#2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray

26:03Okay, maybe. I'm saying it's reasonable for him to say I don't really do debates. Yeah, I think it's weird to mainstream very fringe views constantly and not give another side. I think that's weird. Well, I mean, okay, I think there's a little bit of a contradiction here. You're saying now that these are fringe views, but then you're also saying that these are enormously powerful. No, no, no, no, no. There's no contradiction. Let me clear it off if you think there is. I think there are very fringe views that have become mainstreamed on the right. But then aren't they not fringe by definition? Sure, you can play in a pistol logical game.

26:35No, I'm just saying what's been. You do understand the concept, don't you? That fringe idea has become mainstreamed. Yeah, okay. Right. Sure. So that's it. Okay. I'm not exactly sure. So you're saying that what Joe shouldn't have Darrell Cooper on. I'm saying that you should debate that there will have that if you mainstream very, very fringe views, which are easily able to be debunked. If you mainstream them, at some point that view that was so fringe will be what eager, very disconnected, unhappy people are going to start playing with too. And if these people are such experts in how you see a society go weird, they can look at what is happening to a portion of the right everywhere on this stuff.

27:23There is a portion of the right across the West that is playing this very dark game and they're doing it deliberately and you can't not be aware of that. I agree with that. I don't think Darrell Cooper is doing that. But I do agree with your character. No, but I think it's a pretty important distinction there. You're just taking this one statement and then this where he's trying to joke around with his buddy, this, this Churchill statement. And this is the basis of these other guys are all doing the anti -Churchill stuff now. But he's not doing an anti -Churchill stuff. He and the other Churchill was the orbit.

27:58Churchill was the author of this whole operation unthinkable, right? Were they wanted to use the Nazis to invade Russia? Wasn't that Churchill?

28:09Is that not true? We're going to have to get the weeds on Churchill. There is always going to be a corner which you can get me on a bit of Churchill. But that's the point. But that's the point which is that a comprehensive view. Yeah, Churchill was never working with the Germans to invade Russia. No, no, no. This is a plan that was drawn up. Do you know about Operation Unthinkable? You've got to go to the end of the war. Poet up, Jimmy. Operation Unthinkable was at the end of the war, I believe Churchill was concerned about the rise of Russia, in the rise of the Soviet Union. And the idea was and we'll find out what the historical facts are about this.

28:53Operation Unthinkable, the name given to two related possible future war plans, developed by the British Cheats of Staff Committee against the Soviet Union during 1945. The plans were never implemented. The creation of the plans was ordered by the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on May 1945 and developed by the British Armed Forces joint planning staff in May 1945, the end of World War II in Europe. One plan assumed a surprise attack on the Soviet forces stationed in Germany to oppose the will of the United States imposed rather. The will of the United States and the British Empire upon Russia.

29:25The will was qualified as a square deal for Poland, but added that that does not necessary limit the military commitment, the assessment, signed by the Chief of Army Staff on 9 June 1945 included. It would be beyond our power to win a quick but limited success and we would be committed to a protracted war against heavy odds, the code was... This is... Okay. First of all, I never do Wikipedia. Okay, we can't do Wikipedia this. This is just what Jamie pulled up. Okay, but first of all, yes, at the end of the war, a plan requested that wasn't seen through that suggests that after the defeat of Nazism, communism of the Soviet form is also going to be a threat to Europe, was simply an evidence that it was obvious.

30:12True. It's what I'm potentially worried about throughout the 40s. I'm worried about it in Yolta. He's worried about it everywhere. I'm sorry, but I have to return to this point that this man manages to do one of the most heroic things in human history, in standing alone against evil in its most concentrate form. And he does about as much as any human being can do to save the civilized world. If you just park that and you go on to a plan in 1940 for life to try to counter Soviet domination of Europe, you see what I'm saying? Yeah, but this is not doing something in the round. Yeah, it's also...

30:58Look, I mean, look, I'm not even like the... I'm not at all the expert on World War II. And I'm not like going to debate with you about World War II. But I would say that like that is... There's a lot of room for nuance and disagreement with what you just said. You know, in the 20th century, we had two World Wars. They're the worst thing objectively speaking. The worst thing that's ever happened in the history of the world. And the second World War is the biggest bloodbath in human history. And it ended with handing the man who you just mentioned, Joseph Stalin, half of Europe. So listen, if you want to argue, I'm Jewish in like a German descent.

31:36So like I'm not against the argument that it was the Nazis had to be defeated. And that was the most important thing. But there still is just the basic facts that it was a... It almost couldn't have gone worse. It was like just a nightmare for civilization. And if people want to look back at that and go, man, was there any other way this could have been handled? Was there any other way where there are blunders that were made here? Now personally, what I feel much more comfortable arguing would be that... I try to blame everything I can on Woodrow Wilson as much as I can because also he created the income tax on the Federal Reserve and did so much to damage my country.

32:09But I think American entry into World War I was really a disaster. And imposing the Treaty of Versailles on Germany was a disaster. I also think that's kind of fairly mainstream history. Like that's not a particularly controversial view. That like imposing a Treaty of Versailles on Germany ended up in disaster. Well no, except as Martin Ames said, the only way to not get the Treaty of Versailles would be for Germany to win World War I. Yeah, but we're not talking about the Nazis winning the world we're talking about. Yeah, but I think that... But secondly, sorry, I just have to address that fundamental.

32:45You say the outcome of World War II and everything that happened and it was the worst thing that's ever happened. And the worst thing imaginable, worst possible outcome you said. Just about. You said worst possible outcome. Let me give you a much worse possible outcome. Hitler wins. Right, okay. Sure. So it's not the worst possible outcome. That's true. Listen, but okay, Hitler, yes, okay, I'm not saying you can't dream up a worst outcome. I'm saying what you have dreaming up. That's just what my country with another's went with. What did end up happening was the 60 million people died, including the Holocaust, and then Joseph Stalin takes half of Europe.

33:18So, okay, fine. I should, I'll correct that. There is a worst outcome. Right. But that's not a great one. No, nobody said it was. This is like, there's a very weird argument that you know, hear about. This attempt to revision this, and I know why it's happening. I don't think there's anything else in it. I don't think there's anything else in it. No, there's anything else in it. I think there is. But this attempt to sort of say, look, you know, the end of World War II, what have we got? Stalin has half of Europe, what was the point and so on. That's going on. That's going on. And there are people who are feeding it.

33:49That argument is very similar to this particular school of, as it were, history. It's doing something that I've seen happen with American history as well, particularly with Lincoln. Lincoln's an interesting comparison to make the Churchill on this. There are people who will criticize Churchill for mistakes made, not hard to do. Quite hard not to make mistakes while fighting at a war of total annihilation against your country. People will say, oh, he didn't sort this out in 1945. You know, it's rather like Lincoln. He didn't solve every problem in the world for all time. But he solved a hell of a big problem for his time.

34:29And that requires some kind of generosity of spirit and understanding in hindsight. As opposed to, I will find something that he did that I wouldn't have done, because if I'd been running the British Empire in 1939, I'd even had exactly how to do it. I don't know how to hold the whole thing together. I'd have kept Stalin back and he'd been great at yolting. But I don't think anybody is saying that. I agree with you. I think there was a tendency of like woke left kids to do this. But I don't think that's what, certainly not what I'm saying. And I don't think what Darrell is saying. I do also think that one of the bigger, kind of the bigger picture dynamics to all of this is that we have, at least since 9 -11, been in a state of perpetual war.

35:16And all of these wars have been disasters. They have been so many lies involved in selling all of them. I mean, the whole Iraq war, the whole war in Afghanistan just lying the whole way through. I mean, I remember literally having conversations with Green Berets in the middle of the war in Afghanistan. And they're like, George W. Bush is telling you that the army we're building up there is really successful. This thing is going to fall in a week without us. And then all through the Obama administration is just like lie after lie after lie with disastrous wars. And so this does create a fertile ground for people to say, I wonder if they were lying about all these wars.

35:53Sure. Again, I'm not really trying to argue about all of these wars today. I think the interesting question is whether you're busy watering it. What should you not talk about mistakes that were made overall? Absolutely. Absolutely. Right. All four go back and looking at mistakes. So what is your argument then? It's a very weird thing to go back zoning on a man say this one thing is a mistake and should characterize him. And you ignore everything. You're taking him out of context when you talk about Darrow who's done, what was it, 30 plus hours? So what? 30 plus hours of fasting. But you take you do that in a week.

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37:21The crown is yours. Gambling problem called 1 -800 -Gamberler in New York called 877 -8 hope in wire text hope in Y -467 -369. In Connecticut, help is available for problem gambling called 888 -888 -97777 or visit ccpg .org. Please play responsibly on behalf of boothookasino and resorting Kansas 21 and over agent eligibility varies by jurisdiction. Void an Ontario new customers only bonus bets expire 168 hours after issuance for additional terms and responsible gaming resources cdkng .co slash audio. Yeah, it's a very different. He's not doing a podcast like talking to people. Okay, nor is he doing scholarly work.

38:00Nor is he working in the archives clearly. Come on. I mean, this is he is not the historian of our era. He's not complaining to be. This is the thing, Joe. This is like punching jelly. No, but you don't. You don't consume it, but you don't consume his work. I'm saying because I don't need to consume endless versions of a revisionist history. I understand. But it's not revisionist history. If you listen to his work, it's not revisionist history. He's basing it on historical work. But yeah, I know. Okay, so this is my point about jelly. It's a shape shifting thing. Comedian or historian. He's not a comedian.

38:37Historian or podcast. It would be historian or actual historian. You say he doesn't claim to be a historian, but he's pumping out tens of hours of history. He doesn't stand carlin. He doesn't claim to be a historian either. You see my point about the move. It's like some weird jujitsu move. No, I don't. Where you say hang on. You know all about this as well. You say I'm not a historian, but I'm going to spend my time talking about history. I'm not a journalist, but I'm going to spend my time talking about this thing.

39:10It's a weird move, yeah? No. You don't think. No, I'm a free American. I can talk about what I want to. You can. So what is the point? The point is what are you pushing? What are you watering? What are you pushing? Liberty, free markets, peace, prosperity, not getting in another stupid catastrophic war, which we're on the precipice of right now. That's what I'm pushing. What are we on the precipice of? Well, I think you weren't you just talking about it. But the other day everyone I hear on the inside says we're about to attack around. I think you just said something about that the other day. Am I wrong about that?

39:44I thought I saw in one of your interviews that you did. Possibly. Okay. That doesn't mean we are on the verge of a war. I mean you keep referring to we being in wars. There's a very big difference between a country having a military that's engaged and a country being at war. This country has not been at war for 25 years. You've not been fighting for the American homeland for 25 years. Yes, we haven't that's true. We haven't had a war on our shores. We've been picking on third world countries halfway around the world. Well, you haven't been randomly picking on them. I mean Afghanistan you went to.

40:14I didn't say it was random. Yeah, right. Okay. It wasn't like you suddenly decided to bomb again me and Mar or something. You went for Afghanistan to find bin Laden and take revenge for 9 -11 and stop an attack like that happening again on the American homeland. That is very different from a country being at war. That's a total mischaracterization of the war in Afghanistan. It's one thing to say that might be an accurate characterization of the special operations mission in late 2001. But then we thought then we thought a 20 year regime change war against the Taliban. Because you got dragged into the quick sound of war.

40:48Yes. Okay, fine. But I thought it wasn't a war. Like what do I don't get you already? No, I said it was a war. It's your use of we as if you're personally like suffering this war. Yeah, you're just saying we. We're tax paid. So we pay for it. Okay, fine. Douglas, would you though if I went back and corrected you on every time you've used the term weed or refer to your government or something like that? Like if I were to say, oh, we just impose tariffs on child. Would you point out that I didn't and it was a Trump administration? You take it obviously very personally and that's your right to do so of course.

41:16I'm just trying to make sure we're accurate here. What do you think I'm taking personally? Just that. The American wars. Sure. Yeah, I think they've killed hundreds of thousands of people and cost my country $8 trillion and degraded my country very much. And there's a very good argument to make on that. I'm still slightly bemused about this move from I'm an expert on this and I have used to I'm a comedian. I've never claimed to be an expert on anything. This is the problem, Joe. I mean, if somebody says you have to claim to be an expert on something, but opinions on something, you don't have to be.

41:54You don't have to be. So it was the issue. I'm not a historian, but I'm pumping out history. I'm not an expert, but I'm talking all the time about this. But you're not even talking about specifically on what he just said. No, I think this is my point about this. He you say I'm not an expert. So what's the solution to not talk about it? No, it's to have more experts around. No, the expert class hasn't done a great job. I know. This is follow the signs. Absolutely. I just said to you. I agree with it. I know. So what's the problem? During all of COVID? By the way, I will put my track record against any of the expert class on COVID.

42:30I'm glad to do that. So should I have just shut up? Should I have shut up by opposing lockdowns and opposing vaccine mandates? No. And talk about the argument. That's the entire argument that you're making. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're not an expert. No, why are you just a comedian? You're wildly miss, not listening to what I'm saying. I think you have to take, I think we should agree, perhaps, on the following, that one major thing can break down in front of your eyes or many major things. And it does not mean that every single one of the sewer gates should be lifted. Okay? Yeah, I get that point right.

43:05Who's saying it should be? I'm saying this is a chatter on what is part of our side at the moment. Is that a lot of the sewer gates are being lifted. Sometimes by people who know that they're doing it, sometimes by people who don't, sometimes by people who say, I don't know, I'm just throwing it out there. But at the very least there's some damn hygiene that should be required, isn't there? Yeah, I'm not sure exactly what you're asking, but sure. Just that. Let's have a bit of hygiene on our own side, not lift every sewer gate. And what you say are on that? You mean the right wing broadly speaking?

43:42Broadly speaking. And I'm sort of funny about libertarians. I'm never quite sure. I always think so. I think libertarians are essentially the bisexuals of politics. They should just choose Joe. They should choose. It's kind of, they just want everything for fair. It's very funny. Well, I think we want something. I don't know. Okay, that's a weird way to put it, but I get your point. I see your point. All right. Well, I mean, I don't know. Look, I mean, essentially, I just don't, maybe there's something I'm missing here. But if your argument is that like you're saying I claim to be an expert, but then I have like a parachute to get out of it by being like, Hey, I'm just a comedian who's just saying this.

44:15But I don't think I've ever like really claimed to be an expert. Why are you hearing something? I never, well, well, is I'm interested in these topics? Yeah, I know. But isn't it weird to go around for instance, I mean, let's get to the last year and have it. It's a bit weird to be simultaneously saying, I'm not an expert on a conflict and talking about it everywhere. I don't think so. Not really. I mean, I don't know. I don't think like I don't see how you talk about these things. Which things? All these things that we're talking about. Some of them, yeah. Are you an expert? I am on some, yes.

44:47On some, but you talk about some that you're not an expert on. You'll know what you do. What should you do if those subjects get breached? Well, I think that you educate yourself as much as you can. Should you say I'm not an expert and then give your opinion if you're in the middle of a conversation? As I say, I think that it's a weird move to say, I'm not an expert on this, but I'm going to talk about it nonstop. I think that is true. I will certainly concede that I am weird. So I'm not disagreeing with you. It's weird that I'm as obsessed with all this stuff as I am. I mean, like, okay, I'm a weird guy.

45:14I do, I tell jokes at nightclubs and then get obsessed with politics and monetary policy and like, okay, fine. But I just like fundamentally disagree with this idea that which I really do think is quite anti -democratic and spirit and quite, you know, elitist that there's an expert class. They can have opinions on all of these things. It's weird for any regular person who's just read about it. Not my view. It seems like what you're saying. No, I conceded already. I said a long time ago that I believe a much of the expert class led itself and us all down very badly. And I think that happened in foreign policy and areas, not every area, but it happened in some areas.

45:55I think it happened with COVID in many areas, but that does not mean that it's just a free -fraud. No. There are some things we can still verify to be true and can still agree on as baseline levels of agreement in a free society. And yes, everyone is free to air their views, but it does not mean that everyone who sounds off on an issue, whether it's World War II, the war in the Middle East, the war in Ukraine has an equally valid point of view. No. I certainly wouldn't argue. I mean, that to me is just badding down a straw, man. I mean, I certainly wouldn't argue that everyone has an equally valid point of view.

46:34And I certainly wouldn't argue that there shouldn't be some standards of like who you would want to find interesting and talk to and who you wouldn't. But also, it's like, so let's have the conversation that like, I don't know, like if there's, if there is, if there are experts out there who can smack all of this stuff down or just destroy every point that I make over the years or whatever, like, okay, so then do it. And then let's see. Yeah, I know. Well, that's a bit weird because also that then it's like the debatiny bro thing. But I think you just criticize that. You're not debatin. No, it's a kind.

47:08Yeah, I know. Let me just make the main point. I think what I'm trying to get at, Joe, is that it's a bit like the Twitter algorithm thing, which is, yes. Everyone is and should be free to say what they like on Twitter, apart from whatever the very fringe things of like immediate incitement of violence and all that kind of thing. But we all know that one of the oddities of Twitter, including since Elon took over, is that what you hope is a restored marketplace of ideas, ends up pushing you really crazy shit. Yes. And that is what I'm suggesting is happening on a podcast level and maybe on a wider level beyond that.

47:47I get stuff on Twitter. I just do not want. I do not want a guy with one and a half thousand followers who's got some zany new view on something who isn't an expert but isn't expert to be pushed at me. And effectively what is happening with the Twitter algorithm is happening everywhere else as well. And we're all for the open marketplace of ideas. I want that. I thrive in it. But it is, it is different once you get into the thing of is something manipulating the algorithm behind? Is the algorithm being pushed on me? Why am I being given this? Why am I not being given that? Why am I being constantly pushed this view?

48:26And I think that the answer to a great degree is the same thing in your world as it is in the Twitter world, which is, if you go straight online and you say, you know, JFK file drops, watch livestream of Kennedy historians reading the papers live, you're not going to get any views. No one's going to watch it. That's what kind of what's needed is for the people to know the documents to go through the documents. But you and I know that if as there was some guy who did immediately you do something like livestream, Mossat and involvement in JFK, you're going to milk it. You're going to cream it online.

49:07The money comes in. I'm saying that there's a similar algorithm in all of our lives that we're not as aware of as we should be, which is that we, because we all know this at some level, that there are certain things that get your, a video base going or get people going interesting and crazy and then they start debating it and all that sort of thing. And that algorithm of online seems to me to be spilling into the real world. I don't disagree that there's certainly more sensationalist stuff will get you more clicks. I also don't think that's a, it's not really unique to social media or podcasting.

49:44I mean, this is really true. No, believe me, right for the tabloids. Yeah, right. This has always been true. Right? So yeah, okay, so it's kind of one of the problems that you're having. Yeah, I'm the only man that is arguing against that. You know, it's certainly never my intention when I talk to someone to try to get more views. It sounds crazy, but I'm only talking to people that I'm interested in talking to. And in Darrell's case, it's because I've been a listener of his podcast for years.

50:12That's it. This is like genuinely how I perceive things. I think that's why you're here. I'm genuinely interested in your views as well, even though you completely disagree with him. That's the, the, the, the, the, the marketplace of ideas in real time. I agree. Although as I say, I think you massively underrepresented the pro -Ukrain argument and the pro -Israel argument in the last two years. Um, I don't know. I mean, well, that's my observation. Okay. You're totally allowed to have that observation. What is the, what's the pro -Ukrain argument that you think is not being represented enough?

50:57Well, my broad view is that, again, something to do with the algorithm, that anything that is, uh, conspiratorial about Zelensky or the Ukrainians in the conflict does very well. Anything that says actually the Ukrainian army is fighting to try to retain as much of their country as they can, doesn't do as well. I think that everything that is pushing the idea that, for instance, the Americans caused it or something like that does well. I think everything that says actually in February 2022, Vladimir Putin's tanks invaded Ukraine and they shouldn't have done, doesn't do as well. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that what Vladimir Putin did wasn't horrific.

51:50That's not my point. The point is after that, you, as a whole set of things, let, let, let's look at, for instance, the issue of corruption. Okay. Ukraine is a pretty corrupt country by EU standards, by the, uh, by well -bank standards. Um, and it's been a problem as it is in that neck of the woods. And it's understandable that if the US is one of the countries putting money and arms into Ukraine, then it's going to be a subject of legitimate interests to the American people and others, the European taxpayers. Nevertheless, you end up in this, and I know this because it's the same, it's the same thing in the old media.

52:29You end up on like the new bit of the story. And there's always a risk that you will lose sight of the beginning of the story. For instance, I mean, Putin's corruption is legendary, gargantuan, and not as interesting. It seems to me the algorithm doesn't push that. And I think that's a, to a great extent, the case with the Israel Hamaz. This episode is brought to you by Visible. I want to let you in on something. Your current wireless carrier does not want you to know about Visible because Visible is the ultimate wireless hack. No confusing plans with surprise fees, no nonsense, just fast speeds, great coverage, without the premium cost.

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54:41Plus, all LifeLock plans are backed by the million dollar protection package, meaning LifeLock will reimburse you up to the limits of your plan if you lose money due to identity theft. You might not be able to control how others handle your personal information, but you can help protect it with LifeLock. Save up to 40 % your first year, call 1 -800 -LIFLock and use the promo code JRE or go to lifelock .com slash JRE for 40 % off Terms Apply. Well, isn't there a little bit of a concern? Like I would say a couple things here. Number one, I don't know how the algorithm works or what it's pushing.

55:25It's an interesting thing that we probably should all know more about. But I think there's a danger to just classify everything as well. The algorithm pushes this and doesn't push this. It could also be that some ideas are just resonating more and some ideas are more popular than other ideas. And there's probably both of those things are at work in that dynamic. But I also think that something like the reason why, say talking about Ukrainian corruption is more interesting in a lot of ways than talking about Russian corruption is obviously because like well, one of these countries is an enemy and the other one is one that we're sending tens of billions of dollars to.

56:00Yes, well, debating on between Zelensky and the weapons companies. I don't know. He says he only got 70 billion dollars of it, but we've spent closer to 170, so whatever. But the point is that obviously if there is a country that we are propping up, funding, arming and they're corrupt. I would say my starting point would always be to be more concerned with that corruption than an enemy country, which it's almost kind of a given is a corrupt country. I don't know. I'm sure there are fringes of the right who might say like Vladimir Putin, some great guy or something like that. But that is, I really do not think that is the argument that most people who are critical of this of Biden's policy are making sure.

56:42I mean, I think the one of the interesting things that happens in this is the old cliche of losing the wood for the trees. It just happens an awful lot. And it's the nature of the old news cycle, let alone the current one, the social media era. Actually, I remember that, so I don't go back to World War II, let me just very quickly. I remember this debate with Pat Buchanan when he was debating much more learned historians on the subject of the origins of World War II. And the whole thing got lost in all of this sort of mad puzzle of views about iron ore production in the Varian forest and this sort of thing.

57:18And I remember that everyone was all over the place and the moderator turned to the historian Andrew Roberts and said, Andrew Roberts, why did World War II begin? And he said, World War II began because Hitler invaded Poland. And those moments come along quite often at the moment, which is, yes, there's an awful lot of very interesting things to look into. There's a lot of very interesting things going on which we should all be able to talk about and do talk about. But sometimes you have to remember the origin causes of things as well. And you have to stick to keeping that in mind. Yeah, well, I think that all the people are pretty bad at the moment of keeping that in mind.

57:58Like, you can concede Ukrainian corruption, you can concede all sorts of things and still not lose sight of the thing of, if Russia rolls tanks into neighboring countries, it can't be allowed. Well, listen, okay, so on that, I think we have an area of agreement. And I do think, like, even while I much prefer the path that Donald Trump is pursuing to the path that Joe Biden pursued when it comes to the war in Ukraine. And of course, this is, you know, Donald Trump's thing is once you piss him off, he's going to call you every bad nickname that there is. But when he said, sometimes when you don't piss him off, he will you sure, but when he's a big, he's come to mind.

58:40What did I believe he said that Zelensky started the war? Yes, really, which is like, okay, all right, that's a little bit ridiculous. He said that he started the war and Zelensky was the dictator. Yes, okay. All right. So Trump said that? Yes, he said, but it was after Zelensky started the war. Yeah, but it was this is how Donald Trump is. Love him or hate him for better or for worse. Donald Trump, it's like if you he feels that you disrespected him or come came at him, he's going to be 10 times more. This was, by the way, this happened two weeks before the disastrous overloaf is meeting. Yeah.

59:12And I wrote the next day, the cover in the New York Post, which was a big picture of Vladimir Putin with the headline, this is a dictator. Just again, as I say, not to lose track in all of the melee, not to lose track of the basic facts. Well, look, I will say this as somebody who is a very anti -war broadly speaking. And I do, I do agree with you that it should like we should be able to have conversations about all the things that led up to the war and all the different, you know, like blunders that that were made and also still recognize that Vladimir Putin invaded a country. And as responsible for, you know, at least hundreds of thousands of people dying.

59:54And you know, my Scott Horton, who I always try to promote on here, he just wrote this book called Provoked the best book that's been written on the history leading up to the war between is basically takes you from the collapse of the Soviet Union up to the war in Ukraine. And even in that book, the book is called Provoked and the argument is that that Western policy was very provocative toward Vladimir Putin. And there were a lot of off ramps that could have been explored and should have been explored. But he has an entire chapter in the book where he is saying, like, look, Putin had a lot of other options.

1:00:27He didn't have to do this. It's not as if any of that justifies his invasion. And so I do agree with you that whenever we're talking about a war, particularly a war of aggression, that should always be a war. And it should always be in the front of people's minds. I mean, you can criticize, you know, I would say I think I'm consistent on this across the board. You can criticize lots of things about the insurgency in Iraq, certainly. But you should remember that George W. Bush invaded the country when he shouldn't have and based off lies. So I, I'll, I say that when my government does it, I'll say it when the Russian government does it also.

1:01:01So that being said, there's a very strong argument that there were many policies that the US, you know, NATO and Europe as well, but mostly the US pursued that were just almost like if you wanted to come to this inevitable conflict, this would have been the policy to pursue to give you the best chance to end up. So one of the, you know, I was with a British military friend recently and somebody asked, what does the fog of war mean? And he gave a brilliant example of what it means on the battlefield, which a lot of people don't understand. There's a version of the fog of war in history as well.

1:01:40The great Czech writer, Milan Kondera, had a beautiful phrase in a book of his from the 90s called Testaments betrayed. Where he said, the odd thing about mankind is he said, we walk through life in a fog and we stumble along the path and we create the path as we stumble along it. So that's not the interesting thing. The interesting thing is that when we look back, we see the man and we see the path, but we don't see the fog. Everything looks inevitable when you're standing in the present. Everything looks like it was going to happen this way and you have these endless, often fascinating, often futile, explorations of what might have been, but it doesn't take into account the fog.

1:02:27It's a very good point. And the fog of Russia, after the fall of the Soviet Union, was pretty considerable. The efforts in the 1990s to bring them into a more obvious part of the international order failed. My own view has always been that in part we missed an opportunity to pay a kind of civilizational respect to the Russians, which they deserved.

1:02:56But also throughout the period that people now say they're all of these off -ramps. And now so many people claim that NATO went around the region desperately trying to provoke the Russians into some kind of war or inevitably leading them that way because of NATO expansionism. They never take into account what was in my memory and experience very clear, which was NATO didn't go to go around recruiting. People came to NATO. Countries came to NATO wanting to join precisely because they feared the aggression that Ukrainians have suffered since February 2022 and indeed before. I was in Georgia just after the 2008 war began.

1:03:38The country, not the state. It always has to be confirmed otherwise. People are like, what? Who invaded Georgia? That's Georgia. They're bastards. But I was in the country of Georgia and Putin had tried to invade them and had seized South Settion of Karsia and they were desperate to join NATO. In fact they're desperate to join the European Union. I rather frivolously said to a Georgian friend, if you want we can swap. You can take our British membership of the EU. But in the NATO thing they were desperate for it and they were desperate for it precisely for the reason that many of the Ukrainians were desperate for it, which was only way to stop Putin expansionism.

1:04:20So in the whole fog of the post -Soviet era, that is one of the many things that gets left out of the conversation. And by the way, Putin's actions in February 2022 and since all he's done is provoke two new countries to join NATO and his borders with NATO have grown. That's true. And the only reason Finland and Sweden wanted to join was because they too are scared. It's a heck of a thing to get the Swedish to join a military alliance. It doesn't come easy to them. It doesn't come natural. And these countries joined because like Georgia, like Ukraine, they desperately feared Putinist expansionism.

1:05:06And they weren't wrong. Okay, but I get your point. First off, the war in Georgia in 2008 actually came, was it two or three months after the Bucharest summit where NATO announced that Georgia and Ukraine would be entering NATO? So just making that point that the NATO aspirations came first, but listen, I don't think you're wrong. I don't think anybody is ever implying that we've expanded NATO through force and that the countries who were joining, or at least the governments of the countries who were joining didn't want it. Although in the case of Ukraine, there's a great piece in the Washington Post about this in 2006 where joining NATO was actually very unpopular.

1:05:43And there was a lot done. And largely because they just didn't want to take on the headache of the conflict that this might provoke. But you know, the question I think isn't necessarily like do these countries wish to join NATO? Of course, I think most countries in the world would like to join NATO. I think most countries in the world would like the most powerful government in the history of the world to guarantee their defense and subsidize their defense. The question is, is that in America's interest? And in terms of your point of seeing through the fog, I mean, look, there was, as you know, well, in the 90s, in the late 90s during the first round of NATO expansion, there was a lively debate.

1:06:19Amongst this, and I don't mean a debate amongst outsiders or non -expert experts or whatever. I mean within the real deal experts, the wisest gray beers and the national security apparatus, there was a real debate with at least three secretaries of defense who warned against this. Robert Gates, Robert McNamara, William Perry, the Secretary of Defense at the time, almost resigned, said his biggest regret in life is that he didn't resign over it. George Kenon was able to see right through that fog. He literally said the Cold War year, founder of the containment strategy, saw right through that fog and goes, this will inevitably lead to a conflict with Russia.

1:06:52And his exact words were, and then when there's a Russian response, everybody will say, look, this is why we needed to expand NATO. But the point here is, okay, even within that deep debate, which there were lively debates about, even the people who were on the pro -expansionist side of things, like Henry Kissinger. Even he said, Ukraine would have to be a special arrangement. Ukraine will not come into NATO because obviously that's leading to a war with Russia. And so I don't think it's unreasonable. And I think this is a fair thing that we should do in all conflicts, is like to have as a mere shimer puts it, to have strategic empathy.

1:07:33To say, hey, listen, let's reasonably place ourselves in the other person's shoes and say, how would we react if somebody was expanding their military alliance that is explicitly anti us and is bringing it up to our borders and now is openly for years and years and years, saying that we are going to bring your largest neighbor where you have very important strategic interests from your point of view into our military alliance. And you are saying over and over again, this is our brightest red line. Do not do this. And then they keep flirting with doing this over and over. Then they back a street put that over throws the government there.

1:08:10Don't you think maybe that would be a provocation? First of all, two things. If you want that strategic empathy, that mere shimer, I'm not an admirer of. But if you want to do that, you can do it the other way around as well, surely. Yeah, I mean, do the same thing with the Ukrainians. Absolutely. Latvians and others. Yeah, but I would never, my response to you was never, I can't understand why the Latvians or the Lithuanians would want to be a NATO. I understand that. Yes. And I can understand why Russia thought that Ukrainian membership in NATO was a red line. I can understand that. But that wasn't why Putin invaded in 2022.

1:08:52And I think there's an oddity if I can say so. Maybe this particularly comes across an Elevatorian bisexual side. But the, I think there's an oddity of the. What the record show him a happily married heterosexual man. They will say that. I think there's an oddity that sometimes particularly happens on the libertarian side, which is a, which is a presumption that things only really happen in the world because we make them so. And you know, Russia invades Ukraine because of American policy in Eastern Europe post 1989, 1990. Something happens in the release because of American policy. And I think it's a very blinkered and pro -kill view of things because my experience in countries around the world is that there's a heck of a lot going on that America is frankly not really involved in.

1:09:46Well, that's certainly a straw man of my possession. I'm not saying that I'm not. I know what I'm saying. No, no, no, but what I'm saying is it is very, in fact, it's partly since you very kindly raised the issue Joe. You book. It's one of the things I see is in death cult. It's one of the things I find very interesting about this with democracies, which is it is one of the things in the nature of a liberal democracy. That because we have the right to air our opinion because we have the right to criticize our government and much more. We end up doing all of that and there is a misapprehension people can come to.

1:10:21I don't know if you do, but they can come to, which is effectively we are the only force that causes action in the world. And there's a reason for that, which is that we have, thank God, a say in how liberal democracies are run and how we're governed and we can chew over all of the disagreements that we have. But when a liberal democracy comes against the kind of rock like a death cult, a totalitarian regime, a dictatorship like Russia or the Iranian Revolutionary Government, there's always this temptation to say, to focus our attention on our own side because we can't do a darn thing about the other one.

1:11:04It's a version of, you know, the great late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said when he was ambassador to the UN, he had this great rule, sort of known among those who know about it as Moynihan's rule, which is he said, if you sit at the UN, or the UN Human Rights Council or any of these bodies, you would come away with the belief that the most abused people with the fewest rights in the world live in America and other Western liberal societies. And he came because we're the ones that talk about it. If there's one incident of racism in America, well the whole world knows about it. Everyone reads it, it'll be protest everywhere.

1:11:43If there's one incident of racism in North Korea, it's not going to make any news. And then you have on top of that the fact that the way in which despotisms and death cults and dictatorships work, the information just doesn't come out. And Moynihan's rule ended up being that the, in an interesting point, he said that his rule by the end of his time in the UN was that the number of human rights violations that occur in a country happen in exactly inverse proportion to the numbers of claims of human rights violations. Because only the countries which care about it and which such things can be aired in are ever going to get it out.

1:12:24But the point of Moynihan's law and the warning of it is, be careful not to come away with the mistaken idea that the freest and most liberal societies are the worst. And I think there's a version of Moynihan's law that applies, whether it's from the least, to Ukraine and Russia, which is, we come away with this, people may come away with the impression that the bad things in the world effectively all come from here. And there is quite a lot to be said for some of that, but there's not everything to be said. And much of the world runs on a dynamic and a dynamo, which you can't do a dumb thing about.

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1:13:48What do I mean by almost? Well, you can't get a well groomed lawn delivered, but you can get chicken Parmesan delivered. A day in the sun. No, a bottle of rum. Yes, Uber Eats can definitely get you that for almost almost anything delivered with Uber Eats order now for alcohol. You must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly product availability varies by region. See app for details. Yeah, okay. So I mean, again, I certainly. There is truth to a lot of that. And I think that is a fascinating kind of dynamic where there is something about kind of like, you know, I noticed this even just with my own kids.

1:14:29Like it's like and people when you have kids and you raise them really wet, you know, like you're really sweet to them and you don't hit them and you give them a good life. Small things end up becoming huge. It like things in their mind like someone pushed me at the playground and it's like, whoa, this is where is like the way I grew up. That would have just been kind of like a non event. But anyway, I think it would be certainly incorrect to assume that everything that happens bad in the world is somehow a consequence of US meddling. I also think that there's people on the other side here, maybe the people who are more neocon leaning more horax hockey leaning.

1:15:05They have a tendency to only focus on the bad things that everybody else does and act like our policies have no impact on this. Right. So very specifically, you know, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I'll just get two like bullet points on this. And there's we could talk about a lot of this. But look, number one in 2008, as you well know, right? The Joe Biden CIA director, who was the CIA director for the entire war up until Donald Trump just came back in. He wrote the net means net memo to Condoleezza Rice, a private cable to the then secretary of state when he was ambassador to Russia to let her know that this flirting with bringing Ukraine into NATO is going to end up in a war.

1:15:47And by the way, the Russians don't want to do it. His words exactly. If you keep pushing with this, the Russians are going to have they are going to have to make a decision that they don't want to make, which is whether they intervene or not. And number two, Stoltenberg, I might be but you're on that again, but that the head of NATO, he himself said that Vladimir Putin sent him a draft treaty in late 2021 and said, look, if you just put into writing that you will not bring Ukraine into NATO, I won't invade. Now, if you want to argue that this, this pre you, I admire your appeal to authority to the head of the CIA.

1:16:26I just want to appeal to a thought. How is that appeal to authority? You regard the view of the CIA director on that occasion is being useful for your argument. But secondly, there's an oddity to believing what Vladimir Putin says. No, wait, hold on, but you didn't let me finish my point. So don't believe what he says. I'm not going to pretend to read his heart in mind or something like that. But at the very least, you handed him the giant excuse in order to do it. I mean, maybe he doesn't really believe it, but this is his argument to his own people and to the world that it's like, look, and we put him in a position, you know, if you hate Vladimir Putin, he's such a terrible guy.

1:17:06Well, we put him in this position where he gets to now very plausibly say to the international community in the same way that if the Soviet Union had survived and the United States had it. And they were he doesn't very plausibly have the opportunity to do that. He invaded Ukraine because he wanted annex the whole country because he was trying to pretend the whole place been run by Nazis. Well, I mean, okay, the whole place was run by not see the certain where the certain where this is what he told the Russian people. Oh, he also brought up when he can lie an awful lot when you're a dictator and you have the ability not just to run all of the media, but to kill your political opponents.

1:17:42I mean, you can do an awful lot. Sure. None of this. You know, I just got back from Ukraine again the other week and it's so weird. I saw the the oval office meeting. Is it happened from a trench in the front line between the Russian and Ukrainian positions in the east of the country. And it was so weird seeing the way in which this country's territory was being talked about by outsiders and particularly by America because there's so many oddities about it. But the people who are fighting there, the soldiers on the front lines, the ones I was with, they're not fighting against Putin forces because of NATO expansion or anything that they're fighting because he lied to his own army.

1:18:36He lied to his own people. He lies to the world and he decided he wanted to gobble up Ukraine because he wants to reconstitute the Soviet Union. And as a result, these young men are in dugouts in the middle of winter fighting Russian soldiers because the Ukrainians homes are 13 kilometers behind them. And I just I think among much else that stuff that cannot be forgotten about none of this is simply about NATO expansion or this or that it's about a country whose people are suffering in their third year of war. And it's almost total war. Yeah, as much total war as we've got in the modern age. But that's not I'm not disagreeing with any of that.

1:19:24I'm not saying the Ukrainian people were fighting because they wanted to keep their country. People don't very much like being invaded by foreign countries. I understand that completely. And I've also always said throughout this whole thing that is their right. They have a right to do that. We as Americans have a right to you know have an opinion on whether our government ought to be funding and arming the thing. But all I'm saying is that it's I'm not making an appeal to authority here. I'm just saying that you have the the top people in the Russian government all unanimously saying like this is our red line.

1:19:54You keep flirting with NATO expansion into Ukraine. And then you have all the people at the top of NATO and at the top of the US government admitting it too. And going like yeah, this is the whole beef. So why is it like these two things aren't mutually exposed? No, they aren't now, but I mean they weren't going to expand NATO to Ukraine. Well, they kept flirting with it and you know that the Ukrainians wanted membership. And it was very unwise whenever anyone from the rest of the West even flirted with it. Didn't come on. I was openly say that NATO was going to join you. Yeah, short. I never saw her as the Kissinger.

1:20:32There's an there's some area of agreement. That's Tim Walsh. He's the guy. Well, obviously that guy's the future. But okay, but it is still the vice president of the United States of America. And it's listen, it's not again, that's not why Putin evaded. Well, you can invade it because he because the thing he's dreamt of since he full of falling down to the Soviet Union is you know how he dreams. We know a lot from what he said and what he's done since the fall of the Soviet Union and his statements. Suddenly very early on in his presence. He does have a red line and you violate that red line. Is that because he's following his dreams or it's because his dream is is said many times is the reconstitution of the Soviet Union's territory.

1:21:13I don't think that's exactly what he said. He's he's alluded many times to like how great the Soviet Union was and what a tragedy it is that it collapsed and things like that. But regardless of something we can agree. What a fiction on his pot. Oh, I think the Soviet Union collapsing is one of the greatest things that's ever happened in the history of the world. And the most evil regime is not the most evil result of American action. Sure, there's a lot of factors in there. But I guess in some pro -American views. I will certainly concede that us, lowering them into Afghanistan, was played a huge role in weakening the Soviet Union.

1:21:53It came with the minor little price tag of 9 .11. But okay, but you know that's a. The Soviet Union did not fall just because of Afghanistan. No, I didn't say I said it played a role. I didn't say it was just because of Afghanistan. No, it was the beginning of European groups. Also because communism as an economic model just doesn't work. And it was a disaster and it was destined to collapse. We did all all centrally planned totally socialist economies are destined to. Except for bad results. I don't like that we're destined in that because I mean my experience things that don't work can go on an awfully long time.

1:22:22Well look, the Soviet Union went on and off we long time. I mean it was. I thought when I went to North Korea some years ago that couldn't go on for much longer. And on it goes. Yeah, no, okay. So fair point there. But certainly it's going to be the you know it's it's a much different dynamic for communist country like North Korea who is a relatively small and not expansionist. Whereas the Soviet Union was trying to maintain an empire which is a much tougher thing to do. Like the United States of America is going broke trying to do it. So it was pretty tough for them to do. All I'm saying here is that like if you if the dynamic again it's not just that like first off in 2008 at the Bucharest.

1:23:00We announced we were doing it and we didn't give them a map plan but we announced they are coming into NATO over and over not just the Kamala Harris comment over and over and over again through the years people at the highest level of the US government asserted that this is going to happen. That it's a matter of time and then the 2014 this was a major major provocation toward the Russians that we backed this street protest against the democratically elected government there. And it's again it's tricky because the made down protests were genuine students in the center of the city who were uprising against a corrupt government.

1:23:40I'm not even arguing that you claim the people of Ukraine like other countries when they do have agency beyond what Washington. Yeah I'm not claiming any of those people don't have agency. I'm just claiming that Washington poured a hundred million dollars into the thing and sent our politicians over there. Our politicians openly saying we're on your side. You have the backing of America. Look, it's a story. Historically you know America does like to be has liked to be on the side of people who desire freedom over autocracy. When it's convenient not so much when it's not well. Not in Saudi Arabia.

1:24:17Not in Egypt. I'm glad you joined me in my dislike of the House of South. Okay fine but no but I'm but look it does attack. I'm worried for them in there. Yeah but it does attack your central point there that it's like no I'm sorry like see this is my being my beef isn't ever with talking about the corruption or the evil things that other other governments do. What I don't like is this whitewashing over our own corruption and the evil things that are the idea that America we have a history of just standing with the people because we love democracy so much. No we use that as an excuse when we think it's in our strategic advantage.

1:24:47We will overthrow democratically elected governments with no problem which by the way Yana Kovic was democratically elected with elections verified by the EU. But I'm not denying any of those kids had agency and I'm sure a lot of them were protesting against their own corrupt government. But the point is that like look imagine on I think Jeffrey Sachs came up with this isn't mine but imagine on January 6th if like Chinese politicians work on the government. They're coming over and handing out sandwiches to the rioters and saying we have your back we have I mean listen we would lose our collective minds if another country came in and did something like that.

1:25:25And but I mean we lost our collective minds about Vladimir Putin installing Donald Trump and it was all just completely made up. It wasn't even a real thing but so to think okay. Those people use our minds on that as certain subset of. Okay there's me you know I lost them. For me being a subset. For me being a main set. For me being the bisexual libertarian here you have you have corrected me on my collectivism several times here and you are right. Yes we didn't lose our mind I am speak but others many other people here did but you look I mean you're pouring a hundred million dollars into a street protest against a democratically elected president of Ukraine.

1:26:03And the whole issue is over essentially whether he's going to tilt toward an economic deal with Europe or tilt toward an economic deal with Vladimir Putin. I mean Douglas like if anyone did that in our region of the world we would DC would overthrow that government invade in a moment. If China poured a hundred million dollars into Mexican protest and was able to overthrow the democratically elected government. Well I have to say if it's a state change. It would be a subject maybe but Qatar pours hundreds of millions of dollars into this country billions indeed and tries to change policy in this country.

1:26:40And nobody's trying to overthrow Qatar. Nobody's trying to overthrow the amea or his family. And they've been poisoning American universities, American institutions, buying up American politicians. They pour billions into this country. I just think you're saying you're something rather this morning. Yes I mean well okay but that is a little bit different than overthrowing our neighbor government and trying to destroy. You're saying that we'd lose our mind if anyone tried to interfere here. There are lots of people who try to do that. But I wasn't saying if anyone. And the most obvious one is Qatar which is pours money into DC and into elite institutions and universities in this country.

1:27:18And I don't find from one week to the next anyone who's particularly riled up about it. Well so they've been, I mean so they're pouring money into DC. And so do you think that they are influencing US policy through doing that? I think they're trying to. Maybe they are trying to. They're definitely succeeding with universities and others. Maybe they should try with the political class more if they're trying to turn us anti -Israel or something like that. Because both major parties in this country will fund and unconditionally support Israel no matter what. So I mean I don't know what they're. I don't know what they're.

1:27:52But I mean Qatar is definitely trying to influence things their way as other countries are. I mean I just, I cited as an example of something that's very interesting which is an attempt to interfere in the American public life which gets almost no attention. And indeed the governments, whether Democrat or Republican still seem to adore the Qataris. Even as they act as one of the backers of terrorist groups across the Middle East and elsewhere. And I cannot understand why it doesn't get more attention. Well according to the former Defense Minister of Israel they were begging Qatar to pour that money into Hamas.

1:28:34No that's not what happened. Well that's what he said. His words begging. You're referring to the funding of Hamas in the 2010s. Yes. No. The Qataris poured the money in. And the question on the Israeli side was what you allowed to do with funds that were going into Gaza and the Israelis allowed the funds to go from Qatar to the South. I think a little bit more than that. I think when the funds dried up Netanyahu sent the head of the Mossad and they're to beg him to keep the funds going. Again I'm not sure it's like quoting the head of the CIA quoting the head of the Mossad. So maybe. But that's not the evidence of the last 18 years.

1:29:14I mean it's you can okay so I I mean I guess I think I'm allowed to quote powerful people when they admit what they're doing. No I know but I know again I mean it's just it's just an interesting thing because again it's a discipline about this. Which is do I only quote powerful people when they say the odd thing that I agree with. Or do I simultaneously distrust all powerful people. It's just an interesting rhetorical well no I mean I think that obviously like I don't blindly trust anyone in the political class or the media class for that matter either. But when they admit things that are like very against their interest to admit and kind of give away the whole game that now they're pretending doesn't matter.

1:29:57Are you sure whether it's the I .A. or Mossad that isn't just if they say something that you happen to want to be the case. Well this is kind of like saying if I were to and on trial and I were to like I'm the prosecution and I'd enter into evidence a written confession by the defendant. And you go well are you only entering this in because this kind of goes along with your case like I suppose we're all guilty of having these incentives to some degree. But I do think it's a relevant detail that the former defense secretary admitted this and by the way Netanyahu's admitted this a who Barack is admitted this.

1:30:28They admitted that they allowed funds to go from Katar to Hamas because Hamas. For the cause of for the reason of preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state. No that was not the case. That is what Netanyahu said that is what A .H. had said it's all up and down. There's one claim there's one recording of Netanyahu saying something along those lines. But look I mean we should get on we should get on to it. I could read you the quotes from A .H. had Barack as well. No I know it's all of them I've talked about it. The situation let's get on to it. The situation there on the war of the last 18 months now more than 18 months in the Middle East.

1:31:08Is a result not of that but of Hamas deciding to start another war with Israel and trying to annihilate the neighbor. But you don't think if they if they were being propped up by Israel that has nothing to do with the being propped up by Israel. The reason why Hamas were in power as you know much much against the interests of the Israelis was that they were voted into power after the Israelis was driven from Gaza in 05. Conglisa Rice and other American and other American states folk insisted that the Palestinian should have elections straight after the Israeli withdrawal. They had elections perhaps unwisely and Hamas won and then didn't have another election again and ruled the Gaza for 18 years until they finally got the great fruit of their labor on the 7th of October 2023.

1:32:00And when around southern Israel massacring everywhere and they could including young people at a dance party and then caused in turn destruction of the place that they were made. And then it was a moment to be governing. It's a the whole thing is a great tragedy and all of it is at the feet of Hamas. I certainly agree with you that it's a great tragedy and I do you know I think it's it's. You know when you accuse me of using the quotes that kind of you know back up what I believe I think it's very convenient here to remove all responsibility from the Israelis like even if I'm telling you that you have these quotes I mean I'm I'm not talking about fringe figures figures we could read through the list of people who have admitted what the strategy was with them funding Hamas and property.

1:32:54But hold on let me just say so if you're going to tell me Israel props up this this terrorist organization in order to kill the peace process in order to make sure that the international community gives them a no one by the way with smote rich right the finance minister okay he's on record needs on record saying look Hamas is an asset the Palestinian authority they're the liability Hamas is an asset because we then we can tell the international community well look what you want us to do there's a terrorist organization here we can't do that. And then even a good block admitted like this was also so that liberal.

1:33:29Israelis you know if it was the Palestinian authority they'd be like hey we should make a deal with them but since it's Hamas they can't okay so if Israel props up this terrorist organization and then as a response to them committing a horrific act of terrorism decides to level the entire place and just slaughter women and children in large numbers to that and it didn't do that but yeah it didn't level the play. Gaza's not has a good level by now yeah they did not go into level the place like that okay they went in and leveled the place but that wasn't there. Let's just let's just go back to the beginning if we can sure because it's important since your interest in the question the Palestinian state the Palestinians were given another state in 2005 when every single due was removed from the Gaza by the idea and when even the graves of Israelis and Gaza were dug up and taken into place.

1:34:20I'll go back to the rest of Israel. The the of all of the what ifs of Palestinian Arab history the era since 2005 should be one of the great what ifs which is what if the American taxpayers money that was poured into Gaza the European Union taxpayer money that was poured into Gaza had been used by a government in Gaza to build a state that lived side by side with there is a lot of money. Israeli neighbors and flourished and it's not like the money wasn't there it's not like there wasn't the international will. Ishmael Haneer and the other leaders of Hamaz used that money as you know to make themselves billionaires and to buy themselves and their kids condos in Qatar and to live extremely well whilst withholding the money from the Palestinian people whilst building their network of tunnels throughout Gaza and building an infrastructure of terror.

1:35:20And that's what they did with 18 years in Gaza and of all of the what ifs just consider that that one was in their hands the Israelis did not make them vote in Hamaz the Israelis would not want a tourist entity that wants to annihilate the state of Israel that is there on their doorstep constantly firing rockets starting wars every few years. That why would the Israelis want a group there that means that if you're living in towns like Storat or Ashkorn or Ash Dodd your children grow up all the time knowing that they might have to go to the bomb shelters and that's during peacetime. Well according to them the reason they want it there is because then it kills the peace process and then you have no one to negotiate with certificate and that then you can kick your eyes on building up settlements in the West Bank.

1:36:18I think there are as now many people to negotiate with Mahmoud Abbas may be I don't know as a joke goes currently in something like his 20th year of his first four year term as head of the Palestinian Authority. But Mahmoud Abbas is there in Ramallah the compounds of the Palestinian Authority which I've been to many times in Ramallah are there they run their portions of the West Bank they could be there to negotiate with at any moment the Israelis have said they want to negotiate with them at any moment. And come to the deal in fact Netanyahu your fund of quoting said again before this war began that he would come to the table with no red lines to begin with to start another negotiation with the Palestinian Authority.

1:37:05But let's just get back to this thing because this is so crucial. I am so startled by the post october 7th world not just in Israel and Gaza and everywhere I spent most of the last 18 months but in what's happening here in the United States of America. It blows my mind much of the response here and the desire to leap over the first victims of this and go on to all of the approximate causes theoretical causes what ifs and so on. I was as I described in the opening of this book I was in New York on the 7th of October and I woke up and started seeing what was happening and discovered that later that day already there were attempts there were plans to organize a protest in Times Square.

1:37:58And what was a protest in Times Square massive protest in support of Hamas as the massacre was still going on. And one of the things I just cannot get out of my head is why in the last 18 months when Hamas did what they did have so many people made excuses for them or decided to side with them or deny their actions or excuse their actions. Why do you think that is several very very big things. One is I think people wanted to ignore the nature of the atrocity because it was so appalling that it went against much of their narrative. I was at the reunion of one of the survivors of the Nova Party on one occasion and he said to me what would you do if this had happened in your country.

1:38:50And I thought well it hasn't happened at this scale but something like it has happened. The Ariana Grande arena bombing in Manchester in 2017 the Bataclan massacre in Paris in 2015 the post nightclub shooting in 2015. But all of these occasions when young people were murdered for being at a pop concert or a nightclub the world's attention, the world's empathy, the world's sympathy went to the victims. Only in the case of the young Israelis dancing in the early hours of the morning on October 7th, 2023 do the victims become victimized again and not believed. The era we lived through in the late 2010s was the era of believe all women.

1:39:39And of all the Israeli women who were raped that morning much of the international community does not want to listen to them at all and certainly doesn't want to believe them. And there are many reasons. One, at the most fundamental level is that I think a part of a generation that's coming up has been told there is something especially wicked about Israel, that there is something especially wicked about Israel's existence and its actions and its people. And it means that when their people are burned alive in their homes or raped at a music festival and shot in the head they are uniquely undeserving of sympathy.

1:40:19And I think that people have been indoctrinated by very bad actors into this and as a result have excused atrocities or make excuses for them, make excuses for the people who do them. I think in addition it plays to some of the darkest things of the regional mind as well as the international mind. The aims of Hamaz, the stated aims, include the annihilation of the Jewish people and October 7th they had their best go at doing that. And the fact that in a decision between whether or not you're on the side of the people who want to dance and live in peace with their neighbors or whether you're on the side of the people who want to rampage through a dance party bar in the early morning, macheteering at people.

1:41:16I find it amazing that there are so many people who don't know which side they're on, but there are a lot of them, there are a lot of reasons for that. But one of the foremost reasons is the fact that the state of Israel has been uniquely liable, has been uniquely light about, its history has been uniquely light about. It has been uniquely put under an international spotlight and then misrepresented in a way which I cannot think of many other countries in the world that have been treated that way. And there are deep reasons for it and shallow reasons for it. The deep reasons include some of the most ancient bigotries of the human heart and the shallow reasons are people who don't know what the hell they're talking about.

1:42:04Okay, I think that there's, look, I'm not going to speak for what every person out there believes. I don't exactly agree with the characterization that there was no outpouring of feeling after October 7th. And certainly like everybody I know was just like, oh my god, this is like a horrific atrocity. And like the, the unprecedented terrorist attack from Hamas, the worst terrorist attack in Israeli history against Israelis. And it was horrible. I think what a lot of, I'm not, I'm not arguing that there are no people who are actually pro Hamas or there are no people who are actually like hate Jews or something like that.

1:42:46I do think that what happens is that a lot of people get put in that category who do not belong there. Much like we've seen this over the last year and a half where a lot of people, you know, you have John Putt -Harritz calling Thomas Massey anti -Semitic scum. Because he said we're dead broke. We can't afford to fund everybody else's war here. People have been calling Tucker Carlson anti -Semitic all over the place. When these are two guys, Thomas Massey and Tucker Carlson, who have never uttered the words the Jews in their life. Like they're just not anti -Semites at all. So there's a lot of people I think who are, when they're critical of the Israeli government's response to this, get lumped in as pro Hamas.

1:43:28I will certainly say that's certainly not my position. I think your description of them, death cult, by the way, the same term that Darrell Cooper used to describe Hamas, I think is an accurate one. And it was horrible. But I think that your characterization, for example, that they gave the Palestinians a state in 2005 is just wrong. I just think that is not at all an accurate way to describe the disengagement, which we could get into more if you want to. But first of all, I would just point out that if the two -state solution was achieved, I assume you're arguing it was taken away after that.

1:44:06You're not still arguing that the Palestinians have a state, or are you saying they have had a state since 2005? They had they were given a state in the Gaza. And when did it, when was it taken away? Well, they kind of screwed it up for themselves on the 7th of October. So you were saying from 2005 all the way till October 7th, there was a two -state solution. It had been achieved. Well, it was another state, yeah. Okay, but that would be two states then. No, it would be another state. It was different from the PA. Okay, right. But I'm saying a Palestinian state. Yeah. Okay. So what's interesting about that is that this is not how, like this is not how any of the leaders really describe it.

1:44:40I mean, when Netanyahu himself is not claiming that they had already achieved a two -state solution, why are you talking about this? What happened in 2005 in the disengagement was that essentially Israel went from occupying the place to surrounding the place. And they've had it under a brutal blockade since 2007. And yes, you were right. Why do you think, why do you, I don't agree the blockade was brutal by any means? You don't think the blockade of Gaza was brutal? How brutal do you think the Egyptians are? Pretty brutal. Yeah. They laid a loud stuff in. Okay. I mean, since some stuff has gotten in, yes, that's true.

1:45:20More than some stuff. Okay. Okay. Some from, I'll say this, right? Because there's been different levels of blockade, even before 2007 going back. I know in 1996, they had like a pretty strong blockade that year. According to the World Bank, it contracted 40 % of the GDP of Gaza. So just for reference, the Great Depression was a 30 % contraction. This was in 1996 for one year. They gave them something worse than our Great Depression. That was just one year. They've from 2007 on, there's been a blockade of that country. Why do you think it's a blockade of any kind? Why is there a blockade? Well, I mean, the argument from Israel would be that...

1:46:04No, why do you think? I would say, okay, I think that the disengagement, I think Smotrich was correct when he said... I'm sorry, my mistake there. I think the, which another quote that I'm sure you're familiar with, but Dub Weisklapp, who was the senior advisor to Sharon, was the prime minister at the time. He essentially said, the reason we're doing the disengagement, the reason we're doing this, is so that we can put the peace process in formaldehyde. This is the reason we're not... You're not seeing my question. I'm getting the right wing Israeli politicians. But what do you think there? I'm getting there.

1:46:37I'm getting there. I'm saying, so I think they disengaged in order to kill the peace process. I think they put the full blockade around the country for the reason that they've always kind of done it there. Yeah, they don't want too much stuff getting in. They want to keep them as they put it on a diet. And they don't want rockets to fly into Israel. The second one is a kind of important one, isn't it the final one you said? Yeah, it is. If the Palestinian leadership in Gaza after 2005 had not from the get -go decided to use Gaza as a stockpiling place for rockets to fire into Israel, all of it would be different.

1:47:15If they had just resisted the temptation that so many of us do in our lives to stop keeping RPGs in our cellars and then cutusher rockets in our children's bedrooms, all of it could have been different. If that desire to live in peace beside your neighbors had superseded the desire to stockpile rockets, it would all be different. And is it what you described as... If it is what you described as... If it is what you described as... It is what you described as... I mean, there's a quite a lot of... Well, you believe in self -determination, I'm sure. Yes. Believe in individual rights, yeah, sure.

1:47:50Okay. Individual rights. And that includes the right to make bad decisions. Yes. The Palestinians in Gaza, when they voted in Hamas, made a very bad decision. Yeah, of course they did. And in the years that... Yes, hang on. And in the years after that, they made bad decision after bad decision. It was a very bad decision to continually fire thousands of rockets into Israel. It was a very bad decision to use what boats came in early on and to use the smuggling networks from Egypt, not to bring in supplies that you could actually build a thriving society with, but to bring in rockets. It was a very bad idea.

1:48:31No, there was not starvation in Gaza after 2005. No, there was no deficit of goods coming in. There was no deficit? No, there are plenty of... No, there are plenty of... There are plenty of... Have you been to the crossing points? No. When were you last there at all? I've never been. You've never been? Well, am I not allowed to talk about it now? Have you ever been to Nazi Germany? Are you allowed to have feelings about them? You can't time travel, but you can't travel. You can't travel. Okay, but so what? So what's the point? No, I just... Okay, I find that very... Lots of people have been there and agree with me, and lots of people have been there and agree with you.

1:49:07Yeah, but if you're going to spend a year and a half talking about a place, you should at least do the courtesy of visiting it. All right. I just think this is a non -argument, but I think... You don't think? No, I think it's a non -argument. But if you're an ex... Well, you have to go and touch the ground. No, I think you have to see... I think it's a good idea to see stuff, particularly if you spend a career talking about something. Yes. I have a journalistic rule of trying never to talk about a country, even in Parsi, unless I've at least been there. Okay. But that's not normal. It's a normal thing to do.

1:49:38You're talking about... Hang on, you're talking about crossing points. And not only have you never been to a crossing point in either Egypt or in Israel, but you've never even been to the region. Okay. Again, I think this is a non -argument. I don't understand. No, no, no, it's not a non -argument. Yeah, it is. It's not a non -argument. If you're insisting that you're an expert of some kind, or not claiming you're an expert, but still talking about it, about the provisions going into Gaza or not, if you've never seen any of this going on. So you're not allowed to speak about things that you've read about.

1:50:09You can only speak about things that you've seen with your own eyes. You can talk about what you want, as you're proving. But that is a different matter from spending an awfully long amount of time, talking about an issue in a region you haven't even had the courtesy to visit whilst developing all of these views about it. Now I slightly get an idea of where you're coming from. You've read about this blockade. And so you imagine that that's what it is. I imagine you've read all the people who say that Gaza was a concentration camp and you probably think that too. Am I right? I mean, again, it's literally a concentration camp.

1:50:59It shares a lot of similarities, I would think. Wow. Well, as I say, you can't time travel back to the Black Sea era. Let's go back to the Black Sea era. To the Middle East and actually visit it. The World Bank said in 1996 for the World Bank. Now you're libertarian. It doesn't mean anything. This is a non -argument. Yes, I'm saying the World Bank did their own analysis of this. And they said that it was a 40 % of your own analysis. Hold on, you've got to stop interrupting. Okay, let him finish this. I will. The World Bank said that 40 % drop in the GDP of one year due to the blockade. And there's been a blockade from 2007 on.

1:51:38So are you saying that this hasn't had an economic effect? Is that the argument? No, of course it'll have an economic effect. So you're saying you have to be on the ground and do an audit of the blockade in order to be able to come on? I think you should at least know what it is, what the territory is, what the situation is in the region. Yes, absolutely. And the only way to do that is to be there in person. I think that's the best way. It's not the only way, but it's the best way. For sure. For sure. If you have never seen the countries in question, you've never spoken to the people in question.

1:52:06You've never interviewed anyone. You've never gone around. You've never seen the terrain and so on. And you've used Wikipedia. I'm sorry, no, that's not the same thing. Okay, well, I've not just used Wikipedia. But didn't you write a big piece when the war in Ukraine first came out, titled something like, I've been to Ukraine and they can win. They can repel the Russians. So you could go there and still get it wrong, right? No, I was with Ukrainian armed forces in 2022 when they were retaking territory from the Russians. Right. The last time they had any advances, yeah. Yeah, I said I can see how they could win, which would be advances like that.

1:52:39You said if we just fund them, or if we just aren't them, that they can then... I said that the Ukrainian army was making great successes, which it was when I was with them in the fall of 2022. Listen, there were lots of people who went to Iraq and said, we'll be greeted as liberators. I know. And it'll be paid for in Oyal and democracy will spread through the region. So I don't know, either take on the arguments or don't, but I don't believe. But I'm saying that your argument is incorrect. Okay, fine. Well, then present a counter argument to it. But to just tell me, I'm not allowed to talk about something.

1:53:05I'm not saying you're not allowed to talk about it. Okay, fine. But you're not an expert to even talk about it. You haven't been there. Yeah, I know. But you keep playing this game where it's like the whole opening to this podcast was like, the non -experts talking about this is such a problem. Now you're saying, because I haven't been there, I can't talk about it. Is there a blockade there that's causing economic devastation or not? For any of the world bank there is. First of all, I don't think it's a game. I don't think it's a game at all. Me neither. I'm not playing a game. Okay. But there's a semantics.

1:53:35No, but this is important. Mm -hmm. I've seen plenty of this up close. I've seen plenty of this with my own eyes. Because I do believe that one of the things you should do if you're talking about something is to see it. Yeah, you've established it. Is there a blockade? The blockade that existed to the extent it existed was a blockade to try to make sure that the Israelis and the Egyptians knew what materials were going in and out of Gaza after the first rocket fires when Hamaz, in fact, before Hamaz was elected. The Israelis and the Egyptians, the Egyptians did a very good job of it, were meant to be trying to make sure that the materials that went into Gaza were not materials that could be used to build up the Gaza and Hamaz war machine.

1:54:16The reason why trucks get searched is not because the Israelis want to search through grain or flour. It's because they wanted to stop the trucks containing the arms and the munitions that the Gaza and Hamaz and Islamic Jihad fighters were going to use the fire against Israel. It just makes the most obvious strategic sense as the great late great Joan Rivers once said if as an appeal to authority. That one I like. She also said Michelle Obama is a man. Yeah, I know you do that. I'm saying she got everything right. So continue, go ahead. But as Joan Rivers said, if New York was being rocketed from New Jersey, we would level New Jersey.

1:55:06I don't think you need to level it, by the way. But you would at least try to make sure that rockets weren't being imported in larger quantities into New Jersey. Of course. Okay, that's all the Israelis were doing. And they haven't turned away any food or aid. They haven't turned away. They haven't said you can't bring potato chips and you can't have cookies because they have dual use. Now, isn't this their whole argument that there's anything that could be used to build a rocket has to be excluded? Anything that could be used to build a rocket. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah, but that's a good reason, again, not to build rockets and fire them at your neighbors.

1:55:37It's almost like there's a cost to play. It's almost like there's a cost to pay for instead of living in peace with your neighbor constantly trying to wipe them out. And that is what Hamaz did for 18 years. 18 years. This is what this is why I think it's so unbelievable taking agents away from the Palestinians of Gaza is that the Hamaz had 18 years. And 18 years is obviously the time from the birth of a child to the end of their formal education. They literally had the opportunity to create a generation in Gaza that wanted to live beside their Israeli neighbors. And from everything I've seen since the 7th of October in the region and from all of the dead and the survivors and the family members I've seen, so many of them, particularly the people in the south who were attacked on the morning of the 7th, were literally people who dreamed of living in peace with their Palestinian neighbors.

1:56:30They were people like Vivian Silver whose body wasn't identified for months because there wasn't enough of her child remains left to even extract DNA from. She spent every weekend, like so many people in the communities in the south of Israel, every weekend, driving children with the most rare medical conditions that couldn't be treated in one of the Hamaz -run hospitals in Gaza into very specialist units inside Israel. And she spent every weekend doing that and working with Beth Suleiman, all of these radical left Israeli groups, and it didn't matter a bit when Hamaz came in because they burned her in her own home anyway.

1:57:06My point is in all of the counterfactuals of this conflict, the most important one is what could have happened if instead of educating a generation into wanting to annihilate their neighbors. Hamaz in power had spent 18 years building up a state, teaching peace, creating coexistence with their neighbors. You think any of the people on the Kibbutz Sim in the south or the young people dancing at the Nova Party weren't dreaming of the day that the Palestinian government in Gaza would have created those conditions for them to live beside as well? Of course! Everybody's arguing. Everybody's arguing.

1:57:51Nobody's arguing. Douglas, it's just again. I mean here. It's not what I'm saying. Look, I'll say this again because you bring up the point about agency again. And I hear this a lot as a counter. Much like I said in Ukraine, it's not denying anybody agency. I'm not saying that. Believe me, if I was in control of how people acted, I would certainly... The Palestinians could have handled things much better. And there are different points where we probably all would agree that we wish they had done it this way and not this way. And I think that embracing for those Palestinians who embraced terrorism, which from, you know, which is pretty early on, I mean Israel and Palestine have been at war since the existence of Israel really.

1:58:36And I know it's convenient to kind of pretend October 7th was like the first thing, but actually there's a long history here. I'm not denying any of them agency. The problem is that I see it as like you only seem to focus on the agency of one side. And then, you know, if you want to talk about counterfactuals, I think the most interesting counterfactual, well maybe I'll give you two. Number one would be, Haim Weitzman, who was essentially supposed to be the David Ben Gori, and like he was in line as like the number one ranking Zionist. This is pre -the creation of the state of Israel, who urged all of the Zionist militias to not embrace terrorism.

1:59:10And he ended up losing that battle ultimately. In many ways, this is how terrorism was introduced in the first president of the state. David Ben Gori and I was saying, Haim Weitzman. Yes, yes. And he basically ended up losing his position to David Ben Gori and because they just wanted to be more hardcore. And by the way, the, you know, the, the Ergot and the Lehigh in the Haganah, they openly embraced terrorism to drive out and occupying force. This is literally the story of the creation of the state of Israel. The Palestinians fell into a terrible tragic mistake early on. And I'm saying, listen, I reject terrorism as we all should just because killing innocent people is wrong.

1:59:50I'd like to get to that a little bit more in a second because it's interesting that we haven't really gotten into the, what I think is a great humanitarian crisis here. But they were following, I think in some ways, they were very influenced by the Algerian model that they were like, hey, look, we could, listen, there's a lot of groups, whether it's, which Algerian model. Well, the driving the French out. Yes. And right. And but look, I mean, there's a lot of these scenarios where we, we look back at Nelson Mandela, for example, you know, Nelson Mandela was not in prison because he was, you know, making picket signs.

2:00:25I mean, there have been people who have embraced violence as a means to achieve a policy end, including the early Zionist settlers, including the Israeli government, including the US government and lots of governments around the world. The tragic, tragic mistake in terms of political outcome from the Palestinians is that they really just underestimated the fact that these Jews had no home to go to. This was their home, and you could drive out the French from Algeria because they go screw it or going back home to France. The Jews had been so persecuted in Eastern Europe that there was no home to go and of course, then after World War II, they were here to stay.

2:01:00And so it's of course, it's been a tragedy. And of course, a lot of Palestinian actions, I wish would be different. I wish Hamas didn't exist. It should be pointed out by the way that in 2005, you did mention that it was really part of the Bush administration's exporting democracy around the world that put pressure on them to have these elections. It should also be mentioned that Hamas did not win a majority in one single precinct. They won pluralities all around. So just saying, we were bringing up this election, half the population of Gaza today is under the age of 18. They were toddlers if they were alive in 2005 of the other half that maybe maybe half of them voted in these elections.

2:01:36It was never a majority that supported Hamas. They eaked out a victory. And then of course, there was an attempted coup after that. And that's when Hamas seized complete control. The coup failed. Regardless of any of that. I agree with you that like, yeah, the Palestinians have agency and I wish some of them had made better decisions. Now many of them have made better decisions and it's still resulted in nothing better happening for them and their people. And so I do find it kind of hard to like lecture a group of people who are going through so much like the level of human suffering that's being inflicted on the people of Gaza right now cannot be overstated.

2:02:15And so you know, to lecture them about how you're supposed to handle that exactly. But I will say, man, I think there's kind of this selective empathy that you have here. Like I agree with you, you know, talk about these teenagers being slaughtered at a music festival on October 7th. It's like, my God, like I have little kids. I can't like, imagine the nightmare of this happening to somebody's children. But at the same time, we're not having this conversation on October 9th or in November or December of 2023. We're having it in 2025 where the tragedy that's been inflicted on Gaza is orders of magnitudes greater than October 7th.

2:02:55There are just every day people are inundated with images of just dead women and children. This is like one of the most brutal wars. And by several metrics that really, you know, like personally matter to me, like the number of dead kids. I think that's a pretty good one. It's more children have died than in any recent war. I mean, this is like, it does. I do think there's almost like a fundamental framing bias that you get into when people have these debates. And I've had several of them as you have also, but it seems to me that there's almost an implicit difference in the value that you place on Israeli life.

2:03:33Versed the value that we place on Palestinians life. And to even like we've gone this far into the conversation and haven't even talked about the fact that like, do Israel has feel how have you feel if you want to argue I haven't been there stuff does get through the blockade. Okay, fine. This is a captive people, you know, that Israel has dominated since at least 1967. Many of them are there because of the creation of the state of Israel who used to live in what is now called Israel. And they are just, I mean, the amount of human suffering that's being inflicted on them when even as you kind of acknowledged with the George W.

2:04:08Bush Exploring democracy, Hamas in many ways was forced on these people. In fact, we saw protests against Hamas just recently. So I don't know. I mean, that to me seems to be the greatest human tragedy. And I think much more so than you can characterize it as people being pro -Hamas or people being anti -Semitic. But I actually think that the mass movement around the world of people who oppose this war has been that people feel really awful about all these babies and who are being slaughtered. Okay, quite a few things. First of all, just let's just get one term correct because you said, you do think it's a concentration camp.

2:04:45So does Cher as many, you know, and you also say that there's a disproportionately heavy youth population in Gaza. Yes, so do you think that's not accurate? I think the second one is accurate. But it's a very strange thing to say that there's a population boom in a concentration camp. In Auschwitz in the 1940s, there was not a doubling of the population. Yeah, I didn't say it was a concentration camp. It says Cher as many of the characters as a concentration camp. Was all they did not have? No, yes. Start as a concentration camp. Yes, correct. You'll notice that people were not doubling in size and number because of the children they could have in Auschwitz.

2:05:31Yeah, but nobody's making nobody's calling a concentration camp because it's your same as Auschwitz. Okay, but let's just just just to at least tidy up the language a bit. Either you think the place is a concentration camp or you think it's not a concentration camp and I don't think it can be a concentration camp or any such term is suitable when you're talking about a place which you yourself have admitted has a disproportionately young populations. That's the first thing. I don't think it's leading in any way argues again, but okay, I think the concentration camp, you said it has many of the same.

2:05:59But you asked him if it did. Yes, you asked him if it had any characteristics of a concentration camp. Yes, because he said earlier that it did. Okay, well, let me be much more precise. Let me be much more precise. Okay, so I'm not claiming that it is a concentration camp or that it is akin to Auschwitz. I'm saying that it's been under full blockade since 2007. Israel rules the seas, the heirs, they control electricity that goes in. They're not allowed to have an airport. They're not allowed to have a seaport. They don't have the freedom to leave without permission from the Israeli government.

2:06:27They don't have the freedom to trade with the world. They don't have a freedom to vote over the government that rules them. I don't know. Call it whatever you want to. That's the situation. All of which is the result of the election of Hamaz. None of its isrials. Isrials are not responsible for one of the babies that have died. Okay, because they're dropping. Let's get onto that then. Because you say it's one of the most brutal wars. It's a very brutal war. It's a very brutal war. It's certainly not even sadly about among the standards of our time. And it means the most brutal. We don't need to get into the rather statistician ugly debate about whether or not you follow the Hamaz government in Gaza's figures for the death counts, which is what they...

2:07:11which most of the world's media rely on them, which I don't think are reliable to the least extent. But you don't need to rely on that to say that even by the standards of a conflict in neighboring Syria, the highest Hamaz death count inside Gaza for the... a polling last year and a half is less than an average year has been for the last decade in Syria during the Civil War. So the whole deck. I mean, total far more people died in Syria. Sorry, I'm not arguing that, but you're saying it's less than any year. I think there were years that were pretty... Six to eight hundred thousand people have been killed in Syria during the Civil War there.

2:07:52And I give it as an example. There are far too many examples of wars in the region and in the wider world to go to. But I think we get once again back to the issue of language on this. Who says, one of the most brutal wars is simply obvious that it's an appalling war. But it is not by any numerical or other standards the most appalling war of our time. It's a war that Hamaz started because they shouldn't have invaded their neighbor and they shouldn't have tried to genocide their neighbor. Now, if the war can be prosecuted, could be prosecuted, it was always for two reasons. Always for two reasons.

2:08:29The first one, as stated by the unanimity of Israeli politicians and others, was to retrieve the hostages. Who we also haven't spoken about, but there are still hostages in Gaza held for the last 18 months by Hamaz, including young Eden Alexander from New Jersey. If Hamaz had not stolen the hostages and hidden them in their tunnels and hidden them into civilian homes, this war would have all been different. If they had have given them back and they could give them back tomorrow, it would all be different. But they didn't. They decided to do what they did on the 7th and to hold on to the 250 -hour hostages as it was at the beginning from the beginning.

2:09:10The second reason why the war is still being prosecuted is because of the stated aim to destroy Hamaz, which is the stated aim of the Israelis. Niver of these things is remotely easy. And just from a point of humility, I think, on every one's side we should concede none of that is easy. It is not easy to get 250 hostages back when they have been distributed across the Gaza to civilian homes hidden in tunnels surrounded by munitions and much more. Hamaz is not an actor like Denmark. Its backers don't behave the way that our governments do in the West. They have a totally different timescale that they think along.

2:09:59They have a totally different scale of values as well. The taunts of his Bala's leadership of Hamaz's leadership, their backers in Tehran, are annihilationist to their core. But at any point in the last 18 months, the Qataris for instance, or the Iranians, the Iranian revolutionary government, or the Turkish government or others, could have put their pressure on Hamaz to return the hostages who are still being held in captivity and everything would be different. Secondly, as you know, I'm sure you don't have to have seen this with your own eyes to know it. As I'm sure you know, the way in which Hamaz built up the structure of the Gaza throughout the 18 years they had was precisely to flout and use every law of war against the Israelis.

2:10:54Every army in a conflict has certain rules of war that you're meant to abide by. One of the most obvious is that you are identified as being a combatant, not as a civilian. Another is you don't put weapons in civilian houses and civilian buildings. You do not fire from houses of worship, rockets. You do not launch attacks from hospitals. You do not keep detention facilities where you can torture and disappear people inside hospitals and other medical facilities. All of these laws of war are the laws that Hamaz breaks every minute of every day by their actions. If you want to get the hostages back and if you want to destroy Hamaz when you're fighting against a force which does not only not follow the rules of war but uses your following of the rules of the laws of war against you, at least concede this is a highly specific and complex military operation.

2:12:06If you have or anyone else has and I say this genuinely, a better way to get back the hostages and to destroy Hamaz, I at any rate than all he is. There's a lot there. Number one, I do agree generally with your point about having some humility in these complex situations. But I would also say, do you not then at any point as you're a very well -known public figure who's supporting this war, think about the level of human suffering that is being inflicted on these innocent people and go, man, is there another way? Maybe I'm getting this wrong. Maybe this is the Iraq war all over again. You know what you also supported that?

2:12:50Maybe that was a big mistake? If I said, I don't need to think about it. I've seen it. I know it. I describe it in my book. I describe what I see in Gaza with the Palestinians when they're moving down the humanitarian corridor. Okay, let me just respond to some of this stuff. You say, okay, so then I guess it's not really that much of humility involved in this. But there's two very different goals that are being stated here. There's the retrieving the hostages and then there's taking out Hamaz. Now, retrieving the hostages and actually many of the families of hostages who are taken have been some of the only people really protesting this war in Israel because of course, if you imagine, if you have your family over there and your government is leveling this place, that is not the best path to pursue to make sure you get all the hostages out alive.

2:13:37I would say that it fell apart, but Donald Trump having his envoy Whitcaw go over there and work out this ceasefire deal that they had for a few weeks. They did get, I believe, 30 hostages back during the phase one of this ceasefire seems to me like that would be the method to pursue to try to get the hostages back. But if you're talking about eliminating Hamaz. And I think there's something kind of interesting that you touched on there. I don't complete, you know, I disagree with much of your characterization of that, that like Israel are the good guys who always follow the rules. We could kind of get into some of that.

2:14:12There's lots of rules like in that Israel does not follow that being said, yes, of course. I mean, you're describing guerrilla warfare terrorist organizations. That's right. They stated differently. Gaza doesn't have an air force or an army or a navy. They're just a basically militias running around terrorists who are trying to do everything they can to fight an asymmetrical war. And just like we helped teach Osama bin Laden how to do the Soviets and then Osama bin Laden successfully did to us. The whole game in these asymmetrical wars is to get exactly what Hamaz got out of this, right? Like Osama bin Laden knew that he couldn't bankrupt the United States of America by taking down the twin towers.

2:14:53But he thought he could lure us into a war in Afghanistan. That would bankrupt us. Now it didn't completely, but it came pretty close. That being said, well, I just mean in terms of how much it drained the treasury. It was way more than could have any terrorist attack could have possibly done. That being said, the idea that it's not like I don't think morally speaking when you're inflicting this level of suffering on a group of people that the calculation should be like what we want to remove Hamas from power. That's the goal. Justice for October 7th. You know, there's lots of governments around the world that we would, Hamas is exactly a government, but there's lots of regimes around the world that we would all like to see removed.

2:15:37But that doesn't mean that we would approve of any means by which to get there. You know, if you were like, hey, I think Kim Jong -un's government should be dissolved. I'm sure we would all agree with that. But if you were like, I'm going to level the place and just like slaughter people in order to do it. You might be like, okay, hold on. But aside from that, this has been acknowledged at the highest levels of Israeli intelligence and US intelligence. There's just no way to get rid of Hamas without it being replaced by more Hamas or Hamas like group because it's the basic understanding of this whole situation, right?

2:16:11It's general Macrystal's insurgent math. There's still Hamas popping back up in the areas that Israel's already leveled. And the more innocent people you kill, the more radicalized you're going to get this population, the more these people are going to hate you and join up with the resistance movement. And so I just think that to use the justification that we're trying to get rid of Hamas. And therefore, it's not like it doesn't matter how many innocent women and children die in the process. Of course. Or there's no responsibility on you. You now are not responsible for the bombs that you drop.

2:16:46How many people they kill? Yeah, of course you're responsible. So Israel is responsible then. They're responsible for the means of their retaliation and their war aims. Yes, of course. First of all, let me, first of all, let me just say I totally disagree with your characterization of Islam. I've been laden and what he wanted to do. And I don't think that the Zahmah in Ladins stated public utterances along those lines. But anyway, the reason why the hostages have been released, the numbers that have is because of constant kinetic force. By the IDF. The only Hamas does not come to the table and ever hand over hostages out of goodwill.

2:17:26It doesn't do it. No argument there. It's for their own heart. It does it because of the constant kinetic force of the IDF in Gaza. And if it weren't for that, all 250 hostages would still be there. Second thing is when it comes to Hamas itself, I totally disagree with the presumption that if you tackle a terrorist entity, you will create more terrorists, ego, you should not attack the terrorist entity. That's not the argument that I'm making. But okay, it's it's a commonly held argument that if you respond to terrorism, you create terrorism. And of course the only thing that in that case is you just have to sit back and say the argument that I'm making is that when you slaughter innocent people, those people around them tend to hate your guts.

2:18:14That's the argument that I'm making. First of all, your characterization of the slaughter. It's it's horrible, the war in Gaza. It's horrible that young Israelis have to go in yet again to Gaza and try to find Israeli hostages and try to get the leadership of Hamas. That's not the case. It is not the case. Yes, because I think there's a consequence of starting wars. And so it's not horrible for the people who did it. It's a war. It's it's it's become like these collectivists as soon as a war starts for everybody involved. No, it's the most horrible for the Palestinian people in Gaza right now.

2:18:49That is the group of people who are being fucked over the most right now. No, yes, at the moment. Yes, but they're not being fucked over. The IDF has been moving through Gaza for 18 months. No Israeli soldier I have spoken to ever wanted to go and see the Gaza again. Okay, nobody wanted to go back. They were dragged back because of Hamas's actions. And if Hamas acted differently or the Palestinians have voted in different people and to govern them, it would all be different. But again, that's a hypothetical. The reality of the war on the ground is that in this incredibly heavily built up area with weaponry hidden everywhere, with soldiers.

2:19:33I've spoken to too many of them. They go in. You have a group of people coming out of a civilian building with their hands up. And from their midsts come a bunch of Hamas terrorists firing at you in the hope that the IDF will fire back at the civilians. Gadi Eisenkot, one of the members of the war cabinet in the early stage of the war, lost his own son and then his nephew. His nephew was killed in a firefighting Gaza because the Hamas terrorists were firing from a mosque. And that was why Gadi Eisenkot from the Israeli cabinet's nephew died. The whole operating theater is hideous because of what Hamas has done to the Gaza.

2:20:14The reason why Sinwa cropped up in Raffa, finally the mastermind of October 7th, one of the most brutal, sadistic psychopaths to use an overrated term, you can ever imagine. In the news, really prisoned by the way for having strangled Palestinians to death in the 2000s. But anyway, the reason why Sinwa cropped up in Raffa late last year is because there was nowhere else for him to run because of the actions of the IDF to pursue the leadership of Hamas that was responsible for the 7th. Now, can all of Hamas be destroyed? Probably not. Can you make it effectively impossible to function or incapable of functioning, unable to fire rockets and govern the Gaza?

2:21:02Yes. Right. But it comes by the waystag of swattering tens of thousands of innocent people. No, no. And you're accepting their price. No. So every single war of this kind will include civilian casualties and you and I will almost certainly disagree on the numbers. I'm not saying that the health ministry will be almost the best and the best case analysis is that one innocent Gaza has been killed for every one terrorist. It's the best case scenario you can hear. But that would be almost unparalleled in the laws of war. And it's not how the American or British militaries operate in terms of casualties to terrorist ratios.

2:21:42But when we had the campaign against ISIS a decade ago, after ISIS's fighters had gone in massacre to people at the battle clathieta in Paris and so on, we used Turkish fighters, brilliant brave fighters from the Peshmerga militias to work on the ground. And the French and American and British air forces bombed like hell from the air. And we made ISIS effectively touch wood ten years later, operationally incapable in capital cities in Europe. Has ISIS as a whole gone away? No. They still have pockets in Syria and in Iraq. But we stopped them from being able to do what they most desired to do. And the same is possible with Hamaz.

2:22:35Will they be replaced by some other group? Again, then we get to one of the crucial decision points for the Palestinian people. Is it inevitable that they constantly have to elect people who want to annihilate their neighbors? Or will there ever be a generation that can find a way to live in peace with their neighbors? I agree. Most people don't like being bombed. In fact, nobody does. But if the people of the Palestinians in Gaza can find it within themselves to realize the thing they asked for in the elections is the thing that has destroyed the area they live in. And like that brave young man two weeks ago in Gaza who rose up against Hamaz and was identified by the people who remain in Hamaz and was tortured.

2:23:25And then his body thrown onto his parents doorstep in the Gaza. And the parents started a family, the clan started a bit of a war against Hamaz. But that's how Hamaz treats Palestinian dissidents. But if there were more people like that young man, and of course as we all know, the host history of totalitarian and terrorist groups running societies is very successful. And they stay in power because they're willing to torture and use violence and much more. That's a horrible thing you have to contend with. But if more people like that young man had come about in Gaza in the last 18 months or before, yes.

2:24:02Yes, it would all be different. And if they could avoid electing a terrorist group that invades their neighbors and fires rockets at their neighbors, yes, it could all be different. It could all be different tomorrow. And I'll tell you so again, there is not a person living by the Gaza in the south of Israel who does not dream of the day that such a generation of Palestinians and mergers. Yeah. I think that I, okay, a few things here on Syria there because it is true. I mean, I think so. Okay. So John Brennan and Barack Obama, the head of the CIA and, of course, the former president of the United States of America had a policy of committing literal treason before they ended up accusing Donald Trump of treason, which was all bullshit.

2:24:49But that a policy of committing literal treason by funding al Qaeda and ISIS in the Syrian civil war poured billions of dollars and tons of weapons into that conflict. Now, it is true, by the way, you are correct that like there certainly were military actions taken against ISIS after they invaded Iraq, which was not supposed to be part of the plan. There was also a lot of military actions taken by Vladimir Putin against ISIS after he came in on Assad's request, as you know. In 2017, when Donald Trump came in, one of the best things Donald Trump ever did, he cut off the CIA program to fund the anti Assad rebels.

2:25:28And this was also a big part of what ended up like taking the, you know, the energy out of ISIS. Also, I think there was a lot of good reporting that just they turned enough people on the ground against them. They were even just too radical and just people ended up hating them. It is true that they receded for quite a while, although the former Amir of al Qaeda, Al Jalani is now ruling Syria, which does not seem like a great deal or something that people in America should support. The true enemy of the American people, al Qaeda now being in charge of Syria. I think that, you know, it's easy to talk about how like if the Palestinians had done this different than maybe things would have worked out different.

2:26:08But I just think again, when you look at things, when you say, which essentially I think is your point here, right? I mean, I tried to push you on this, but you're saying, look, we can degrade Hamas. But the cost of that is going to be slaughtering a whole bunch of people. It's slaughtering its war. Okay, I think you're okay. They're not being slaughtered. They're being killed. Okay, whatever word you want. They're being killed in a brutal war started by Hamas. Yes. It's babies and little kids screaming out for help under rubble and no help is coming. They sit there under the rubble until they die.

2:26:44That is the level of human suffering that's being inflicted. And if you want to say, well, listen, that's a price that I'm willing to pay to try to degrade Hamas, even though you yourself recognize that we've been doing this. We can't totally eliminate them, but we could maybe degrade them or maybe take them down a peg. And the price for that is these babies being tortured to death, essentially, whatever you want to call it. Okay, but from the other side of that story, like if there's like, I got little kids, I don't know if you have kids. I know you have kids, Joe. If anybody ever was saying to me that like, my kids were the acceptable price for this policy that we want to put into place, I'm saying, I don't think there's any scenario.

2:27:22Any scenario, Douglas, whether it would be any time where you would accept Israeli kids dying like that as an acceptable price for a policy that you're going to be advocating for. First of all, again, go back to the what is actually happening. There is no desire or aim by the IAF or the IDF to go into Gaza and kill women and children. Well, they're doing it. Hang on, hang on. There is no desire for that. Does it happen collaterally, certainly, certainly. And that is one of the very ugly rules of war and things that happens in war. And it's another of the reasons why it's almost like you shouldn't start a war and hide your rockets and your terrorists inside civilian buildings.

2:28:08Yeah, but hang on. Hang on. You've made this point a lot of times, but okay. Well, it clearly can't be made enough because there is no intention on the Israeli side to cause the death of non -combatants. Oh, come on. Hang on. What do you think, why do you think the Israelis would want to go and kill children in Gaza? Listen, let me just, how about I say it like this, okay? And by the way, when I say it like this, I'm not claiming that disputes between nations are the same as handling dispute domestically. I'm just saying on the idea of intentionality or who wants to do this or whatever. Look, if you, even if you had the right, let's say somebody broke onto your property and killed some of your family members and you want to go kill this guy, if he goes back to his apartment building, and you know that there's women and children in that apartment building.

2:28:58And so your move is to blow up the building. What you would be charged with is murder in the first degree, cold -blooded, premeditated, intentional murder. Now, you could sit there and tell the judge, I didn't want to kill all those people. Why would I want to kill all of those people? I just had to kill that one guy, but that's bullshit. That's not what counts. You did it intentionally. You dropped a bomb knowing that there were women and children in that building. You're taking an action knowing that these innocent people are going to die. Then that is by definition intentional. And you know, you could sit here and talk about, and it is true.

2:29:32There have been documented cases of Hamas placing missiles in mosques and in schools and things like that. But when you look at the aerial footage of Gaza, that does not describe every single strike that Israel has launched. There have been tons of bombs dropped where it's simply, and we have very good reporting on this, where they literally just have information that they believe with some degree of certainty that a couple of Hamas militants are in this building, and so they blow up the building. That is intentionally murdering innocent people. And if you're going to advocate for this war, I don't see how you can do it without saying that, like, at least, bite the bullet that Madeleine Albright did when she was asked, that we've played this clip on the show before, when she's point blank asked about the sanctions on Iraq, and our 500 ,000 children is that price acceptable.

2:30:23And she said, yes, we believe that price is acceptable. If you're going to support this war, you know this is the price of it, so why can't you just say, yes, that price is acceptable. Because then we could have a real conversation about why the other side is going to look at you like a monster. Because first of all, I don't agree with any of the characterization you make, any of it. Okay. You say that the Israelis get some information as if this is like, what, they're making it up, or you think these might want to drop a bomb. No, they act on the information about where the terrorists are, just like the act on the information of where the hostages are.

2:31:03Secondly, when you talk about the destruction of the guards, or something you probably haven't realized, but is one of the reasons why the destruction looks so bad, and is so bad, is because when the IDF were clearing the areas that they'd asked the civilian population to leave, and we're going house to house, and it isn't just stories here, or stories there. It's every second or third house in Gaza that has either munitions or tunnel entrances. Every second or third house is not the odd case. One of the things that everybody who has been there knows is that you go into a mosque and you know there will be either rockets and or tunnel entrances.

2:31:49You go into a hospital and you know that there will be grenades or or or tunnel entrances or dungeons or whatever, just on a light to note early in the conflict when the sheifer complex, which is used as a hammers headquarters, and has also been used as a hospital. But even in 2014, the BBC said this is where hammers are operating from. When that was shown by the Israelis to be have massive weapon stores in the tunnels and sellers underneath it, they had grenades, RPGs, collation of coughs, and the BBC's chief Middle -Lisks correspondent was asked live on air, why would these things be in a hospital?

2:32:27And Jeremy Bowen said, well, it's perfectly possible because there's a lot of guns in the Middle East as perfectly possible in the security department of the hospital had the collation of coughs. I said yeah, and did the grenades belong to the cardiologists? I mean, why? Why is this so normal that these every civilian building like this and every second or third house in Gaza is a weapons dump or a place that you enter the tunnels from? But the reason why the devastation, which it is in the North in particular, but also in Rafa and elsewhere, is what it is, is because every time the IDF went into an area where they had told the civilians to leave, the hammers, terrorists that remained were in civilian buildings and booby trapped a very large number of the buildings.

2:33:20So what they did as they proceeded through those areas of the Gaza to clear them was to set off munitions, which the American military and others use, which sets off secondary explosions in places that are booby trapped. And much of what you see in the photographs that you see and many other people have seen from Gaza is the result of that. It is the result of the IDF trying to clear an area which has been very carefully and well booby trapped for years. Let me make one other very quick point about the bigger picture that you said, because I think it's important. We were talking about the Syrian, you mentioned the Syrian conflict and ISIS.

2:34:00I think again, it's really important to keep this in mind. What I said earlier about, let's not think we are the primary actors everywhere. Or even that important. I remember the debate over the Syrian intervention issue. And at the time, despite being in many cases an interventionist, I said on that occasion, I said we didn't know what we were doing. Clearly didn't know who we were going to back. If you remember John McCain went to Syria to speak to some rebels and one of them immediately turned out to be a kind of head hacking, G -Hedis. That wasn't great. I said I don't have any confidence that we know who to back.

2:34:35And despite many Syrian friends of mine imploring me otherwise, so I don't think it's something we can get involved in. However, if you look at the last 10 years or more, what is it now, 13 years of conflict in Syria, the US and the Western powers are not remotely significant actors in that conflict. The significant actors in that conflict were always have been the Russians, the Iranians. I mean, one of the things that blows my mind in the analysis of the region is the fact that the prime mover in the region, the revolution Islamic government in Iran that has been oppressing the Iranian people since 1979 and has been holding a great civilization in captivity.

2:35:23But the Iranian revolutionary government in Tehran has literally been colonizing the region. I have this rule about, you know, I took it from Vasily Grossman, the great Soviet Jewish writer, who had this great line about tell me what your accuser Jews are and I'll tell you what your guilty are. This absolutely runs as well with the accusations against the Jewish state in the region. The Iranian revolutionary government is constantly accusing the Israelis of colonialism of expansionism. It is the Iranian revolutionary government that has been colonizing Iraq, colonizing Yemen, colonizing and destroying Lebanon and colonizing Syria.

2:35:58And the amazing thing, when you look at the disaster that has happened in Syria in the last 13 years, and I don't see it getting especially better under the current, gee, had this. The disaster is not of our making primarily. We are bit players. America is a bit rare. In Iraq in Syria. We are a bit of a man. You mentioned Iraq in there too. The great idiocy of that was that Iraq notices our failings, our lack of saying power, our desire to get out as soon as possible and much more, which is all understandable. Now we have to hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. And they moved in. And they moved in.

2:36:39Of course. But I was talking about Syria. In the Syrian theater, the main actors are not us. And one of the things I still interested in about this mindset that you have is, why does it always have to be us? It's other people who have actions in the world. The Russians, the revolution government around, they are so busy. See, I think this is all about framing here because I don't think I've ever once made this claim. You've made this point several times so far. I've never once made the claim that everything is always us. I think you're the one who's downplaying the influence and impact that we have.

2:37:17We are after all, when I'm saying we, I'm saying the United States of America's federal government, is the largest most powerful organization in the history of the world. It is the world empire. And to sit there and say, Iran colonized Iraq. No, George W. Bush invaded the country on a bunch of lies. It's a war that you supported. He went in there and overthrew Saddam Hussein and installed democracy in the Shiite majority country. Of course, he handed the thing over to Iran. But to say that that had no impact on Syria or that the US military funding and arming the anti -Assad rebels had no impact.

2:37:52I'm not claiming the entire thing is America. Bashar al -Assad was an actor. There were other forces there aside from the US meddling there. But at the same time, you got the most powerful government in the history of the world, who as we all know put Syria on its seven countries in five years list of who we're going to go overthrow. And it's had a profound impact on the region. Of course, it did. It was a huge contributing factor to that civil war to begin with. I think America is obviously a major. It certainly could be. It's meant to be the major actor on the world stage. I think that the history of the region and many other regions around the world is that America does not have either the staying power, the capability of the intelligence, the kind of people that you would produce in order to have the kind of impact that you actually think it has.

2:38:38America's weakness in the Middle East has been, I say this as somebody obviously from Britain, but when Britain was a dominant world power, she produced the type of person who was keen to go and be a governor of a Stan somewhere and learn the local dialects and run the civil service. You guys were better at empire than we are. Yes, they produced that sort of person because they wanted to stay. America has never produced that sort of person. And it certainly hasn't in the Middle East in particular. It it it acts militarily on occasions and in my view, sometimes well, sometimes poorly. But in but the reason why America was so badly outplayed by the mullers in Iraq was simply that as you say after the war, America had nothing like the staying power of the mullers in Tehran had nothing like the ability to affect post war chains like the Iranian revolutionary government did.

2:39:35And so yes, if we create a vacuum like that or somebody else creates a vacuum and after all we did not cause the beginning of the the West, I'm saying that's okay. It did not cause the beginning of the Arab spring as it was it was optimistically called at the beginning or the over the beginning of the revolution uprising in Syria in 2011. These things were ground up and the actors in the region moved in much more defiantly and effectively than we did. It's the same with Lebanon. It's the same with the American doesn't even have eyes over Lebanon. Iran has an army that has a checkpoint at Bayroute airport that will check you on behalf of his baller when you come in there.

2:40:20You can't tell me that America is just because America is on paper and much more has been. The power that America is the death operator in the Middle East. There are so many people who outwit America in the Middle East all the time. Yeah, but you can't tell me that there hasn't been an impact from the $8 trillion that we've spent there and the multiple regime changes all around the Middle East that were done by America. These weren't just going to happen on their own. Are you saying that they were having an impact with certainly done by America, of course. So Iraq was certainly done by America, Libya.

2:40:53NATO. Right, but NATO is the European wing of the American Empire. I mean, let's get real. That's the American decision. Sure. I'm saying it's not because some way to be a country. I mean, the Libyan intervention, I was pretty iffy about at the time, but that was done not create an empire or anything like that. It was done for one very clear reason. And I remember the debates in the European capitals and in Washington, DC at the time. There was a belief that after the uprising against Gaddafi began that there would be a mass slaughter genocide carried out by Gaddafi against the people. So there's a 2011 and it was 2011.

2:41:41Yeah. There was a belief. Everybody believed it. He had started his son. If you remember, Saif Gaddafi, formerly of the London School of Economics showing that we can produce the best. Saif Gaddafi stood up and said we will fight to the last bullet and so on and everybody believed them. And the desire to intervene was caused in an attempt to not to people do not want the resources of Libya and nobody wanted Libya to fall apart or anything like that. They did it because there was a genuine belief in what was called time, which has gone out of fashion, but right to attack. Well, then, why they went in?

2:42:19So, okay, if that's why it's interesting, it's interesting. Well, I don't think it's correct. I mean, you always kind of like ascribe the best of motives to Israel and the West and nothing but the worst of motives to all of their enemies. So just riddle me this then. If we just went in because there was this uprising in 2011 and because we were worried that Gaddafi was about to go genocidal, something that your own the UK parliament did an investigation into and found out was just complete, completely wrong. But why is it then that I got four star general, Wesley Clark, Supreme Commander of the NATO forces?

2:42:56Why is it that he told me that he saw the plans in 2001 to overthrow Gaddafi? And that this was part of a strategy to overthrow seven governments in five years and all of them except one have been done at this point. So you're telling me it's a complete coincidence that he saw that the neoconservatives had this plan to overthrow more, more Mark Gaddafi and then 10 years later we happened to do it when we have the opportunity. The two aren't related at all. Nice to hear the end word again. The end word. Did I say that? Oh, that one. I was thinking of a different one. Okay. First of all, I would assume I would hope that there's American military planning for absolutely everything.

2:43:38I would hope that there is a scenario for absolutely everything somewhere in the American pentagon or whatever. Yeah, but he didn't say what he was going up war games. He said this is the plan that we're going to assume that I would hope that any major power like America would have plans in place for almost everything that is likely. Including this America could have what should have started planning for some kind of kinetic force in in Libya from the 1980s. Of course, of course, that'd be. Yeah, but again, this is not what this is not what Wesley Clark's let he wasn't saying like we've drawn up war games.

2:44:19We've drawn up war games with everybody. We have war games with China war games with Russia. We've we've mapped out how a kinetic war would work even with countries that have nuclear arsenals like just in case we have to fight a traditional war and nukes aren't being used. That's not what he's talking about. He said that not only are he he was told we're in Afghanistan now. This is late 2001. He goes next we're going to Iraq after that we're going to Libya after that we're going to Syria Somalia was Sudan and finishing off with Iran. He laid out the the path of what we're about to do and then we did it in the next administration.

2:44:56You don't think there was any connection between those two. What we did Somalia and Sudan. No, I'm sorry. He's his I'm sorry if you go look at the list of seven countries. It was Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya. I believe Somalia, Sudan and Iran, I believe. Why would America want to do any of those things? Who wants to do it? Well, what he said is that essentially these plants he said later in an interview with Pierce Morgan that he that he had seen the plans at first in 1991. That they came from Paul Wolfwitz that basically then they got what's funny about what the four star general said. Okay, no, I'm just curious what's laughable about this.

2:45:40Paul Wolfwitz is a great figure for almost any deep conspiracy in this country because he was a deputy secretary of defense at the highest in his life. He is forever being ascribed almost almost supernatural power. I don't think anyone's largest the largest that the highest position he ever got to was as Donald Rumsfeld's deputy. And it's it's a very strange thing always when Wolfwitz's name comes up because he was a relatively low level person to whom almost everything can be ascribed. Well, I didn't describe I can't if this is a story. I didn't know I've ever been to him. I'm literally telling you what the face.

2:46:26Anyway, go on. No, I'm telling you what the four star general said about him. And I wouldn't say deputy secretary of defense is like a nothing position. It's pretty consequential position. Not important. And what does Rumsfeld will say? Yeah, agreed. But what but who said it was? No, I just feel like you're batting down straw man. I never said that he is the creator of all conspiracies or anything. I'm literally saying that the four star general said that he first saw the plans from him that he had brought this to the national security adviser and then basically beaten like, ah, we'll look at this after the election.

2:46:56And that then it was resurrected later by Richard Pearl. And that they these guys were producing again, not me saying this. This is four star general Wesley Clark. He said in a study paid for by the Israelis. And yeah, you can laugh at this all you want to Douglas, but you can go read the clean break memo for yourself. This was the neo conservative strategy along with their counterpart the Lecoods in Israel that they wanted to remake the region in a way and that and I'm sure by their own justification. They believe that democracy would sweep the region and it would be better off for them. Nonetheless, they pursued this path that has ended in nothing but disaster.

2:47:30And I don't think that to say that in 2011, it was like a purely humanitarian mission to go overthrow Mo Marquaddafi. I do not think it's right. Well, first of all, before I get to the substance of it, why would they want the current situation in Libya? Huh? Why would they want the current situation in Libya? Well, because they wanted Codafi out. Why? Well, okay, if you read the clean break memo, what their argument essentially is is that you wanted to have regime change against the hostile surrounding Muslim countries. But was Codafi not hostile to Israel? To Israel, yeah, sure. But he was, I mean, the Europeans and everybody else in NATO found that Codafi was a really relatively easy person to get on with, latterly.

2:48:15Right? Yeah, no, I think it was an insane policy. No, no, you'll notice that after he hands over the nuclear program and thus makes himself very vulnerable, unfortunately, for the future of world peace. He, uh, Libya has been unutterably disastrous. Hang on, hang on. No, just unutterfully disastrous fear. I agree with you. And, and Somalia and Sudan, why, why, why does America, Israel want to, do regime change in Somalia? Can I just ask you a clarifying question on this? What, when you say that was a disaster for the prospects of world peace, you mean overthrowing Codafi was a disaster? I say that, that him being, sorry, I should have clarified.

2:48:56I think is him being overthrown after he's given over the nuclear weapons as a disaster because it leaves on the table this thing that you have to hold onto nuclear weapons. And if you don't hold onto nuclear weapons, you can be dead. Do you think maybe the Israelis should stop using the term the Libyan model to push for negotiations with Iran? No, I don't think anyone should, should, should use, what happened to Gdafi as being a good precursor for the people. Well, we certainly have a lot of agreement there. It was an absolute disaster, particularly to do it, to let a guy get sawed amized to death after he denuclearized is not a good precedent to set.

2:49:31I agree. And I saw the reasons why, one of the reasons why Iran wants to move to Iran. And I'm not sure it's just, I mean, it's the sawed amized to death as you put it. But yeah, they, they, they want a nuke because they, I mean, if you like what the Iranian Revolutionary Government has done since 1979, you'd love what they'll do with the world when they've got a nuke. But anyway, put that aside for a second. I mean, the, I just, I'm sorry, it's slightly come back to where we started. But I, when you start talking about Paul Wolffwitz and Richard Pearl, it's, it's all awfully, the noxious smelling.

2:50:10Richard Pearl was a member of the Defense Policy Board, which had an advisory capacity toward the Pentagon in the early 2000s. But it was in no, by no means a policy board that dictated Pentagon policy. Okay. In the last 30 years of American foreign policy, there'd be many major actors. Paul Wolffwitz is a relatively major one. But we come slightly back full circle. In my view, I'm not saying you're guilty of this suddenly not knowingly, in my view, when people start talking about Paul Wolffwitz, I always remember that line of Mark Steins many years ago. And he said, you can't help thinking that one of the reasons why people find Wolffwitz so appealing to talk about is that his name starts with a nasty animal and ends Jewish.

2:51:06People love, people love say, it's such a great name. It is very new. He's perfect for it. He looks perfect for it. I could say, oh, the craft you Paul Wolffwitz is crazy. So you're a big it. You're a Jew, Hader, if you mentioned the near cost. No, no, no, no, no, just let me continue with the thought. So I remember those days and his boss, Donald Rumsfeld, was like the ruler of the world at that time. He had such charisma, such genius was attributed to him for the initial invasion of Iraq. People, you can't imagine the admiration that existed in the defense establishments around the world for Rumsfeld.

2:51:59Dick Cheney was so powerful that people of right and left, particularly on the left, spent all those years in the W Bush administration saying W wasn't the real president. He was being run by Dick Cheney because he was the brilliant, etc, etc. He was certainly listening to him at the beginning. Okay, but I'm just saying it goes back to this thing of when certain ideas catch hold and what's really going on in them. Now, to attribute American foreign policy in the last 40 years to Paul Wolffwitz and Dick Pearl is knowingly or otherwise to encourage a conspiracy that has very obvious legs. And I just urge you not to do it.

2:52:45Okay, let me respond to this a little bit. First of all, I did not, it is not at all saying that these guys, they are for just control everything. I'm just pointing out what a four star general claimed where plans originated and that they ended up being implemented. That doesn't mean that they were the absolute ruler or arbiter of what was going to happen. But again, I got to say for you to say that I can't bring up the neo conservative court. I'm not saying it's a good thing. Okay, let me just write, but the implication is that I'm unwittingly giving fertile ground to some like Jew hating conspiracy.

2:53:25If I bring up a guy who's got a Jewish last name who was a consequential person in our government, this is identical to the arguments of the woke left. That would just be like, oh, if you even say so, you know, if you bring up the crime rate in Chicago, you're basically a bigot because other people could take this and run with it. Come on. No, you come on. What's the argument? If you said to me, I said a four star general said something and there's no, what's the response? If you said to me or somebody said to me, don't you think there's a, that some people are running the global financial system?

2:54:00And I said possibly, and you and I over said, who do you think it is? And they said the Rothschilds. I think I'd be right in saying there was something a bit off about the character of the person doing that because it seemed like they were playing to some kind of lazy old trope. And I think similarly that if you, if you give the implication that a cabal of people, particularly and you should be really careful about this because of the people who come up underneath you. If you give the implication that these cabals exist and you decide to elevate the Jews or people with Jewish names in it and then play down the non -Jews, I can tell you, you will be opening up a world of madness.

2:54:56Am I really playing down the non -Jews? I mean, go look at the stuff that I've said about Obama, about George W. Bush. I said Middle East policies. I said, dick pull and pull wolf with it. And I said, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is why I'm saying this is a woke leftist tactic. I literally just mentioned that a four star general said that I'm quoting him. And now you're telling me that this is the same thing as me. But if it tends to mean that when you quote somebody, it's a totally arbitrary thing, you just pluck out of the air. You decide it's not arguing out. I'm not arguing that it's arbitrary.

2:55:27I'm saying I'm using the quote for a reason. I was connecting it to an argument. And I'm saying to you, I'm giving fertile ground to Jew haters to mention. I think that when you decide to elevate what is a conspiracy of people who are overthrowing the governments of various countries, some of which haven't been overthrown and others of which have, by the way, were not overthrown by American dominance, that you're not in Syria. And then you say that the people who are doing it are these people with Jewish names. I think you should be more judicious than that because you probably know what bubbles up underneath you online by now.

2:56:11Yeah, look, I mean, there's no question that there are, you know, no matter what. And by the way, you know, it's funny just hearing you say this to me. I mean, look, and by the way, I completely agree with you. I think you've been one of the best champions on opposing Europe's insane immigration policy. I also think the United States of America has had an insane immigration policy. I'm happy to see that. Point to the point. That seems to be being reversed. But imagine you made a point about immigration. And I were to say to you, be careful what's bubbling up online because now you're getting, look, the fact is, if you are taking a position that opposes, say, Muslim immigration into the UK, then yes, it is quite possible that a lot of people who really just hate Muslims are going to end up liking what you had to say or following you.

2:56:56But that doesn't mean you're responsible to it. And if I were to say that to you, you would be the first to very eloquently point out that that is a complete non -argument. The question is, is this policy good or is it bad? And whether there's not, and if you want to say to me, hey, I should like disclaim when I make this point that like, hey, I'm Jewish. I love Jewish people. The fact that there were some Jewish people involved in our foreign policy establishment does not mean that it's the Jews. Then fine, I'm happy to say that. But I just think it's a non -argument to say that like, oh, you know, you're kind of like giving, you're creating fertile ground for this hatred.

2:57:33If I'm being completely honest, I think we've seen what you're talking about bubbling up on Twitter. Do you think that's gotten worse over the last 18 months? Oh, yeah. Right. I think kind of what Israel's doing in this war and the US funding and arming it have been something that is really a great facilitator for that stuff to wobble up. We could go back to that by disagree. I think that Israel has every right to go in and destroy the terrorist group that carried out the massacres. Yes, but again, but no one's arguing that they're right to destroy the terrorists. The question is, the right to kill innocent people.

2:58:04Go around again, which I think we don't. What does it mean? Just to go back to the meek. I think you don't realize that actually people like me who have a voice and right than much more do think about that all the time. It's a profound concern and responsibility. So I agree with that. Right. Right. And don't think I don't worry all the time and make sure I intervene into the debate very carefully at times when I think some people have picked up something that I've been saying and are going to go wrong with it. That scares the hell out of me and I do it regularly. Me too, but I have to. Yeah, listen.

2:58:54So that's a point of agreement too, but you don't start believing in that policy for it and you want to start bringing that up. You do say, but you do say on a cable. I mean, most obvious one on that. If there is something where something really a fetid happens, something really terrible. And there's a bunch of people that decide to riot or commit violence or something like that. I know that I have to as a duty say, absolutely, this is to be condemned. If it is people trying to pretend that all Muslims this or all that, absolutely, I intervene to stop that. I think that is, but I think that this is one of the responsibilities that comes with putting out ideas in the public square.

2:59:46And I think that none of us are blame free, but all of us have some kind of responsibility to know that what we put out there is very carefully watched, very carefully followed. And that we have to tread well. Well, okay, so I agree with that, but when you say you intervene, what exactly do you mean by that? You mean you voice opposition to it? You say, hey, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that like we have to have a saying immigration policy that's good for our country. Make sure I say which politician I think can deal with it decently and which ones will not. I mean, I've made plenty of enemies in the European right by saying who I think is bad and who will not do this well.

3:00:33I just put it out there. I think I literally I said as a point of caution. Yeah, well, I mean, I don't disagree with that and I've certainly done the same thing. Said that like, I don't know, like I don't like the, I don't like Jew hatred on Twitter and I don't like people jumping to wild conspiracies that they don't have enough nearly enough evidence to actually back up, which I've seen quite a bit of. That being said, I also think there's a whole lot of real conspiracies and I'm not going to stop talking about those just because some people on Twitter might take it in a bad direction. Well, as a great Michael Mattis said, as you quoted, one red pill not the whole bottle.

3:01:16I've been trying to limit people to one red pill, one red pill a year. Well, a lot of people, they take one of those things and they just get hungry. Sure, like boosters. Like boosters. Well, it ends up, it ends up, yeah, exactly. You would take, take none of those. No, you're supposed to take one red pill. By the way, what's the one in front of you? Which one? That one there. That one, yeah. It's nicotine. Oh, that's the chewing one. It's like a pouch. Chris, what he was going to show me yesterday, this one that you, he said, wait lift as a using in Austin. It's like a powder or something? Weight load, yeah.

3:01:51A nicotine powder? No, it's not nicotine. It's something like it. Creatine? No, it's like, it's a sniff. Oh, no, no, no, that's smelling salts. Smelling salts, that's right. For a goof. For silly. We do that to be silly. I hadn't heard of that since I was a 19th century women who thought they had the vapors. And he said, these are smelling salts. Well, they used to use it for boxes when they got knocked out to wake them up. That was it. Yeah, that was it. Does it work? Well, it works for weightlifters. You sniff it before you lift incredible amounts of weight. Allegedly, powerlifters use them.

3:02:24That's literally why they sell it. It just jolts your entire central nervous system because it's so horrific. Want to smell? No. This is, by the way, a little insight into the comedy community. The deal is that Joe will help advance the careers of comedians, unlike anybody since Johnny Carson. But then the cost is you do have to sniff smelling salts. We all have to do that. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's an elsey of Morgan absurds, but it is what it is. Do you have a hard out, Douglas? Uh, kind of. I got to get to DC. Okay. My one of my least favorite cities in the country. Yeah, there are area of agreement.

3:03:03There we go. Thank you. Thank you for doing this. Appreciate it. It was very, very good. I enjoyed it very much. Thank you, Dave. I do. Yeah, thank, of course, thank you to you, John. Thank you, Douglas, very much. I do appreciate that. While we do fundamentally disagree on a lot of this stuff, I do admire that you will come have these conversations. Let's show everyone the book here. It's a, whoa. Jesus Christ. I've waited on myself, luckily. Um, on democracy's and death cults, Israel and the future of civilization, Douglas Murray. Did you do the audiobook? I did do the audiobook. Thank you. You can hear these Malif Lewis tones.

3:03:34Yes, love it. It would be a tragedy if anybody else did it. I trust you. Yes. All right. Beautiful. All right. Goodbye everybody. Thank you.

3:03:57Yeah. With putting out ideas in the public square. Yeah. And I think that none of us are, um, blame free, but all of us have some kind of responsibility to know that what we put out there is very carefully watched, very carefully followed. and that we have to tread well. Well, okay, so I agree with that, but when you say you intervene, what exactly do you mean by that? You mean you voice opposition to it? You say, hey, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that we have to have a sane immigration power and that's good for our country. Or make sure, say which politician I think can deal with it decently and which ones will not.

3:04:40I mean, I've made plenty of enemies in the European right by saying who I think is bad and who will not do this well. Yeah, I just put it out there. I think, I literally, I say it as a point of caution. Yeah, well, I mean, I don't disagree with that and I've certainly done the same thing. I said that like, I don't know, like, I don't like the, I don't like Jew hatred on Twitter and I don't like people jumping to wild conspiracies that they don't have enough, nearly enough evidence to, you know, actually back up, which I've seen quite a bit of, that being said, I also think there's a whole lot of real conspiracies and I'm not going to stop talking about those just because some people on Twitter might take it in a bad direction.

3:05:24Well, as the great Michael Madness said, as you quoted, one red pill not the whole bottle. I've been trying to limit people to one red pill, one red pill a year. Well, you know, a lot of people, they take one of those things and they just get hungry. Sure, like boosters. Like boosters. Well, it ends up, it ends up, yeah, exactly. You would take, take none of those. No, you're supposed to take one red pill. What's the one in front of you? Which one? That one there. That one, yeah. It's nicotine. Oh, I see. Oh, that's the chewing one. It's a, like, a pouch. Chris Williams showed me yesterday this one that you, he said, wait, lifters are using in Austin.

3:06:01It's like a powder or something? Weight loaptures. Yeah, you know, you're a nicotine powder? No, it's not nicotine. It's something like it. Creatine? No, it's like the, it's, it's the sniff. Oh, no, no, no, that's smelling salts. Smelling salts. Smelling salts. That's right, smoking salts. For silly. We do that to be silly. I hadn't heard of that since I was horrible. 19th century women who thought they had the vapors and he said, these are smelling salts. Well, they used to use it for boxes when they got knocked out to wake them up. That was it. Yeah, that was it. Does it work? Well, it works for weight lifters.

3:06:32You sniff it before you lift incredible amounts of weight. Allegedly, power lifters use them. That's literally why they sell it. It just jolts your entire central nervous system because it's so horrific. Want to smell? No. This is, by the way, a little insight into the comedy community. The deal is that Joe will help advance the careers of comedians unlike anybody since Johnny Carson. But then the cost is you do have to sniff smelling salts. We all have to do that. It's a bring this in the box. It's a bargain of sorts, but it is what it is. Do you have a hard out Douglas? Kind of. I got to get to DC.

3:07:11Okay. One of my least famous cities in the country. Another area of agreement. There we go. Thank you. Thank you for doing this. Appreciate it. It was very, very good. I enjoyed it very much. Thank you, Dave. Of course, thank you to you, John. Thank you, Douglas, very much. I do appreciate that. While we do fundamentally disagree on a lot of this stuff, I do admire that you will come have these conversations. Let's show everyone the book here. It's a... Jesus Christ. I've waited on myself, luckily. On democracies and death cults, Israel and the future of civilization, Douglas Murray. Did you do the audiobook?

3:07:45I did do the audiobook. Thank you. You can hear these Malif Lewis tones. Yes, love it. It would be a tragedy if anybody else did it. I trust you. Yes. All right. Beautiful. All right. Goodbye everybody. Thank you.

3:08:02Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.