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00:00:30.000hey everybody how's it going thanks for joining me this afternoon i've got a great stream with
00:00:41.620some great guests that i think you're really going to enjoy so believe it or not we may or
00:00:46.460may not be back at war with iran again it's always an exciting you know thing to speculate about uh
00:00:52.360can we actually close this deal are we actually going to win this thing are we going to get
00:00:57.400some kind of peace agreement or are we actually just stuck in another forever war also is israel
00:01:04.440about to integrate with the american military what does that mean for national sovereignty
00:01:08.840we're going to talk about all this with daryl cooper with the host of the martyr made podcast
00:01:14.620daryl thank you so much for coming on of course anytime brother and ron i'm probably writing for
00:01:20.200your favorite think tank dotson thank you once again for joining us sir oh good to be here
00:01:24.840all right guys so first things first uh it seemed that the trump administration had made a significant
00:01:32.520pivot it seemed that the intention was realizing look we're heading towards midterms this did not
00:01:39.700go as we planned this is going too long gas prices straight of hormones all of the political blowback
00:01:45.920in one of those moments that is pretty rare for a sitting president it seemed like trump was ready
00:01:51.420to pivot away from a conflict and look for peace at pretty much any cost he was willing to give up
00:01:57.120quite a bit uh to ultimately secure this deal now it seems like we're back in a scenario where
00:02:02.780we're exchanging fire uh what is going on what is the what is the situation here is the mou even
00:02:09.220salvageable at this point or is the trump administration now locked in to military action
00:02:14.020matter what go ahead ron well i mean i'm having a heart i don't have any uh i haven't had any
00:02:23.860visibility in a little bit into the act you know what's going on in the cabinet as far as what
00:02:30.420specifically triggered this deal other than what we all can assume which is israeli action against
00:02:38.820hezbollah uh just you know was the was kind of the spark and trump was unable to he's not able
00:02:47.220to control israel and he certainly can't control uh the iranian response um but something you know
00:02:56.020eventually ultimately it comes down to his personality and he you know had somebody said
00:03:01.860something that he'd and he'd had enough so uh do is the is the mou salvageable probably not
00:03:11.140but i don't think at this point at least i don't think it this touches off into a
00:03:16.820into anything other than what it was which is going to be some type of north korea south korea
00:03:23.140long term hey we're we're gonna you know kind of agree to be you know hostile frenemies that's my
00:03:30.500take at least yeah i think um you know there's a few like key things that you have to you have
00:03:38.260to be thinking about uh the main one is that you know if you look at the what we learned uh
00:03:48.100in the early weeks of this war about the survivability of our air defense network
00:03:53.460uh it was a lot of information we probably um needed to know but honestly would have rather
00:03:59.060just continued to be ignorant of because we we realized what people who are in that field have
00:04:05.600known for a long time which is that offense is easier and cheaper than defense and um when you
00:04:13.860look at the systems that iran was able to successfully target and destroy especially
00:04:19.720the early warning systems uh you know those are these are billion dollar systems with five to
00:04:28.660seven-year lead times. So it's not like you can ramp up production and get a new one whenever
00:04:33.500you want. And they destroyed one of those many THAAD systems. The THAAD system that we brought
00:04:39.060over from South Korea survived about a week and a half. And so we now know that we're much weaker
00:04:48.660now than we thought we were going into this thing. And so to restart another round of high-intensity
00:04:56.320operations with a high-intensity response. I don't think Trump wants that. I know for a fact
00:05:04.020that, at least at the uniform level in the Pentagon, they've been really pushing the
00:05:12.980Secretary and the White House hard, telling them essentially, if you want us to continue doing this,
00:05:19.580let alone escalate, you've got to give us a mission so that we can tell you how and if it's
00:05:24.540realizable through military means because right now we don't have one and that sounds crazy of
00:05:29.420course we do right now like at a certain point ron's right it comes down to the personality
00:05:33.760of the guy making the calls and you know with with with trump it's funny you have like uh
00:05:40.000in the old days of the soviet union the cia would have their little kremlinology you know desk where
00:05:45.800they would try to figure out and parse like what they actually mean or like how the federal reserve
00:05:51.640chairman is expected to go out before Congress and make his report. And he's supposed to be as
00:05:57.340vague and both sides as possible to say nothing without saying what they should have done is just
00:06:03.860gone and gotten an actual crazy person and had them go give the briefings and let the criminology
00:06:08.680or, you know, the economists try to figure that out. Cause that's what we've got with Trump. I
00:06:12.100mean, you don't know. I mean, you don't know if he's stretching the truth. You don't know if he
00:06:17.020is completely making something up or you don't know if he's just telling you what he's going to
00:06:21.020do like all of those things are equally possible at any time and it's it's you drive yourself crazy
00:06:26.800trying to keep up with him you know so you have to just look at like the brass tacks military
00:06:31.260reality which is unless we want to go in there with a lot of troops and a serious commitment
00:06:38.480which nobody does you know uh yeah i i don't think most proponents of you know like pro-israel
00:06:46.620anti-Iran people like most of them don't want that if only for Daryl how do you even get them there
00:06:51.800well yeah exactly I mean when we uh when we prepped for uh the second Iraq war we were staging
00:06:57.240in you know Bahrain and Kuwait for I mean a year beforehand you know bringing all our gear0.89
00:07:04.320and they were able to just sit there because right up until the very last second Saddam was hoping he
00:07:09.180could get out of this you know Iran's not going to allow us to do that um and where yeah like
00:07:13.940like you said where are we going to stage kuwait and go into iraq and then drive a thousand miles
00:07:18.980across open or not even open across mountainous terrain to tehran are we going to go take a piece
00:07:24.660of afghanistan back and like coming from the east and there's you know it it's it's very it's
00:07:31.700completely untenable and so the question becomes uh you know have we achieved everything that can0.96
00:07:38.900be achieved militarily because we have degraded their capability some uh not in a way that's not
00:07:44.500going to be everybody seems to say uh replaceable in you know in the the near term um but really
00:07:52.500i mean you know i i do think that as much as we really stepped in it by getting into this thing at
00:07:58.580all um you know the iranians they lost some negotiating leverage when they agreed to the
00:08:04.740the ceasefire because when you go back to when it first began when the ceasefire first went into
00:08:10.700effect quote unquote ceasefire um you know what if you ask yourself at that point in time what is
00:08:18.320the number one thing trump needs right now and at that point in time trump needed the shooting to
00:08:24.440stop that's what he needed politically he needed that but militarily we needed that we were running
00:08:28.980low on interceptors we were having trouble i mean we were we were starting to talk about like at the
00:08:34.520pentagon they were starting to talk about pulling munitions and air defense systems from seriously
00:08:41.200important strategic regions you know we took that dad system from south korea and nobody really
00:08:46.800thought north korea was going to use the opportunity to you but they were talking about we're going to
00:08:51.320have to take from ukraine we're going to have to do like some things that we really don't want to
00:08:54.940do and that are really gonna not go over well with the countries we do it too and so that's
00:09:00.360where we were and trump needed that to take a breath so that uh you know um so that if the war
00:09:08.840were to reignite or if it were to just continue at a low boil um he would have an opportunity to
00:09:15.040sort of reframe the narrative as this isn't us this is the iranians this time being intransigent
00:09:19.720you know that kind of thing and so they gave him the number one thing he wanted right off the bat
00:09:23.720And so, you know, I think the real question that we have to confront here is, you know, whether our political system, like the incentive structure, and you'd be the best to talk about this, Oren, like the incentives built into our political system really allow a president or even a group of leaders to make a sensible choice.
00:09:52.380when it's going to be easily demagogued and used against them you know it's it's very very
00:09:59.680difficult especially in this day and age where i mean look let's just be honest um you know if
00:10:05.480trump were to really fall out of favor you know if he were to uh lose his momentum and have even
00:10:13.020a lot of republicans start to turn on the consequences for him are not losing a midterm
00:10:16.820election you know they're benjamin net yahoo consequences like he might go to jail his kids
00:10:21.640might go to jail they might lose what they have and so when you put somebody in that position
00:10:26.840you know you force them to make choices uh based on their own on their own fate and or you know
00:10:32.600possible fates and so that's where we're at with that and you know i think it's i think it's unlikely
00:10:39.080that we unless the iranians decide that the ceasefire is not working for them and um they decide
00:10:44.680their best well i have a frozen daryl there well well i'll just return quickly i'll just jump in
00:10:57.600real quick daryl was talking about you know basically the idea of blocking force how do you
00:11:02.400how do you stage without protection and it's impossible the other thing that we've shown
00:11:08.880in this uh uh in this deal is that oh daryl's back so how long was i gone sorry uh about 20
00:11:16.980seconds is all okay yeah i was just saying that uh adding to your point about staging
00:11:25.060the our our force projection uh has has been based you know since world war ii on on uh on
00:11:36.400you know, on carrier, our carrier battle groups being able to put basically mobile seaborne
00:11:44.820airports anywhere we want and have great immediate pressure on any coast with good range. Well,
00:11:56.820the calculus has completely changed because now we have to keep our carrier battle groups
00:12:05.460further back than our strike packages have without refueling, it's beyond their range.
00:12:14.760And so you can't keep up a sortie rate without exposing very soft targets to fire.
00:12:24.260It's a, basically our entire naval projection doctrine has been called into question.
00:12:32.040And a lot of folks have been saying this time was coming, but we just put on a case study for the world. And that's really, hopefully, over the next, you know, the rest of this administration, the next administration, and so on, we got to get our heads around that.
00:12:50.840because that impacts, you know, how do you think about your near versus, you know, middle and far
00:12:56.180broad? How do you think about the Pacific Rim, your entire alliance structure? And that's really,
00:13:05.800it would have been nice to at least to keep the charade going while we rebuilt our doctrine and
00:13:11.980our forces to better reflect the new reality. And the new reality is now right in our face.
00:13:19.480And I saw a commercial sat put a picture up that we were sailing one of our carriers, which one escapes me now, into the Gulf of Oman.
00:13:34.080So who knows what we're, but it didn't have a strike force attached to it, which is, I don't understand that.
00:13:41.280I don't know if you saw any of that, Daryl.
00:13:43.420Maybe I can pull up my iPad and see if I can get something further.
00:13:46.600But I'm really confused as to the coherence of how we're thinking about these things right now, because I'm not seeing a lot.
00:13:58.360And they're good people, you know, but I'm really confused as to what we are doing with regards to how policy and doctrine are matching up.
00:14:12.740yeah this seems like a calamity on several fronts so first you know we don't seem to have a mission
00:14:20.040as you said uh you know the the the military itself is struggling with you know what they
00:14:25.560should actually be doing with what the uh you know sequence of actions that need to be taken to
00:14:30.040reach the different objectives are i think it's pretty clear that in general the mission is run
00:14:35.180cover for israel while it fights in lebanon like that seems to be more or less the actual mission
00:14:40.320But obviously, we can't say that out loud. Marco Rubio only gets to make that illusion one time, not twice.
00:14:46.300When it comes to the military technology, also, this is a big problem, as you're saying, because, you know, you can think of it this way.
00:14:53.940We spent a lot of time investing in basically Death Star systems, right?
00:14:57.200Like we poured all of our time and money into like these unbeatable, you know, it's like French knights, right?
00:15:05.300Like they were an incredible force on the field.
00:15:07.720You know, nobody can touch them until you get the longbowman.
00:15:10.980And then all of a sudden, the entirety of the entire idea of investing in a nobility
00:15:15.860that spends their whole life training to fight and play now makes no sense.
00:15:19.660But you're still going to get, you know, 50 years of people dying in this kind of combat
00:15:26.240And so you really want to learn that lesson as quickly as possible.
00:15:29.660And it seems like in warfare we have hit that moment where the idea of investing just these billions and trillions of dollars into weapon systems that are meant to kind of completely dominate in this one area, that's just no longer efficient in a world of drones and cheaper strike forces, these kind of things.0.69
00:15:46.420the ability to leverage economic disruption, Iran understanding that their real target was always0.52
00:15:52.160the American economy and never the American military. These are things that when I talk to
00:15:57.040average people, the average Fox News viewer, they're just blown away because when I talk to1.00
00:16:01.840them, they say, well, why don't we just get rid of everything in Iran? I don't understand. We're0.99
00:16:06.140the American military. We hit a button and everything explodes. They don't have any realistic
00:16:11.840understanding of limitations of capacity, or that there might be some kind of trade-off when we
00:16:16.780invest in these insane weapon systems, that there could be a vulnerability that could be exploited.
00:16:22.220They just think that, well, we have the best technology with the button, our best guys go
00:16:25.900do the thing, and it's over. It's very hard for the American public to process the idea that we're
00:16:30.820in a paradigm shift of technology that might turn our current doctrine into something that is not
00:16:35.980the best for us in this conflict. Well, in our lifetime, we can think of an example of this.
00:16:41.300remember the long-term fascination way beyond the useful shelf life of the, you know, Missouri-class
00:16:51.900battleship, and to the point where still people say, man, if we could just throw some tonnage,
00:17:00.140you know, if we could park 25 miles offshore and just bombard, and still not being cognizant of
00:17:09.660the fact that this is, that it's a different world now. And I love aircraft carriers. I think
00:17:16.120they're cool. I have some of the guys that I'm friends with that I think are the coolest people
00:17:21.340to walk the earth are naval aviators, especially before, uh, you know, uh, the magic carpet came
00:17:28.420online. Uh, these guys are, you know, I'm a pilot, but, and these guys are like the, you know,
00:17:35.540the platonic ideal of, of, uh, you know, technological soldiers to me, it's still,
00:17:43.380that doesn't, the, the, the amount of cool factor doesn't make up for the fact that the world
00:17:48.900presses on, history marches on, and it's tough. I mean, Daryl can speak way more cogently about
00:17:54.880this than, than I can, but, but I think it's, it's just very difficult for people, uh, to,0.81
00:18:03.040to especially once you get you know my age and you're the ruling class age it's it's hard to
00:18:10.760stay mentally flexible especially when it comes to guarding your country's you know
00:18:17.540treasure and honor and all those things you just get stuck yeah and there was a um you know
00:18:25.480unfortunately we uh you know one of the factors that got us into the second iraq war was the first
00:18:32.540Iraq war in the sense that it gave us this sense of invincibility that the U.S. military is so
00:18:38.160technologically advanced that, you know, there's nothing that it can't do. So, of course, we can
00:18:43.260go transform the Middle East into a democracy. We're not sure how yet, but who can stop us,
00:18:48.000right? And the problem, you know, something you wish hadn't happened, to your point,
00:18:54.360about learning lessons, is that the, you know, the war on terror would have taught us the
00:18:58.180limitations of that but it really didn't because what it taught us is that counterinsurgency is
00:19:03.880super hard and going into countries that are just radically different culturally and trying to
00:19:08.060transform that at gunpoint is really hard and nobody really feels like going through the process
00:19:13.540necessary to do that's what we kind of learned we did not really learn the lesson that the
00:19:18.240american military doesn't just have a magic button that says win war on it that you can just go do
00:19:23.820anything you want and you know and i'm talking in terms of like just just uh basic destructive
00:19:30.320capacity even right like to give you an example like um a destroyer or a cruiser which is you
00:19:39.920know those are our two those are the ships that we would we would drive in with a carrier that
00:19:43.880would fire tomahawk missiles right which are our main strike missile um they'll carry you know
00:19:50.420because they're primarily air defense platforms.
00:19:52.480They're there to defend themselves and the carrier and whatever, uh, you know,
00:19:56.260area of interest they're, they're assigned to. And so if they've got, uh, you know,
00:20:01.020they probably two thirds to three quarters of the missiles that they have loaded
00:20:05.060on board or air defense missiles, their SM twos, SM threes, SM sixes for long range
00:20:09.800stuff. And then they've got some Tomahawks and some, uh, sea sparrow missiles and
00:20:13.440things like that. But you're talking, even if they're like sort of loaded out
00:20:16.940for strike packages. You're talking like 40 to 60 Tomahawk missiles. 60 would be a huge amount
00:20:23.680on a destroyer especially. And so to put that in context, it was like, well, 60 missiles,
00:20:28.480that sure is a lot, right? Back in, it would have been like 2017, 2018, when Trump struck
00:20:36.460a Syrian airfield because of chemical weapons, you know, supposedly whatever. He fired 80
00:20:43.240something tomahawk missiles at that airfield and it was back in service a week later okay so these
00:20:49.340things are not nuclear weapons they're not these just gigantic massive you know four thousand pound
00:20:55.640jdams that can go in and destroy a city block they're not that powerful and so if you've only
00:21:01.640got 40 to 60 of them on a care on a on a destroyer or a cruiser what happens when you run out of0.91
00:21:08.200those well another ship comes right you just uh you know just like hit the magazine release and
00:21:13.640pop a new one in right no you drive all the way back to uh crete or diego garcia if they still
00:21:20.980have some left and you go through a three or four day long operation with hard hats and cranes and
00:21:27.040everything else to reload your your mat your missile magazines and so it's a big operation
00:21:31.940it takes you know back and forth to get to and from if you do go to diego garcia or crete's
00:21:37.220going to take you you know a week and a half probably if you're really really pushing hard
00:21:43.300and so it goes to that to the to the point ron was making about uh when you have to run your
00:21:50.260sorties from so far away you know part of the problem with that is yeah you have to expose
00:21:54.880uh platforms to enemy fire that are not really you know designed to be you know uh easily
00:22:02.520defensible, but it's also just slows down your sortie rate so much that it, to the point that
00:22:09.640it changes, you know, the whole, the whole doctrine of what you can actually accomplish
00:22:13.800with that method. And so, you know, this is, this is definitely the case with our strike missiles.
00:22:18.740And when you limit yourself to standoff weapons, as we have, you're just going to run into this
00:22:27.880basic problem which is that you just cannot destroy enough things fast enough in a country
00:22:32.880like iran to make them feel like they have no choice but to give give you what you want i mean
00:22:38.740you just can't do it you can't overwhelm them you can't you can't do any of that there's just not
00:22:43.260enough firepower the end of the day if you're not willing to drive tanks into their country and put
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00:23:18.000details. Terms apply. There's just extreme limitations on what you can accomplish with,
00:23:23.480far away, blow them up stuff. And even if you are willing, which we're not,
00:23:31.540you've still got to be capable to our earlier point. And I can't imagine a scenario where
00:23:38.960that capability, again, where's your path? This is the most impenetrable piece of real estate on
00:23:47.220earth i mean other than alexander who's who's conquered the persians you know on home turf
00:23:54.160um anyway yeah i mean the only thing that's even remotely plausible is getting turkey to go along
00:24:02.140with it and letting us do things there but i mean even then that presents massive problems and turkey
00:24:07.100would never allow us to do it and so well yeah and then yahoo announcing every 10 minutes that
00:24:14.040he plans to fight turkey is probably not going to help persuade them to you know like i i don't like
00:24:19.100seeing any of these wars happen innocent people get killed in modern warfare like at a very tragic
00:24:24.600rate and everything but there is a part of me that would love to see israel pick one with turkey
00:24:29.640how quick would that be done it depends on how far the turks wanted to take it you know short of the
00:24:37.520short of short of uh nuclear weapons from israel they could drive tanks into tel aviv i mean it's
00:24:43.400not a matter of like not accomplishing objectives the turks are a very serious military that trains
00:24:48.880to fight and if the turks move you got to think there's a big temptation in uh cairo for them to
00:24:58.820move as well a lot of pressure yeah i mean a lot of pressure i don't know if they would uh and i
00:25:04.800mean i don't think this is going to happen i think we still have uh enough carrots to offer
00:25:09.540you know countries like turkey and uh in egypt to avoid anything like that but that also does
00:25:15.520that doesn't mean that we have enough sticks to threaten them into allowing us to do things that
00:25:21.300they don't think are in their interest you know well how it's just how long are they going to put
00:25:25.280up with netanyahu saying yeah we're good we're getting ready to move on you guys i i you know
00:25:31.160we get we get frustrated with the iranians saying death to america and you know we were looking the
00:25:37.560other way in the 80s while uh uh while uh our supposed allies uh hussein was you know using
00:25:45.880chemical weapons on them so i i don't know it's it's all a mess that i wish we would have a much
00:25:52.640lighter touch with this entire sandbox um i know that's not going to happen i know that's a right
00:26:00.240wing larp but uh it doesn't keep me from wanting that i mean the thing is ron like that i think
00:26:07.580from a just a if you're looking at it from a pure political standpoint that's definitely true
00:26:12.080like from a just pure political standpoint getting people in office who are going to make
00:26:18.280the right decisions and move in that direction just because they understand it's the right thing
00:26:22.520that is completely unrealistic but as you guys are talking about i mean what we are learning
00:26:29.020right now in real time and you wish we would have learned it watching russia and ukraine but we
00:26:33.620didn't apparently is that warfare has fundamentally transformed and it makes running an empire much
00:26:40.680much much more difficult because they're you know parity exists um you know not if you just sort of
00:26:48.460line things up on a balance sheet it you know you don't see parity but in terms of do you does a
00:26:54.400larger, more powerful country have the ability to go in there and compel action, to coerce action
00:27:00.440from weaker powers? And the answer is, if they have their own industrial base and a stable
00:27:06.580government, man, you better be ready to take serious losses. It's World War I. It's the World
00:27:13.900War I transform all over again. Most of the objectives of the wars that we fought in recent
00:27:19.780memory are not worth the kind of losses that you're going to have to suffer i mean look at
00:27:25.380russia i'll bet you i mean you know at the time i'm sure they felt cornered like they had no choice0.72
00:27:30.200or like it was just the best course of action to go into ukraine i'll bet they could they wish they
00:27:35.120could go back and undo that now i mean especially with the bar it's just it's incredibly costly
00:27:43.140just because you know again like it doesn't matter how much bigger of an economy you have
00:27:48.940I mean, maybe there is some upper limit where this isn't true. But at the end of the day, shooting down $40,000 drones with $2 million air defense missiles is just not a sustainable strategy. You just can't keep that up forever. And the other sides know that.
00:28:06.040You know, part of the problem with running a world empire, and this goes to Oren's point about just all these Death Star systems that we that we focus on, which, you know, part of that just has to do with our corrupt procurement process here at home.
00:28:19.240But another part of it is, you know, the way that the defense companies sell these things is they say, look, we got to be able to show up on the polar ice cap at a moment's notice.
00:28:31.080We got to be able to go to the South Pacific and do standoff attacks on, you know, just our mission is the entire world.
00:28:39.600And anything that can possibly emerge as a problem, even conceivably, that's our mission.
00:28:44.880And so that's what we have to sort of try to prepare for.
00:28:47.500Well, everybody else in the world doesn't do that. Everybody else in the world says, what does America have and how do we overcome that? That's it. You know, that's all they have to do. And so, you know, the Iranian military just kind of on paper. Yeah, it's weaker than the United States, but ours is a generalist military and theirs is specifically designed to, you know, to overcome the natural advantages we have.
00:29:11.540yeah you think that a country who really was founded on this idea that you know our troops
00:29:17.820were so much better during a revolution against a world power empire because we understood the
00:29:23.300terrain and we understood the land and we had all these tactics adapted for our homeland you think
00:29:27.980that would maybe transfer somewhere into our into our doctrine but unfortunately as you say this is
00:29:33.120the nature of you know general empire you don't get to prepare for particular theaters you don't
00:29:37.720get to have particular tactics, particular strike options. You have to be ready for anything at any
00:29:42.680moment, which means you're never the best at any given thing. And I think, you know, as you were
00:29:47.640saying, there was this moment, I thought we'd all learned this lesson. You know, I was an idiot. I1.00
00:29:52.340turned around and I thought we had all learned after the GWAT that like, actually, this doesn't
00:29:56.700work. And we all know that this is bad. And I think a lot of us learned that lesson. I think
00:30:00.100that's what, you know, Trump wrote in on this lesson. I think the, you know, while I'm very
00:30:04.900happy that we had a successful mission in venezuela just because of you know protecting
00:30:09.200the lives of american soldiers i think that victory might turn out you know go down in history
00:30:13.760as one of the more disastrous victories america's ever secured because for some reason it just lit
00:30:19.500up in the neocons eyes that actually once again we were back to being able to just win a war
00:30:25.260through bombing even though that's literally never happened in our entire existence it just has a
00:30:30.540it's up there with rent control as being like one of the most perfectly uh failed strategies
00:30:37.520in human history it's a disaster every time you implement it it never works and yet somehow we
00:30:42.540managed to sell it over and over and over again and the truth is you know this feels like late
00:30:47.940imperial stuff you know again i don't want americans dying in any of this to be really clear
00:30:52.260but if you have if you're going to engage in this stuff you got to be willing to say yeah we're just
00:30:56.880going to put 100,000 guys somewhere and just completely obliterate you and completely control
00:31:01.720you if you don't listen to us. And without that real backing, you're just not a serious military
00:31:06.860threat. You're just not a real empire. And it's getting incredibly obvious to people that America
00:31:13.420simply does not have the will to do that. We're just not going to put 200,000 guys on the ground
00:31:18.540and completely dominate any given country. Americans do not have the political will.
00:31:22.960And it doesn't matter how many trillions of dollars you pour into advanced weaponry.0.51
00:31:27.460If you just won't put a soldier on the ground, you're just not going to win.
00:31:32.700So it'd just be better to not engage with it at all.
00:31:34.920But again, this was not the lesson learned.
00:31:36.700Instead, the lesson learned was we just had we, you know, we just need to hit them hard and fast enough.0.66
00:31:41.680As long as the American people don't see anyone bleed, we're fine.
00:31:44.400And I think this was going to end up being a really costly realization for most Americans.
00:31:49.840How many soldiers, how many rifle carriers did we have at the height in Vietnam? Half a million?
00:31:59.360Close to 600,000, yeah. Yeah, right. Vietnam is what, a tenth the size of Iran? 20% the size of
00:32:10.680ran uh i and we had the ability to stage b52s much closer i i that just were continually pounding
00:32:24.120uh especially linebacker two so i this this lesson should have been learned a long time ago
00:32:32.600um i'm you know i i get what you're saying aren't about the about the venezuelan op
00:32:40.600But I am for, hey, if we're going to do anything, shoring up the near abroad, because I think that's where this is all going.
00:32:48.160I think you're going back to a, because of where technology is, I think you're going back to a sphere of influence.
00:32:55.620There's a system and you better shore up your near abroad because that's all you're going to be able to shore up.
00:33:04.860The problem is we've always seen the Atlantic and the Pacific as our hegemons, you know, are it that's so I don't know where this ultimately goes.
00:33:20.200To be clear, if if the lesson from Venezuela is let's stick to the Monroe Doctrine, I mean, I would still have some quibbles about foreign intervention, but I would feel much better about that.
00:33:29.580I would feel like, OK, this is something that's manageable. This is something directly in our interest or at least adjacent to our interest on a regular basis.0.72
00:33:36.480You know, these are, you know, theaters that we could prepare for specifically bring things in closer.
00:33:41.940That would all be great. But what I'm saying, my problem is not the Venezuelan operation itself.
00:33:46.900You know, it's that that operation very clearly seems to have sold the idea that now, well, we just take that map and we move it to wherever we take it to Iran.
00:33:55.920we take it to you know cuba we take it to wherever we're going next and that's that's just how it's
00:34:00.900going to be uh and that that's my problem with it ultimately but before we move on to our next topic
00:34:06.440um i just want to get you guys general prediction here do we are we in a scenario now where
00:34:12.840basically we're just going to be exchanging missile fire every week or two for you know an
00:34:21.260indeterminate number of months is there any significant uh development that you see on the
00:34:25.760horizon anyone making any real move or are we are we just in a literal forever war that we call
00:34:31.940not a war because we have like a memorandum of understanding somewhere i mean yeah so i i i don't
00:34:39.940think i would be surprised if um another high intensity uh series of operations flared up but
00:34:46.460i don't expect the back and forth tit for tat stop anytime soon you know because it's something that
00:34:53.100that the u.s side can do at relatively little cost politically and militarily you know one
00:35:00.220of the things that we would always talk about uh when i was with the department of the navy the um
00:35:06.060you know the destroyer they're amazing platforms you know two billion dollar ages destroyer they're
00:35:12.060great platforms but for a long time it's like what is the mission here exactly you know we're
00:35:17.580not going anywhere where anybody's gonna shoot a volley of cruise missiles at our carrier like
00:35:22.380that's not the cold war and so we would literally have a two billion dollar ship uh that costs a
00:35:29.580million dollars a day to keep at sea floating around off the coast of yemen or the cape of
00:35:35.100the horn of africa you know pulling over like little wooden dows and like searching them for
00:35:41.500hashish and stuff, right? And so they can, you know, they can stand off, you know, at 800 kilometers
00:35:49.460around the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman and picket that area and occasionally do standoff
00:35:57.360strikes and stuff forever, you know, because, you know, again, like they, it's either that or
00:36:05.180go chase dows around, you know. And so we can do that. And nobody seems particularly bothered by
00:36:10.880it back home except for you know scott horton i mean like the people who are really like engaged
00:36:15.940with this stuff care but as long as you know it's uh not driving up gas prices and no americans are
00:36:20.980dying people don't really care it's just not a hot issue and so i think that and it doesn't have to
00:36:26.360make sense if afghanistan taught us anything at all it's that it doesn't have to make sense
00:36:30.360it just has to you know you can be in a situation where um you know you put the president and the
00:36:38.100people around him in a position where the only course that actually makes sense politically
00:36:43.260is to kick the can down the road and let the next guy lose the war.
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00:37:20.420the uh gas prices you know oil prices are are are huge so anything any action that doesn't
00:37:30.420propel that up. You know, I think if you can get oil down in the low 60s to where gas is
00:37:39.380back in a quasi-affordable range, I think that's good for the president. And, you know, I think
00:37:51.580that he's, he's, he's got the, he's got the gas thing on one hand and any type of saving face on
00:38:00.600the other. And what's the, the real hardcore reality about all of it is, is the Persian Gulf
00:38:07.700is going to remain Persian, uh, in for the foreseeable, you know, I think for our lifetimes,0.94
00:38:15.220They've just, and that reality, all we've done is cement that reality.1.00
00:38:21.980I do think the Iranians, as Daryl said, have lost a little bit of leverage.0.99
00:38:26.400But all they want, all they want is de facto control so that they can keep irritants out.0.95
00:38:34.320And they want to trade the cards they have to get rid of sanctions.
00:38:44.760So there's some game theory stuff. If everybody, if there weren't midterms and, you know, which there are, and there wasn't the MIC with amazing procurement control, but there is, then there's ways to game.
00:39:01.620and there wasn't the the lobby which is pushing the irrationality button at every opportunity
00:39:09.140um you know then i think there's ways to game out of this to where everybody kind of
00:39:14.980wins a little bit at least or at least or loses the least yeah i mean and so but you're not going
00:39:24.540to change the reality that the Persian, that Iran just has that armored coastline all up and down
00:39:32.780the Persian Gulf, and that the strait has one tiny little channel that you can navigate that
00:39:38.960they control. You're just not going to change that. So how can, you know, cooler heads would
00:39:45.340be saying, so how can we leverage a way that makes it better for everyone? Well, the problem is
00:39:49.860our, we've got a so-called ally that wants none of that. And so, uh, you know, in, in the old days,
00:39:58.820in, in the Nixon era, we had a guy who was kind of a bad guy. Um, but he was, but, but he provided
00:40:06.320a great balance to, uh, Israel, uh, Turkey and Egypt. And we just don't have that now. And,
00:40:14.980And and that's the that's what makes this the, you know, kind of unsolvable if you want to win at every point.
00:40:24.320Yeah. And unfortunately, the Iranians and I can understand why, but unfortunately, they don't seem to be in any mood to give Trump a dignified off ramp, which I wish they would do.0.97
00:40:36.380I understand, you know, well, assassinating leadership in the middle of negotiations.0.66
00:40:42.200Yeah. Imagine, you know, if during the Pearl Harbor attack, which Trump on camera, you know, compared our initial attack on Iran to imagine if they had also blown up a school full of little girls and killed the president in the most popular preacher in the country.
00:41:01.660I mean, we would be in no mood. I mean, even all they did was attack military targets and we were in no mood for forgiveness, burn down their capital city over that.0.59
00:41:10.920So, I mean, I understand why the Iranians are feeling this way, especially since they're kind of feeling their oats and probably feel pretty confident in their position and their ability to withstand whatever we can throw at them.0.94
00:41:23.500But, yeah, I wish they would, you know, I wish they would give us an out.
00:41:27.700A lot of people have suggested that one of the goals for Israel here is not just to degrade Iran, but is also to degrade at some level the American presence in the Middle East, that they see America as a ally in flux, one that they've leaned on very heavily to maintain their current geopolitical status,0.62
00:41:51.600but ultimately recognize either America may wane in power or others may rise or it may just be that the unpopularity of Israel in America is going to grow as the generational turnover occurs.0.87
00:42:04.320And so it would be best if America expended all of its blood and treasure, kind of burning Iran as hard as possible, but also kind of putting it in a place to where it has to flee the region and allow Israel and perhaps other allies to kind of reconfigure their defense strategy there.0.82
00:42:24.740Do you think there's any truth to that? Or is that just kind of adding sinister motive to Israel? Do they ultimately are just too reliant on America to believe that they could somehow switch over to another ally or go it on their own? What do you guys think about that theory?0.92
00:42:37.800i mean if they if they do believe that and if that is something that it's on their list of
00:42:46.120uh you know of positive outcomes then that is hubris in the extreme i mean look if you go back0.85
00:42:53.860to the days of the british mandate there was a period where the zionists were building up their0.97
00:42:58.320forces training their people taking you know strategic territory and then once they felt0.96
00:43:04.200like they were strong enough they started attacking the british right alongside the0.98
00:43:07.540palestinians because they wanted the british out because the british were going to stop them from0.99
00:43:10.940going full hog the whole hog against the palestinians and so they were successful there
00:43:16.680this said this is a totally i mean again like there's there's no way short of nuclear weapons0.56
00:43:25.360that israel could win a one-on-one fight with iran if anything's become clear from this conflict
00:43:31.120it's that you know they're taking they're taking damage with jordan the united states uh you know
00:43:38.240missile defense batteries in turkey the whole region is defending israel and they're still
00:43:43.680you know they're still taking damage and um if they really believe that i mean i don't
00:43:50.000you know you know common friends of ours do do think that's what's going on but um
00:43:56.000i just have to imagine that you know there's some rational people in israel who understand that
00:44:01.120that that is an absolute pipe dream, especially after this conflict. I don't know what you think,
00:44:05.420Ron. Yeah, I mean, I think their ability to project power has to have that full force
00:44:16.420multiplication of the U.S., mainly U.S. cooperation, I don't see how, you know, Iran is far.0.63
00:44:31.140They don't have a real, you know, independent refueling capability.
00:44:40.780You know, they don't have a huge ground force.
00:44:43.440um yeah i i don't think that i mean i i was skeptical of this idea in general of this
00:44:50.460this kind of line of reasoning but i think to do it justice i don't think the idea is that it would
00:44:56.200just be israel one-on-one with iran i think the the the just the thrust of this kind of line of
00:45:02.400reasoning is you get kind of u.s and iran to degrade themselves as much as possible you know
00:45:08.320at the cost of kind of the US military, Iran becomes less and less of a threat. The US realizes0.80
00:45:14.660that it can't continue to kind of impose its will, but also can't prove some level of hindrance
00:45:19.900to Israeli ambition. And then you bring in some other, you pair with some other, you know, India
00:45:25.120or China, I don't know, someone else, some other geopolitical giant to kind of take over the role
00:45:30.560of America for Israel. Yeah, I think the more interesting question, which is maybe this is
00:45:35.760kind of a, a corollary to is, is without the United States, is there a steady state, uh, in the,
00:45:46.100in the, in the region, in the entire region that is self-balancing? Um, that's a more interesting
00:45:54.340question. And I, I don't really know the answer to that. I, I know that the Turks, uh, have been
00:46:03.740and well and shoot and the you know uh have have have tried to increase their their presence in1.00
00:46:11.680their middle abroad you know around the horn uh and um you know i don't i i really don't know what
00:46:19.620the saudis really want to be up to as far as being able to project force so but um it's it's a real
00:46:27.820theoretical question, but that's interesting to me. If you could game out the U.S., let's say we
00:46:34.000completely left the region and just shook the dust off our hands, so to speak, is there a steady
00:46:42.720state that is achievable over there? I'm skeptical, and I don't think there's any scenario where
00:46:53.020uh israel becomes the the the middle power regional hegemon over that area i don't know
00:47:00.720daryl what do you think no absolutely not i mean not without us there i mean right i don't i don't
00:47:06.960think i don't think even egypt could sustain their relationship with israel if we weren't there
00:47:13.380putting our thumb on the scale and this is the problem we run into when you have an external force0.52
00:47:18.240sort of putting their thumb on a scale of a given region, you create a whole set of
00:47:24.360possibilities and incentives that wouldn't exist absent that outside force. And you build up over
00:47:31.080time just more and more and more in a given direction that is completely unnatural. And so
00:47:36.460there are people who are very serious people who look at it and say, yeah, it'd be great to get0.99
00:47:42.940out of the Middle East. And maybe there is a stable order that is possible. But there's a1.00
00:47:48.040couple million corpses uh between here and there yeah and if we leave at this point it's like
00:47:54.080pulling the last thing out of the jenga tower because this thing is just an unnatural construction
00:47:57.960to begin with yeah that's all right guys that's really good well i want to move on to our next
00:48:04.920topic here which is of course very much related um ron you just wrote a piece about uh this
00:48:11.040very interesting uh kind of clause being inserted into a bill that's working its way through the
00:48:17.420Congress. There's a lot of overstatement and hyperbole on this. And I think it's important
00:48:22.320that we get the actual scope of what this agreement would look like down because I think it is itself
00:48:29.820very bad. I think that inserting something like this into the American kind of intelligence and
00:48:37.280military system is very bad. However, when people completely say things like, well, this just hands
00:48:42.900over control of the american military to bb netanyahu uh when you when you say things like
00:48:47.220that it uh you know it makes it hard for people to then take the the actual problem seriously uh
00:48:54.280you don't want to blow it out of proportion because it's really important the details matter
00:48:59.020on this one so can you lay out what's going on where did the suggestion come from it sounds
00:49:03.960insane even when you give the realistic explanation of what it is so can you tell us what it is and
00:49:09.700how it emerged? Sure. Well, there's, um, let's leave how it emerged to somebody who's willing
00:49:18.080to be a lot more spicy than me. I write for the Claremont Institute and I don't want to, uh,
00:49:25.820no. Um, well, you've got two, you've got two separate sections. There's section 219 and
00:49:30.520section 622, and they do two different things, but towards the same goal. But let's back up
00:49:36.620authorization act defense reauthorization bill remember uh we we it's uh we we do this kind of
00:49:46.280legal uh not a fiction but kind of a legal miracle every year in order to get around some of the
00:49:52.880constitutional provisions of a standing army and so we kind of recreate our defensive structure
00:50:00.300every year. Um, that's, uh, I mean, that's settled law and all, but it's, it is kind of funny when
00:50:07.600you think about it. Uh, let's step, take a step back and realize what it, cause this all goes to
00:50:13.620the, the theoretical idea of what an alliance is now in, in, we have, we have cooperation with
00:50:22.340other countries at a pretty deep level through NATO. Um, the, I mean, shoot, Daryl can speak
00:50:29.200really well. He, he, he worked for, you know, uh, uh, for, uh, the defense department and all that
00:50:37.140for, for a long time doing this very thing, this integration with other countries. So that in and
00:50:42.440of itself is not new or weird. Um, it, we, I think it's due for a rethink. And I think a lot of
00:50:50.920people on the intellectual right are calling for a rethink. That's why there's kind of a pushback
00:51:00.060against the whole purposes of what are we doing with NATO and so on and so forth. The specifics
00:51:06.460with Israel are Israel is not an official, there's not an official alliance structure that's there.0.59
00:51:14.640It's kind of this weird netherworld that we deal with. And so there's these two provisions
00:51:34.020It would deepen the U.S.-Israel cooperation
00:51:36.680in research, development, systems integration,
00:51:39.360procurement, programs of record, co-production,
00:51:42.740training, and information sharing, okay?
00:51:45.860And so that goes into mental defense, drones,
00:51:48.960artificial intelligence cyber warfare and these are things that are pretty hard to you start
00:51:54.700mixing uh ones and zeros it's pretty hard to do any kind of extraction once it gets started it
00:52:02.500does not formally merge the militaries or create an automatic mutual self-defense guarantee but it
00:52:08.720is institutional lock-in and so um you got training that adapts to it contractors invest in it
00:52:16.280supply chains get built around it, and then you get congressional districts acquiring the
00:52:22.660economic interest and the whole MIC thing, okay? So what you're creating is a quasi-mini-NATO
00:52:34.160buildup between the two countries. And now 622, so that's an issue, but that's an issue with NATO
00:52:42.040as well. So we just, I think there's a realistic rethink that needs, that is going on, that this
00:52:49.740is trying to forestall and by putting another, what did Daryl say a minute ago, a Jenga piece
00:52:57.320in, you're inserting a Jenga piece rather than pulling one out to make the whole structure
00:53:02.740more comprehensive. Section 622 is intelligence integration. And this scares me. I'll just
00:53:12.020be honest, because on the ground, I know Daryl's heard stories about this. I know on the ground,
00:53:18.240Mossad and, um, you know, are not guys are, are no official cover guys and are, and are, uh, you
00:53:26.240know, are, are guys who have official cover, who go and do the official things when they visit
00:53:31.660israel that that that's not a fun integration there um but so six section swish 622 basically
00:53:41.180mandates rather than rather than keeping it a uh a discretionary uh uh uh eventuality where it
00:53:53.660mandates integration between our and their uh intelligence apparatus and that's
00:54:01.420that's weird and problematic to me so what it does is it uh it it it directs the executive branch so
00:54:10.060it's anti-article two to expand intelligence sharing with israel across uh uh terrorism
00:54:19.100sanctions evasion cyber threats missiles drones air and space warning so all the palantir stuff too
00:54:24.860uh technology proliferation and it basically says you can't uh you can't end this without specific
00:54:33.020cause and congressional approval so it basically so that's an issue to me so those are two separate
00:54:42.300provisions uh one is uh towards kind of making israel and the u.s into the kind of this mini
00:54:49.900nato kind of sharing deal and the other is saying our intelligence apparatus has to
00:54:55.980really integrate uh in a mandatory rather than a discretionary way so so this is just insane on
00:55:03.420several levels like first uh the the fact that uh you're you're talking about the need to end nato
00:55:09.820how terrible it is to be just completely intertwined with these fossil like, you know, national or international organizations that no longer benefit you.
00:55:21.060You have all these free riders on the system. You know, it doesn't make sense. It impinges on your sovereignty.
00:55:27.320This is something every American on the right pretty much agreed with, you know, again, after GWAT and everything else.0.78
00:55:33.740uh and now it's like no we're gonna build a tiny smaller nato with israel uh is itself uh pretty0.82
00:55:40.840nuts but the second one the latter one is is the truly insulting one where you have to integrate
00:55:46.440you have to give things to israel by statute and if you don't the executive who should be you know
00:55:52.540commander-in-chief has to go justify to congress why we're not giving something to an ally i mean
00:56:00.900this there is no sovereignty here this is just putting israel in charge of our intelligence
00:56:06.140right like am i crazy here daryl this seems no it's giving them the key to the city and
00:56:11.080you know that last part really gives away the game of what's going on here right which is
00:56:16.600they see the polling they see the direction things are going uh in the united states and this is an
00:56:22.860attempt to take our military and intelligence support for israel uh out of the democratic0.74
00:56:30.140process before it turns on them because it's going to very soon. That's all this is. And1.00
00:56:35.900like, you know, you've even, you've seen recently, for example, like people love to talk about the
00:56:40.360$3 billion in aid we give them every year. I wish people wouldn't focus on that so much because
00:56:44.120they're going to get rid of that. And guess what? They're going to get their money one way or
00:56:48.260another. They'll figure it out, how to get it, you know, how to get it over there. And, but
00:56:53.500they'll be able to say, Hey, you know, we're not having aid anymore. So I thought that's what you
00:56:57.180wanted you know and so we only spent 50 billion dollars on israel this year so it's fine i think
00:57:02.580the key question here because there's probably a lot of people who are hearing this who are like
00:57:06.260oh so what we're like um elevating them to the level uh you know giving them the privileges
00:57:11.900that we give like our like like england right austria oh no this is unprecedented no we don't
00:57:18.260have anything like this with our oldest closest allies and um it's beyond five eyes right wouldn't
00:57:25.400you say oh yeah yeah because it gives them statutory rights i mean you know right now we
00:57:30.380have uh integration but you know with five eyes but everything literally everything is discretionary
00:57:36.920you know and to take to remove that i mean it's it's a okay so so the first thing that you have
00:57:44.800to like really think about when you consider something like this is want to see your rewards
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00:58:17.280lower. Visit shell.ca slash loyalty for full details. Is the party that you're considering
00:58:24.360doing this with, have they proven themselves over years to be trustworthy partners?0.73
00:58:28.860And of all of our quote unquote close allies, by far in a way, the biggest answer no is Israel.
00:58:37.160They have spied on us. They have stolen technological secrets. Back in the 1980s,0.86
00:58:41.780They had a sub agency in their military intelligence directorate that was basically entirely tasked with with stealing technology from the United States.
00:58:52.500You know, Jonathan Pollard was being run by Rafi Aitan when he ran that sub agency.
00:58:57.460And, you know, the who is the movie producer Arnon Milchan helped, you know, he he got with a nuclear engineer here and got him to send a bunch of nuclear components over to Israel, you know.0.88
00:59:09.300and this was something that was like a real operation this law is you guys can get rid of
00:59:16.100that sub agency like you don't have to have that anymore you know you're just gonna have access to
00:59:21.420all of these things no matter what and it also gives them the uh you know because just like with
00:59:27.860our procurement process in general now you know the way that they always very smartly i guess uh
00:59:34.260The defense companies make sure that the nuts and bolts are made in this district and, you know, the the steel is milled in this district and whatever else so that everybody has a stake in making sure, you know, this program continues and they can go and say, hey, you're not trying to cut a military program.
00:59:52.900You're trying to cut jobs in this vital district.
00:59:55.820You know, how dare you? And they want our support to Israel to be able to be made and argued in those terms.
01:00:01.560and finally i mean you guys both mentioned like a sort of mini nato situation it's way worse than
01:00:07.760that because this is this is elevating israel to uh the status of like a super nato member really
01:00:15.140with privileges our nato members don't have but without any of the obligations you know that's
01:00:20.460they don't they don't have any obligation under a treaty law to uh to support us to say yeah i mean
01:00:27.040and the thing is say well we can always you know just continue to do what we want to but obviously
01:00:32.400like as we've shown the fact that this law exists at all that is extremely difficult to do here in
01:00:37.000the united states and it's not for them and you know they can still make conscious decisions
01:00:41.640whereas over here you know they just have uh they have their hand deep up the backside of
01:00:47.060you know the the american government so again the the key thing to know about this really is
01:00:54.460all this is like at its base at its base level is an attempt to get ahead of shifting American
01:01:00.380opinion and take our relationship with Israel, support with Israel out of the democratic process
01:01:04.700before that ship sails. Daryl, was there a, is there truth to the, uh, uh, to the story of
01:01:13.500Netanyahu being involved in the timers being stolen, uh, the timers that were, you know,
01:01:19.340So in an implosion device, you have to have a very specific timing sequence in order to collapse the plutonium pit into super criticality.
01:01:31.720I've had people tell me that Netanyahu, when he was much younger, was part of a program that a bunch of American-made timing mechanisms disappeared, and that was critical to their movement.
01:01:48.300have you heard about anything of this no not that specifically but you know if that uh would
01:01:54.140if that would surprise anybody at this point i think you probably haven't been paying enough
01:01:58.260attention you know uh i i of course yeah i think everybody uh you know are currently on this uh
01:02:06.580stream understands uh the difficulties of speaking about israel it goes into all kinds of strange
01:02:18.660yeah so i looked up real quick yeah if he uh while while we're uh i don't know how this is
01:02:28.520working if this is going out or not i think we're the show right now so keep okay so so uh in the
01:02:34.3001980s uh there was and this was reported by time magazine uh there was a major controversy that
01:02:41.640erupted between israel and the usa concerning krytons yeah the high speed gas building yeah
01:02:48.240exactly and so that was uh that's what i was referring to yeah um and it was richard kelly
01:02:56.020smith who uh who smuggled 810 of these timing devices out of the united states you know the uh
01:03:04.820This whole thing is really like it's just the platonic example of what Washington was warning us about in his farewell address when he talked about entangling alliances.
01:03:15.640Like the whole point of it was if we do that, then we're going to make their problems our problems.
01:03:23.440And now it's one thing if you're really good friends with a country and you say, look, if you get attacked ever or anything like that, then we've got your back.
01:03:33.440It's like if if you have a friend who every weekend he goes out and he gets in a bar fight every single weekend and he says, hey, I need you to come out with me this weekend.
01:03:43.180I might get in a fight. You have to tell that person, no, even if they're your friend and like he calls you and says, hey, I'm surrounded by 10 guys.
01:03:50.580I really need backup. Maybe you go. But every time you just decide to go out with him on a Saturday night, you're making his problems, your problems.
01:03:58.060And Israel is that guy. You know, you're making an alliance with somebody who's already in a hot war with like most of its own region. And it's just a crazy thing to do. And, you know, again, like there was a part of me when they first said this that thought, you know, maybe this will actually in a weird way be a good thing because it'll make this so upfront and blatant that nobody can kind of deny what's going on.0.62
01:04:24.880but I think the opposite is what would happen is it would disappear into the
01:04:28.520halls of the bureaucracy and it wouldn't even come up as a political issue.
01:04:32.600And you know, we, cause once that happens, you know, look at the,
01:04:37.240whatever the Snowden revelations or anything like that,
01:04:40.460all that stuff's still going on. Nobody cares.
01:04:42.220It just sort of disappeared into the bureaucracy and we got over it.
01:04:45.140And that's what would happen here. And so hopefully we're able to defeat this.
01:04:49.700Hopefully there's enough Democrats that just wreck it because the Republicans
01:04:52.500aren't going to stop it but um hopefully there's enough democrats who realize their careers are on
01:04:56.900the line maybe that'll help but i don't know it's a bad idea for sure well i managed to survive the
01:05:03.840direct strike on my uh power by florida thunderstorms uh so we have returned uh we had
01:05:10.800the show going it was great i i appreciate it yeah i knew i knew i was in good hands uh while
01:05:16.220i attempted desperately to get things back and running uh but yeah it sounds sounds like you
01:05:21.320continued the conversation that we were on there, but I just wanted to finish my thought in saying
01:05:25.820that we all know the difficulty of discussing this issue. We all know that it's a hot button.
01:05:30.340We all know that, unfortunately, people get crazy on both ends of this, and it makes it very
01:05:35.260difficult to have just a rational conversation. And I never really wanted to be focused on the
01:05:39.980subject in the slightest, but I keep running into the problem that when I'm discussing American
01:05:43.800sovereignty, when I'm trying to do things like get illegals deported out of my country, I can't do it.0.99
01:05:49.260And the reason I can't do it is in no small part because so much of the political energy in my country is directed towards some stupid country in the Middle East.0.96
01:05:58.580And, you know, I wish them well and hope they do fine.0.81
01:06:00.860But the idea that I cannot, you know, do basic things in my country because actually the real focus of my government is everywhere and always, you know, being vigilant for the borders of some foreign country while I'm watching my country be invaded.
01:13:50.280You know, when I talk about the need to ban Chinese immigration, especially from American universities because of the spying problem that is obviously present in that population here, for the most part, nobody bats an eye.0.99
01:14:05.220Conservatives are like, yeah, at some level that makes sense. That's perfectly reasonable, right?1.00
01:14:09.280And all I'm asking is that we apply that logic equally across all groups, you know, not that we need to isolate one group, not that we need to see one group as somehow more subversive or, you know, that we can interact with.
01:14:20.580but that the same logic that applies to China or Russia, you know, if we had, you know, a large
01:14:25.940amount of people, you know, coming in and influencing our politics in either of those
01:14:30.220directions in the interest of those countries, we would immediately recognize. And we do recognize
01:14:34.480the need to stop that. Many people agree with me, even if I talk about care and how I really don't
01:14:38.880want to see that in the United States either. Again, heads nodding all across the Republican
01:14:42.920side of the aisle. But then, you know, you get to, you know, the Israel question, all of a sudden
01:14:47.940that becomes a much much larger issue even though nothing has changed none of the logic has changed
01:14:52.900none of the justification has changed at the end of the day like you say ron we're looking towards
01:14:56.820what is just what is good for america across the board you don't need to you don't need to randomly
01:15:02.380create this special exception for one country you can just apply those principles be reasonable and
01:15:07.900if if someone has a problem with that if they want to call you a name when you're applying the
01:15:11.600same standard to china as you did israel that's their problem like that that's very clearly an
01:15:15.980issue for them, not something that you've done wrong. But that said, guys, I probably should
01:15:19.580not tempt my power any longer, having already withstood one salvo. We do have a number of
01:15:25.740super chats. So if we can get to those real quick, that'd be great. But before we do, Ron,
01:15:30.200is there anywhere that you want people to look for your stuff? I write, you know, I write my
01:15:35.400sub stack, the eyes of pillies. I write for the American mind and for American reformer and for
01:15:43.820responsible statecraft and daryl um i've got the martyrmaid podcast and i do a weekly podcast with
01:15:52.140scott horton called provoked uh if you really really really like those you can pay me five
01:15:57.580bucks a month to subscribe to my sub stack which is subscribe.martmaid.com yeah just do it if you
01:16:03.420don't it's the best content it really is other than the orrin mcintyre show that's right yeah
01:16:10.060But neck and neck, we're fighting there.
01:23:31.820Most Mo says, there's nothing now that I could hear about Israel that is so despicable or
01:23:36.220immoral that I wouldn't think of on hearing it. Yeah, I could see that. I mean, unfortunately,0.99
01:23:40.300you know, I was talking to Mark Hemingway about this when he was on recently. You know,
01:23:44.620Daryl is going to have more of a bleeding heart for the Palestinian situation. But0.93
01:23:48.400very clearly, Israel is not doing itself any favors here. It has ruined its reputation across
01:23:53.660the board um it's going to have a hard time standing on anything from human rights to national
01:23:58.340sovereignty to any of this um so as ron said you know the longer this goes on the worse it actually
01:24:03.120is for israel and if you do actually care about the country or the people in it you know the most
01:24:07.400important lesson they can get is uh-oh the weather in florida is
01:24:18.900yeah i mean there are there are like reasonable you know pragmatic people let's say out there
01:24:28.400like did you see um ram emmanuel's speech that he just delivered in israel it was basically telling
01:24:33.540them what you guys are just talking about it's like look this is this is headed nowhere good
01:24:39.240and you need to adapt the reality of the situation that's going on in the united states
01:24:43.820because you know but the problem is you know you you run into this problem whenever you have like
01:24:49.100a pathological paranoid narcissistic personality either in individuals or groups right where
01:24:54.820just like that guy said israel hates you hates america right i used to go to israel all the
01:25:02.680time for work when i was with the dod individually they do not hate you they know love americans
01:25:08.680actually like you know they would breeze me through airport security and like it was
01:25:13.320um it was very very positive sort of reaction but incredibly entitled incredibly like touchy
01:25:22.520like if they sense at all that um you know maybe you're not fully on board then it's just a 180
01:25:29.800kind of flip thing and so you know when you have a situation where
01:25:34.040Where sort of at a personality level, at a sociological level, they're incapable of sort of recognizing the role that they themselves are playing in the negative situation that they find themselves in, then you have to be extremely careful with those people because they will eventually turn on you.
01:25:54.840That's true. But again, the point is, was I think like Trudeau back in the day, he said that ridiculous quote about like, if you hate your enemies, they win or something like that.
01:26:05.500And that's a stupid idea if you've got the Mongols invading your country or something.0.92
01:26:11.300But on some level, there's there is some truth to it, which is once they get you in that mode where you're not thinking clearly and you're coming from a place of hatred and animosity, you know,0.98
01:26:21.720and making it so that your resistance to whatever's going on is dependent upon this heightened level of emotion that you have to have in order to,
01:26:29.760then you're going to, you're, you're, you're not going to be as effective as you, as you could be.