Ep. 1743 - My Honest Take On The War In Iran
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Summary
The United States attacked Iran. Was this a smart move? Will it benefit American citizens or doom us to another Iraq-style quagmire? And why did we launch this attack? Was it necessary? We will break everything down today, as fairly and objectively as we can, on The Matt Wall Show.
Transcript
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Today on the Matt Wall Show, the United States attacks Iran. Was this a smart move? Will it
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benefit American citizens or doom us to another Iraq-style quagmire or something else? And why
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did we launch this attack? Was it necessary? We will break everything down today as fairly
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and objectively as we can on the Matt Wall Show.
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We are going to discuss today, of course, the military operation in Iran. It will not
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surprise any of my viewers and listeners to learn that I am quite skeptical of this operation
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as I am usually skeptical of military interventions in far-off countries on the other side of the
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globe. That's my position, and I'm not going to abandon it now, even as certain segments
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of the base become inflamed with war fever and demand that the rest of us fall in line.
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I'm not going to do that. I'm also an American patriot. I love my country. I wanted to succeed,
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which means that I'm not rooting for this to be a failure, obviously, nor am I weeping over the poor
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Iranian regime and its leaders who are now scattered in many pieces across the desert sand.
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Good riddance to them, as far as I'm concerned. Now, you wouldn't know it based on what you see
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on social media, especially X over the weekend, but there is actually a lane for people in this
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camp, in the camp that I'm in. There is a lane for people who are skeptical of military intervention
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and regime change wars, especially ones in the Middle East, but also aren't siding with the
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Iranian regime and actively rooting for America to fail. Not only does that lane exist in real life,
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but it's where I would estimate a great majority of normal Americans live.
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Now, with that in mind, I want to discuss this issue as fairly and objectively as I can.
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One thing we know for sure is that it is never more difficult to recognize the limits of what
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you know and to ask honest and good faith questions about what you don't know than it is during a once
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in a generation war in which millions of lives, including American lives, can be potentially changed
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irreparably. It's not natural for a political commentator or a politician to admit this,
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but it's true. For decades, Democrats have pursued a policy of appeasing Iran on the theory that money
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and diplomatic concessions would forestall the development of a nuclear bomb. On the other hand,
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Republicans have been split between two factions, the neocon axis of evil hardliners who chant
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bomb Iran on the one hand and the America first proponents on the other, many of whom voted for
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Donald Trump precisely because he promised to keep the United States out of needless regime change
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wars. Every single one of these factions at the moment has reason to be furious and therefore they
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have an incentive to confuse the public about what's actually happening in Iran. Democrats didn't get
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their peace treaty where the mullahs and the supreme leader hold hands and announce that they'll
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never attempt to build a dirty bomb ever again. The neocons didn't get their full scale ground
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invasion complete with boots on the ground, a new democratic Iranian constitution drafted by the
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United States and lucrative nation building contracts, at least not yet. And many America first
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voters, myself included, are wondering how exactly the invasion of Iran will advance the interests
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of the United States. We should not do anything at all, anything outside the borders of our country
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or within them, unless it will first and foremost benefit American citizens. And the benefit must be a
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net gain, which means the reward for Americans is greater than the cost we must pay to procure it.
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That has to be the deal or whatever you're doing is a bad idea with no exceptions.
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Is that the case here? Well, other than a 3 a.m. address from Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Friday
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night, which broadly argued that Iran has been a threat to the United States for many decades,
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that case was not sufficiently made in the lead up to this operation. And I would states say that it
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still has not been made. And it certainly hasn't been subjected to any kind of rigorous scrutiny.
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Now, you can make the argument that because the beginning of the war in Iran was a highly sensitive
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military operation involving classified intelligence that could change at a moment's notice,
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it's not prudent for the White House to lay out its case in detail ahead of time. After all,
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the president is the commander in chief of the military for a reason, and he's entitled to deference
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when it comes to national security. But there are two major problems with that argument. First of all,
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U.S. military deployments to the Persian Gulf over the past few weeks have been extensive and very
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obvious. So this was not a surprise attack or anything close to it. There's no reason why the
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president couldn't have addressed Congress, explained the status of the negotiations with Iran,
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and then outlined a plan of action in case those negotiations failed, including some suggestion of
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what would happen after Iran's government was toppled. That didn't happen, even though the president
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had a chance to do so during the State of the Union. But even if you give the administration
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a pass on that, which you might, you still have to wonder why the silence persisted. There was no
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senior administration official or cabinet member appeared on any of the Sunday shows the other day,
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more than 24 hours after the attacks began. They didn't seem interested in explaining how the war
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was going, why they felt they had to strike at this moment, or what Iran will look like in five
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months or five years. Over the weekend, information came mostly through press releases and truth social
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posts. Then this morning, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and General Dan Kane held the first press
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conference to discuss the mission more than 48 hours after the start of the war. When asked if the U.S.
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will put boots on the ground, this is how Kane replied.
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You mentioned during the briefing, General Kane, that there would be additional troops sent to the
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region. Could you say how many troops currently are involved in this operation and how many
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additional troops are planned to go in and in this next phase? I don't want to talk specifics because
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that would tip the enemy off. And then Pete Hegseth said the same thing when asked if the U.S. already had
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boots on the ground. Are there currently any American boots on the ground in Iran?
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No, but we're not going to go into the exercise of what we will or will not do. I think it's one
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of those fallacies for a long time that this department or presidents or others should tell
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the American people, and our enemies, by the way, here's exactly what we'll do. Here's exactly how
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long we'll go. Here's exactly how far we'll go. Here's what we're willing to do and not do. It's
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foolishness. And so President Trump ensures that our enemies understand we'll go as far as we need to
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go to advanced American interests. But we're not dumb about it. You don't have to roll 200,000
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people in there and stay for 20 years. We've proven that you can achieve objectives that advance
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American interests without being foolish about it. Now, when a reporter asked how long the mission
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would last, this is what Hegseth said. I had a question about four weeks. It's the typical NBC
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sort of gotcha type question. President Trump has all the latitude in the world to talk about
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how long it may or may not take. Four weeks, two weeks, six weeks. It could move up. It could move
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back. We're going to execute at his command the objectives we've set out to achieve.
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Okay, so then what is our objective? Is it regime change? Here's what Hegseth said.
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Turns out the regime who chanted death to America and death to Israel was gifted death from America.
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And death from Israel. This is not a so-called regime change war. But the regime sure did change.
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Now, a lot of people on the internet are saying that this is the Iraq War 2.0.
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The administration and Warhawks are saying that it isn't. So it's important to lay out some historical
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context for those of you who don't remember what happened in 2003 or weren't born yet or were too young.
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Back then, the Bush administration would often use the Sunday shows to make the case for regime change
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in Iraq. They would fabricate information on occasions, as it turned out. But they were also
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grilled over and over again. They knew that meet the press was not friendly territory for them.
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They knew that the Sunday shows were biased in favor of the left. But the Bush administration still
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felt compelled to make their case before a hostile and skeptical audience one way or another.
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Just days before the invasion, Vice President Dick Cheney went on one of the Sunday shows and said,
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I think the invasion will go relatively quickly, weeks rather than months.
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A few weeks later, after the situation spiraled out of control, the Washington Post reported that
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Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz told reporters that defense officials made assumptions
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that turned out to underestimate the problem, beginning with the belief that removing Saddam Hussein
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from power would also remove the threat posed by his Ba'ath party. In addition, they erred in assuming that
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significant numbers of Iraqi army units and large numbers of Iraqi police would quickly join the U.S.
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military and its civilian partners in rebuilding Iraq. Now, back in the present day, yesterday,
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the Washington Post reported that, quote, inside the Pentagon and among some members of the Trump
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administration, there was deepening concern Sunday that the Iran conflict could spiral out of control.
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Iran and Iraq are two different countries, that's true. And a lot of things about those two
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situations are different, but they aren't as different as the proponents of this war would
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have you believe. It definitely is not unreasonable to wonder if and to worry that the early days of
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this conflict and the stated reason for it resemble very closely those events in 2003.
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So the reasoning we're hearing so far simply is not good enough. I acknowledge that the White House
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has accessed all kinds of information that I don't have. They could have reasons for doing what they're
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doing that I don't know about or understand, but that's an argument we've heard before, not just
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during Iraq. I mean, much more recently. It's what we heard during COVID, when all the people with
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more information than us chose a course of action that was disastrous for the country, and we still
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haven't recovered. The trust the experts logic died with COVID, and it's never coming back.
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From now on and forevermore, the experts will need to make their case clearly and coherently,
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explain exactly what they're doing and why they're doing it and what the end game is and what information
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justifies whatever course of action they've chosen. Just simply trusting that they have it all under
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control is not going to work anymore, at least for those of us with a memory that stretches back
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farther than last week. To the extent that an objective has been clearly laid out, stopping Iran from
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developing nuclear weapons appears to be the primary one. But the problem is that we were told
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that Iran's nuclear program was obliterated. That's the White House's own phrasing. Still on the website,
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you can go check it. Just a few months ago, it was obliterated. So how could Iran's nuclear program go
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from total obliteration, annihilation, to a matter so urgent that we have to go to war over it
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in the span of seven or eight months? That's a problem. That doesn't make sense. It just doesn't.
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This is a question that still has not been even close to coherently answered.
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It is a fundamental hole in the logic behind this entire thing. Now, the question about the end game,
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on the other hand, is very important. At this point, it is by far the most important question.
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Whatever the reason is that we got into this thing, and that's still not clear,
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we are hearing different things, what exactly is the end game? How do we get out? When do we get
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out? What are we trying to achieve? The Iranian people rise up and take control of their government
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is what we've heard. That's what Trump said in his address on Saturday night. That's what he called for.
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Well, okay, what does that mean? Which people? How are they taking control? What happens after they do
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take control? Are we sure the new people, whoever they are, will be better than the old people?
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How are we going to make sure of that? How are we going to make sure of that while also not putting
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boots on the ground? Or are we going to put boots on the ground? Even though we were told many times
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that would not happen. None of this has been explained, and it needs to be. You know, it's just
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a basic matter of life that generally speaking, the most ruthless and violent forces will be the ones
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who seize the crown. That's the way, that's the lesson of history, not just Iraq, but all of human
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history. What exactly is the mechanism by which we plan to ensure that these secular pro-Western
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factions in Iran, who are by definition not barbaric killers, somehow manage to fill the power vacuum and
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prevail over the factions that are barbaric killers? Now, I'm not a foreign policy expert. I admit that.
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I'm just a common sense guy. I'm also a student of history. So, someone explain it to me, to all of
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us. If you blow up the government, how is it not very likely that militant killers who are as bad or
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worse than the old regime fill the void? How is that not just a possible scenario, but actually the most
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likely scenario. Now, however much trust you may have in Donald Trump and his administration, this is
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the reality he must contend with. It's perfectly reasonable for Americans to be skeptical of regime
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change wars in the Middle East. We can hear all day long, this is totally different from Iraq. It's
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totally different. Okay. I mean, that's, so you claim that Trump himself was skeptical of regime
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change wars in the Middle East. And the idea that we're obligated to just assume it's a good move
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because Trump decided to do it is asinine, not to mention un-American. And that's especially true
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since at the moment, powerful voices in the conservative movement are calling for a long
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war in Iran, which is explicitly contrary to what most of Trump's voters want. Here's the
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Wall Street Journal editorial board, for example, quote, it's too soon for Iran off-ramps. The first
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two days of the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran have been a striking success, but the response of the
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Iranian regime has also revealed the reason it was necessary. The biggest mistake President Trump
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could make now would be to end the war too soon before the Iran, before Iran's military and its
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domestic forces have been more thoroughly destroyed. Yes, the biggest mistake would be
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ending the war too soon. We can't have a short and contained conflict, say the neocons, you know,
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like the operation in Venezuela. Instead, we need an open-ended war. We need to stay until we eliminate
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their capability of engaging in acts of terrorism, which is when exactly? And where have we heard this
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before? I mean, again, everyone says it's totally different. It's totally different. Okay. It sounds
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a lot like the argument that got us stuck in Afghanistan and Iraq for an entire generation.
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It sounds a lot like that. I mean, it's pure gaslighting to tell us that we shouldn't draw any
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comparisons at all. So before that happens, the Trump administration needs to answer some questions.
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In addition to clearly establishing a timeline, the need to tell us, is it true, as some anonymous
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sources have claimed, that Iran was beginning to work on dirty bombs that could kill American
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citizens? Now, here's one of the posts I'm talking about. This is from Andrew Colvett of
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Turning Point USA. In response to something I wrote on X, he said, quote, in calling around a number of
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contacts today, it was clear that there was growing urgency and concern in DC, even among the most
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stridently anti-war voices, that Iran was beginning to work on dirty bombs while making urgent appeals to
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China for hypersonics, which can sink U.S. carriers in the region, which carry 5,000 servicemen.
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Now, while I don't fault Andrew, of course, for sharing what he's hearing, the problem with this
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kind of information is that it's totally useless for the rest of us. There's no one going on the
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record who's saying that. In fact, we have some reporting that suggests a totally different,
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suggests the opposite, actually. This is from CNN, which is not a trustworthy source of information.
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But where are the trustworthy sources? That's always the question. But here it is, quote,
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Pentagon briefer has acknowledged to congressional staff in a briefing Sunday that Iran was not
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planning to strike U.S. forces or bases in the Middle East unless Israel attacked Iran first,
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according to multiple sources. This undercuts Trump admin's argument on Saturday that Iran was
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planning to potentially strike the U.S. preemptively and posed an imminent threat.
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Now, none of these claims in either direction are reliable because no one is answering these
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questions on the record with any specificity. And in that sense, these reports are even less
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reliable than the narrative that led us into the Iraq war. In 2003, Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld
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went out in public. They told the United Nations and meet the press that Iraq had WMD and that we
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knew precisely where those WMD were. If they could lie on camera, then there's absolutely no reason to
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trust. And they did lie, as we know. Well, if you've got, you know, government officials that
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are going to go lie on camera, well, there's no reason then to trust anonymous sources who tell
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various media outlets or turning point that Iran was on the verge of acquiring a dirty bomb or
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hypersonics. Nor is there evidence that Iran, you know, wasn't going to attack first. We need to
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actually see the evidence and someone in the administration needs to explain it to us.
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Now, it does appear that, as Trump suggested at Mar-a-Lago, that Iranians are happy that their
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supreme leader has been killed. Iranians living in Los Angeles, who, you know, a lot of these people
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shouldn't even be in the country, took to the streets in celebration. So maybe they can go back
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home. I mean, that's what we're hearing is a lot of people are going to go back home. I'll believe it
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when I see it. I don't think that's actually going to happen. And there were similar scenes in Tehran,
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as New York Times reported, large crowds of men and women dancing and cheering, shouting,
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woohoo, hurrah, drivers passing by honked their car horns, fireworks lit up the sky,
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and loud Persian dance music filled the streets. Many residents from their windows and balconies
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joined in a chant of freedom, freedom. Well, that's good for them. But we don't fight wars for the
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freedom of Iranians. I mean, of all the reasons you could possibly give to justify this war, and
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there have been a bunch of reasons offered, many of them conflicting. The worst thing you could say
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is that, well, we're freeing the Iranian people. Their freedom is not relevant to us. It may sound cruel,
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but to put it as frankly as possible, the question of whether or not Iranians are free should be of
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no concern to us whatsoever. That's their own issue to sort out. What's relevant in terms of mission
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objectives is whether these people, I mean, the right people among those people, whoever the right
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people are, which hasn't been explained, will rise up and, as Trump suggested, complete the mission in
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Iran, whatever that mission is exactly. Is that going to materialize? How sure are we that it will?
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We need the administration to answer those questions. They also need to provide assurances,
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if they can, that this new power vacuum in the Middle East will actually be filled
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by pro-Western secular leaders. Has it worked that way at any point in the last 40 years
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when we've overthrown a Muslim state? What's the batting average on that? What's the batting average
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in overthrowing a Muslim regime and then having someone better fill the void?
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What's the batting average? And if that ever does happen, how long does it take generally?
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And how much money has to be spent by Americans and lives lost to get us there?
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Now, we all know what happened when the Obama administration, along with France and the UK,
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overthrew the government of Libya. More than a decade later, that war has produced millions
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of refugees, many of whom ended up in Europe. The economy of Libya, which was once a relative
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bright spot in Africa, has been destroyed. Militia violence is commonplace. Slave markets returned.
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And maybe that would be considered a success in Iran. Maybe that's what they're going for. I'm
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not being sarcastic. That could genuinely be the goal. It could be the case that the United States
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has decided that if Iran is reduced to a dysfunctional, violent hellscape with no functioning
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leadership, then America will be safer. After all, dysfunctional third world countries typically
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aren't capable of building nuclear weapons. But if that's the goal, and I don't know if it is,
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somebody needs to tell us that. And then we should debate the pros and cons of that rather risky
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approach. We should ensure that refugees from Iran won't end up in Europe and the United States
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where they can commit terrorist attacks. We should have some way of determining whether Iran's dirty
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bombs or the material to make them will end up in the hands of terrorists. And by the way, what happens
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if Israel is not on board with our approach, whatever it is? Because right now, they don't appear to be.
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Instead, Israel is currently vowing to use the full weight of their military to go after Iran,
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which leaves open the possibility of a ground invasion. What happens then? What happens when
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Israel decides that they want to put boots on the ground? Does that force us into it?
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Would the Trump administration assist in that kind of operation? Right now, we have no idea.
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Would Russia and China get involved in that case? So far, they've shown no interest in the
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conflict, which is a good sign. It means that World War III probably isn't about to start.
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Will that continue indefinitely? Will it continue if ground forces are involved?
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And maybe the most important unanswered question, the one that has immediate ramifications for every
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American, is whether or not Iran has sleeper cells in the United States that could activate at any
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moment. We have no real guidance on that point whatsoever. The administration hasn't
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shared any intelligence with us one way or another. Our consulate in Pakistan just came
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under attack, but it appears U.S. Marines were ready for the rioters. The Marines opened fire and
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prevented the attack from becoming another Benghazi, thank God. But in Austin, Texas, a terrorist,
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sympathetic to Iran, sympathetic to Iran, and we know that he had a Koran and clothes that said
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property of Allah, was able to murder several American citizens two nights ago. His name was
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Diaga Diagni. He's a 53-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Senegal, was living in
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Pflugerville, Texas. His social media feed was full of deranged posts, many of them anti-Christian and
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anti-Jewish. He also mocked the idea that Islam could be a threat to the United States, which is
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reminiscent of that trans-identifying gunman in Rhode Island who insisted that trans people
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aren't actually dangerous psychopaths, and then went and demonstrated that, in fact, he was one.
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This is someone who obviously should not have been allowed into the United States, much less granted
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citizenship. We should have taken one look at him and sent him back to Senegal, but that's not what
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happened. This is from Fox's Brooke Taylor, quote, Diaga Diagni entered the U.S. on March 13,
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2000, on a B-2 tourist visa. In June 2006, he adjusted to lawful permanent resident based on
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a marriage to a U.S. citizen. He naturalized as a U.S. citizen on April 5, 2013, under the Obama
00:24:21.580
administration. In 2022, he was arrested in Texas for collision with vehicle damage.
00:24:26.600
In other words, he remained in this country for six years on a tourist visa, which is illegal.
00:24:33.920
Tourist visas last six months, not six years. But instead of being deported, he was allowed to marry
00:24:39.300
a U.S. citizen and become a lawful permanent resident. And then the Obama administration
00:24:44.400
made him a citizen. It's reminiscent of the story of Billy Chimimer. You might not remember this one.
00:24:52.940
Billy was born in Kenya. He overstayed his visa, married a U.S. citizen, got a green card,
00:24:57.540
and then slaughtered 18 elderly women. Precisely no lessons were ever learned from this incident.
00:25:05.720
But there's an easy solution here. First, we need a blanket ban on all third world immigration.
1.00
00:25:10.420
There's no reason why we should allow any foreigner from Kenya or Senegal or Somalia or Iraq or Afghanistan
1.00
00:25:16.120
or Iran or anywhere else in the third world to step foot in the United States, period.
00:25:22.760
And certainly they shouldn't be allowed to come into the United States under the pretext of being a
1.00
00:25:26.480
tourist. There are no tourists from the third world. They have no money to spend.
1.00
00:25:34.140
And foreigners from third world countries, statistically speaking, overstay their visas
00:25:37.740
at extremely high rates. So just cut it off. End the entire stream.
00:25:43.920
Third world migration offers no benefits to this country at all. Not a single benefit.
1.00
00:25:51.720
And we know it. We all know it. So end it all. End the farce. That's our only choice.
00:25:59.400
And secondly, of course, we need to intensify our efforts to deport and denaturalize as many
1.00
00:26:05.200
Any foreign-born resident, any naturalized citizen who is clearly anti-American needs to be gone.
00:26:19.020
You know, angry lesbians and Antifa managed to make this administration back down in Minnesota.
1.00
00:26:24.200
That's just a fact. That's what happened. And it can't be allowed to happen again going forward.
00:26:29.640
The stakes are simply too high. We need to ruthlessly deport any illegal alien,
1.00
00:26:35.540
no matter how elaborate their sob story may be, because it's a matter of national security. And we
00:26:41.900
need to denaturalize anyone who, like this terrorist from Senegal, is on social media talking about
0.96
00:26:49.740
bringing death to America. That should be one strike and you're out. Just one social media post like
00:26:57.500
that or public statement as a naturalized citizen where you're expressing hatred for America or its
00:27:05.320
people, you should be gone, period. These are people who lied on their application for citizenship.
00:27:13.980
They defrauded this country. They are a threat to us. They need to go.
00:27:21.120
Now, keep in mind, when we talk about the potential downstream negative effects of wars in the Middle East,
00:27:26.160
this is one of them. Okay, even if World War III does not materialize, which it probably won't,
00:27:33.500
we still have to contend with all the millions of third world anti-American invaders who are already
0.99
00:27:38.280
in our country and could lash out at any time as one of them already has less than 48 hours into this
00:27:44.600
thing. That's part of the cost of an operation like this. That's the other thing that proponents of
00:27:53.400
this war need to contend with, and they're not. I haven't heard any of them. You have to honestly
00:27:58.620
contend with this. It's not enough to say, oh yeah, well, there's not going to be World War III
00:28:02.580
because China's not getting involved. Russia doesn't care. I think a lot of that is premature,
00:28:08.840
but what about here? Because what's happened over the last 20 years, one of the differences between now
00:28:13.840
in 2003, between now and Iraq, is that we have permitted a tidal wave of immigration from the
00:28:24.420
Muslim world. So in many ways, we are at a worse position to do this kind of thing now than we were
1.00
00:28:32.180
in 2003. A lot worse, actually. We are much more susceptible, much more vulnerable now because of
00:28:39.520
the invasion that has happened over the last 20 years. And that has to be part of the calculation.
00:28:47.580
It just has to be. You start doing this in the Middle East. We have a bunch of Middle Eastern people
00:28:54.460
here who are still loyal to their homeland. What is that like? That is a very volatile situation,
00:29:03.800
which is why before I could even theoretically support a regime change war in the Middle East,
00:29:07.740
it would need to be preceded by a mass deportation operation to remove every third world Muslim
1.00
00:29:14.760
militant and potential militant from the country. Our own safety must come first, always.
00:29:23.800
Now, right now, the attitude in the Republican Party is very different. Here's Ted Cruz. This is from
00:29:30.560
Plus taking the time to speak on issues like immigration.
00:29:33.620
My approach to immigration for a long time, I've summed up in four words. Legal, good.
00:29:41.540
Illegal, bad. I think most Texans and most Americans agree with that.
00:29:49.360
It's one of those cases where the simple approach is wrong. The fact that a foreigner has complied with
1.00
00:29:54.680
our laws does not mean that the law is correct. It doesn't mean the law should remain unchanged.
00:30:00.120
In fact, there's compelling evidence, which you can see all over the place, that the law needs to change immediately.
00:30:06.620
It's one of the great betrayals of the Bush administration that even as they waged war in the Middle East,
00:30:10.960
they allowed millions of foreign Muslims to enter the United States.
00:30:15.660
At the time, the Bush administration's argument was that Islam is a religion of peace and that extremists represent a tiny fraction of the Muslim population,
00:30:22.220
never mind the fact that worldwide, the vast majority of Muslims support Sharia law.
00:30:27.980
The Bush administration was very concerned about being called racist, so they just opened the floodgates.
00:30:33.480
Now, 20 years later, we have Muslim politicians like Rashida Tlaib,
00:30:38.400
who wrote the following post on social media in response to the attack on Iran.
00:30:42.980
So she's referring to the United States as they.
00:30:48.440
Both the U.S. and genocidal Israel don't care about the laws.
0.99
00:30:57.240
Doesn't even pretend that she's an American.
0.51
00:31:02.420
The people who elected her despise this country.
00:31:06.340
So is Zoran Mamdani, the Muslim socialist who's now in charge of New York,
00:31:09.900
where a quarter of the population can't even speak English.
00:31:16.740
Today's military strikes on Iran carried out by the United States and Israel
00:31:19.740
mark a catastrophic escalation in an illegal war of aggression.
00:31:23.320
Bombing cities, killing civilians, opening a new theater of war.
00:31:27.580
They do not want another war in pursuit of regime change.
00:31:29.900
They want relief from the affordability crisis.
00:31:35.440
So it's not that we don't want another war when he's talking about Americans.
0.75
00:31:39.540
Instead, Mamdani says they don't want another war.
00:31:42.980
Again, he doesn't see himself as an American because he knows he isn't one.
0.71
00:31:51.320
And also pay attention to the other language that they use.
00:31:54.080
They call this an illegal war, as if international law actually exists.
00:32:00.500
I think there's a lot of reasons to be skeptical of this, to be opposed to it, as I've already laid out.
00:32:12.160
Americans, people who actually care about this country, aren't interested in talking about international law.
00:32:17.540
However, the only thing that matters, I don't care if it's an illegal war, I don't care about that.
00:32:24.040
What I care about is how this will benefit the people of the United States of America.
00:32:31.240
Now, given the lack of information, you have to be open to the possibility that this might have some benefit.
00:32:44.800
Lacking information, as we discussed, nobody can make an absolutely definitive proclamation with any credibility.
00:32:53.020
But we also have to be very open to the possibility that the war might undermine everything the Trump administration has achieved to this point.
00:33:01.240
Now, sure, if the conflict ends up as a major success with a minimal loss of life and a new pro-Western Iran,
0.60
00:33:09.460
then Donald Trump can claim victory and will go down as a hero.
00:33:31.960
And right now, we're nine months from the midterms.
00:33:34.260
Some polls show that the overwhelming majority of Americans oppose going to war with Iran,
00:33:38.200
although you also find some mainstream polls showing that Americans support the war,
00:33:41.420
if it means eliminating Iran's nuclear capability.
00:33:44.840
So to some extent, it depends on how you ask the question.
00:33:48.140
But really, the polls aren't the best indicator because people are generally, this is the important, a key point.
00:33:53.340
People are generally supportive of invasions in the early days.
00:33:56.920
The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were popular at first.
00:34:00.440
They ended up destroying Bush's presidency and led to eight years of Obama,
00:34:03.880
which means that most likely, this is the key point.
00:34:08.500
This operation in Iran is right now as popular as it will ever be.
00:34:16.320
And no matter which poll you look at, it's still not that popular.
00:34:21.760
There's a low ceiling politically on this kind of thing, and that's a bad sign.
00:34:29.140
So what happens if this war becomes a quagmire and gives the Democrat Party a new platform to run on?
00:34:33.260
What happens if the Wall Street Journal gets what they wish, what they want?
00:34:36.060
A war that continues for years and years until Iran isn't capable of committing acts of terrorism, however that's defined.
00:34:43.420
Right now, according to most generic congressional ballots, Republicans are roughly even with Democrats in the congressional races.
00:34:51.320
And if this war costs Republicans in midterms and then the presidency, it will not have been worth it.
00:34:57.160
Almost no matter how it turns out in Iran, if it means Democrat rule at home, it was not worth it.
00:35:08.420
Because Democrat rule here at home means tyranny for our people.
0.99
00:35:12.560
Freedom for Iran in exchange for oppression for Americans is not a good trade.
00:35:21.220
That would be just about the worst deal of the century.
00:35:23.840
So it's not enough for the president to talk about the USS Cole bombing, which took place more than 25 years ago.
00:35:31.020
It's not enough for him to talk about the attack on Israel in October of 2023 either.
00:35:43.020
What's in it for us, for our country, right now?
00:35:47.060
Whatever the answer is, we are right now staring down the possibility of another indefinite conflict in the Middle East.
00:35:56.040
One that could cost trillions of dollars, result in the deaths of more Americans.
00:36:05.500
It won't necessarily turn out that way, but it certainly could.
00:36:10.260
And to me, based on what we know right now, that does not seem to be a risk worth taking.
00:36:30.840
Less than a year ago, we were told that Iran's nuclear capacity was decimated and totally obliterated.
00:36:40.400
So how do we know that this time, despite recent history, everything will be different?
00:36:47.100
And if we are told this whole thing was a smashing success, how do we know it actually was?
00:36:58.400
And before the administration escalates this war even further, and before any more Americans die,
00:37:18.100
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Okay, well, this is supposed to be the part of the show where we run through other headlines.
00:39:53.000
The problem is that there really aren't any other headlines because everything's about Iran,
00:40:02.880
In much less important news, or maybe not, maybe even more important news,
00:40:13.460
And there is a point to be made here, which I'll get to.
00:40:21.320
As expected, there were a bunch of speeches from rich and famous black people
00:40:25.380
talking about how oppressed they are, which we knew was going to happen.
00:40:28.380
Ryan Coogler, who's the guy who directed The Sinners, right?
00:40:38.980
We just want to say thank you to you guys, man.
00:40:41.080
Like, it's a lot of, since our people have been here over four centuries,
00:40:46.380
there's always been a lot of lies told about us.
00:40:48.080
And a lie, no matter how powerful the person is saying it is, it's still a lie.
00:40:54.320
And the truth, no matter how little power the person has that's saying the truth,
00:41:00.480
And the truth is y'all are loved, y'all are beautiful, and y'all are powerful and mighty.
00:41:05.720
Okay, so a lot of lies told about us, what lies exactly he doesn't say.
00:41:17.680
But then there was this from Michael B. Jordan, the actor, very famous actor, of course.
00:41:28.620
Y'all really don't understand how much this means to me, being here.
00:41:37.300
I used to come here when I was a kid, when I was about 15 years old,
00:41:45.920
It felt like a reunion of sorts, you know, being from New Jersey
00:41:51.440
And this is a place where I always felt encouraged.
00:41:53.700
I always felt like I could, I was being celebrated and nourished.
00:41:59.560
Even when I was a kid, you told me it was okay to keep going
00:42:19.180
I have no issue with Michael B. Jordan or any other black person saying that.
0.92
00:42:27.980
You should love the parts of yourself that are innate,
00:42:33.060
I mean, I'm not big on the whole love yourself shtick.
00:42:37.420
Not really my style, but you should love yourself as a child of God.
00:42:50.140
The problem, though, is exactly what you're already thinking.
00:42:57.520
And the problem is that we all know if, let's say, I don't know, Chris Pratt got up at some kind of award ceremony and was standing up there and said,
00:43:08.180
man, I love being white, man, I love being white.
0.55
00:43:17.200
It might even be the top headline on CNN right now, even with everything going on with that.
00:43:28.940
He would be condemned from all corners as a racist and forced to apologize.
00:43:36.820
And even more absurd, people, including a lot of white people who have no problem with what Michael B. Jordan said,
00:43:42.940
people would take issue with the statement conceptually.
00:43:49.240
They would say, well, what do you mean you love being white?
00:43:58.980
They would act like it's fundamentally ridiculous for a person to love being the race that they are.
00:44:05.120
And they would certainly act like, so it's ridiculous.
00:44:07.540
And so they would assume that, well, the only reason you're saying that is because you're actually trying to convey that you hate other races or you think other races are inferior.
00:44:17.840
And that is the totally irreconcilable hypocrisy in our racial conversation in this country.
00:44:26.300
And a lot of people, white people, are just done with it.
00:44:32.100
You know, this is, in a sense, the kind of like modern social contract.
00:44:38.380
But if there is a social contract, then this is the contract, the social contract in the modern age, which says that white people will just tolerate, even actively affirm and celebrate these ridiculous, ludicrous racial double standards.
00:44:55.200
This contract that says that, you know, every other race except whites are allowed to say and do a whole bunch of stuff that white people can't say and do.
0.55
00:45:05.480
The contract that says that, you know, every other race is allowed to love themselves and be proud of who they are, but white people can't.
0.61
00:45:14.280
And the only reason ever given for that is just sort of gesturing towards, well, it's about the history.
00:45:20.640
Never mind the fact that the actual history of our country is that white people as a group, generally speaking, have been most responsible for building, establishing, maintaining, fighting for, inventing, pioneering, basically every good thing in our lives.
0.90
00:45:36.420
And for that effort, the reward is, in a very literal sense, this kind of second class citizen arrangement.
00:45:45.780
But the thing is that increasingly white people, especially younger white people, especially white men, are just bowing out of this arrangement.
00:45:58.480
And that's what all the frantic hand-wringing about, you know, the rise of so-called white nationalism and all this stuff is all about.
00:46:10.520
It's, it's them, it's people looking at this contract and saying, I'm not signing that, but I don't, what?
00:46:17.560
Oh, so the contract is like, there's all these rules I have to follow, but nobody else does because of the color of my skin?
00:46:29.560
Oh, you're saying that like every other person with different color skin can say this.
00:46:57.640
Go ahead and explain to me why everyone else is allowed to say that, but I can't go ahead.
00:47:02.740
But you can't explain it and you know, you can.
00:47:16.000
And that's, and that's, that's exactly what's happening.
00:47:19.120
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I've also been meaning to mention that episode two of my new series, Real History, is out
00:48:48.900
And in this episode, we talk about the history of the American Indian and the real story of
00:48:55.760
the American Indians, which is a theme that we've talked about.
00:49:01.720
It's something that's important to me, which is making the case that we, in fact, do not
00:49:16.200
It was not, you know, this whole story of a country built on oppression and subjugation
00:49:25.440
And in the second episode, we deal with this, with that whole thing.
00:49:29.480
We lay out the real history, the real history of the American Indians and of the Indian wars
00:49:35.420
So here's a clip from that episode where we talk about why the Indians were called savages.
00:49:41.160
And today we're told that, well, that was all just pure bigotry and racism, but there
00:49:58.440
We'll get into specific details of some of these raids, but for now we can focus on
00:50:02.360
perhaps the most gruesome detail of all, evidence of cannibalism among American Indian tribes.
00:50:07.760
According to Keeley's book, War Before Civilization, at 25 sites in the American Southwest,
00:50:13.160
anthropologists have discovered cannibalized human remains dated from roughly the year 900
00:50:17.780
to 1300, hundreds of years before Columbus arrived.
00:50:21.400
We know they were consumed because the assemblages of disarticulated bones share a number of features.
00:50:27.280
Butchering cut marks, skulls broken, long bones smashed for marrow extraction, bones burned
00:50:33.920
or otherwise cooked, and disposal with other kitchen refuse.
00:50:42.300
If you watch the episode, you'll find we go into gruesome detail about what the first
00:50:49.740
the European pioneers and settlers and then Americans discovered when they came across
00:50:57.540
And that is, and it doesn't really matter where they came across them.
00:51:01.840
If it was in, if we're talking about, you know, continental United States or the Mesoamerican,
00:51:06.700
Mesoamerican tribes, we're talking about South America,
00:51:09.660
all across the hemisphere, I mean, even up into the Arctic,
00:51:19.140
the Inuits as we call them now, you find this sort of thing, just brutal savagery.
00:51:27.100
And this is the story across the entire hemisphere.
00:51:37.800
It's to give you a sense of what it was like, what they were dealing with when they were
00:51:46.120
I mean, you get to this part of the world, you want to build a civilization here
00:51:53.200
And it advanced modern civilization for its time.
00:51:56.640
And, uh, but what you're encountering are these tribes that are living 5,000 years in the past,
00:52:09.780
And when you actually look at the history and you look at what these, what these tribes were doing,
00:52:15.780
the whole story, the whole narrative about the noble, the noble savage, these peaceful people,
00:52:23.180
the Pocahontas, right, singing to the, to the, to the birds and the bees and the trees,
00:52:35.780
And you also begin to understand, you can, you can, you know, there's so much emphasis that's been put
00:52:41.760
over the last many decades on empathizing with the, the, the native people, the so-called indigenous people.
00:52:57.040
Nobody ever talks about being empathetic or trying to understand in context,
00:53:03.200
the, the settlers who came here, the Western, the Westerners, and what it was like for them.
00:53:13.060
I mean, just imagine what it's like, you, you, you cross it in ocean, you come to this new land that you've never seen,
00:53:23.540
you know, nothing about, there are no maps, you have no context for it.
00:53:27.100
It's a wilderness, mostly an empty wilderness, by the way, most of the hemisphere was empty,
00:53:35.740
wide, wide swaths of land that were empty, not claimed by anybody.
00:53:44.760
And then you encounter, again, without any context, it's, it's really hard for us to put ourselves in this mindset
00:53:50.400
because of all the, because of all the context we have now, because all these things we take for granted.
00:53:57.520
Um, and all the kind of dogmas that we have that are ingrained in us, embedded in us.
00:54:03.220
You know, the idea of like universal human equality, everybody is equal.
00:54:13.540
And people 500 years ago, 400 years ago, 300 years ago, they didn't have that.
00:54:20.440
So you don't have any of that framework in mind, right?
00:54:24.640
You don't have any of that, any of that kind of scaffolding.
00:54:26.600
Um, and you get here and you encounter people who are running around naked or in loincloths, um, murdering each other brutally.
00:54:40.860
What, what conclusions would you draw about these people?
00:54:44.620
What, what, what language would you use to describe them?
00:54:48.640
Would you conclude that they're, that they are savages?
00:54:51.860
And when, when, when you, when you start to be, when you try to actually be empathetic in that way and understand things from their perspective, uh, what you realize is that actually in many cases, it's, it's the, it, the lack of brutality on the part of the European and American settlers is pretty surprising and admirable.
00:55:18.960
There was much more restraint than people realize.
00:55:25.760
And in fact, much more restraint on the side of the Europeans and the Americans than on the side of the Indian tribes.
00:55:32.220
Anyway, we get into all this, uh, in the episode and, uh, in much more detail, but in order to watch it, you have to become a subscriber.
00:55:40.020
So go to a dailywire.com, become a subscriber and watch, you can support what we do.
00:55:45.540
We can't do things like this takes, actually takes a lot of time, a lot of research, a lot of effort to put together things like this and, um, can't do it without your support.
00:55:53.180
So go to dailywire.com, subscribe, become a member, support the show, and that will do it for the show today.
00:56:16.900
They told you colonialism was evil and that Joseph McCarthy was a bad guy.
00:56:24.980
For half a century, generations of American schoolchildren have been taught to hate our history, hate our country, and hate themselves.
00:56:34.040
And since no one else is going to do it, I will.
00:56:39.040
What were India and Africa like before Europeans arrived?
00:56:44.380
Some of the most well-known stories from American history are designed to demoralize you.
00:56:48.400
The Trail of Tears, the Smallpox Blanketsmith, the Red Scare.
00:56:53.560
It's time for a lesson on what they're not teaching in public schools.
00:56:57.060
On the real history of slavery, of colonialism, of the Indians, of America, and the world.