The John-Henry Westen Show - USA Heading Toward World War 3？! Catholic Veteran Speaks Out

00:00:00.000 President Bush running roughshod over the charter, offering a hypocritical justification for war 0.57

00:00:04.960 that was construed as criminal contempt of the commander-in-chief.

00:00:11.600 Hello, my friends. Welcome to the John Henry Weston Show. On one of our Faith and Reason

00:00:15.860 programs, we discussed the issue of just war theory with Deal Hudson. And it was an interesting

00:00:21.620 discussion, particularly in light of what's going on right now with the U.S. involvement

00:00:27.240 with the Middle East conflict with Israel and Iran, and also with the U.S. involvement in Ukraine,

00:00:35.720 Russia. And I was actually advised to speak to someone who was very expert in this area. He is

00:00:44.420 someone who has written about this for decades. But not only that, very interesting character. His

00:00:50.520 name is Commander John Sharp. He is a veteran of the U.S. Navy and a very decorated one. But most

00:00:58.860 interesting to me is he was canceled for being a traditional Catholic back when this wasn't cool.

00:01:04.540 He's also someone who has a publishing company, published two books, both called Neocond,

00:01:10.220 about the entrance of the U.S. into the Iraq War, opposing it. And back then, you were criticized

00:01:16.480 heavily if you engaged in such criticism. He did nonetheless. A man of great courage, a traditional

00:01:22.660 Catholic with seven children and a beautiful family, and one who is and remains a traditional

00:01:31.700 Catholic despite all the persecution that it entailed for him. Commander John Sharp, thank you so

00:01:36.560 much for joining us. Thank you, John Henry. It's an honor. Let's begin as we always do with the sign of

00:01:40.920 the cross. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

00:01:47.860 So, John, just by way of introduction, if you could tell us a little bit about yourself,

00:01:52.240 especially about being canceled as a traditional Catholic before through the auspices of the

00:01:59.680 Southern Poverty Law Center. I came into the old mass and the old faith back in the very early 90s

00:02:07.060 through a mentor, a professor named David Allen White, who was an English professor at the Naval

00:02:11.560 Academy where I went to school, who introduced myself and maybe 200 young men over his career

00:02:17.800 to the Catholic faith, whether Protestants, you know, coming in from the outside, agnostics, etc.,

00:02:23.620 or mainstream Catholics who just grew up in an era when they wouldn't have known,

00:02:28.040 you know, about any of the changes from the 60s and 70s, which was my situation.

00:02:33.560 Kind of a bookworm by nature, so I avidly read in doctrine and history. It's still not politically

00:02:40.060 correct to mention the Reverend Father Dennis Fahey, an Irish scholar, priest scholar, who was

00:02:45.200 active in the late 18, early 1900s, died in 54. His works, among many others that could be identified,

00:02:53.180 provide just a sweeping tour de force of history considered from the Catholic point of view. And

00:03:00.500 going from the ages of faith, you know, with the medieval synthesis, as the historians like to put

00:03:05.220 it, to the Reformation, and then the slow, you know, dismantling of Christendom. So I got into

00:03:11.340 reading him and so many of his colleagues and fellow, you know, authors, scholars, both cleric and lay,

00:03:17.720 and was just very excited about it. And frankly, quite naive, because Fahey, in writing in the 30s and

00:03:24.240 before, when there's not an atmosphere of political correctness and certain taboos, he's just very

00:03:31.560 candid, and he's very loving. So I want to make sure we're clear that any criticism he offers towards

00:03:38.640 those that are hostile to the faith, whether it be the long career of Freemasonry and all that

00:03:43.580 kind of stuff that we all know, you know, has been working against Christian civilization, 1.00

00:03:48.480 there's no hostility from his point of view. He's motivated by a great charity and a great desire

00:03:56.300 to have everyone ultimately integrated into the mystical body, which of course is our goal as

00:04:01.840 Catholics, right? That goes without saying, but it needs to be said just for clarity. So I embraced

00:04:06.720 this view without hesitance, thinking, you know, like Rodney Dangerfield would say, hey, what could

00:04:13.020 happen? You know, like, everyone's in favor of this, enough of the study, let's just get to work. And

00:04:17.780 then lo and behold, you have this entity that you mentioned that's kind of connected to this lobby

00:04:23.760 that I would say is, well, Fahey, I'll use his term, he calls it organized naturalism, the notion that

00:04:29.900 the world only is composed only of that which we can see and which we can touch, which leads to

00:04:37.360 materialism, of course, the drive for wealth and the drive for power without any consideration of our

00:04:44.060 ultimate end, and more to the point, without even acknowledging that there is such a thing as

00:04:47.760 an ultimate end, which as Catholics, we know is the beatific vision. So you run afoul of these groups,

00:04:53.260 if you hit the hot buttons, and of course, you may or may not be familiar listeners, the same with

00:04:58.300 this expose that they did 20 years ago now of what they called the dirty dozen, you know, the 12 worst

00:05:04.380 groups and worst people on the planet, all traditionalists, you know, running afoul of this 1.00

00:05:09.700 agenda to keep this kind of liberal authoritarianism. And I say liberal, not just in the sense of our

00:05:17.560 today, you know, left versus right, but liberal in the more historical sense of the order of complete

00:05:23.700 intellectual moral freedom or pseudo freedom, really, that replaced, you know, the Catholic vision

00:05:29.220 in its integrity. You know, they came after us. And again, I still naively thought, oh, what could

00:05:33.780 happen? Big deal. But the Navy took a dim view of what they wrote, you know, launched this lengthy

00:05:39.240 investigation and lengthy process that I'm not kidding, started in 2005. But it really started in

00:05:46.360 earnest in early 2007, and went on for 32 months. And don't don't get the wrong idea. It's not like

00:05:55.440 we're really wasting taxpayer dollars with with deep study of what humble me was doing in for 32 months,

00:06:03.860 it was a little flurry of activity, six or eight months of delay. What do we do with this guy?

00:06:09.220 Because we have the First Amendment, you know, like he's actually allowed to have whatever religious

00:06:13.740 views he has, he's allowed to speak freely, you know, within certain limits in the military,

00:06:18.140 they couldn't come up with anything that was a problem. And then, you know, for purposes of our

00:06:22.580 discussion today, the thing that was so interesting, I'm waiting for someone to deliver copies of these

00:06:27.360 books we did that I can show you on the war in Iraq. But as a Catholic, I was vehemently, you know,

00:06:33.580 without reservation, imposed, opposed to our to our entrance into that conflict, edited some volumes

00:06:40.880 very long about the war. And apparently, one of the things the Navy folks did during the 32 months is

00:06:48.320 have someone read every word of those two volumes, which, you know, I was glad in a roundabout way,

00:06:54.240 like, that's good. Let's maybe we could have everyone read those. And then, you know, we wouldn't

00:06:58.100 get ourselves in such trouble. I was told later, you know, by kind of a friend on the inside who was

00:07:03.540 leading the legal team on the government side, we were the SPLC charges of, you know, anti-Semitism

00:07:09.960 and hatred and bigotry that didn't fly because there's no evidence. It's just it's an ideological claim

00:07:16.140 rather than, you know, factual, you know, factual evidence that they could obtain. So they scoured

00:07:22.480 these books. And literally, John Henry, they found a line, a single line from among maybe 80 or 90

00:07:31.080 little introductory blurbs I had written because all the book was a collection of articles by scholars

00:07:35.880 who are beyond me in all of the different fields. And I was a servant just pulling those voices together

00:07:41.880 and maybe giving having seen the whole vision, giving a little sketch of how does this deep dive

00:07:48.920 on a certain subject fit into the big picture. So there was one line in one of those introductions

00:07:53.640 where we may come to this in our conversation. We were addressing the claim that the the UN had,

00:08:02.380 in fact, in some roundabout way, authorized the Americans to go into Iraq. And we know that that's

00:08:08.460 ultimately not true because there was no action by the Security Council or any of the UN machinery

00:08:13.820 to say in order to, you know, remedy problem X, whatever the problem was, we need to assemble,

00:08:19.940 you know, an international force and solve it through military action. That didn't happen.

00:08:24.920 So the Americans were then scrambling for the proverbial fig leaf, which they would have a few UN

00:08:30.120 resolutions from back in the 2000s, which would be a year or two before our invasion and make this

00:08:35.720 argument. And in fact, if you don't mind the digression on this, you know, key point, it's very

00:08:41.960 similar. I enjoyed listening to Deal and you, you know, discuss this. It's highly relevant to what's

00:08:47.760 going on today. It was, I believe, George Weigel, who is another another leading Catholic who would

00:08:54.640 have traveled in the same circles that Deal Hudson did when he was organizing sort of what, you know,

00:08:59.100 what's the Catholic approach to the war in Iraq. George Weigel was asked, like many people are

00:09:05.140 today. Well, now that we know that the WMD was, to say the least, a mistake in Iraq, what's your 0.89

00:09:10.900 perspective now? And I think, you know, before we were speaking, you mentioned Deal, you know, very,

00:09:17.040 very candidly and with certain humility said, yeah, you know, in hindsight, that that didn't pan

00:09:21.800 out. But Weigel doubled down on it and he said, oh, no, I would stick to my guns. I mean, even though

00:09:26.080 there's no WMD, we did exactly the right thing. And his argument was, there were a few of these 0.91

00:09:31.420 resolutions. They wanted Saddam to open certain facilities to inspection. They wanted him to 0.81

00:09:37.600 back off on procuring certain equipment. And he was in flagrant violation. That was the charge.

00:09:43.080 His inventories didn't line up. You know, he said, I have 400 aluminum tubes for centrifuges,

00:09:48.480 but we found 404 and we know you're lying and you're defying the UN. And ultimately, Weigel's point

00:09:54.800 was Saddam brazenly and blatantly defied this recognized international body with the force of

00:10:02.940 international law behind it. And that can't be tolerated. And my point, of course, was if you're

00:10:08.280 going to invoke the UN, we might even discuss terminology, you know, in law. UN is a creature

00:10:13.600 of positive law. It's the written law, you know, not the law of God in our hearts. If you're going to

00:10:18.120 invoke that, you're stuck with the article two of the charter, which says every member who signs onto

00:10:24.260 the charter, which is a treaty, you know, between independent sovereign states, everyone who signs

00:10:28.920 onto the charter accepts article two, which is we will refrain from using force in any way that

00:10:35.400 threatens the territorial integrity or the political independence of a member state. And to come back,

00:10:41.620 to close the loop on the SPLC and all that, the phrase that I wrote was President Bush ran roughshod

00:10:48.600 over the UN charter, which is a, I think, a standard literary phrase. It's also happens to be true.

00:10:55.060 And despite this invoking of these subordinate resolutions, it was it was phony and it was not

00:11:00.160 credible. Well, that that phrase running roughshod, I said it was it was hypocritical to invoke the

00:11:05.540 resolution when when we ourselves are violating the charter. They discovered they the lawyers and I

00:11:12.100 learned very quickly of an old provision of the military code that there's a special body of law

00:11:17.880 for we military folks called the Uniform Code of Military Justice that has a provision that dates

00:11:23.760 all the way back from James II of England from the late 1600s, which is you can't criticize the king

00:11:29.660 or the sovereign or in our case, the president. So that was that one phrase, President Bush running

00:11:35.460 roughshod over the charter, offering a hypocritical justification for war that was construed

00:11:40.740 as criminal contempt of the commander in chief, which which which carries with it a maximum

00:11:47.300 punishment of up to two years in Leavenworth, I might add, which which I didn't I didn't have

00:11:52.400 that experience. But that that's as I said, you'll have to, you know, rein me in because that it's a

00:11:58.160 very to me, it's a very interesting story. And it hits at all of these issues that are important to

00:12:04.060 us. But that's the, you know, cancellation before it was cool. Indeed. And this happens when you are a

00:12:10.000 family man, you are a decorated man in the Navy, having given your life in service to your country,

00:12:16.840 and you have seven children, as we already said. And you're going through this, which has

00:12:21.940 ramifications for your family as well. And it went on almost three years.

00:12:26.240 Well, it did. And John Henry, not to over melodramatize the situation that that that was the

00:12:32.740 process. So so thank God all that time. I mean, again, talk about, you know, inefficiency and waste of

00:12:39.720 you know, tax dollars. If Musk was around running the doge, he would have he would have gone through

00:12:44.640 the roof at that point, because they they were they were literally just having me sit cooling my heels

00:12:49.600 that the whole kind of establishment, we don't want any help from you. I mean, you're you're employed,

00:12:54.400 you're on the rolls, I was drawing my paycheck. The trial with the family started afterwards,

00:13:00.000 because I was eventually discharged, you know, with with wasn't a dishonorable, but it was the middle

00:13:04.800 kind of discharge, general discharge, which is you're sort of naughty, but not, you know,

00:13:10.260 a hardened criminal. And I was out for, let's see, I left at the end of 2009, took some initiative in

00:13:16.800 the courts and other other administrative proceedings, and then got back in in 2017. So I was

00:13:23.460 out for eight full years. And that's when the pay had been turned off. So it was dicey. But I don't,

00:13:31.220 you know, again, without making a crazy example or being highly melodramatic, part of what I was

00:13:38.360 concerned about is that I was at the Pentagon before this all started when we were working on our books.

00:13:44.340 And Uncle Sam, God bless him. Sometimes you wonder about his judgment. He would bring injured

00:13:49.860 soldiers, mostly army, some Marines, maybe random Navy guy once in a while, but but mostly army from

00:13:56.000 Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C., which is our chief hub for all the military health

00:14:01.740 facilities and, you know, cutting edge technology. They would bring every so often, I want to say

00:14:07.680 some number of months, a busload of the of the very severely wounded to the Pentagon. They would send us 0.60

00:14:15.760 all of us bureaucrats sitting at our cubicles, these little messages that would come through the

00:14:20.380 computer system, you know, meet in the corridor, 10 a.m., such and such day. We'll have a parade of

00:14:25.620 the wounded, honor the wounded, which, you know, is a fine sentiment. But I couldn't escape the feeling

00:14:31.700 that as we were all summoned to the corridor, including many high ranking officers. I mean, I was

00:14:36.300 by absolute standards, I was middle management. So we have, you know, multi-star generals and admirals

00:14:42.760 coming out to the corridor, lining the corridor as these young men and women, mostly men, I guess,

00:14:48.340 you know, that's good in one respect. Being wheeled because they're all in wheelchairs or worse 1.00

00:14:53.080 down the corridor with the most horrific injuries, you know, amputees, missing limbs,

00:14:59.260 gigantic bandages, pieces of skulls missing. And we're expected to and by all means applaud. I mean,

00:15:05.980 to me, you want to give the men and women a hug, you know, and like literally get on your knees and

00:15:11.100 embrace them and say, you know, God, God be with you. Like what? You can't really find the words.

00:15:16.120 But to me, it was also an outrage because all the time I'm thinking I started in with an

00:15:21.580 intelligence background and then I got way out of that into like a very mainstream line

00:15:25.720 of work with the military. But I knew enough at the time, John Henry, to know how the system works

00:15:32.060 and how we believe the stories that we tell ourselves. If there's an agenda to do something

00:15:37.120 politically, all of the pieces can be put into place. You know, it can be done in a way where those

00:15:42.560 who have sensitive consciences about telling outright lies can be handled in a way where

00:15:50.120 you can say technically what's true. I mean, as Catholics, you know, you and I've read enough

00:15:54.700 Jesuit manuals to know what mental reservation is, right? And it gets very, very gray. That's why 0.99

00:16:01.520 the manuals of casuistry are, you know, five, six volumes of a thousand pages each. But I knew enough

00:16:07.300 instinctively and with what I had seen personally to know it was an outrage. Whatever was going on

00:16:14.180 in Iraq that was a problem didn't warrant this kind of carnage. And of course, you know what the

00:16:19.340 ratios are like. On our side, for every one wounded, there's 10 or 100 on the other side. Wounded,

00:16:25.000 killed, maimed, without Walter Reed, you know, to have access to. And that's why I should say,

00:16:30.840 having listened again with great interest to your conversation with Deal. I can't fault Leo XIV

00:16:36.260 really in any way for saying war's not the answer. I mean, I understand. So I'm not, we're not Quakers,

00:16:42.480 so we do defend ourselves. But that last resort prong of just war along with the other ones is

00:16:48.820 when you've seen that, it resonates very loudly. You know, it's very, very strong.

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00:17:25.240 Why don't you lay out for us the principles of just war theory upon which you based your

00:17:33.500 rejection of the war in Iraq, and then we'll apply it to what's going on in America today.

00:17:38.400 The key one, of course, is having a just cause, which at the end of the day resolves into what

00:17:43.220 is basic common sense, which is there's got to be a justifiable reason for going to war.

00:17:49.180 I will digress for a minute, and if it gets a little too esoteric, I rely on you to keep it at

00:17:55.720 the level we need to keep it at, but it's really important. We started this by the grace of the

00:18:02.320 Holy Ghost, that our discussion has evolved with talking a bit about the UN. The jury's a bit out

00:18:07.700 on the UN. Conservatives traditionally, over the last hundred years, or really what's career from

00:18:12.820 the 40s is we're at 80-some years now. Conservatives always resist these international bodies because

00:18:18.920 it's an infringement of our national sovereignty, especially Americans. We're very jealous of 1.00

00:18:24.800 that. Our sovereignty sometimes is so large that we want to extend that. I don't know if you plan

00:18:30.940 to sign up for the 51st state movement or not, but that sovereignty tends to be so sovereign that

00:18:37.380 other sovereignties tend to trickle in comparison, which is why a plug for our friends,

00:18:42.680 Belloc and Chesterton, the great Catholics who talk distributism a lot in the economic order

00:18:48.020 about economic sovereignty. Well, the Catholic position is really just distributism

00:18:55.760 in geopolitics. Every nation has a right to its own livelihood, its own economic production,

00:19:02.860 its own productiveness, its own culture, its own language, its own traditions. And so there's a

00:19:09.180 tension between the international bodies and the individual nation states. The same way if you

00:19:14.900 envision in the old West before, when it was just pioneers and it was just, you know, a guy and his

00:19:20.620 family, a couple of guns and a wagon, and there is no law and order, it's every man for himself,

00:19:27.040 right? He has no choice but to take the law into his own hands. And this is where our concept of

00:19:30.760 vigilante justice, you know, once you have an established system of courts and laws and criminal

00:19:36.420 charges and procedures and appeals and, you know, the whole mechanism of legal process against those who

00:19:42.560 would violate the criminal law, it's also a crime to take the law into your own hands. So the thing to

00:19:48.280 keep very clearly in mind is that the war-making power of a state has this element distinct from the

00:19:57.180 UN and distinct from the international body, has this element of the state taking the law into its own

00:20:02.760 hands. So if the state feels with its sort of judicial power, it looks at facts, it looks at there's some

00:20:10.740 infringement of rights that's going on by another nation against the actor. So let's say the United

00:20:16.420 States. I mean, if you don't mind, we can kind of flesh out the principles with reference to what

00:20:21.860 we'll talk about, you know, for right this moment. Indeed, please, yeah. You know, the argument is

00:20:26.280 something along the lines of we, the United States, even though we have signed on to the UN

00:20:31.380 charter, which brings with it the International Court of Justice, which is part of the UN system,

00:20:36.460 but as has been widely reported for 20 years, in fact, the president who took us into Iraq was the

00:20:41.860 one who decided not to sign on to the International Criminal Court, which I'm sure you've talked about

00:20:46.540 a little in your show, because, you know, the theory is, unfortunately, this is our big American

00:20:51.380 sovereignty. Again, we don't want to sign up for that because we don't need our soldiers being

00:20:55.340 arrested somewhere when we elect to take military action. So interesting point. But there's that

00:21:00.420 internationalist kind of tension and then the reservation of sovereignty to a state and, you

00:21:07.460 know, again, for the United States. So our argument is we, our intelligence community and our, you

00:21:14.180 know, observers of the world scene collect facts and then we make an adjudication. So this is where

00:21:19.380 sort of the judicial part of the government process comes in. And if the result of our adjudication is to

00:21:25.560 conclude that we have no choice, one of the many principles of just war is it's got to be the last

00:21:31.820 resort, right? In other words, we can't just rush to take military action, but we've got to be forced

00:21:36.720 by the force of evidence into this regrettable conclusion that no further diplomacy will work,

00:21:43.460 no more sanctions, no more international machinery. We have no choice. The only thing that's going to get

00:21:49.460 us relief from whatever the problem is, is military action. So that, you know, buttonhole that or

00:21:55.140 put a pin there for last resort. But the essentials of it is that the nation evaluates by itself,

00:22:04.660 evaluates the situation, comes to this conclusion, military force is necessary. The key prong that I

00:22:10.660 mentioned at the beginning, the just cause, to mystically, Deal mentioned, you know, his facility

00:22:16.060 with St. Thomas. To mystically, it's an answer to the question, why? Why do you feel that arriving at

00:22:22.880 this sort of irreversible point of no return is necessary? This is where I part ways with what's

00:22:29.100 happening now, and I parted ways in Iraq. When the nation believes that war is necessary, that

00:22:36.600 conclusion must be driven by something that is doing harm to the nation that proposes to go to war.

00:22:43.740 In a way, let's take kind of the Old West, you know, model. Cattle rustlers coming along, 0.99

00:22:50.380 stealing your cattle, killing your cattle, burning your homestead, you know, breaking down your fences. 0.58

00:22:56.560 That goes on and on and on. You maybe have a meeting with him. Let's meet at the saloon. I'll get you a

00:23:01.760 beer. We'll try to talk about it like civilized men. You do that as much as you can, and at some point,

00:23:06.960 it just doesn't work anymore. The reason why in that setting, you're allowed to get a posse and go

00:23:12.960 after him, or at least shoot him as he's coming to steal your cattle, is because there is no authority

00:23:18.140 to whom you can have recourse, because you're the authority. And if the term is familiar to it, you 0.87

00:23:23.900 know, we talk about the family, which you and I discussed earlier, as an imperfect society. It's

00:23:29.640 absolutely a society with members and leaders, but it's imperfect because it's not self-sufficient.

00:23:34.780 It can't do what it needs all by itself. The state, just like the church, is a perfect society,

00:23:40.780 meaning that she, referring to the state, possesses and should possess the full capacity to do

00:23:47.060 everything for that temporal common good that benefits the members of the state, to include

00:23:52.680 acts of self-defense and to include the judicial power that's necessary to think through the process

00:24:00.360 of our rights in some way are being infringed or there's harm being done to us. How grave is it?

00:24:06.600 This is one of the other concepts we hear. Is there any other way to fix it other than to go to war?

00:24:11.640 And then if you've exhausted that whole process of thinking, then you get to the point where, yes,

00:24:17.140 the state is allowed to use military force and, frankly, to commit acts of violence. I mean,

00:24:23.360 war is killing people and breaking things. And you're allowed to do that to just kind of reset

00:24:28.940 everything on this process of the state making its own decision. The reason I had such trouble with

00:24:35.440 Iraq and the reason I have trouble with this now is even if we do what we're supposed to do as good 0.82

00:24:41.740 soldiers, or in my case, as a good sailor, or in your listeners' case, as just good citizens,

00:24:47.980 you follow St. Augustine who says, well, we must give the government the benefit of the doubt.

00:24:52.120 The authority who's entrusted with these matters is always entitled to the benefit of the doubt.

00:24:58.020 Based on what I saw in the run-up to Iraq, that's a hard pill for me to swallow.

00:25:02.600 Because when you know enough, you realize, frankly, if someone's talking nonsense, you say,

00:25:06.500 well, yeah, you have the benefit of the doubt, but I can overcome that doubt with facts and with

00:25:11.040 evidence and with research. But if we start with benefit of the doubt and we listen to all the

00:25:15.460 claims that have been made, I was just brushing up for this. You'll get a kick out of this.

00:25:20.480 There's a huge thunderstorm coming through, so I hope it doesn't kill our connection. If you see

00:25:25.600 some glitch, that's either NSA and Mossad or just Mother Nature who's after us. But listen to some of

00:25:34.540 these little quips, which are very resonant today. Judith Miller, a famous New York Times, kind of

00:25:41.440 disgraced New York Times reporter, writing in 2002, evidence suggests Saddam Hussein is attempting to buy

00:25:48.660 thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes for his centrifuges. Condoleezza Rice, this is the famous

00:25:55.560 one you heard a million times, John Henry. There will always be uncertainty in the evidence, but we

00:26:01.040 don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud. And this was repeated. This was hatched in, I won't

00:26:06.340 say it was, you know, the deal ran this outfit, but this was hatched in these discussions of how do we

00:26:11.320 how do we sell this war to the American people? And that one phrase, I'll drill down on that for a

00:26:17.140 second. There will always be uncertainty. So that tends to be the judo move that diffuses all

00:26:24.120 scrutiny. Oh, I admit there's uncertainty. Like, are you certain? Can you prove that the Iranians are 1.00

00:26:29.480 enriching to 90 percent? Can you prove that they've violated this agreement with centrifuges and storage?

00:26:35.040 Well, no, there's always uncertainty. So now that argument is kind of, you know, it's gone. It's like, I

00:26:40.780 acknowledge there's uncertainty, but we can't take the risk because if we were certain, we would know the

00:26:46.640 consequences would be very grave. So we come back to this, you know, kind of last key principle, which is

00:26:52.820 giving the authorities the benefit of the doubt. The way I approached Iraq and the way I approach this is, let us

00:26:58.540 presume, as we're obliged to do, that everything the authorities say is correct. All the conclusions

00:27:04.780 they draw from the intelligence, we accept those, or as the lawyers would say, we'll stipulate that

00:27:10.160 that's true. Is it enough to say that because Iran is pursuing the technical capacity and the raw

00:27:19.740 materials to take those raw materials and advance them to a next stage of processing, which then would

00:27:26.460 become the raw material for a weapon, which then may or may not be used against another station? So you

00:27:32.520 see there's like four or five building blocks of conditions, none of which our government officials

00:27:38.080 even claim certainty. I mean, you were, I thought it was great when you mentioned Tulsi Gabbard, like

00:27:42.900 what about, you know, just three months ago, she said, they're not pursuing a nuclear program.

00:27:48.240 Is there any world in Catholic thought where we could say a potential enemy or a threat, you know, to the

00:27:55.780 good of the nation that again, remember the concept is that this other enemy nation will infringe very

00:28:03.420 central intrinsic rights like that, that that's where the catechism refers to it as damage that's

00:28:08.820 grave and lasting. But, but if you don't mind taking a page out of the conversation you had with deal

00:28:14.280 Hudson, uh, they, they, they tend with respect to short circuit that analysis because with the idea,

00:28:23.780 with the mushroom cloud comment, well, a new going off in, in Boston, that's grave. We had, no one

00:28:29.340 disputes that. I agree that it's grave. The question is, can we, uh, you know, invert the logic to walk

00:28:36.300 ourselves back to justify intervention by force of arms when all that we're certain about is that

00:28:43.440 there is the possession of a, of a, of a technical capacity with all the infrastructure to enrich a raw

00:28:50.180 material to a certain stage, which then must be enriched further, which then must be assembled, developed,

00:28:55.700 et cetera. And then the, the elephant, as far as I'm concerned, John Henry in the room is there is there, you

00:29:03.180 know, we, we can debate and we should, the world should debate whether nuclear weapons should exist, right?

00:29:08.120 Our, our famous Cardinal Ottaviani, you know, the great intransigent solid Catholic, he, he, he was, he, he, he took a

00:29:15.820 dim view of nuclear weapons. Let's put it that way. Uh, and the anecdote is that when he gave an

00:29:20.680 allocution or a presentation at Vatican II, supporting one of the phrases, and I believe

00:29:26.320 it's Gaudium et Spes, but you'll, you'll have to fact check me on that. But in one of the Vatican II

00:29:30.500 documents, I think that's correct. That, that has some very harsh things to say about nuclear weapons.

00:29:35.280 Uh, he endorsed it. And, and, and the report I get from my, uh, sort of peacenik Catholics is that he

00:29:42.120 received the longest and most powerful ovation from the council fathers during Vatican II by endorsing

00:29:48.580 this, uh, Jeremy ad against, against nuclear weapons. And, and, and that's where the gravity comes

00:29:54.360 from. But the question then becomes if these original members of the UN, United States, Russia,

00:30:01.680 China, France, England, plus the others, Pakistan, India, now North Korea. Uh, I'm sure I'm missing a

00:30:08.900 couple. And of course the Israelis with their reputed, you know, uh, large assembly of nuclear 0.98

00:30:14.860 weapons. If all of these nations claim the right to have nuclear weapons for whatever purpose, our

00:30:20.600 doctrine is its deterrence. Our doctrine is it's ultimately like the last thing that will impede an

00:30:25.660 armed invasion of the United States. Is there a reason that, that another nation coming to possess 0.88

00:30:31.560 nuclear weapons should trigger an immediate armed intervention when, especially when the diplomatic

00:30:37.260 process, which has been going on for 25 years was, was again, back in motion. You know, this is the

00:30:43.720 other thing we're told about this current circumstance. President Trump gave them 60 days, the day before

00:30:49.460 the Israelis are already loading their weapons and taking advantage of the fact that as there's a public 0.77

00:30:55.220 discussion of the negotiation, the Iranians are put in this position of, okay, we'll come back to

00:31:01.100 the negotiating table. And even if we're going to be stern negotiators, even if we're not prepared to

00:31:05.780 give up, I'm not going to go into hiding because we have a meeting in the morning and, and, you know,

00:31:10.840 we know how that turned out. So I'll, I'll let you, um, you know, intervene and, and, and guide us where

00:31:16.080 you want us to go. But, uh, there's so much to unpack here. You know, it's just really, it's very

00:31:21.600 interesting, but it's, uh, but these are like life and death issues, you know? Indeed. In fact,

00:31:26.940 it's very much like we've taken on Minority Report, the famous Tom Cruise movie, where, where you, um,

00:31:33.220 are going to charge people with crimes they could, or will commit in the future, uh, based on your

00:31:41.160 prescience or the, the, the, the, these, um, anyway.

00:31:44.520 A hundred percent. And that, and that's, and that's the danger of it. As you can tell, I do a

00:31:49.680 poor job of reciting the catechism because there's so much built in, you know, these, these points of

00:31:55.520 just war, like just in terms of the visual aid, I pulled a couple of things off my shelf. This,

00:32:00.240 this old book of, of, uh, I'll just tell you real quick, 500 plus pages, uh, from the thirties is

00:32:06.700 called, uh, the Catholic tradition of the law of nations by, by a Catholic scholar, John Epstein,

00:32:14.960 uh, published. You'll find this interesting to, to, to organizations, Carnegie Endowment for

00:32:20.420 International Peace. So Carnegie, you know, a big name, very mainstream, not, not, we're not talking

00:32:25.520 some kind of, uh, you know, crazy, shady radicalism or what have you. And then another, uh, entity that

00:32:31.900 is, that is unknown. It's, it's covered in our books, the first volume called the Catholic

00:32:36.700 Association for International Peace. And, and, and the, and the, the effort of that group, which

00:32:41.720 assembled, uh, international lawyers, jurists, historians, scholars, Franciscans, Dominicans,

00:32:48.060 Jesuit, like a whole team of 20 or 30, just cutting edge. The, the level of scholarship, John

00:32:53.740 Henry, that you would, you would, I'm sure there was, uh, interplay and intermingling of these

00:32:58.460 folks that the Harvard level lawyers who would write, uh, international law sections of the

00:33:06.000 army manual for land warfare from the fifties, where it would lay out, you know, rules of

00:33:10.500 engagement. When are you allowed to go to war? What are you allowed to do in war? This is

00:33:14.640 just, just worth thinking, which the church has given to humanity. That's then distilled

00:33:19.740 into principles and tenants, you know, that are, that are actionable at law. But your reference

00:33:24.360 to that movie is, is spot on because one of these other corollaries and one of these other

00:33:28.800 things to unpack is that when you have the, uh, situation, which all of these gentlemen

00:33:35.060 as early as the 1930s were, were lamenting the kind of wild west atmosphere internationally.

00:33:42.300 In other words, it's all just armed posses, judge and jury in their own case, fighting it

00:33:47.540 out instead of having a judge and a policeman and a, and a system that civilized people have

00:33:52.840 recourse to their, one of their major arguments in favor of moving to some international order

00:33:59.820 was the very fact that since, as I explained before, the state intrinsically has the power

00:34:05.680 to collect facts, pass judgments, make its own decision, and then go to war if need be.

00:34:11.600 That that's a, the lawyers would say that's a classic conflict of interest, right? No, no man

00:34:16.080 really is supposed to be judge and jury in his own case, but because there is no higher authority

00:34:21.120 that the state is subject to, you really have no choice. And I'm not arguing against that because

00:34:26.100 as a military man and a patriot, I absolutely believe in our right of self-defense. And I might

00:34:32.040 add, so did everyone else because that's enshrined in another article of the UN Charter, 51, which

00:34:37.900 says nothing herein shall be construed to deny, you know, the state's natural and intrinsic right

00:34:43.100 to defend itself. But, but there's the added phrase in the event of an armed attack or in the

00:34:48.440 event of an imminent armed attack. And so your minority report, again, it's a fantastic example. 0.97

00:34:54.220 I remember deal, you know, said the magic word, this is a preemptive strike. And in volume two of

00:35:01.440 neocond, there is a meaty article about the difference between preemptive and preventive

00:35:07.320 war. And clearly what we did and what the Israelis did is a preventive war. In other words, if for some 0.53

00:35:13.000 reason you and I have a spat, God forbid, and the word gets out that you don't like me very much,

00:35:17.920 maybe reading, dipping into the Southern Poverty Law Center literature a little too, you know,

00:35:23.260 aggressively, and your attitude sours toward me, I can't go shoot you because I see you walk into a 0.53

00:35:29.060 gun store, right? It's common sense. I might get nervous. I might get to upgrade my security system. 0.98

00:35:34.880 I might have a private eye to keep an eye on you. But in law, if I simply went to your home and I

00:35:41.780 murdered you and my defense was, I know he doesn't like me. He's been waiting to do something. And I saw

00:35:47.780 him buy a gun. And to make the parallel exact, it wouldn't even be buying a gun with our Iranians. 0.90

00:35:53.860 It would be, I saw him get some molten metal and some molds to like make a gun and then get gunpowder.

00:36:00.240 And he's got shell casings with the machine to fill it up. And, you know, as our friends,

00:36:04.840 our Israeli friends said to you, they're one year away. They're just on the cusp, but that's 10 years

00:36:09.220 ago. And every year they're one year away and one year away and one year away, which then opens the

00:36:13.780 question, are we perhaps to take seriously the fatwa that said, as Muslims, we don't want a nuclear

00:36:21.080 weapon. And then you ask the question, of course, is presented, well, why enrich the uranium to higher

00:36:27.280 than what's needed for civilian power? And there is a rational answer. And the rational answer is

00:36:32.600 because we've been strangled by sanctions and we want those to go away. So we need something to give

00:36:38.840 up. We can't come to a negotiation where you have everything and we have nothing. And it's not a

00:36:43.620 negotiation between two sovereign powers. It's basically a house cleaning.

00:36:48.760 One of the things I think that is very confusing for people, because I think for most people,

00:36:54.280 for most Americans, definitely for conservative Americans, things tend to line up. The moral issues

00:37:02.340 go with conservatism. The leftist moral issues tend to go with the sort of leftist politics. So

00:37:07.520 there's very much a paradigm of this is the way it goes. If you're on the right, you're for God and

00:37:14.100 country and God, remember? And this is where we're going. And the other side, you're left,

00:37:20.000 you're for abortion, you're basically for Satan. And that's where it goes. And yet here, when you're

00:37:26.100 considering what's going on with Israel and Iran, and even to some extent, at least previous to this

00:37:33.660 administration, Ukraine, Russia, you had this divergence, all of a sudden, it seemed like all

00:37:41.820 the folks who were in support of abortion and all the things that traditional Catholics would deem

00:37:48.080 from the devil, they're opposing the war in, well, for Israel with Iran now. And yet, and most of the

00:37:58.940 people on the right are all for this. So there's a massive confusion. How do you solve that for people

00:38:06.500 when that tends to be the paradigm that many of them are looking at this from?

00:38:11.200 Yes. Well, and I think, I don't know if you would agree with this, and you're far more up on,

00:38:16.180 you know, because of what you do, the sort of contemporary discussion.

00:38:19.500 Um, but, but I, I found it very interesting and I was very encouraged to see how much traction the

00:38:27.280 Tucker Ted Cruz discussion got, you know, over the last two or three weeks, correct me if you

00:38:32.240 disagree, but I think he would, at least up to this point, you know, before he got canceled from

00:38:37.200 mega, um, he, he, he was absolutely right at the heart of everything you just talked about.

00:38:42.160 This red blooded July 4th family, good values, you know, right down the line.

00:38:48.300 So I think the fact that there's that discussion is good. And I'll, I'll answer you maybe in two

00:38:55.520 ways, uh, John Henry. One is, and I knew you made reference to it just now. We absolutely saw the

00:39:01.380 same thing in Iraq, not that would be Gulf War II, because we were in there first in the early nineties

00:39:06.280 and then, and then, uh, 2003, one of the several goals that we had in, in publishing that large

00:39:13.240 collection was to show that the, the consensus was so powerful. It really trans transcended the

00:39:20.120 traditional left, right divide that you're talking about. So we had in the same week, the

00:39:25.280 conservatives tended to be in volume one, cause that was more cultural and doctrinal. Those who

00:39:29.680 would be called liberal or on the left were more in volume two, because they were some specialists in

00:39:34.060 certain things. You know, I'm sure that the scholars that did our treatises on international law,

00:39:39.380 and we got some very, very serious, uh, international critics of what we were doing at the

00:39:46.060 time, which seems like no one's talking about anymore, you know, fetching, uh, civilians off

00:39:51.720 the battlefields and sending them to Guantanamo Bay for, you know, God knows how long under this

00:39:56.340 kind of war on terror type regime. So those were, were leftists. I mean, we, we would not have dared

00:40:01.800 say, by the way, give us an essay on what you think about abortion and women's rights and

00:40:05.500 transgender, whatever, because you don't want to hear what they have to say on that. 0.99

00:40:08.900 But at the end of the day, an expert's an expert right in his field. If he's talking truth,

00:40:12.700 let's hear from him. And I think our Lord would have been the first to say, uh, don't, don't

00:40:17.080 question where you hear it. The question is, what are you hearing and what's being talked about?

00:40:21.600 So our goal was to point up that this dichotomy or this division, uh, is not always a reliable

00:40:29.080 guide. And, you know, and I think that's what you're pointing to it, you know, in a nutshell,

00:40:33.740 it was Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and Pat Buchanan, you know, all in the same collection,

00:40:40.100 basically saying the same thing, criticizing, and, and ultimately from the same spirit. At the end of

00:40:45.580 the day, we're human. You know, as my old roommate in the Navy used to say, when we got in trouble by

00:40:49.640 some high ranking official, he would say, well, he puts his pants on one leg at a time in the

00:40:53.820 morning, just like we do. So don't, you know, don't let it keep you up at night, you know, just do

00:40:57.540 your best. And, and, and I think we're all, we're all human underneath. Neither a leftist nor a right

00:41:02.720 winger wants to be incinerated in a, in an unnecessary war. None of us want our kids to

00:41:07.300 be sent places. And, and I can tell you, John Henry from, you may have seen it in the, in the far too

00:41:13.020 long biographical sketch that I sent you, that as a result of my, uh, interaction with the military,

00:41:19.320 I picked up what is kind of a side job for me now, which is helping a lawyer represent, you know,

00:41:24.580 young men and women who get crosswired with the government, you know, because they're getting

00:41:28.700 kicked out for this reason or that a lot of what we see tends to be, it's not directly related,

00:41:34.640 but we, we stumble into reviewing files of these kids that come to us as clients and the PTSD and

00:41:42.900 the trauma that's triggered from combat experience is overwhelming and it, and it's unimaginable and

00:41:48.260 it's highly medicated, you know, so it just gets you into a spiral of, I need my meds. I'm not

00:41:53.320 improving. I need more meds. And, you know, the, the kind of anecdote about the, the down and out

00:41:58.460 drug addicted, impoverished Vietnam vet, you know, sitting on the road under a bridge somewhere. I

00:42:03.460 mean, that, that's a real thing. That's a real thing. And that's, and that's what I think,

00:42:07.060 uh, regrettably, as you go through these just war criteria and you think about the, you know,

00:42:14.460 one of the many bullets that Deacon read to you, you know, the other day is the harm that's caused.

00:42:20.080 Is it outweighed by the evil you're trying to stop or, or will the harm you cause outweigh,

00:42:24.440 in fact, the very evil you go to correct? Um, and so I don't know if dropping, you know,

00:42:28.900 three or four bunker busters in an empty mountain that we're told, you know, they knew we were coming

00:42:33.560 and they got it all out anyway. Thank God we're not involved more. I mean, that's one thing,

00:42:37.500 you know, like, thank God it's just that so far, because my fear was it's going to, we're right back

00:42:42.420 to Iraq, you know, with 500,000 troops on the ground and several years, I, I, it may, it may happen. And God,

00:42:49.420 God forbid, uh, that, that it goes to that direction, but that's what Iraq was producing is, is these guys 1.00

00:42:55.740 coming back permanently maimed stories of them attempting suicide in the hospital, because one of the

00:43:02.460 other ironic developments is the technology for prosthetics and the lifesaving techniques on the

00:43:08.140 battlefield are so good that you end up surviving as half a person. Whereas in the civil war and, you know,

00:43:14.080 back in that area, you would have had your last rites made a good confession and bled to death.

00:43:18.620 And that would be it, you know, which as a Catholic, we can say, maybe that's preferable.

00:43:23.040 These kids literally pieces of skull missing. And, and they, they, a lot of them try to kill 0.55

00:43:27.420 themselves. They, I don't want to go on. And that's, I don't know how you weigh that human cost,

00:43:32.080 you know, against whatever the argument is in your uranium and this and that, you know, we,

00:43:35.800 we talk all the time to mothers and fathers whose kids either didn't come home or who came back,

00:43:41.020 you know, as half a person, it's very difficult, you know, to find the words that, that, that suit

00:43:47.160 the situation. And again, that's not to mention what's the cost on the other side, which frankly,

00:43:51.200 we don't see a lot of. But what's a more realistic analysis from your view of things as to where

00:43:57.400 things might go? It's very serious. If you look at world politics, you know, over four or 500 years

00:44:02.640 and, and you ask yourself, well, what, what does the dismantling of christened mean? What does it mean?

00:44:07.720 What it means is that the, the moral order, which was by and large recognized and accepted,

00:44:15.180 even if it was not honored all the time, admittedly, that moral order, both intellectually and then in

00:44:22.360 the practical manifestations that made that order work. And frankly, that enforced it. I mean, all of

00:44:28.360 this just war tradition comes from a, a very basic Aristotelian and to mystic understanding

00:44:36.340 that there is a coercive power that God has been given. It's right out of scripture where

00:44:42.900 St. you can correct me. I'm, I'm pretty sure it's St. Peter who said that God, you know,

00:44:48.400 sent the Kings to chastise the wicked, right? Like that whole notion of punishment, it's real. And,

00:44:54.020 and, and it's a power that's given to man. And so this is where the war making power comes from is

00:44:58.860 that yes, if your nation is being assaulted and there's no other recourse, neither to an international

00:45:04.940 body nor towards, you know, further diplomatic discussions. Yes, you have that, that, that

00:45:10.580 chastising power. But I think as Catholics, we have to say, and as students of history, that that was

00:45:16.780 only kept in, in very, very precarious check by a moral order, where if you happen to have two

00:45:24.580 sovereigns or two, you know, feudal Lords, two Kings who were disputing, but who had enough sense of all

00:45:31.560 of these things we've been talking about, the human costs, ultimately the hopelessness of war.

00:45:36.020 I mean, I guess I'm talking myself more and more into really not just kind of tolerating, but really

00:45:41.280 supporting Leo XIV comment, because it doesn't, it's not a solution over the longterm. Presumably

00:45:47.680 these sovereigns had some sense of that and they were prepared to go before the Pope who, who was that

00:45:53.300 international authority as an arbiter between Christian powers. You probably know the story of,

00:45:58.360 of how firmly and, and almost violently St. Pius X warned the emperor of the Habsburgs,

00:46:05.980 don't go to war. Like we understand your honor was defended in a grave way with the assassination

00:46:11.820 of the Archduke, but Pius, I mean, you know, one of the, one of the pious stories about Pius X is he

00:46:18.200 died from a broken heart because he said, this is not going to fix. And historians will tell us World

00:46:22.420 War II is really a continuation of World War I because of all the, the redrawing of the map. And

00:46:28.680 some are saying that what's happening now is, is a continuation of that because so much of what's in

00:46:33.820 the Middle East, and this is, there is a, I do have an answer to your actual question, John Henry, this

00:46:38.240 is, this is it, but all of what's going on in the map now in the Middle East is all the fruit of Versailles

00:46:43.460 afterwards. Right. And, and even before that, all of, all of these semi-artificial boundaries where

00:46:49.240 the Brits and the other powers kind of carved up pieces of, of, of the Middle East, you know, 0.92

00:46:54.220 when Syria fragments it, that's a fruit. When we, we went in saying we're going to restore order

00:46:58.760 in Baghdad. You remember our friend Wolfowitz said, well, the rock swims on a sea of oil,

00:47:03.780 so that'll pay for the war. No problem. And now we're at $37 trillion in debt, you know,

00:47:09.600 on, on the cusp of adding another five to that, you know, over the years. With all that said,

00:47:14.860 the question is, can the United States back itself out of maybe two phenomena? One that we've talked

00:47:22.700 about, the big guy on the block, we have to sort of throw our weight around in every situation.

00:47:27.540 Are we prepared to, to let other countries have a spat and fight it out? Unless maybe they both come

00:47:33.900 to us saying, let's arbitrate. I mean, I hate to say this, but I thought it was a little rude when,

00:47:38.540 when Putin very quickly volunteered communicating with president Trump, how can I help with Iran

00:47:46.040 and Israel? And Trump said, you know, something not uncharacteristic, but go mediate yourself,

00:47:51.840 you know, I'll take care of it. Okay. Well, I mean, it's a little flippant when you consider

00:47:56.100 the human costs, like what's at stake, right? So we, we have to, we have to hope and pray and lobby

00:48:01.880 and work to the limit of our capacity to get us into this, uh, a little bit more humble frame of

00:48:08.500 mind. First of all, second of all, I think we have to be very honest. It's painful. It's a little,

00:48:15.000 you know, some of this kind of came up in my, uh, you know, canceled before it was a cool, uh, story

00:48:19.860 that the situation with Israel having been created on a piece of territory that was inhabited for

00:48:26.580 centuries by another people, namely the Palestinian, uh, natives. Just look at, look at historical

00:48:33.220 maps. 1948, there's one size, then it's bigger, then it's bigger, then it's bigger. Uh, West Bank

00:48:38.420 is still under pressure. Lebanon's under pressure to the North. The Gazans just open, you know, just 1.00

00:48:44.360 Google Gaza and, and get, and get some of the, especially the footage that's not kind of highly

00:48:49.100 managed, you know, by the mainstream media. It's atrocious. And I think the international

00:48:54.620 community and our leadership has to, at least to go back to St. Thomas, you know, he started each

00:49:01.680 article of the Summa, what's the question presented? Let's not worry about the answer. Let's, let's,

00:49:07.020 we'll schedule the disputation for later. What's the question? We have to have the courage and the

00:49:12.440 candor to say, one of the questions presented is does the conflict between Iran, Syria, Iraq,

00:49:23.480 in its previous manifestation, probably still part of Egypt to some extent, uh, Jordan, they're,

00:49:29.760 they're, they're good, you know, fence sitters, uh, the Lebanese, the, the, the conflict between that 1.00

00:49:35.700 loose affiliation of states and Israel, is it really just that they're all Arab or Persian fanatics

00:49:43.920 who hate Jews and just want to repeat, you know, the crimes of World War II? Is, is that what it is?

00:49:49.500 Because if it is, okay, well, we, we need to deal with that and maybe deal is right. Maybe the bombs

00:49:55.660 just need to start falling. But if there's an argument on the other side, which is, you know,

00:50:00.880 the Irish, they fought the Brits eight centuries probably, you know, to get them out. If the argument 0.72

00:50:06.960 is, uh, you're familiar, I'm sure your listeners with the, the Balfour declaration, the, the, the very

00:50:12.560 famous statement, you know, fully public, not nothing secret, uh, where, where the, uh, where

00:50:18.060 the British foreign ministry said we'll support a Jewish homeland in Palestine. And there's an

00:50:23.380 important, I pulled this just thinking of this today, an important rider in that declaration

00:50:29.520 from 1917, nothing shall be done, which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing

00:50:36.440 non-Jewish communities in Palestine. Uh, I mean, I think that's one of those questions where it's

00:50:42.640 enough to, to present the question and it answers itself. So if this extended conflict, this, this

00:50:50.180 frankly, sort of greater Zionist problem is really just with, with, with caveats for, I'm not defending

00:50:57.840 anything that anyone's ever done that's wrong, you know, acts of violence, terror, whatever. I, it's not

00:51:02.900 the point. The point is if, if this is the essence of this conflict and when the Iranians say, well,

00:51:10.520 the state that doesn't want us to support the Palestinians doesn't want us to be able to defend

00:51:16.540 ourselves. Therefore, we may not have a nuclear weapon. Therefore, sanctions need to be, be tightly

00:51:22.160 enforced against us. And perhaps the only way to get those sanctions lifted for the good of our

00:51:27.220 citizens is to at least have some bargaining power, not your revolver that you're going to shoot

00:51:32.840 me with John Henry, but maybe a few bullets and a, and a forge over here, you know, where I can at

00:51:37.860 least put a pistol together so that when you and I make a deal, you can say, well, I'll give up the

00:51:43.220 parts to my pistol in exchange for you letting me go shopping. You know what I mean? That, that just

00:51:47.860 seems reasonable. And I think against the background of what the Middle East is and what it's been for the

00:51:53.960 last hundred years, we have to face that. We have to face it. And, and, and I know on your program and

00:51:59.360 your authors and Micah and I, of course, talked about this, the, um, and I know you've had McGregor

00:52:04.320 that you've, you've spoke to Colonel McGregor. Um, it's not, it's not a secret that just through

00:52:10.220 open, regular political means, the, the interests of Israel have, have a very strong interest in our,

00:52:17.060 and a strong influence upon our politics. That's just, it's not, you know, it's not, uh, it's not crazy.

00:52:22.520 It's not a conspiracy stuff. It's just regular old lobbying. It's the same way Lockheed sends people

00:52:27.760 to get more contracts. No big deal. But unless we're prepared to face that and say, wait a minute,

00:52:33.180 let's go back to that phrase in the Balfour declaration and walk that back and figure out

00:52:37.760 how are we going to solve this problem in a way that's fully equitable. And where we just start

00:52:42.620 talking plainly, where we talk plainly, why do we think the Iranians want a nuclear weapon?

00:52:47.980 Seems to have worked out for North Korea because no one's pestering them anymore. And, and I'm

00:52:52.720 opposed to nukes just like Odoviani. I think it would be better just like the, you know, many 1.00

00:52:57.200 respects certain segments of the internet, internal combustion engines. I mean, I'd love to live in the

00:53:02.260 middle ages in a little village with my family and sing Gregorian chant all day. You know, that'd be

00:53:06.720 great. So I'm not, I'm not extolling these inventions, but at the end of the day, when you're surrounded by

00:53:12.440 people that have them, it's exactly like the baker, the last holdout in the village who doesn't open

00:53:17.960 on Sunday. And if he doesn't open on Sunday to keep up with everyone else, you know, he's going

00:53:22.720 to go out of business until there's a meeting and everyone comes back and says, okay, well, you know,

00:53:28.580 maybe just one Sunday a month, like let's start there and then we'll walk it back where we need.

00:53:32.700 We have to be prepared to, to face it. And the Catholic traditionalists like ourselves are constantly

00:53:39.120 accused of wanting to turn back the clock. And if turned back the clock means let's go back to the

00:53:44.820 principles of St. Thomas, you know, ruling heads of state, I'm all for it. And we just have to say

00:53:50.500 that plainly. There's nothing wrong with doing that. It's not a prediction, obviously. It's not

00:53:54.140 a good answer to your question about, Hey, what's next. But I, but I think these are root causes that

00:53:58.160 we have to, we have to tackle. John Sharp. Thank you so much for being with us. Where can people

00:54:02.520 keep up with you and what you're doing? IHS Press is the, uh, is the, is the publishing company.

00:54:07.400 If you visit the website, it's just, you know, triple W IHS, which is the monogram for our Lord

00:54:14.160 IHS press.com. Don't be deterred. It hasn't been updated in decades. So you'll think that there's

00:54:19.340 no one home, but we're actually home. You can write me there just a standard old fashioned email

00:54:24.080 and mom and I are, uh, where she's been doing an interview program for 15 years. So we're, we're

00:54:29.180 thinking of launching a platform where we can take these kinds of discussions to the next level,

00:54:34.340 which we're calling rebuilding Christendom, since that's, you know, the theme of, you know,

00:54:38.320 every, every Catholic should be rowing in that direction. So we, we hope to, we hope to keep 0.98

00:54:42.900 you posted on that, uh, John Henry, and perhaps being our guest someday, if you'd be willing to do

00:54:46.880 that. Oh, by all means. Beautiful. John, thank you so very much for joining us. God bless you.

00:54:52.100 Same to you. Take care. And God bless all of you. And we'll see you next time.

00:55:00.460 Aloha everyone. This is Jason Jones for Lifeside News.

00:55:03.340 We hope you enjoyed this video for more content like this. Check the link in the description.

00:55:09.840 You can also connect with us on social media to stay up to date with the latest news on life,

00:55:15.840 faith, family, and freedom. Thanks for watching and may God bless you.

The John-Henry Westen Show - September 12, 2025

USA Heading Toward World War 3？! Catholic Veteran Speaks Out

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