to reevaluate afresh what are our actual worthy and goals in that region and what's the realistic way to achieve those goals and what's the cost benefit sort of risk analysis behind that?
00:13:52.280Because it doesn't seem like there's any of this type of thinking guiding what we're doing there.
00:13:58.680Well, and I'll and I'll I'll tell you that when you read foreign policy or Charles Lister, any of these guys, Charles Lister is a great person to keep an eye on, very similar to one of these Norm Eisen types who really speak to the voice of the foreign policy establishment.
00:14:12.600So, you know, there are sort of a mouthpiece for what the prevailing winds are within the establishment.
00:14:18.820And so you hear him going through this this intricate chessboard and it's always it's always the intricate chessboard in the Middle East.
00:14:24.900Do you hear this? The British were obsessed with this about 100 years ago, then the United States became obsessed with it increasingly after the fall of the Shah, which, you know, somebody helped helped to occur back then.
00:14:37.300But, you know, this idea that, well, you see, the U.S. troops are there because we're worried that ISIS could be breaking back out again.
00:14:43.960And we are providing stability to the region right there on the border of Syria and Jordan.
00:14:49.660If you guys want to show that map up again, you can see these strikes took place. Tower 22 essentially is the checkpoint between Syria and Jordan.
00:14:56.740This is where special forces would go back and forth during those counter ISIS operations.
00:15:01.560So obviously a strategic checkpoint in the region that's very it's it's a desolate area.
00:15:08.420It's it's right in the middle of the three continent or the three countries there, Iraq, Syria and Jordan.
00:15:13.500But of course, the complete you know, there is completely destabilized.
00:15:16.780It's not like, you know, the U.S., U.S.-Canada border.
00:15:20.100It's as destabilized as our border with Mexico.
00:15:22.220And so the idea, though, and I said this on War Room this morning, the idea that the United States having a paltry number of troops, I don't care if you have three thousand troops or five thousand, ten thousand troops, you're not going to you're not going to stabilize the kingdom of Syria versus the kingdom of Jordan versus the Turks versus the Iraqis.
00:15:42.180These are issues and tribal conflicts and ethnic conflicts, religious conflicts that have been going on since time immemorial, and we are not going to solve them.
00:15:52.240However, we do have an issue on our own border that we could solve.
00:15:56.100But I'm you know, I tweeted this out and I probably shouldn't be giving ammunition to the enemy here.
00:16:00.280But how long I said, how long before Biden orders the mobilization of the Texas National Guard to reopen the border away from Greg Abbott?
00:17:03.800It was always about Iran and Assad, with ISIS often as a pretext.
00:17:09.180And occasionally you'll get, you know, an honest, unwitting admission from military officials or even political officials.
00:17:16.420I think one of the overlooked or at least underemphasized WikiLeaks emails to Hillary said, like, ISIS is on our side in Syria or Al Qaeda, which is effectively the same thing.
00:17:32.200And so one of Trump's great achievements was getting rid of ISIS.
00:17:35.760And I don't want to detract from his victory there, but part of the reason it was so easy for him to do that is that it was actually, you know, not that much of a thing to begin with.
00:17:47.240With a modicum of will it could have been gotten rid of, which goes to show, among other things, just how uninterested the foreign policy establishment was before Trump in getting rid of ISIS.
00:18:02.880And now it looks like it's emerging in that same context.
00:18:06.420It's also interesting as well, right before we're going to break here, we'll be back with Darren Beattie.
00:18:10.280But interesting as well to note that ISIS seemed to dry up right when President Trump ended the CIA's Operation Timber Sycamore, which was sending funds and ammo to that very same region.
00:18:22.480But don't worry, those are just moderates.
00:18:28.900You know, they talk about influencers.
00:18:50.820I really do see this as a turning point in history.
00:18:53.260And I don't think that people quite get it yet.
00:18:55.320Because and Darren, let's let's just to look at the just to look at the basic power dynamics of the situation.
00:19:02.920Drone strikes are something that for the past decade plus, the U.S. imposed and inflicted on various groups around the Middle East.
00:19:14.420Groups in the Middle East don't drone strike American troops.
00:19:17.900This is a complete inversion of the entire relationship between U.S. and the Middle East that that really started all the way back in 2001.
00:19:27.000And I don't think psychologically the blob, the foreign policy establishment, Victoria Nuland, et cetera, understand it.
00:19:34.980Their response is going to be let's double down.
00:19:38.520I just for the life of me don't realize or don't think they realize the implications of this.
00:19:43.600While, by the way, the our only aircraft carrier in the region is bottled up in the Red Sea because they're dealing with the Houthis and the Houthis drones.
00:19:51.100The the Ukrainian counteroffensive can't can't even break out.
00:19:56.780Why? Because of Russia's drones, which, of course, are also produced by Iran.
00:20:00.320And as you mentioned before about Taiwan, let's see.
00:20:03.380Do you think the Chinese would have a comparative advantage when it comes to mass producing small scale drones at a massive?
00:20:10.700Obviously, the Chinese would would become the most powerful military country in the world with just drone swarm warfare across the entire continent of Asia if they wanted to.
00:20:20.180And so I think this is an example where the tactics that have come out of the battlefield conditions of Ukraine have really changed the game in ways that Washington hasn't even figured out yet.
00:20:37.180I mean, not a military expert in that regard, but I think, you know, more so we're going to have to look at what our actual goals and objectives are in the region,
00:20:48.600because, you know, that seems to be the primary issue.
00:21:00.200Do they make sense with respect to other geopolitical priorities?
00:21:04.740Do they make sense in terms of a cost benefit analysis?
00:21:07.700All of these questions that you think would be so primary and basic that seem to be entirely absent from everything that we're doing and everywhere that we are.
00:21:22.140I think we really need to revisit those questions on a fundamental level.
00:21:26.020And I hope at least part of the conversation that develops around the 2024 election cycle includes those kind of foundational questions.
00:21:37.400In 2016, Trump opened up a lot of those questions with respect to NATO, respect to the Iraq war and otherwise.
00:21:43.540And I think it's time that we get to a round two version of that conversation in light of, you know, these developments and basically the broader situation geopolitically.
00:21:56.520And of course, it goes without saying that this and I think I do need to say it because it's for some reason, there are people who, even though we're only a few years away from it, the administration in which you serve, the Trump administration,
00:22:08.440I feel like people have already forgotten the history of it because we've been so inundated with things like January 6 or hoax after hoax.
00:22:16.300This this this this idea that this was Trump's stated policy.
00:22:20.840He wanted our troops out of there. He wanted the thousands of troops to come home from this region.
00:22:26.060And then he was stymied by people like like was it Jim Jeffries, the ambassador admitted on his way out that he was lying to the White House about our troop placements,
00:22:36.980that he was playing a shell game with the numbers the entire time, just just straight up treason, straight up textbook levels of treason that they would lie about.
00:22:46.300These troops would not be on the ground there in harm's way after post October 7th to be killed.
00:22:53.100And I'm going to have a piece coming out at humanevents.com later today to say, look, if we do have interest in the region as a country, as an international arm, fine.
00:23:01.980But in this operational environment, it makes no sense whatsoever to have those troops on the ground in these destabilized regions.
00:23:10.940Look, there was a there was a period of rapprochement when everyone was sort of fighting ISIS right after Trump got in.
00:23:18.580And you had you had sort of like like the IRGC guys were anti ISIS and Russia was anti ISIS and Assad was anti ISIS and America was nominally anti ISIS where we could have actually achieved some rapprochement with Iran.
00:23:31.060We actually could have done that during the Trump years and, you know, maybe not as quickly as we did with with North Korea or some of the other areas.
00:23:38.480But it was the path was certainly there.
00:23:40.800I worry, though, that with what the administration might do in the lead up to the election, Darren, I worry that they may do something that's possibly irrevocable with Iran.
00:23:50.940It's possible. I kind of I kind of doubt it. I mean, it's always possible, but I would doubt it.
00:23:59.440But absolutely, it's it's important to remember that the geopolitics of the Syrian civil war was very much a part of the domestic politics during the 2016 election and the Trump versus Hillary grand contest.
00:24:17.740And I think we still see the reverberations of that in this base in Jordan, like right at the border with with Syria and Iraq, this whole issue with the Iranian proxies.
00:24:32.320And again, the question is, what what is the ultimate aim?
00:24:35.280Because it's very clear from people like Lindsey Graham and otherwise, you know, the ultimate aim is finding any kind of pretext for the ultimate confrontation with Iran.
00:24:44.440And I think that's probably the aim of a lot of the Middle East, certainly the Gulf countries.
00:24:50.680I would say that's clearly an aim of Saudi Arabia.
00:24:54.160It's an aim of at least several political factions within Israel.
00:25:00.780And so the question, what is our what is our aim there?
00:25:04.640Do we want Darren? We actually have we let me cut you off.
00:26:36.200And, you know, it's not even as though this was the attack was intentional or deliberate or understood on the part of our forces.
00:26:45.160But if you have them plop down in that region for long enough, especially given what the dynamics are now,
00:26:53.360these things are bound to happen and they have the ready made narratives to escalate,
00:26:58.340which seems to be what they want to do or at least a lot of these factions.
00:27:01.720But again, I think the core question is, what is the ultimate objective?
00:27:05.300Is the ultimate objective a final confrontation with Iran?
00:27:09.500Seems to be what a lot of people like Lindsey Graham and others want.
00:27:12.520Or is it some kind of strategically palatable modus vivendi that involves a kind of balance of power?
00:27:22.440And that really needs to be determined before anything that we do on the ground there makes any kind of strategic sense.
00:27:33.220All right. This is this is what led Trump to say, of course, you know,
00:27:36.240why are we invading all these countries with oil and we're not even taking their oil?
00:27:39.820Because as a as a businessman, you know, he's he's an opportunist, first and foremost,
00:27:44.420which, of course, in the foreign policy realm blends itself to just, you know, basic old school imperialism.
00:27:49.860If we're going to go in there, why aren't we getting the resources?
00:27:52.180What do you mean? We're we're building up partner capacities and exporting democracy.
00:27:57.680What is that instead of plundering the resources of the vanquished lands?
00:28:03.760We are plundering the taxpayer purse to the benefit of the defense contractors
00:28:11.260and the corrupt elites of the nations that we rebuild.
00:28:16.660Precisely. And this is a this goes back to the the classic infamous really now quote of Julian Assange,
00:28:27.900where he said the the point of the war is not to be won.
00:28:32.280And the point of the war is for it to be continuous to wash the tax bases of the domestic domestic audience overseas and then bring up this.
00:28:42.300By the way, J.D. Vance was being attacked over this very thing where he said, you know,
00:28:47.040he's getting community noted right now on X because he said, you know, we sent so much money to Ukraine and now none of it's coming back.
00:28:53.580The community note, Darren, came back and said, well, actually, most of the money sent to Ukraine is being spent on U.S. weapons manufacturers.
00:29:00.920So they so when you push back on them, they admit it as if it's some kind of gotcha on you, as opposed to just saying the quiet part out loud.
00:29:10.400Right. No, it's it's very foolish. And I mean, this obviously distorts what our actual regional interests are, because it's so confounded.
00:29:20.300You know, if you study something in space and you have the weird trajectory of some kind of celestial object,
00:29:27.400then you can infer the presence of something that has a gravitational force nearby.
00:29:33.380And in this case, that force is being exacted by the overwhelming financial interests of the defense sector.
00:29:42.580Well, actually, you know, just to just to throw back on that, though, that that kind of piggybacks is what I'm saying earlier,
00:29:49.540not just piggybacking like the Iranian drone. But the point of the fact of the matter is the entire military industrial complex is is justified
00:29:56.700and predicated on the idea that highly sophisticated, extremely expensive weaponry and machinery and technology are needed to achieve these these overseas goals.
00:30:06.100But if we found out that, you know, the Houthis and a couple of Iranian, you know,
00:30:10.240backed Shia militia guys are able to destroy all of our weapon, our weaponology and weapon craft over there,
00:30:15.620then suddenly it it really strikes at that question of why exactly are we spending so much money on all these systems
00:30:21.320if they can be destroyed by a couple of guys with A.I. and a one way drone?
00:30:26.540No, you see, it just happened because we didn't buy the latest version of Lockheed.
00:30:31.100Ah, the latest version. You've got to get version 2.0.
00:30:35.780I know. You've got to update. You've got to update your operating system.