RadixJournal - Bowden! - 11 - The Forgotten War

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Vanguard, a podcast of radical traditionalism.

00:00:24.680 Here's your host, Richard Spencer.

00:00:27.380 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Vanguard.

00:00:30.900 And welcome back, Jonathan Bowden. How are you?

00:00:33.860 Yes, hello. I'm fine.

00:00:35.780 Very well. Well, today we're going to talk about an issue that was very much in the news over the past decade.

00:00:44.740 And indeed, I think one could say that it defined the mainstream media mass communications, the news, for at least five to seven years.

00:00:55.760 And yet now we're at a point in which this event is slipping into the realm of history.

00:01:02.820 And I'm referring to the Iraq War and as the 2003 invasion by the Bush administration and some some allies.

00:01:12.080 And we're going to talk about the meaning, the relevancy of the Iraq War for today, as well as some origins of it.

00:01:20.840 And we'll also speculate about the future of American foreign policy.

00:01:26.160 Will any lessons be learned? So on and so forth.

00:01:30.340 So, Jonathan, first off, I think it's always best to start at a point that that is most relevant for the here and now in the sense of what is the Iraq War like today?

00:01:42.980 And I think the Iraq War today is a quite ironic episode because much as I as I mentioned, the the debate over the rock and the debate over the surge and this news reports of the insurgency and and violence of all kinds.

00:02:02.340 That defined the news cycle in the United States and Europe for at least five years in the mid 2000s.

00:02:10.040 And it also defined the conservative movement.

00:02:13.080 That was their issue.

00:02:14.360 And it was a kind of shibboleth for the conservative movement.

00:02:17.340 You know, you were on board with the invasion and the freedom agenda or you were kicked out.

00:02:22.100 And yet we reached 2011, 2012.

00:02:27.760 And by the end of 2011, Barack Obama has more or less ended the Iraq War.

00:02:33.500 All of the troops are out in Afghanistan.

00:02:37.440 The war is not completely ended.

00:02:39.300 However, it's there is a major drawdown.

00:02:42.380 Now, of course, there's some kind of presence there and so on and so forth.

00:02:45.420 It's one of those wars that might never actually end, much like the Cold War, World War Two, where you had these footprints that were remaining from these past conflicts, you know, still military bases in Germany and so on and so forth.

00:02:59.000 However, more or less, it is over.

00:03:01.460 And yet there was no real debate.

00:03:03.580 There was there was a kind of minor debate about whether I don't know if you heard about this, Jonathan, but whether we should have a ticker tape parade in New York City or something to celebrate this supposed victory.

00:03:15.480 That was a kind of minor debate.

00:03:16.900 And I think even even the military was a little bit embarrassed by the suggestion that they have a big mass parade to celebrate the Iraq War.

00:03:24.680 So what do you make of this?

00:03:27.460 This this this kind of irony that I'm speaking of?

00:03:31.280 It's almost as if this was the most important thing in so many people's lives on the left and right and the mainstream media and the conservative movement.

00:03:39.240 And yet they've now kind of forgotten about it.

00:03:41.820 What do you think about this, Jonathan?

00:03:46.160 Yes, I think Iraq in some ways is the first postmodern war. 0.94

00:03:49.740 It's the first ironic and reflexive war.

00:03:52.220 And there's a constituent interconnected set of constituencies out there who now wishing in some ways to forget it occurred because the war was a grandiloquent failure in its own terms, certainly in the grandstanding terms that it was put forward to the American and to other peoples.

00:04:08.340 It changed the regime in Iraq and the political set of inside that Arab nation state is now totally different.

00:04:16.240 However, it brought forces forces that were latent there anyway, even under Saddam.

00:04:21.420 So there has been a big change, but it's only for Iraq.

00:04:25.260 Nothing else has changed anywhere.

00:04:27.920 And all that's happened is the dictatorship was taken down, a sort of Arab fascist sort of government was taken down, really.

00:04:35.960 And the forces that were held down, these Shia forces in the south of the country have now become a democratic mandated majority.

00:04:45.400 But they don't rule in a democratic way, in a way that the Americans thought they would.

00:04:51.300 They rule in a purely sectarian way, playing off the other two groups against them and dominating everything from their own point of view and doing to the other groups in some respects what Saddam did to them, which is not the reasons why the war was fought.

00:05:04.900 And considering the amount of blood and material that was lost, the $3 trillion, the cost of the whole war from beginning to end, U.S. dollars, and the death total of around $160,000, that's the most lowercase revisionist death total.

00:05:28.220 So there are higher ones in the anti-war movement and among certain historians of up to three-quarters of a million, about $27 million in Iraq as a whole.

00:05:38.560 So that's the sort of package that you are presented with.

00:05:44.060 And the war has not been a success.

00:05:45.820 No, let's – before we talk about how we got into the mess and the origins of the Iraq War, let's put a little more pressure on this aspect of democracy in itself.

00:05:59.960 And, you know, oftentimes Americans, the American public are deemed naive, they're made fun of.

00:06:07.120 And, you know, to be frank, and I'm speaking of American, in some ways I think a lot of these criticisms are valid.

00:06:12.760 I mean I remember listening to talk radio in the mid-2000s.

00:06:17.820 These are just normal people.

00:06:19.500 I don't think this was, you know, manipulated propaganda.

00:06:23.480 Normal people calling up and being like, yeah, we're going to give them a democracy and they're going to start shopping in malls and not worrying about radical Islam and this kind of thing.

00:06:33.100 You know, democracy itself was just this kind of vision of becoming a, you know, American postmodern nihilist or something where you spend your life buying shoes and, you know, working in a post-industrial cubicle or something like this.

00:06:51.100 But, of course, you know, democracy, there's the crossy with the – not just the demos.

00:06:57.320 It's not just a kind of way of life.

00:06:58.960 It's a form of power.

00:07:00.280 And the great irony, particularly for the conservative movement and the neocons who are now obsessed with Iran, is that the Shia Muslims, who, you know, Iran is a Shia Muslim country, have been empowered perhaps even beyond their wildest dreams before 2003 in the sense that you had a – Saddam was a Sunni dictator, kind of Arab fascist is not a bad way of describing him. 0.65

00:07:28.500 And he was ruling in some ways on behalf of a Sunni minority.

00:07:33.820 He was keeping the Shia in check. 1.00

00:07:35.320 He was keeping the country together.

00:07:37.680 Now you have an empowered Shia majority.

00:07:40.860 You have Iran, which has more influence in its neighboring country, you know, because democracy was put forth.

00:07:48.120 So do you think that that is kind of this – you know, the two sides of democracy, this kind of hokey notion of democracy that everyone's happy and free and, you know, they're all shopaholics.

00:08:02.760 That's the kind of vulgar hokum that seems to be what was put forward by George Bush and was actually believed by a lot of Americans.

00:08:11.220 And then there's actually the kind of – the democracy that's much more equivocal and is actually about power and has unintended consequences and so on and so forth.

00:08:21.440 Do you think that people have learned anything by this?

00:08:24.460 Do you think that the foreign policy establishment gets it?

00:08:28.300 Do you think that the public, general public, are maybe a little more cynical or realistic this time around?

00:08:34.620 Probably a little bit, although it will be marginal once the propaganda has cranked out yet again.

00:08:39.880 I think nothing that happened is particularly mysterious to experts on that area of the world in the State Department.

00:08:47.200 But they're a tiny fraction of the educated American polity.

00:08:50.940 They could have predicted what would happen.

00:08:53.180 There are no bourgeois institutions.

00:08:55.280 There are no middle-ranked civic institutions in a country like Iraq.

00:08:58.840 So people will vote nakedly along sectional lines.

00:09:01.600 And they will vote along interest group lines.

00:09:03.740 They will vote along communitarian lines.

00:09:07.960 And you will basically just shift power from one group to another.

00:09:11.820 And the groups, although they reach concordance with each other, have no concept of sharing power in an equitable way because it's about group domination.

00:09:20.100 And certain policies in the West have always resembled this.

00:09:25.440 Northern Ireland, for a long time, was not run along lines of left-right, non-communitarian democracy, individualized bourgeois democracy.

00:09:36.060 But whether you were a Unionist, whether you were a Protestant, whether you were a Nationalist, whether you were a Catholic, for example, was all important.

00:09:43.080 And in those kinds of societies, these divisions were the Kurds in the North as well.

00:09:48.080 It's all that matters.

00:09:49.040 And so what the United States of America succeeded in doing is they took down a particularly virulent form of Sunni elitism and have replaced it by mass tabisitri, Shia democracy linked to Iran.

00:10:03.180 And that is the dispensation which now ruled.

00:10:06.000 Now, if Americans were told that they'd go through this great expense of war, men and materiel, never mind financing, to achieve such a limited end, it would have completely blunted all of the idealistic sort of posturing that led up to the war and its aftermath.

00:10:22.180 I do think, though, that people are a little more chagrined afterwards, and the sort of Democratic Party side of the agenda, which always tends to be a bit more cynical, a bit more passive, a bit more disinterested in terms of foreign affairs, a bit more realistic about the realities of power and how it can be exercised in other societies with very different dynamics, that has largely won through.

00:10:47.700 But I don't know what shape the anti-war movement is like in the United States or whether, in any respects, it has collapsed.

00:10:55.800 Well, it's a very good question because I mentioned how the Iraq War defined the conservative movement and was a kind of shibboleth within that movement.

00:11:03.840 But it also defined the left.

00:11:06.840 And there was a very strong anti-war left.

00:11:09.940 It might not have reached the peaks of the anti-Vietnam movement, which, you know, became a social movement and spilled over into all these areas.

00:11:19.600 In some ways, that revolution had already taken place.

00:11:22.460 But it was a very powerful thing.

00:11:24.320 And in some ways, I think, you know, so much of the anti-war movement was probably absorbed into Obama.

00:11:32.040 And, you know, now the notion, I mean, Obama, again, Obama is a very equivocal figure.

00:11:38.820 He has he hasn't more or less ended the war in Iraq.

00:11:43.260 But then he's kind of taken on, you know, a foreign policy, which is almost George W. Bush light.

00:11:50.300 You know, it's like we won't spend three trillion on some lunatic crusade in Iraq. 0.85

00:11:55.480 We're going to spend half a trillion on a smaller lunatic crusade in Libya, which, which, again, has the same unintended consequences and so on and so forth, although it's on just a smaller scale. 0.71

00:12:09.840 So, you know, in some ways, it's just kind of the, you know, the old boss, you know, same or the new boss, same as the old boss, although maybe not as crazy.

00:12:20.040 But it's hard to say there's a compliment.

00:12:21.860 So in some ways, the whole anti-war movement has just been absorbed into the system, which it once supposed.

00:12:29.660 And, you know, to go back, you know, to what I mentioned before, I think a lot of this idea that people want to almost forget about the Iraq war is because, you know, much like 9-11 put the whole world on a new footing.

00:12:44.380 You know, whether that was justified or not, you can argue, but it did.

00:12:47.940 And I think the 2008 financial crisis put the world on a different footing.

00:12:53.840 I think social mood is fundamentally different.

00:12:56.040 I think people have different expectations.

00:12:58.360 They have different perceptions of the West on power now.

00:13:01.820 And so do you have any thoughts about that, of kind of this new, you know, I think we really are.

00:13:09.340 We're in a different social mood zone, you know, pardon me for the clumsiness of that term.

00:13:17.040 But, you know, than we were in the mid-2000s.

00:13:19.640 We're in a kind of different world.

00:13:21.040 Yes, I think the pretensions of the Bush presidency have been exploded.

00:13:26.360 I think the reason the Republicans lost to Obama is largely placed, can be placed at the door of George W. Bush.

00:13:34.060 I think there was, at the end of his regime, at the end of his second term, there was an enormous amount of sort of despair and onnui,

00:13:42.140 particularly in conservative circles, about George W. Bush, and it's why McCain, who was almost as ardent in foreign policy terms,

00:13:50.020 particularly around issues like Iran, couldn't pick up the baton there.

00:13:54.360 It was the fact that George had ruined it for them with what appeared to be lies from the European perspective to get people into the war in the first instance.

00:14:05.940 But there were no weapons of mass destruction.

00:14:08.040 There was a high probability that there were none.

00:14:11.460 Many other countries, small countries like the Netherlands and Northern European societies,

00:14:15.440 who tend to be past 15 orientation anyway,

00:14:18.080 and therefore whose judgments are not really listened to when the big brokers of power sit down glabally with each other.

00:14:24.820 But they had suspected for a long time that there were none of these weapons.

00:14:28.900 Most people thought there were such weapons or early systems to develop them,

00:14:33.800 because Saddam's government was the sort of regime that would want them.

00:14:37.580 What appears to have happened is he was developing low-level chemical and biological weapons,

00:14:42.580 which is the poor man's bomb, and had an extremely rudimentary nuclear program.

00:14:46.660 And yet he abolished it because he feared the Americans would use any programs for mass death as an excuse to invade.

00:14:55.320 One of the ironies about all of these things, of course, is Saddam was a staunch ally of the United States. 0.53

00:15:00.440 Yes.

00:15:00.840 And we've all seen the photos of Saddam in tuxedo and little Dickey Bowtie stood next to Rumsfeld,

00:15:07.060 laughing it up in Baghdad during the height of the Iran-Iraq war.

00:15:10.860 Right. Gaddafi was an ally after the Iraq war, but in the mid to late 2000s, you know, he had ended his nuclear program.

00:15:22.280 He was making nice with Washington.

00:15:24.380 And I think in some ways what Washington keeps teaching the world is don't play nice with the United States.

00:15:32.120 It doesn't pay.

00:15:33.000 The U.S. will forget what you've done, and they might end up attacking you.

00:15:38.340 In some ways, you know, you need to be a realistic policymaker.

00:15:42.480 You need to speak a language, so to speak, or you need to have a give and take.

00:15:47.260 There needs to be a rational discourse that, you know, we have certain ends we want to achieve.

00:15:52.040 If you help us, we'll give you this, so on and so forth.

00:15:54.520 With the United States, and I don't know if it has to do with, you know, I don't know, you know, sociopaths running the country or democracy itself,

00:16:02.800 which is so fluid and influenced by emotion and so on and so forth.

00:16:10.380 But I don't think there's any rational reason for any foreign power to trust Washington.

00:16:18.160 You know, there's...

00:16:18.560 No, but I don't think they do anyway.

00:16:20.180 Well...

00:16:20.440 I think somebody as rude as Saddam didn't either. 0.77

00:16:23.760 Yeah.

00:16:24.520 His basic mistake was Kuwait, when the Americans put out conflicting signals.

00:16:29.740 But Saddam ought to have known that the Americans would not tolerate him taking Kuwait.

00:16:33.680 The whole purpose of these Arab gerontocracies and feudal states in the Gulf is to break up the possibility that dangerous Arab tendencies could emerge 1.00

00:16:42.940 that might adopt an anti-Western and an anti-Israeli specificity.

00:16:48.300 And there is a degree to which countries in the Middle East are kept supine under Arab giant regimes that are loyal to their Western paymasters. 1.00

00:17:02.360 And there's two premises upon which all of that is based, the flow of oil and that it's kept so,

00:17:08.140 with a minor corollary over to the effect that radical pan-nationalism in an Arab sense and Islamism should be avoided.

00:17:17.120 And the second one is that the regime should not be too dangerous for Israel's future existence,

00:17:23.100 even though it's understood that the Arab masses loathes Israel and would like to destroy it.

00:17:27.580 And that is a reality of the Arab world and of the Muslim world in general and of Arab and Muslim politics.

00:17:34.600 But as long as those feelings can't actualize themselves in threatening parallel state agencies or staple agencies, this is fine.

00:17:43.020 The trouble with Iran at the moment is Iran appears to be a second world state of threatening aspect 1.00

00:17:49.600 that might pose, in the most lurid of circumstances, an existential threat to Israel's existence.

00:17:57.020 And all of the pressure which is being put upon Iran is purely because it's seen in that light,

00:18:02.100 and the Israelis are calling in every favor they possibly can, particularly from the United States.

00:18:07.080 Netanyahu is turning up later this week again for more consultations,

00:18:11.560 because Israel is obsessed with the idea that Iran is a threat to them,

00:18:15.340 and the United States is obsessed with giving Israel what it wants in relation to Middle Eastern power diplomacy.

00:18:22.380 The correct position for the United States is the power, of course, is to be more even-handed and to have Arab allies. 0.99

00:18:28.460 But such is the fervor of pro-Israeli sentiment in the United States,

00:18:33.920 not least orchestrated by tens of millions of ardent Christian Zionists, 0.92

00:18:38.380 who are actually extraordinarily important, particularly to the Republican Party.

00:18:41.840 that the interest of the United States as a state is itself skewed,

00:18:47.320 because they have interests on the Arab side that perpetually get overlooked,

00:18:51.000 despite key Arab allies like Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

00:18:55.040 Yes, without question. I mean, it's a very complicated issue.

00:18:58.360 You obviously have a great deal of Jewish money supporting,

00:19:02.060 and not just Jewish money, but Jewish Zionist money supporting Democratic candidates,

00:19:06.840 and then you have the Christian Zionist base that doesn't seem to be financial,

00:19:12.120 seems to be emotional or spiritual.

00:19:15.700 Those are very powerful forces.

00:19:17.560 Let's talk a little bit about the origins of the war.

00:19:20.820 You know, I've mentioned before just how 9-11 put the world, Washington, on a new footing.

00:19:27.380 New things were thinkable after that campaign.

00:19:31.760 And certainly, the neocons had drawn up plans for an Iraq evasion.

00:19:39.400 They actually issued a paper that was signed by all sorts of neocons,

00:19:43.000 and kind of beltway-type, Dick Cheney-type people,

00:19:46.160 of, you know, we need to attack Saddam. 0.73

00:19:48.960 And I think they even mentioned some things that are fodder for the 9-11 truth movement,

00:19:56.500 of, you know, barring a Pearl Harbor-like attack,

00:19:59.360 this will be difficult to achieve, and so on and so forth.

00:20:02.380 But what do you think are the major factors?

00:20:05.820 I mean, in terms of the origins of the war,

00:20:08.400 I think obviously 9-11 just kind of put everything on a new footing.

00:20:12.740 The oil question is a very difficult one.

00:20:16.680 You know, obviously oil has become immensely more expensive since the campaign.

00:20:22.860 And, you know, corporations like Exxon and so on and so forth have become wildly profitable.

00:20:28.180 They're either – Exxon is either the first or the second largest company in the United States

00:20:33.720 in terms of market capitalization zone and so forth.

00:20:36.520 So, you know, that must have paid a factor, although it's a very difficult one.

00:20:41.060 It's not like the U.S. just wanted to grab the oil.

00:20:43.820 They haven't done that.

00:20:44.840 And then you also have the issue of Israel and, you know,

00:20:49.520 the Israel's fervent backers in the United States, the neocons.

00:20:53.240 So how would you try to piece this together?

00:20:55.760 It's a very – it's a difficult puzzle.

00:20:57.580 And I don't think – with something like this, I don't think it pays to be conspiratorial.

00:21:02.400 Like there was something – you know, I've heard some people,

00:21:04.620 George Bush wanted to invade Saddam because they attempted to assassinate his father or something.

00:21:09.620 You know, I think that that's just too cheap and easy.

00:21:12.000 I think this is a very complicated issue.

00:21:14.660 So how, Jonathan, would you put some of these pieces together, you know, 9-11, oil, Israel, and so forth?

00:21:22.400 Yes, I think after 9-11, America had a wake-up call and a call to arms against complacency

00:21:29.240 and had a neo-imperial spasm.

00:21:31.920 And for a period of about five years after the 9-11 attacks,

00:21:36.800 became a much more right-wing imperialist nation-state,

00:21:40.100 looking after itself much more, much rougher around the world,

00:21:45.440 resiled from many liberal codices that restricted the operations of the Central Intelligence Agency,

00:21:51.740 restricted its ability to intervene in other countries,

00:21:54.680 restricted its ability to engage in torture and black activities,

00:21:59.040 restricted its activities in relation to kidnapping

00:22:02.620 and taking people across borders without their consent

00:22:07.120 and without the consent of the governments that prevailed in those areas.

00:22:10.800 So there was a tightening up and there was a ratcheting up

00:22:13.580 of the sort of counter-revolutionary warfare,

00:22:16.820 espionage-related and actual warfare that the Americans were there to fight.

00:22:21.020 And in the course of this, things became much more radicalized

00:22:24.880 and ideas and sentiments along the lines of

00:22:28.760 we can't have errant third-world dictators who used to be clients of ours

00:22:33.640 but then who militarily act against our interests, witness Kuwait,

00:22:37.880 running around and developing weapons of mass destruction

00:22:41.360 which could, in a certain type of circumstances,

00:22:44.080 find their hands into parallel-state actors like the al-Qaeda network.

00:22:48.320 And I think this was the motivation for the war 0.88

00:22:51.280 which, in a moment, reconsideration reveals itself to be something

00:22:59.080 that's like a tenth-rate policy paper that will be shot down

00:23:02.660 by a much better policy one since some brainstorming session in the State Department

00:23:08.740 because, firstly, Saddam is a sane dictator

00:23:12.640 who is regarded as a secularist and almost a communist by al-Qaeda.

00:23:17.320 There is no interconnection between those movements at all.

00:23:21.460 Indeed, Ba'athism was considered by Islamists to be an enemy ideology.

00:23:26.100 They only have time for them when they fight against Western and Israeli interests. 0.52

00:23:30.940 There were no al-Qaeda operatives whatsoever in Iraq.

00:23:34.700 Meetings between some of his security people, the Muhorbat and al-Qaeda,

00:23:39.540 were the meetings which go on all the time.

00:23:41.860 There were many meetings between the CIA and the network which became al-Qaeda

00:23:45.280 because they financed them to fight against the Russians in Afghanistan,

00:23:48.920 which is where they first got close to each other

00:23:51.120 and where Osama cut his teeth prior to launching his crusade against the United States.

00:23:56.500 So foreign policy is a dangerous and a complicated area.

00:24:02.140 But I personally think that the factors involving the attempted assassination of Bush Sr.,

00:24:08.240 which did occur by all accounts,

00:24:10.520 the factors involving the oil wealth of the country

00:24:13.380 and its privatization after its nationalization against Western commercial and corporate interests

00:24:19.520 by the Ba'athists in the past, these are all minor.

00:24:22.940 They're all part of the mix.

00:24:24.680 But you don't go to war for reasons like this.

00:24:27.020 You also have a Churchillian psychology in relation to President Bush

00:24:31.160 and the belief that the West must act and must do things in a decisive military way.

00:24:37.120 If Gore had been president, I doubt the Iraq war would have occurred.

00:24:41.940 Hmm. I'm not sure I agree with you, actually, on that last assertion.

00:24:47.100 You know, Gore was talking a big talk when Clinton actually did a kind of mini-Iraq war in the late 90s

00:24:55.820 where they were attacking Saddam over airspace.

00:24:59.680 I think there was actually – there obviously is an anti-war left and things like that.

00:25:04.860 But in terms of the neocons, neoliberals, there was a broad consensus about going to war in the early 2000s,

00:25:13.860 one that isn't there in the establishment now.

00:25:16.820 And, you know, you don't see the Council on Foreign Relations.

00:25:21.220 You see them actually talking against invading Iran.

00:25:25.060 But that was – it was definitely not the case in the early 2000s.

00:25:30.420 One of the reasons why there is such reluctance to go on Iran,

00:25:33.560 one of the reasons why America is in a non-militant posture in relation to Iran,

00:25:38.720 it's because of Iraq.

00:25:40.520 The Iraqi war has been such a disaster and has burnt itself into the consciousness, 0.99

00:25:45.560 not of the American population, who's soon forgotten it,

00:25:48.300 unless they've got some direct military involvement through their own families and so on.

00:25:53.100 Iraq is so – not an issue for contemporary Americans now,

00:25:56.880 that in a strange way it's almost as if that war didn't occur.

00:26:00.100 That's the impression I've got just by being in the United States.

00:26:03.280 It's subsequent to the war.

00:26:05.160 But I think in relation to Iraq,

00:26:07.840 they are so mindful of the minefield of unexpected possibilities

00:26:12.120 that loom as soon as you start using force in relation to these complicated areas,

00:26:17.700 particularly to achieve tendentious and simplistic results.

00:26:21.040 Even in terms of planning, it's quite clear the Bush administration had no plan at all for post-Saddam Iraq.

00:26:27.420 They began with a blank sheet of paper and had made it up as they went along,

00:26:32.120 consulting allies such as the British, who of course used to run Iraq 0.93

00:26:36.080 and have a larger degree of practical knowledge about how you manipulate the groups

00:26:41.380 in the cyber country in order to achieve any sort of stability.

00:26:45.120 So I think the fact that political parties will be set up,

00:26:50.400 hundreds and hundreds of them that later merged into blocks,

00:26:53.360 that later hardened into sectional blocks,

00:26:55.900 caused certain Western policymakers to despair,

00:26:58.580 that they couldn't create a bourgeois democracy in a couple of years inside Iraq.

00:27:03.340 It would take centuries of democracy in these societies

00:27:06.000 for them to develop middle-class, left-right polarities,

00:27:09.380 such as those that exist in Western societies.

00:27:11.800 You've got to basically overcome group-based societies

00:27:16.380 and populist politicians who play on that internally all of the time.

00:27:20.600 Yeah, perhaps even never.

00:27:22.060 I mean, I think there's...

00:27:23.100 Even never, yes.

00:27:23.860 Like India. 0.99

00:27:24.820 India has quite an advanced polity for an ex-third world society. 0.99

00:27:29.500 But all of India's politics is rooted in caste, 0.91

00:27:32.500 rooted in communitarianism,

00:27:34.320 rooted in religiosity.

00:27:35.800 If you're a mainstream Hindu, you vote for the Congress Party. 0.98

00:27:39.320 If you're a militant Hindu, you vote BJP. 0.96

00:27:43.060 If you're a communist, you've got a tiny little slot over to one side.

00:27:46.940 And the cluster of minorities, enormous minorities, 0.98

00:27:49.680 Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, and otherwise,

00:27:52.140 vote for the Congress Party because Congress is less militant

00:27:54.700 and will protect you.

00:27:56.120 Yeah, I think there's something to the idea that it is Northern Europeans

00:28:01.100 or Europeans as a whole who have this abstract corporate notion of the state.

00:28:06.740 It's just something very different,

00:28:08.960 and it might not really work in the Arab mind.

00:28:12.120 And, you know, it gets back to what we were talking about before,

00:28:14.300 of this hokey notion of democracy that George Bush put forth

00:28:19.260 and Americans gobbled up,

00:28:21.720 and the difference between the real existing democracy in the Arab world,

00:28:26.920 just two very different things.

00:28:27.960 And it's something the American public just can't understand.

00:28:31.740 You know, again, the problems of democracy really affecting foreign policy.

00:28:38.240 Let me, you know, there are two interesting issues that I want to talk about

00:28:41.960 and ask you to speculate on.

00:28:44.080 And one of those is the neoconservatives.

00:28:47.100 And, you know, this is a very,

00:28:48.960 in the intellectual history of the American right,

00:28:51.860 it's a very interesting topic.

00:28:52.940 You essentially have a generation of Jews, 1.00

00:28:58.720 mostly in New York City,

00:29:00.160 and it is a Jewish movement,

00:29:01.820 much like Critical Theory or so on and so forth,

00:29:04.420 who were essentially the Trotskyists,

00:29:07.200 who, you know, would argue against the Stalinists

00:29:10.340 and the other alcove of the cafeteria of New York City College,

00:29:15.020 as the story goes.

00:29:15.900 And I think that story is literally true.

00:29:17.780 They seemed, they were very,

00:29:20.140 they were essentially the anti-communist left,

00:29:23.180 which definitely existed,

00:29:25.000 the Trotskyist left.

00:29:25.880 That kind of morphed into a,

00:29:29.380 in the Cold War,

00:29:30.780 into a neoliberal,

00:29:33.320 liberal democratic kind of thing.

00:29:35.800 And then by the Reagan administration and onward,

00:29:38.000 it shifted over to the Republican side.

00:29:40.420 It's an interesting story.

00:29:42.180 And, you know,

00:29:44.080 they seem to have maintained a little bit of that Trotskyist,

00:29:50.820 maybe even demonic spirit.

00:29:53.280 You know, you have people,

00:29:55.400 and, you know,

00:29:56.080 we shouldn't overestimate that spirit within the neocons,

00:30:00.320 but you really did have people like Michael Ledeen.

00:30:03.500 I can't remember the exact phrase he used,

00:30:06.540 but it was something like,

00:30:07.980 we seek chaos in the Middle East. 1.00

00:30:10.380 You know,

00:30:10.540 we seek creative destruction.

00:30:11.860 I think that's what the term he used,

00:30:13.760 much like America is a ever progressive,

00:30:16.660 creative,

00:30:17.240 destructing force.

00:30:18.700 You know, 0.94

00:30:18.820 we must go and smash the Middle East and bring them to a higher level. 1.00

00:30:22.620 I mean, 0.74

00:30:22.820 you have this,

00:30:23.520 a very weird Americanized form of Trotskyist revolutionary fervor.

00:30:29.580 And I,

00:30:29.740 and I think that,

00:30:30.420 that really played a part in the neocons imagination.

00:30:34.400 And obviously at another level,

00:30:36.400 there,

00:30:36.660 there is Israeli nationalists.

00:30:37.940 They are,

00:30:38.160 they're firm Zionists. 0.85

00:30:39.340 So,

00:30:39.960 you know,

00:30:40.580 anyway,

00:30:41.020 it's very complicated issue,

00:30:42.340 but do you think Jonathan,

00:30:43.860 that in some ways the neocons have blown their wad,

00:30:48.620 you know,

00:30:48.820 they,

00:30:48.960 they had their moment where you,

00:30:51.880 you had the opportunity with 9-11 that everyone,

00:30:55.440 again,

00:30:55.680 they're on a new footing.

00:30:56.600 They're,

00:30:56.980 they're ready for war.

00:30:58.320 You had a president who could be cajoled into this,

00:31:03.720 could,

00:31:03.900 could easily be influenced,

00:31:05.020 not,

00:31:05.600 not particularly intelligent.

00:31:07.600 You had the Christian Zionist community,

00:31:09.640 which was kind of,

00:31:11.360 you know,

00:31:12.080 reached its peak,

00:31:14.760 you know,

00:31:14.960 in the mid two thousands and so on and so forth.

00:31:17.080 Do you,

00:31:17.300 do you think that it's in some ways over for them or,

00:31:20.360 or do you think that they too will stage a,

00:31:24.580 a comeback of sorts?

00:31:26.620 I,

00:31:27.100 I actually,

00:31:27.760 I,

00:31:28.020 my view,

00:31:28.780 I think the neocon,

00:31:30.440 the neoconservative era might be really coming to a close.

00:31:33.180 I,

00:31:33.540 I think it,

00:31:34.320 it reached its peak with Bush and I don't think they're going to get a

00:31:37.840 chance to do anything like they've done before.

00:31:40.980 But that's just my view.

00:31:42.140 I might be wrong in that.

00:31:43.440 What are your thoughts on,

00:31:44.520 on the neocons and the future of the neocons,

00:31:46.660 Jonathan?

00:31:47.600 Well,

00:31:47.840 they're tied inbillically to Al Qaeda and to 9-11 because that's what

00:31:52.660 gave them their moment.

00:31:54.020 So if America suffered climactic terrorist attacks of a similar sort,

00:31:59.260 if somebody exploded a nuclear weapon in an American city 15 years from

00:32:03.580 now,

00:32:04.660 then that type of politicking can come back because it's entirely

00:32:10.120 dependent upon events.

00:32:11.960 They will have their own caucuses.

00:32:13.380 They will have their own meetings.

00:32:15.040 They will try and press the flash.

00:32:16.480 They will try and get money into the hands of politicians who are

00:32:19.040 corruptible and can be induced in one direction as against another.

00:32:23.400 But they are now reduced to the ordinary level of middle ranking

00:32:26.460 politicking.

00:32:27.640 They no longer have the ear of anyone in power and their thesis seem to

00:32:31.620 have failed because their thesis in Iraq,

00:32:34.420 whether the Western style liberal democracy could be created in Iraq,

00:32:37.500 which would make Israel safer,

00:32:40.140 but which seemed to be their premise looked out from abroad.

00:32:43.400 All of that seems to be utter nonsense.

00:32:45.340 The Maliki government in Iraq is as anti-Israeli as the Saddam ever was.

00:32:50.160 When Maliki was asked at the White House,

00:32:53.500 who do you support in the upsurge of the Hezbollah war or micro war a couple of years ago

00:32:59.860 between Hezbollah and Israel? 0.52

00:33:02.220 He said,

00:33:02.580 Hezbollah are brothers of the Shia, 0.99

00:33:05.960 and there were extraordinarily pained faces around him in the White House press room

00:33:09.820 because he's responding to a totally different constituency and he's not going to say anything

00:33:15.780 in relation to, you know, sort of American allies who put him in power,

00:33:21.240 which could in any sense deflect from the constituency he represents inside Iraq and outside,

00:33:28.440 because there's this phalanx of Shia power now that exists from Iran through the deserts of southern Iraq

00:33:34.380 into Jordan and out into the Lebanon,

00:33:37.080 which faces off directly against Israel's northern border

00:33:39.780 and where Iran has a proxy army arranged with the Syrians in cohort called the Hezbollah militia.

00:33:46.740 The great unwritten fear in all of this, of course,

00:33:48.920 is that weapons of mass destruction will be given to Hezbollah.

00:33:51.340 Who would use them?

00:33:54.920 Probably.

00:33:55.720 They're ten times more likely to use them than an Iranian state.

00:34:00.160 States are incredibly nervous because of the fear of retribution,

00:34:03.220 which would occur if they use such weapons.

00:34:06.140 But the likelihood that a state would ever give an organization as radical as Hezbollah 0.63

00:34:10.900 as weapons of mass destruction is extremely unlikely

00:34:13.240 because it will be known almost instantly that they've done this.

00:34:16.400 And it's now pretty much known that the Pakistanis, of course,

00:34:19.720 sold the technology of the bomb illicitly to North Korea,

00:34:24.120 which helped them to develop their tiny little device.

00:34:27.460 And Syria, to a degree, that, of course, was destroyed by an Israeli attack,

00:34:37.060 but they only had one place to aim for, and the Syrians were anxious to cover it up.

00:34:41.180 And Libya, Libya had quite an advanced nuclear program,

00:34:45.480 far more advanced than the West thought they did

00:34:47.480 because Libya was always regarded as a very eccentric regime,

00:34:52.220 led by a man who was regarded by the Western popular press as insane.

00:34:56.880 And it surprised the West how advanced their nuclear program was,

00:34:59.620 but they bought it off the shelf from Pakistan.

00:35:02.320 So there is a danger of internal proliferation

00:35:04.640 when these countries begin to get these weapons.

00:35:07.860 But nothing can stop these countries getting these weapons.

00:35:11.120 So this is old technology.

00:35:12.820 This technology is between 70 and 80 years old.

00:35:15.740 These countries are 70 to 80 years behind the West

00:35:18.340 in terms of the economic and technological cusp,

00:35:21.900 and therefore it's inevitable they're going to get them.

00:35:23.880 Between now and 2050,

00:35:26.020 a whole plethora of second- and third-world societies

00:35:28.960 will achieve atomic weapons.

00:35:30.320 Yes, I agree.

00:35:33.220 And I also agree about the reluctance of the states to use them

00:35:37.280 because they have a return address,

00:35:39.220 and retribution would be swift.

00:35:41.360 I think at some level all of these states are going to be rationed.

00:35:45.780 They're going to rationally calculate that

00:35:47.420 they would only use such a weapon in an extreme exigent.

00:35:52.500 Let's talk about it.

00:35:53.640 I have two more issues that are both a little bit speculative,

00:35:57.060 but let's talk about this Christian Zionist issue.

00:36:01.540 You know, it's interesting when you look at it

00:36:03.880 because it is a purely American phenomenon.

00:36:07.960 It's very hard to find Christian Zionists anywhere in Europe. 0.82

00:36:12.060 Perhaps you could find some in England.

00:36:15.040 But what do you think the origins of this movement are

00:36:20.580 and the larger meaning of it?

00:36:22.880 And do you think it's going to have a future of some sort?

00:36:27.700 And I'll just mention that there has been-

00:36:31.200 there are obviously a lot of dealings

00:36:33.480 between many of these, you know,

00:36:35.800 fanatical Christian Zionist preachers like Heiji or Pat Robertson

00:36:39.780 and so on and so forth,

00:36:40.460 where they're literally dealing with Israel.

00:36:43.100 They're being sent on trips to Israel.

00:36:45.100 I think Israel famously bought Jerry Falwell a plane,

00:36:48.740 all this kind of stuff.

00:36:49.600 So obviously there's some, you know,

00:36:52.680 pressing of the flesh that gets this relationship started.

00:36:56.000 But, you know, it's-

00:36:57.420 I don't think one should think that they don't sincerely believe in this,

00:37:01.780 I don't know what to call it,

00:37:04.460 ideology or cult or something like this,

00:37:06.840 where they believe that there's going to be

00:37:08.640 some kind of Armageddon in the foreseeable future

00:37:11.220 and that the Jews must inhabit the Holy Land 0.99

00:37:14.080 and there'll be a rapture.

00:37:15.760 And I guess in some ways it's a very strange vision,

00:37:19.280 which is almost anti-Semitic in its views.

00:37:24.020 But what do you think about the Christian Zionists? 1.00

00:37:26.340 Are they just kind of useful idiots of Israel? 1.00

00:37:29.380 Or is this something that might actually have a future? 1.00

00:37:33.440 Or what are your thoughts on this issue, Jonathan? 1.00

00:37:36.220 Yes, I think they are useful idiots, 1.00

00:37:37.840 although I think they are totally sincere. 1.00

00:37:41.240 It's always wrong to think that people don't believe

00:37:43.100 what is attested to them in terms of their beliefs.

00:37:46.720 And they come out of the semi-crazed world

00:37:50.660 of millennial Protestantism inside the United States.

00:37:54.180 The Roman Catholic writer Flannery O'Connor

00:37:56.040 wrote an extraordinary book about a time

00:37:58.420 in the deep south of the United States

00:38:00.000 amidst Protestant and revivalist cults

00:38:02.380 called Wise Blood.

00:38:03.900 Wise Blood!

00:38:04.740 And it's about these good old boys

00:38:08.460 who wrestle with serpents in church,

00:38:10.880 literally have fights with pythons and stuff in church,

00:38:13.720 fire into the ceiling of the church

00:38:15.820 during ecstatic raptures

00:38:17.340 when they're whipped up to frenzy

00:38:19.260 by various apocalypsian preachers,

00:38:22.140 and so on.

00:38:22.980 This is the politicization of good old-time religion.

00:38:26.640 And it's always had a mass following in the United States

00:38:30.320 because the United States is a Puritan country

00:38:32.520 founded by English revolutionary Protestants

00:38:34.840 and also Scottish brethren of the same

00:38:37.220 who went over there

00:38:38.660 because they couldn't create a theocratic state in England

00:38:41.940 based upon these sorts of maxims.

00:38:44.420 So they believe all this.

00:38:46.180 And the active side of Protestantism

00:38:48.880 does have millenarian and apocalyptian features

00:38:52.220 whereby they want the end of the world or end times.

00:38:56.200 And Catholicism and Orthodox Protestantism

00:39:00.260 are much more sedate.

00:39:01.740 Although Christianity is a millenarian religion,

00:39:04.400 it's always believed

00:39:05.460 that the world will come to an end at a particular time.

00:39:09.120 But that's so pushed far down the agenda

00:39:11.820 in relation to mainstream Christianity

00:39:14.120 that it's almost not there.

00:39:16.040 But with these fanatics,

00:39:18.060 it's very much there and it's ever-present.

00:39:21.560 What they want, of course,

00:39:23.100 completely diverges from Israeli interest.

00:39:26.200 Because in the end,

00:39:27.280 these Israelis and Jews generally

00:39:29.060 will all be converted to Christianity 1.00

00:39:30.840 and to the Protestant version of Christianity

00:39:33.060 of a particular sort anyway. 0.99

00:39:35.200 If not, they're all damned.

00:39:36.900 So it's not in their interests either.

00:39:39.260 But politically,

00:39:40.960 they are a very potent force.

00:39:43.320 And when they're whipped up,

00:39:44.440 they can be used by other people,

00:39:46.500 even though they have quite transparently

00:39:48.380 their own agendas.

00:39:49.820 It's like when there was Hollywood blocking

00:39:52.380 of the distribution of the Christian film,

00:39:56.100 The Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson.

00:39:58.480 Gibson went to Falwell

00:39:59.820 and all the other leaders

00:40:00.900 of the Protestant millenarian tendency

00:40:02.700 in the United States.

00:40:04.260 And despite the fact

00:40:04.960 that it's a very Catholic theological film,

00:40:07.340 an ultra-Catholic theological film,

00:40:09.380 they were so enraptured by it,

00:40:11.840 they really had a rapture then and there,

00:40:13.440 that they agreed to disseminate that film

00:40:16.380 right across the Bible Belt and beyond.

00:40:19.220 And when they moved,

00:40:20.080 they had enormous social power

00:40:21.520 and a lot of money.

00:40:22.940 And they were blocked by

00:40:23.880 sort of cinemas in Texas and elsewhere

00:40:26.980 where every part of the multiplex

00:40:29.020 would show The Passion of the Christ

00:40:30.360 12 screenings a day.

00:40:32.060 And they would bus in their people 1.00

00:40:33.600 from local churches

00:40:34.620 so that the cinemas were always full.

00:40:36.900 So it was everyone was a winner.

00:40:38.820 And Gibson did something incredibly clever there

00:40:41.820 by tapping the energy of these people

00:40:44.000 who, it would have been otherwise thought,

00:40:47.240 would have nothing to do

00:40:48.160 with a sort of Hollywood sophisticate

00:40:51.660 and sort of actor like Gibson.

00:40:55.360 But when these people move,

00:40:57.080 they move and they're very well-oiled

00:40:58.820 and they've got a lot of political abilities,

00:41:01.260 obviously, to mobilize their own people.

00:41:04.920 And I suppose this outsider 1.00

00:41:07.380 in the Republican race at the moment

00:41:10.020 who is giving Romney a run for his money.

00:41:12.660 Rick Santorum.

00:41:14.520 Yes.

00:41:15.140 He's pure, even though he's a Catholic, isn't he? 0.99

00:41:17.760 Well, you know, it's funny.

00:41:19.200 He's getting the support of these people.

00:41:20.800 I mean, it's quite obvious from the outside.

00:41:22.620 Oh, without question.

00:41:23.460 It is a funny thing.

00:41:24.900 Just to mention,

00:41:26.900 you have Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich,

00:41:29.720 you have others.

00:41:30.220 There's a funny way the, you know,

00:41:34.060 snake-wrestling Baptist Christian Zionists, 0.92

00:41:39.640 they're almost, they look to Catholic leaders.

00:41:42.820 I've kind of noticed this trend.

00:41:44.740 There's another Catholic from Kansas

00:41:47.300 named Sam Brownback,

00:41:48.720 who's thoroughly awful in every possible issue.

00:41:52.400 He wants, you know, mass immigration, 1.00

00:41:54.340 and we need to also send troops to Darfur.

00:41:56.880 So he's, I don't think there's,

00:42:00.400 you know, I almost find myself agreeing

00:42:02.180 with the kind of wishy-washy

00:42:03.820 mainstream Episcopalians or something,

00:42:05.980 which is, I guess, my religious background.

00:42:08.980 You know, they seem to, you know,

00:42:10.480 they're kind of, 0.99

00:42:11.060 they're maybe a little bit silly 0.99

00:42:12.600 on, you know, gay marriage or something, 0.99

00:42:15.220 but at least they're not bringing about

00:42:18.300 the end of the world

00:42:19.060 with some of their foreign policy desires.

00:42:23.440 But it's a very strange thing,

00:42:25.620 but I've always found,

00:42:27.340 I don't know,

00:42:28.100 it's hard for me to put into words.

00:42:29.460 I've always found it a little bit odd

00:42:30.520 that you have these Baptists, 0.99

00:42:32.540 yet you have these Catholics leading them.

00:42:35.900 It's almost like they almost recognize 0.98

00:42:38.880 kind of their own silliness, 0.86

00:42:40.720 and they look to a more establishment religion 0.88

00:42:44.160 as their, you know, for their leaders.

00:42:48.420 I also think a lot of these

00:42:49.320 intra-Christian rivalries of the past have gone.

00:42:51.840 Oh, yeah.

00:42:52.120 One of the things that the Gibson in,

00:42:53.940 it's Christians against the rest now, 0.98

00:42:55.900 and all of these inter-denominational disputes

00:42:58.080 amongst Protestants themselves

00:42:59.400 that used to be so warm and fervid,

00:43:01.780 and kept many of the hateful fires burning

00:43:04.020 in relation to between people

00:43:05.340 who are fundamentally similar,

00:43:07.100 partly given mass migration into the States

00:43:09.340 by people who are not Christian at all,

00:43:11.400 and partly by the change in context

00:43:13.120 of the world around them,

00:43:14.480 and the re-emergence of Islam

00:43:17.580 as, after a sleep of the best part of a millennium,

00:43:21.080 a major force in the non-Western modern world, 0.96

00:43:24.840 which, with migration and immigration en masse,

00:43:27.800 is beginning to become a major player

00:43:29.460 even inside the Western world now,

00:43:31.460 a major minor player.

00:43:33.300 Christians have seen what unites them

00:43:35.020 rather than what divides them,

00:43:36.780 and it's all coming together as the clans,

00:43:40.180 and it's all Christians against all the others now.

00:43:42.420 So I think that's why they're no longer bothered

00:43:45.480 the fact that sort of leading cultural icons

00:43:48.660 like Gibson and leading people

00:43:50.260 like the politicians you've mentioned

00:43:51.620 are actually Roman Catholics

00:43:53.200 whom they wouldn't have followed in the past.

00:43:55.700 Yeah, yeah.

00:43:56.480 No, I think that's true,

00:43:57.940 and in some ways from our radical

00:44:01.820 and racialist perspective,

00:44:03.380 I think that's a good thing.

00:44:05.200 I don't think any kind of war of religions

00:44:07.700 is going to do any good

00:44:11.800 for European civilization.

00:44:15.360 I think getting over that

00:44:16.800 is probably a positive step.

00:44:19.260 Let me talk a little bit about,

00:44:21.960 to bring up one last issue

00:44:24.340 before we end this very interesting conversation,

00:44:27.860 a little bit about the notion

00:44:30.120 of the nation and the state.

00:44:31.820 And, you know, I remember,

00:44:33.960 I guess it was back in 2008 or 2009,

00:44:38.280 Scott McConnell,

00:44:39.880 who was actually my boss in 2007

00:44:43.820 when I worked at the American Conservative Magazine,

00:44:46.880 and he was actually kind of a former,

00:44:48.440 he's Gentile, 1.00

00:44:49.660 but he was a kind of former neocon

00:44:51.080 or neocon ally.

00:44:54.720 And then with a lot of the actions in Kosovo

00:44:59.620 and so on and so forth,

00:45:00.460 I think he kind of recognized

00:45:02.060 that this was leading to,

00:45:03.740 you know, perpetual war for perpetual peace,

00:45:06.560 so on and so forth,

00:45:07.160 and he kind of became a Buchananite,

00:45:09.320 although he always had a,

00:45:10.460 being a bit of a kind of liberal in a way,

00:45:12.520 I don't think he would,

00:45:13.820 I don't think he would get mad at me

00:45:15.840 for saying that.

00:45:16.980 You know, kind of an oddball in some ways

00:45:19.140 in the Buchananite movement,

00:45:20.540 which has a lot more,

00:45:21.960 you know, kind of staunch,

00:45:24.040 Midwestern, Catholic, patriotic kind of people.

00:45:27.540 Anyway, he wrote an article,

00:45:28.700 which I reacted strongly against back in 2008,

00:45:31.920 where he was saying that,

00:45:34.020 more or less,

00:45:36.140 we, with mass immigration

00:45:37.780 and with this new Latino population,

00:45:40.680 maybe even African population,

00:45:42.620 Asian population,

00:45:44.080 this brings certain problems.

00:45:46.140 However, it will spell the end

00:45:48.600 of a neoconformed policy,

00:45:51.800 because the neoconformed policy,

00:45:53.300 at the end of the day,

00:45:54.260 its base is the Protestant white population

00:45:59.520 in Middle America and the South.

00:46:01.640 And in some ways,

00:46:02.400 those are the only people who support it.

00:46:04.420 They're the only people

00:46:05.460 who have a positive view of Israel,

00:46:07.460 for instance.

00:46:08.620 Israel, within the Western world, 0.96

00:46:10.800 certainly within elite institutions,

00:46:13.260 universities within America,

00:46:14.440 all over the world,

00:46:15.940 it is a, if not a pariah,

00:46:18.140 certainly people are quite skeptical

00:46:19.620 of it and its actions,

00:46:21.460 but not so.

00:46:22.560 But the only place in the world,

00:46:23.700 probably Israel itself

00:46:24.500 and the Deep South.

00:46:26.440 What he was saying is that

00:46:27.440 when you have this new

00:46:28.100 multicultural population,

00:46:29.940 that foreign policy will change.

00:46:31.960 And there's a kind of,

00:46:32.760 there's a great irony

00:46:33.840 in the sense of

00:46:34.600 a lot of paleoconservatives,

00:46:37.500 so-called, like Pap Buchanan,

00:46:39.480 would, you know,

00:46:40.520 they oppose immigration,

00:46:41.600 but they also oppose the Iraq War

00:46:43.500 and the neocon agenda.

00:46:45.120 But there's a kind of irony

00:46:46.260 where you,

00:46:48.040 with mass immigration,

00:46:50.000 you will actually get

00:46:51.300 a more isolationist,

00:46:53.000 pacifist foreign policy.

00:46:55.480 And obviously,

00:46:57.080 I think a lot of people,

00:46:58.600 when someone heard this argument,

00:46:59.940 they kind of suspected

00:47:01.360 that this is almost

00:47:02.140 a pro-immigration argument.

00:47:04.100 And, you know,

00:47:04.520 I and others reacted

00:47:05.880 strongly against that.

00:47:07.040 And I think I also mentioned

00:47:08.060 an important criticism,

00:47:09.500 which is that

00:47:10.160 foreign policymaking

00:47:11.500 is one of the most elite

00:47:13.340 activities of government.

00:47:15.980 It is not,

00:47:17.300 you know,

00:47:17.660 only in rare cases

00:47:19.280 like a big war,

00:47:20.600 and we certainly saw this

00:47:21.420 over the past 10 years,

00:47:22.340 but in rare cases

00:47:23.440 like a big war,

00:47:24.300 does it become

00:47:24.920 a populist policy

00:47:26.440 in the sense of

00:47:26.940 you're going to have,

00:47:27.720 you're going to rally

00:47:28.400 the public on behalf

00:47:29.420 of foreign policy.

00:47:30.740 Normally,

00:47:31.160 it is basically something

00:47:32.580 that is affected

00:47:33.800 by elite institutions

00:47:35.520 like the Council

00:47:36.200 on Foreign Relations,

00:47:37.400 diplomats,

00:47:38.540 State Department,

00:47:39.520 so on and so forth.

00:47:40.060 It's a very elite institution

00:47:41.260 that in some ways

00:47:42.020 is buffered

00:47:43.780 from emotional democracy

00:47:46.420 and so on and so forth.

00:47:47.920 So, you know,

00:47:48.460 I said, you know,

00:47:49.020 we could have a worst

00:47:49.760 of all possible worlds

00:47:50.680 where, you know,

00:47:51.140 we have a multicultural population,

00:47:53.060 but then we still have 0.93

00:47:53.980 this horrible neocon

00:47:55.260 foreign policy

00:47:56.440 because you have

00:47:56.840 the same people

00:47:57.700 that are actually

00:47:58.160 running the show.

00:47:59.120 But, you know,

00:47:59.860 in some ways,

00:48:00.980 I think McConnell

00:48:01.860 made a good point

00:48:02.920 because at the end

00:48:04.100 of the day,

00:48:05.380 it is a democracy.

00:48:07.380 And even though democracies

00:48:09.380 might be a sham

00:48:10.200 in some way,

00:48:10.840 they're run by elites,

00:48:12.120 at the end of the day,

00:48:13.240 the character of the people

00:48:14.900 is going to affect government.

00:48:16.540 It just can't,

00:48:17.780 you know,

00:48:18.080 eventually it will.

00:48:19.380 It can't help itself

00:48:20.660 but doing that.

00:48:22.020 And so, you know,

00:48:23.360 I think there's a good question

00:48:24.940 of the future

00:48:25.980 of American foreign policy

00:48:27.500 if current trends continue.

00:48:30.660 That is,

00:48:31.560 if we continue

00:48:32.860 to have the non-white population

00:48:34.840 increases by about

00:48:36.540 a half a percent a year.

00:48:38.260 So it increases

00:48:38.720 about two percent

00:48:39.640 every election cycle.

00:48:41.560 If this keeps going on

00:48:43.380 like this linearly

00:48:44.300 for, you know,

00:48:46.140 let's say another decade or two,

00:48:48.360 what foreign policy

00:48:50.220 is going to be?

00:48:50.880 I mean,

00:48:51.060 we might be in a situation

00:48:52.440 that's dramatically different.

00:48:53.700 We might have a new focus

00:48:56.140 in, say, South America

00:48:58.240 or a new focus

00:48:59.200 of our diplomatic relations

00:49:00.540 with Mexico

00:49:01.860 or something

00:49:03.120 altogether different

00:49:04.120 that's almost unimaginable.

00:49:05.420 So, Jonathan,

00:49:06.320 what are some of your thoughts

00:49:07.420 on this general idea

00:49:08.980 about the nation

00:49:10.360 affecting the state

00:49:11.540 in the foreign policy realm

00:49:13.080 and maybe some of your ideas

00:49:15.260 about what American foreign policy

00:49:16.940 is going to be like?

00:49:18.240 And, you know,

00:49:18.680 also if we project forward

00:49:20.220 a much more impoverished America,

00:49:22.660 an America that can't really 0.93

00:49:24.400 say with a straight face anymore

00:49:26.440 that we are the wealthiest country

00:49:28.480 on Earth,

00:49:29.200 you know,

00:49:29.460 everything, you know,

00:49:30.680 here is processing,

00:49:31.700 you won't be able to say that

00:49:32.880 with a straight face

00:49:33.640 because it's not true.

00:49:35.140 And so,

00:49:35.740 what do you think

00:49:36.660 is the future

00:49:37.560 of American foreign policy?

00:49:40.800 Yes,

00:49:41.280 I think that article

00:49:42.100 that that chap wrote

00:49:43.000 was right,

00:49:44.140 that the time frame

00:49:45.060 is wrong.

00:49:46.240 I think

00:49:46.620 it would take

00:49:48.420 a century to,

00:49:49.260 half a century

00:49:49.720 to a century

00:49:50.340 to make the nation

00:49:51.280 to affect the state

00:49:52.140 in that way,

00:49:53.100 tripping up from the bottom.

00:49:54.840 Policy will still be made

00:49:56.080 by the elites.

00:49:57.340 Indeed,

00:49:57.540 there's been such a change

00:49:58.460 from the Obama regime

00:49:59.920 to the Obama regime

00:50:02.060 from the Bush one

00:50:03.000 that you can almost see

00:50:04.300 the default position

00:50:05.880 emerging there

00:50:06.800 because what will happen

00:50:08.160 is that regimes

00:50:08.840 in the future

00:50:09.400 will be more like Obama 0.98

00:50:10.680 than Obama

00:50:11.240 is allowed to be himself.

00:50:12.500 because my reading

00:50:14.000 of Obama

00:50:14.500 is Obama

00:50:14.980 is not really

00:50:15.720 an ally

00:50:16.180 of the Israelis 0.73

00:50:16.820 at all

00:50:17.480 but is completely

00:50:18.540 hemmed in

00:50:19.160 by the reality

00:50:19.920 of power

00:50:22.340 and money

00:50:22.900 directed to

00:50:23.960 Democratic Party

00:50:25.000 caucuses

00:50:25.600 without which

00:50:26.080 he couldn't have

00:50:26.520 got anywhere.

00:50:27.460 He also needs

00:50:28.280 people who were

00:50:29.000 allied in

00:50:30.240 civil rights causes

00:50:31.260 going back

00:50:32.640 several generations

00:50:34.140 now.

00:50:34.840 So he knows

00:50:35.740 what he can do

00:50:36.420 and what he can't do.

00:50:37.380 But I personally

00:50:38.380 believe he debates

00:50:39.900 with himself

00:50:40.560 about Israeli power

00:50:42.000 dislikes having to

00:50:43.400 negotiate so hard

00:50:45.800 in such a hard

00:50:46.560 and fast manner

00:50:47.180 with Netanyahu.

00:50:48.420 And although they've

00:50:49.240 given the Israelis 0.92

00:50:49.940 everything they want

00:50:50.860 short of absolute war

00:50:52.180 and invasion of Iran

00:50:53.600 I believe that he

00:50:54.980 will never invade Iran

00:50:56.300 and there will not

00:50:57.220 be a U.S. attack 0.68

00:50:58.140 upon Iran 0.78

00:50:58.860 because he

00:50:59.700 axiomatically

00:51:00.340 does not believe

00:51:01.160 in doing so.

00:51:02.460 And all of this

00:51:03.220 pressure is partly

00:51:04.740 a pressure on

00:51:05.360 the United States

00:51:06.320 to go further

00:51:07.220 and is partly

00:51:08.440 Israeli irritation 0.98

00:51:09.660 that Obama

00:51:10.320 is holding the line

00:51:11.420 and the U.S.

00:51:12.640 chiefs of staff

00:51:13.380 are being told

00:51:14.140 to hold this line.

00:51:16.000 And I think

00:51:17.540 that as time

00:51:18.060 goes on

00:51:18.900 American foreign

00:51:21.440 policy will become

00:51:22.440 more U.N.

00:51:23.360 foreign policy

00:51:24.300 and will become

00:51:25.300 less Western

00:51:26.120 and will become

00:51:27.820 less American nationalist

00:51:29.120 and will become

00:51:30.580 more isolationist

00:51:31.520 but it won't be

00:51:32.060 the old style

00:51:32.780 isolationism

00:51:33.540 of a century ago

00:51:34.680 which was an

00:51:35.500 American first

00:51:36.520 a sort of white

00:51:37.600 isolationism

00:51:38.600 it will be

00:51:39.380 an isolationism

00:51:40.380 of the lowest

00:51:40.860 common denominator

00:51:41.760 where you

00:51:42.540 digitally wish

00:51:43.180 to remain

00:51:43.660 inside the U.S.

00:51:45.120 unless you're

00:51:45.680 attacked externally

00:51:46.500 from abroad

00:51:47.300 which the Al-Qaeda

00:51:48.460 attacks could be

00:51:49.340 perceived as an

00:51:50.280 attack from abroad

00:51:51.460 hence justifying

00:51:52.660 the Afghanistan

00:51:53.380 war the first

00:51:54.700 time around

00:51:55.420 but not

00:51:56.600 the Iraqi war

00:51:57.740 and certainly

00:51:58.280 not an Iranian 1.00

00:51:58.960 war maybe

00:51:59.800 to come

00:52:00.340 maybe not

00:52:01.140 so I believe

00:52:02.360 that American

00:52:02.880 foreign policy

00:52:03.540 will just become

00:52:04.600 the declining

00:52:05.900 foreign policy

00:52:06.740 of an increasingly

00:52:07.560 second world

00:52:08.280 country

00:52:08.700 particularly

00:52:09.060 as a major

00:52:09.680 contraction

00:52:10.260 in America's

00:52:11.420 superpower

00:52:11.840 status

00:52:12.300 in the next

00:52:13.440 20 to 25 years

00:52:14.900 countries in

00:52:15.840 Central and Latin

00:52:16.480 America and the

00:52:17.120 Caribbean

00:52:17.420 will become

00:52:17.980 much more

00:52:18.440 important

00:52:18.900 you'll have

00:52:19.660 a reversal

00:52:20.340 of the

00:52:21.560 Monroe

00:52:21.800 doctrine

00:52:22.320 the Monroe

00:52:23.080 doctrine

00:52:23.340 was designed

00:52:24.020 to prevent

00:52:24.640 European powers

00:52:26.180 from imperially

00:52:27.260 meddling in the

00:52:27.960 Americas

00:52:28.360 and was designed

00:52:29.520 to put the

00:52:29.940 whole of the

00:52:30.440 rest of the

00:52:30.880 Americas

00:52:31.260 under North

00:52:33.280 American ages

00:52:34.160 one of the

00:52:35.180 reasons why

00:52:35.720 Latinos have 1.00

00:52:36.500 always fought

00:52:37.060 cultural war

00:52:37.900 against the

00:52:38.620 United States

00:52:39.740 and its influence

00:52:40.980 is because they

00:52:42.060 were felt

00:52:42.580 cold-shouldered

00:52:43.460 and belittled

00:52:43.980 politically

00:52:44.360 in terms of

00:52:45.460 the raw power

00:52:46.260 within the

00:52:47.040 hemisphere

00:52:47.440 but American

00:52:49.000 interests will

00:52:49.560 become hemispherical

00:52:50.440 and will become

00:52:51.040 centred on new

00:52:51.860 factors of interest

00:52:53.080 such as India

00:52:53.660 and China

00:52:54.240 as it becomes

00:52:55.320 less and less

00:52:55.900 of a forceful

00:52:56.720 western power

00:52:57.840 one could always

00:52:58.780 be wrong

00:52:59.400 but it could be

00:53:00.460 that Bush's

00:53:01.040 presidency

00:53:01.520 is the second

00:53:02.120 Bush

00:53:02.580 is the last

00:53:03.560 hurrah

00:53:04.080 of various

00:53:05.060 forces

00:53:05.580 which are now

00:53:07.040 replete

00:53:07.640 and partly

00:53:08.360 exhausted

00:53:08.880 themselves

00:53:09.420 in that

00:53:09.880 particular war

00:53:10.860 and it was a

00:53:11.920 war which

00:53:12.360 Obama described 0.99

00:53:13.120 as a dumb 1.00

00:53:13.700 war 1.00

00:53:14.060 didn't he

00:53:14.560 that was one

00:53:15.440 of his

00:53:15.760 phrases

00:53:16.880 that haunt

00:53:17.620 his administration

00:53:18.440 and of course

00:53:19.260 he was right

00:53:19.800 it was an

00:53:20.200 extraordinarily 1.00

00:53:20.680 dumb war 0.99

00:53:21.300 against the 1.00

00:53:21.800 wrong regime

00:53:22.460 at the wrong

00:53:23.320 time

00:53:23.820 for the wrong

00:53:24.600 reasons

00:53:25.200 that cost

00:53:25.900 an enormous

00:53:26.320 amount of

00:53:26.820 money

00:53:27.100 and achieved

00:53:28.420 the opposite

00:53:28.960 of what it

00:53:29.540 set out to

00:53:30.060 achieve

00:53:30.420 it set out

00:53:31.320 to achieve

00:53:32.160 a westernized

00:53:34.160 Iraq

00:53:34.540 which would be

00:53:35.880 impermeable

00:53:37.080 to Islamism

00:53:37.900 and not a

00:53:38.860 threat to its

00:53:39.460 neighbours

00:53:39.840 and not a

00:53:40.860 threat to Israel 0.88

00:53:41.620 you now have

00:53:42.880 an Iraq

00:53:43.460 which is as

00:53:44.300 anti-Israeli

00:53:45.000 as it ever

00:53:45.420 was

00:53:46.000 which is a

00:53:46.940 sectional

00:53:47.440 democracy

00:53:47.960 which is the

00:53:48.840 only way

00:53:49.140 democracy will

00:53:49.780 work in those

00:53:50.420 parts of the

00:53:50.980 world

00:53:51.440 and which is

00:53:52.680 a hotbed of

00:53:53.720 Iranian influence

00:53:54.860 and Iranian

00:53:55.880 Iran has now 0.99

00:53:56.760 replaced all the

00:53:57.500 other regimes

00:53:58.080 including Cuba

00:53:58.940 and North Korea

00:53:59.700 and Syria

00:54:00.640 as the worst

00:54:01.620 regime in the

00:54:02.300 world

00:54:02.620 from the

00:54:03.180 perspective of

00:54:03.740 the American

00:54:04.200 neoconservatives

00:54:05.300 but nobody

00:54:06.200 other than them

00:54:06.820 and their allies

00:54:07.420 thinks of Iran 1.00

00:54:08.200 in those terms

00:54:09.040 although people

00:54:10.240 do not want

00:54:10.740 Iran to get 0.97

00:54:11.740 a nuclear weapon

00:54:12.420 they don't want

00:54:13.520 Burma or Cuba

00:54:16.040 to get nuclear

00:54:16.680 weapons either

00:54:17.340 they don't want

00:54:18.080 Argentina and

00:54:19.180 Brazil and

00:54:19.620 South Africa

00:54:20.080 all of whom

00:54:20.620 have got advanced

00:54:21.340 nuclear programmes

00:54:22.240 to develop

00:54:23.100 nuclear weapons

00:54:23.740 either

00:54:24.100 it's largely

00:54:25.260 this

00:54:25.720 rather than

00:54:27.200 any

00:54:27.580 existential fear

00:54:29.540 that the bulk

00:54:30.480 of Gentiles 0.97

00:54:31.100 have on Israel's

00:54:31.960 behalf

00:54:32.480 this sort of

00:54:33.740 teeth-wrenching

00:54:35.340 sort of Zionist

00:54:36.340 default position

00:54:37.240 is held by

00:54:38.380 nobody

00:54:38.880 except certain

00:54:40.280 Zionists 1.00

00:54:40.760 themselves

00:54:41.360 the political

00:54:43.520 and moneyed

00:54:44.120 club in the

00:54:44.640 United States

00:54:45.460 and the

00:54:46.260 Christian Zionist 0.91

00:54:47.060 movement

00:54:47.480 which extends

00:54:48.800 across the

00:54:49.580 great swathe

00:54:50.820 of Protestant

00:54:51.320 radicalism

00:54:52.060 nobody else

00:54:53.000 in the world

00:54:53.420 perceives the

00:54:54.040 world in this

00:54:54.640 way

00:54:55.060 when I open

00:54:56.080 a copy of

00:54:56.500 the London

00:54:56.860 Times

00:54:57.400 and it's

00:54:58.280 full of this

00:54:58.800 slightly watered

00:54:59.700 down

00:55:00.000 neoconservative

00:55:00.920 stuff

00:55:01.400 it's only

00:55:02.180 because of

00:55:02.680 the nature

00:55:03.060 of the

00:55:03.340 ownership

00:55:03.700 of News

00:55:04.180 International

00:55:04.700 and the

00:55:05.660 nature of

00:55:06.180 the press

00:55:06.700 comment that

00:55:07.300 it draws upon

00:55:08.100 from the

00:55:08.740 United States

00:55:09.500 so although

00:55:10.220 that type

00:55:10.680 of media

00:55:11.120 is here

00:55:11.780 nobody in

00:55:12.800 Britain has 0.95

00:55:13.400 that sort

00:55:13.920 of viewpoint

00:55:14.500 there was

00:55:14.800 overwhelming

00:55:15.280 hostility to

00:55:16.060 the Iraq

00:55:16.440 war in

00:55:16.860 Britain

00:55:17.120 it cost

00:55:18.000 the Blair

00:55:18.440 government

00:55:18.880 its moral

00:55:19.420 legitimacy

00:55:19.820 with its

00:55:20.320 own side

00:55:21.100 and it

00:55:22.260 didn't win

00:55:22.680 them many

00:55:23.040 friends and

00:55:23.500 allies

00:55:23.760 afterwards

00:55:24.240 and the

00:55:25.160 key killer

00:55:25.920 weapon with

00:55:26.500 the Blair

00:55:26.840 regime

00:55:27.240 was the

00:55:27.640 weapons of

00:55:28.020 mass

00:55:28.180 destruction

00:55:28.680 the entire

00:55:30.000 British

00:55:30.260 population

00:55:30.780 is convinced

00:55:31.380 that we

00:55:31.660 went to

00:55:31.940 war on

00:55:32.260 the basis

00:55:32.600 of a

00:55:32.920 lie

00:55:33.240 and nobody

00:55:34.280 now even

00:55:35.780 mentions Iraq

00:55:36.660 and the

00:55:37.300 people who

00:55:37.720 said that

00:55:38.060 they were

00:55:38.300 in favor

00:55:38.700 of it

00:55:39.020 at the

00:55:39.420 time

00:55:39.720 were

00:55:39.880 embarrassed

00:55:40.460 so in

00:55:41.320 Britain

00:55:41.620 who was

00:55:42.040 the minor

00:55:42.760 sidekick

00:55:43.460 ally

00:55:43.840 in relation

00:55:44.720 to the

00:55:45.080 Iraq

00:55:45.360 war

00:55:45.820 there's a

00:55:46.400 more radical

00:55:47.100 disjoint

00:55:47.900 in relation

00:55:48.840 to the war

00:55:49.500 and its

00:55:49.760 aftermath

00:55:50.160 and there

00:55:50.520 is in

00:55:50.680 the United

00:55:50.960 States

00:55:51.460 but the

00:55:52.060 same

00:55:52.380 panoply

00:55:52.960 is discernible

00:55:54.360 the same

00:55:55.400 adjustment

00:55:56.720 of expectations

00:55:57.740 the same

00:55:58.780 reluctance

00:55:59.320 to admit

00:55:59.800 mistakes

00:56:00.360 and partly

00:56:02.100 a desire

00:56:02.540 to forget

00:56:03.040 the entire

00:56:03.580 incident

00:56:03.980 yes

00:56:05.160 well

00:56:06.180 Jonathan

00:56:06.580 is a

00:56:06.860 very

00:56:07.080 complicated

00:56:07.600 issue

00:56:08.100 which we're

00:56:08.500 going to have

00:56:08.900 to take up

00:56:09.500 again in the

00:56:10.420 near future

00:56:11.020 thank you for

00:56:12.000 being on

00:56:12.620 Vanguard

00:56:13.040 and I look

00:56:13.840 forward to

00:56:14.220 talking with

00:56:14.660 you again

00:56:14.980 next week

00:56:15.500 thanks very

00:56:16.860 much

00:56:17.120 all the

00:56:17.400 best

00:56:33.980 you

00:56:35.480 oh

00:56:36.080 you

00:56:37.800 you

00:56:40.500 you

00:56:42.040 you

00:56:42.400 you

00:56:43.200 you

00:56:52.300 you

00:56:53.100 you

00:56:53.360 you

00:56:57.940 you

00:56:58.040 you

00:57:00.460 you

RadixJournal - January 05, 2018

Bowden! - 11 - The Forgotten War

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript