B (3:29)

Yeah.

A (3:30)

He wasn't wrong. And we think about that.

B (3:34)

No, that's. That's absolutely right. And I, And I do think, particularly in. In this moment right now, you know, as somebody like, I've been. I've been involved in the Libertarian Party before for years. I, you know, I was. I was in supporting the Republican Party when Ron Paul was running for president, but that was kind of not really supporting the Republican Party. That was kind of a third party candidate, you know, running within one of the parties. And then, of course, in some ways, Donald Trump has kind of been a third party candidate running in the Republican Party in 2016, 20 and 24. And I did vote for Donald Trump and endorse him in this last election. And for. For many reasons, it seemed to me that Kamala Harris losing was like a. A must for our country. It also forget even any policy, but just the pure humiliation of Kamala Harris being the commander in chief. It would have been. It does. It gives one shivers in. In their soul.

A (4:30)

Well, remember what we were talking about before we came on air? You know, Lincoln said, ignorance is no bar to advancement in politics.

B (4:37)

Man, did he get that one right.

A (4:39)

That. Yeah. But of course, then we're back to the John McCain problem, aren't we?

B (4:42)

Yes, we sure are. But even. Maybe with as awful policies and even more ignorant than. Than John McCain, if that's possible. But I do think that, at least at this point now, like, and I really don't I don't want to downplay, say, like, look, there has been tremendous success in terms of the border crisis compared to where we were a few years ago. And I think the Trump administration should get some credit for that. That is a big deal. And I'm not trying to downplay that. However, I do think almost now, in the culmination of the Trump experiment, where Donald Trump did get two terms, I mean, he's in his second, but he did. He did win two terms. And I think for a lot of us, people like myself were kind of here before Trump and are coming back around to this now. We go on these very fundamental issues that are destroying the country, namely being forever wars, perpetual debt, and debasement of the currency. Both parties are in lockstep. And in some senses, Donald Trump might, when it comes to, say, unconditional support of Israel, might be actually a substantial clique worse than the Democrats would be on that issue.

A (5:50)

There's also another topic, though, that I think is very important to everybody. And people don't get this. This crosses all the racial lines. I don't care what anybody says is public safety.

B (5:59)

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And, and the Republicans might be a click better on that, but the problem is still not turn. It's not nearly enough. And so in a sense, if you start to chart this thing out, like as if we're a car driving toward a cliff at 100 miles per hour, you're like, just voting in the Republicans. Is. Is clearly, empirically not enough to stop this car from heading toward this cliff. And in that case, I do think, as you're saying, we have to start exploring alternatives. Like, what is that? You know, I'm not asking for much. I'm not just asking for a candidate who says, let's not get into stupid wars of choice and aggression and let's be fiscally responsible. And yes, as you pointed out, too, hey, maybe let's have some policies like, you're not allowed to do heroin on the street. You know, like, you have to go inside. You know, like, I mean, I'm not even. I'm not a war on drugs guy at all. I'm just saying, like, we can't allow, you know, this, this crime to take over all of our big cities. And we have nobody in this country who is running a serious campaign on those issues.

A (7:10)

No, it's. And we. The idea that the solution is to attack other countries to solve the drug problem that exists inside your borders is a very dumb idea.

B (7:21)

Yeah, that's. That's right. I'm really glad you said that, too, because. And maybe we could just do that topic first. But it has been. It's almost heartbreaking to me to see how many people who I think are good, patriotic Americans who do, when Donald Trump or even other people who I like very much like Vivek Ramaswamy and other people talk about how we gotta, you know, we gotta drone bomb the drug cartels. Are we. And you sit there and you go, so are you telling me that you would like to combine the wonderful results of the policies of the war on terrorism with the war on drugs? You think that those two mixed together are going to end up being, what, like this is going to be a good solution somehow? And then, of course, as you know, the. The onus seems to be. I mean, there seems to be no onus to even demonstrate, like, for example, with those boats off the coast of Venezuela, that they were drug dealers or they had drugs or they were on their way to us. Venezuela is not even one of the major contributors to our drug problem here. It's much more. Colombia, Mexico, China. There's lots of other. You know, it doesn't even make sense. And then, of course, as you know, led by the head of the State Department right now, Marco Rubio, there's been a major effort for. To flirt with a regime change in Venezuela that seems to be kicking up again.

A (8:40)

Yeah. How many times do we have to play this film about regime change to discover that it's a. It's a dead end, it doesn't work, it leads you nowhere. This really goes back to the Bolsheviks. Once they took power in Moscow, they had this notion of perpetual revolution. They were going to march all the way across Europe and install new communist parties in power everywhere. Didn't work out, and it brought on the Second World War. Frankly, I think we have to step back and ask ourselves, what are our real problems and what are the threats against us that we should be concerned about? I can't find existential threats beyond our borders. I'm sorry, I just don't see them. I see no evidence for mendacity and determination to attack and destroy us or Europe on the part of Moscow. Absolutely not. Completely disinterested in that. Over there, the Chinese. How do you persuade people that Xi is not the evil Fu Manchu, that he actually wakes up every morning and hopes that he can hold 1.4 billion people together for another 24 hours? That's his top priority. And he spends most of his time fighting internal corruption, which is overwhelming, by the way. That's an ageless problem in China. When the Japanese invaded the place, they bought off half the Chinese and marched ashore. People don't realize that all the bankers in Shanghai cut a deal with the Imperial Japanese Army. So the Imperial Japanese army marched in, killed large numbers of Chinese, but they didn't touch the banks. We don't understand the reality. So I think we have to face the fact that most of the problems that we have are generated here at home by us. We create them. And the budget's a perfect example of it. We've reached a point where nobody on the Hill wants to cut a dime out of anything for fear they won't get reelected. That's not a good sign. It means that people pay attention to one thing and only one thing. The check in the mail, the freebie they get the food stamp or something else. We've lost sight of everything else. And then you have the small group of people in Washington that enjoy these regime change wars. And effectively the war with Iran is another regime change war waged by Israel and us. The possibility of war with Venezuela, which looks very, very real right now, unfortunately, is another regime change war. And if you go back and listen to Joe Biden and the people that surrounded him and the neocons that were advocates since, I would say, easily since 2014, when we installed this puppet regime in Kiev to wage war in Russia, they've all been about regime change, at least on the surface. Obviously, they wanted to get into Russia, divide it up, strip it of its resources. The bankers were anxious to see that work so they could all get rich. We have a similar situation potentially in Venezuela. Venezuela has great oil and gas, emerald mines, gold mines. Gosh, of course, it's a big problem. You see, it's almost the size of Germany and France together. It has 1,700 miles of coastline. It has 1380 miles of border with Colombia and roughly 1380 miles of border with Brazil. Oh, that should be easy, you know. Yeah, let's go change the regime. What are you going to do with 2,000 Marines, some special ops, and of course, the old problem with all of these things, it's the problem in the Middle east, it's a problem with Russia. What do you do when it doesn't work? Well, historically, what have we done? Escalate until we can't, because the American people finally wake up and say that we've had enough, get out. And that's what happened in Vietnam. Nobody talks about Vietnam anymore. Yeah, you don't talk about defeats, do you? Do we talk much about Iraq? I don't think so. They threw us out in 2011. And the few that stayed on, they want to get rid of them. And I think most of us have pulled out as a result. Where's the big success story in Afghanistan? How many times do you have to have strategic failure before someone inside the United States notices? And that's the biggest problem, that the American people have been insulated from all these disasters. As long as, you know, they can go out and get a case of beer, you know, drive home, watch the game Monday night, hey, it's not my problem. And we have no draft, so no one feels the pain except the less than 1% that are in the armed forces. And, you know, they're expendable. What are we worried about them for? It's a pretty terrible situation. I don't think it can go on much longer. And, you know, I think what's. What may rescue us. This is a terrible thing to say, but it may be bankruptcy that rescues us from ourselves. But we have to admit to the blame, don't we? We're Americans. We, we voted for this stuff. We shut up. We said nothing. We said, fine, go ahead. And we're in a mess.

B (13:49)

All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Kelsey Kelshi. Is a prediction market where you can bet on just about anything or you can go there and just see what people are betting on. Like, for example, were bets raging about whether the government would or wouldn't shut down all last week. There's bets about whether Mamdani is going to win the, the mayoral race or not. He's the heavy, heavy favorite at this point. You could also bet on sports and all types of basically anything you can think of. Check them out. Cali.com join the over 5 million users. You can trade on politics, culture, even the weather. That's Cal.com all right, let's get back into the show. Yeah, no, that's that there. Look, there is something to that. We have to take some responsibility for it. And of course, this is what Ron Paul used to always say, is that the system, this system is fundamentally unsustainable and so it will not sustain itself. And that end is going to come one way or the other. And then I think the question is, what do we do with that? And what is the response to that? You know, as, as you said as you were talking about this, I'm thinking I had mentioned this on my last show, but so recently on, on P. Morgan, he had a panel where there was a, one of our mutual good friends, Scott Horton was on and your old colleague General Wesley Clark was, was on the show too. And there was one point where it was, it was the end of the show. So like Wesley Clark made this point and then Scott didn't get around to respond to it. But I found it like truly striking. At one point Scott was, he was condemning Donald Trump's support for Israel's destruction of Gaza. And then General Wesley Clark said once at the end, he said, he said, yeah, but what's the alternative? What does Israel pull out now and let Hamas say that they won? And I was really taken back by that, that I went, so you like at this point that Mr. Former Four Star General, you still have not learned the lesson of like, yes, that is, I mean, okay, technically that is true and I guess that is one of the bad part of fighting an occupation war where there's an insurgency and eventually you can't beat the insurgency. Yeah, they, all they have to do is not lose and then they get to say that they won. But that applies to Afghanistan. That applied to Vietnam. That applies. Yes, if, like so. But essentially the thing that's so frustrating about it is that obviously if you just think about this, what the, the, the situation, the corner that you're painting yourself into now is saying what you can't leave until what, there's not one young man with a rifle who wishes to, to avenge his cousin or father or son or like, until none of that. So until under current conditions, Gaza becomes Denmark. That's when this, this can end. Like, it's just, you've set in. It's an obvious recipe for forever war. And it's, it's shocking to me that somebody who you know, like, look, I don't agree with Wesley Clark on a lot of things. He's a Democrat and I don't agree with his politics. But you would think that here's a guy who was like the leader of the NATO forces, a four star general, a guy who's got to have, you know, like a head on his shoulders. And it was just stunning to me to hear that you're still working within this paradigm that means we bleed ourselves into bankruptcy and your boys get slaughtered like the ones you're supposed to be responsible for. It's just, I, I just, I guess the question is more like, how are more people in the military not able to see the things that you're able to see, I guess is the question.

A (17:27)

I, I think a lot of the trouble starts at West Point because you Go to a mixer. In the old days, we were all male, and they would bus in these girls from all over the place. And somebody would walk in and say, well, you know, I'm not really very impressed. Everything else, somebody said, here's a beer, put your beer goggles on. And after enough beer, suddenly everything looks really good, I think. Wes Clark, by the way, I know him and I like him personally very much. He's a very intelligent man. He and I always got along well, though we did not agree on a lot of things. But to his credit, he tolerated me when I disagreed with him, I think because he knew I would always be honest with him and I'd be loyal to him, and I have been and I will be. But he was wounded, almost died in Vietnam. They had to fly him on an emergency basis all the way to Japan, and they thought they were going to lose him on the table. His wife flew into Japan, and it was almost nothing short of a miracle that he survived. And so you would think in retrospect as you reflect on that, that you would question exactly what you brought up. But it's deeply ingrained in him, this idea, well, you have to win. We haven't won anything for a very, very long time. And we forget how terrible the Second World War was. I listen to people, well, we won the second world war. Well, actually, 50 plus million people died in it. We happen to be on the winning side. But we were all really, really happy. We came in late and we were really, really happy. When we only fought for that, it was over. And we don't want to go back there and experience it again. But that's not what you hear. We. We. I'm so glad the President was tough and told those Russians to. To get with the program. What? Have you lost your mind? This is a sovereign state. It has its own national security interests, their legitimate security interests. What? What's wrong with treating them as legitimate security interests? They don't have any interest to compare to ours. Well, what are our interests in Ukraine? Explain this to me, please. I haven't figured it out. And, oh, by the way, what driving strategic interest compels us to support the Israeli extermination of people in Gaza? I don't get it. Now, you may not like the people in Gaza, that's fine. And the Israelis, it's their country, obviously, if they want to do these things. But what are we doing supporting it? Is that consistent with our values? I hear all this crap all the time about. Well, our values dictate. Okay, what are Those mass murder and expulsion, where's that on the list? I don't see it. I wouldn't want to do that inside my own country. So, you know, what are we doing it overseas for? It's all very, very odd stuff. And the biggest problem, though, I think it's not just the Americans, who, on any given day, Dave, you and I both know the average American doesn't care what happens overseas. You know, as long as he has a case of beer, he can watch the game, he's happy. As long as he has a car he can drive and can afford the gas, he's happy. As long as he has, you know, wife and kids to play with, he's happy. I mean, this is kind of where we are. We're not an overly demanding people and we are rather simplistic. We're not complex people in that sense. But the problem with this very inward focus is that we allow things to happen in our name beyond our borders that are catastrophic. You know, Dave Petraeus, I talked to him back in 2005 when he was at Leavenworth. That's the last time he and I spoke. He was a couple of years ahead of me at the military academy and I had come to the staff college to speak and we talked. He, he talked about Iraq. What do you think? And everything else. And I said, well, these raids, checkpoints and, and patrols. I said, this is just a steady grind. It's not going to take us anywhere. The British gave this up in Ulster. It didn't work. We don't want to do this. And then he said, well, I agree with you, but we need to do these and these and these things. And finally I said, well, why don't we just leave? And he said, we can't do that. Anbar province will become a platform for the projection of terrorism all over the world. I said, well, the. In Vietnam, we just left. We just pulled out and it made no difference to us at all. But 58,000 men died, another hundred plus thousand were wounded, and what, 2, 3 million Vietnamese were butchered as a result. This is insane. You know, it's this mentality that, you know, we can't do this. We have to, we have to have a surrender ceremony on the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay to end every conflict or we're unhappy. But that's not realistic. And that's not necessarily why you fight a war. You don't fight wars to exterminate people. I mean, maybe Stalin did and Hitler did, but we don't do that. So, you know, it's very frustrating. And I run, run into this all the time with many people that I served in the military with. And then you have the problem of people that were in Iraq or Afghanistan for long periods of time in the last 20, 30 years. And of course, they're not very fond of anybody they think is a Muslim, you know. Okay, well, there was a time when we felt that way about anybody who came from Northeast Asia, especially after the second World War with Japan. But that's not. You don't allow that kind of thing to shape your policy and your thinking. And I think politicians play to audiences too much.

B (23:28)

Yeah, for sure.

A (23:31)

What was it that H.L. mencken said if a politician found out he had cannibals in his district, he'd provide them with missionaries for dinner. Not far off.

B (23:43)

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A (28:22)

Well, unlike New Jersey, Israel also does not have any good pizza. These guys haven't grown up in Philadelphia. I mean, that's very disappointing. Having been to Israel several times. That's something they lack. On the other hand, I think, you know, we have to understand something. People like me, I. I was raised. I was. I grew up as a Quaker. My family, my mother's family being in the country since 1681 in Philadelphia, I went to one of the oldest, I guess the oldest Quaker private school in the country. We were all male. Once again. This is before, you know, mixed everything. And Israel was treated as this. As this triumph of the Second World War that in view of what had happened. And remember, the Jews collectively at one point or another, have been thrown out of almost every country in Europe and the Middle east over 2,000 years. Now, we don't want to go down that road and ask that, why is that? But that was taught to us. We heard that. And, you know, they were murdered and butchered during the Second World War. We now have a state for them. So for most of us, Everything began in 1947-48, without any understanding of what had happened in the previous 80 to 100 years and how this sort of Israeli state crept into the mix thanks to the Rothschild banking cartel and people like Benjamin Disraeli, the prime minister of Great Britain, has always been one of my heroes. So we saw Israel as this very virtuous place that had lots of smart people that could do interesting things and were a blessing to humanity. And I've been to Israel several times. In all of my dealings were always with the idf, people who are either in the military or had been. And I liked them enormously, got along with them. There was always this undercurrent, especially in Gaza. I visited Gaza, the Israeli headquarters down there, in 2020, in February, and I saw everything that they did. And the Israelis had that place locked down so tight, you can't even begin to imagine. I mean, the quality of their intelligence that they did. I mean, if somebody on the other side shot at someone, an Israeli soldier in a tower or something on the outskirts of Gaza, they would know within, I would say, 90 seconds who it was. They had everybody's picture, everybody's cell phone number. They knew where everybody lived. They had all the tunnels mapped. I mean, this is a brilliant operation. And I remember asking a couple of officers that were there that were escorting me, I said, well, what are you going to do about this long term? I mean, there's nothing can be done with these people. I mean, surely they have this nice. You know, as Trump said, nice property sits on the Mediterranean. Is there something. Oh, no, it's hopeless. Have you tried to. Oh, no. Yeah, it's hopeless. Can't do anything. So I didn't say anything more. But when the attack happened on 7 October, one of the things I began thinking about immediately is, how did this happen? And within two weeks, it became pretty damn obvious to me that this was not an accident, this was deliberate. They let it happen. Now, when I say they, who are we talking about? We're talking about the leadership of the military, the state, the intelligence. And now we have women. The Israelis are very smart, the way they employ their draftees. They take six or seven very brilliant young women and say, your whole focus in life, 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the next two years, whatever is Gaza and everything that happens there, and all the intelligence, they monitor everything. They picked up that this was happening, and they've said so publicly, and they reported it. Then you have the deputy chief of staff of the for intelligence in the Egyptian military who gave a personal phone call to the head of intelligence. I guess it was Shin Bet, or it could have been Mossad, I don't know which, and said, look, you got an attack coming, this thing. And of course, by that time, a lot of people knew, they'd watch them, you know, practice. Then this horrible attack happens. But the attack was horrible enough. But then, as Max Blumenthal points out, they had a lie about all of it and make much worse than it was. Not that it wasn't bad. Of course it was bad. And, you know, this was very tough for me to deal with because I had this very positive picture. And then it became very obvious this is a trigger to unleash this massive murder and expulsion campaign. And that's what it's been now we, now we know there are over 600,000 people have died. An estimated 70% of them are children. I don't know what the age is they're giving. It's unbelievable. It is something that I could never conceive of in the modern world, particularly involving Israel, because I saw this state in a very different light from the way I see it today. And I think this is hard. It's hard. You know, I'm a boomer, right? So all the boomers, you know, they immediately say, well, the hell are these people in Gaza? But people are people. I don't care what they look like or whether you like them or not, or what the religion is. I don't see that the average human being on the planet deserves to be exterminated because another person somewhere else says so. This is very tough. This is very hard. And I don't know that there is any solution that we could embrace other than to cut off the aid and stop it.

B (33:51)

Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, that's, yeah, I mean, I think it's, it's the obvious, you know, it's, it's, you know, one of the, the kind of parallels in a way between Israel and Ukraine is that you see that and, and this is, I guess, goes kind of to the heart of why the founders of this country never wanted us to be an empire. Because even when you get in these entangling alliances and you realize that even if well intentioned, and I certainly am not claiming that I think any of this stuff is well intentioned, but even if well intentioned, there's just a tremendous moral hazard that comes along with these security guarantees and blank checks where you give, you know, you put people in a position. Again, it's like saying to your little brother, like, you're going out to the bar and you go, you get in a fight with anyone, I got your back. Well, the problem with that now is that you're encouraging him to maybe get in some fights that he otherwise would have talked out and not came to fisticuffs. And obviously in Ukraine, that's just clearly true that there would have been a negotiated piece at the very beginning of this, which almost undoubtedly would have been more in the Ukrainian favor than what the, the final agreement, whenever this thing ends will be.

A (35:06)

Well, you know, there's an expression, if I could say something real quick, when, if there is no accountability, there is no performance, and we really haven't held people accountable, military or political, for a very long time for doing anything. And as a result they think they can do anything. In other words, there are no constraints. That's really what you're saying?

B (35:28)

Yeah, exactly.

A (35:29)

You know, and my grandfather, my maternal grandfather was in the First World War. He was. Came back on active duty in the second, but in the First World War, he was in the Army. He's a private enlisted after he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, so did most of his classmates. You won't see that happen anymore. And in fact, he used to say to me, he always wanted me to go to Annapolis, which I absolutely did not want to go to, because I don't like going to sea. Really bothers me. I don't like to be out of sight of land. I'm happy flying. And I figure if it fails, well, it'll be quick. I don't want to feed the sharks or something else, you know, from a ship. So I didn't ever want to do that. So he would say to me, though, he'd say, you know, Doug, I was in the army, and in the Second World War, I was in the Navy, and I became. I was a private, and then I was a master sergeant in just a few months, and then I became an officer. And he said, but, you know, in the army, in a war, you know, you don't get much to eat. Whatever you get to eat is cold. You freeze, you live in the mud, it's nasty, and people shoot at you all the time. He said, so if you're in the Navy, you know, you're aboard ship, and most of the time, you. You have nice, clean, dry clothes and everything's warm, and the food's excellent, and you always have coffee, and you don't really. You're not really under fire very much. So I really think you should go to Annapolis. And I said, I went into the Army. He wasn't entirely wrong. I found that out the hard way. But having said all of that, his. My family, on both sides, everybody was violently opposed. I mean, almost to the point of violence against war in 1917. And, you know, the first point was, what has Germany or Austria, Hungary done to us? Nothing. You know, what's the basis for this? Who made them the enemy? Why are we committing the national treasury and 2 or 3 million soldiers to this war? And, of course, you know, the casualties we took were terrible. People don't realize that in 110 days of fighting, we had 318,000 casualties. You don't realize that that's far more intense than, frankly, most of what happened in the second war. Second war was episodic. And we had 110,000 killed. And if you do the math, that comes down to about 1,000 dead for every day of fighting. Now, I don't think most people in this country would tolerate that sort of thing, but yet we have a lot of people right now talking about war. War potentially with the Russians, war potentially with Iran, which could inevitably, or I would argue, will inevitably bring in Russia, China, and other states in the Middle east now. And on top of this, we're talking about Venezuela, a place about which most of us know absolutely nothing. And I don't see any serious existential military threat emanating from Venezuela. We are out of touch with reality. We don't know what this word war means anymore. And that's the greatest danger. Because, you know, In Europe in 1914, that was the problem. In Germany, France, Britain, Russia, everywhere. They hadn't had a major war for 50 years, or almost 50. And people thought, oh, this will just be, you know, a few months. It'll be over, and, you know, we'll. We'll trade some territory and we'll be back to normal. Well, that's not what happened. And if we get involved in this war as. As we are now in the Middle east and potentially in. In Europe, because even though President Trump has said, I really don't want to do this anymore, so I'm just going to give you weapons and you can pay us for them, and then you go do whatever you want, we're still there. We still have a hundred thousand men along the border. You know, if. If this thing is pressed by the Europeans, you're going to see widespread destruction in Germany, Poland, Great Britain, any number of places. We're not going to be able to stay out of that. So we've lost the sense that our number one priority in foreign and defense policy should be avoid war. Instead, we seem to be in the hunt for it. As you and I were talking before this began, two wars aren't enough. Don't worry. We got a third one over here. This is nuts. It's crazy. And none of it is affordable, and we're on very fragile financial grounds right now.

B (40:04)

All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Quince. It's time to break out the fall and winter wardrobe. And if all of your clothing from last season is falling apart, stock up with Quince with staples like 100 Mongolian cashmere sweaters starting at just $60, and real leather jackets without the crazy price tag, you can refresh the whole wardrobe I will tell you, I've gotten a couple articles of clothing from Quince and I love them. I got one of their cashmere hoodies and it's beautiful. And another sweater that's really great. And they're very reasonably priced. You're getting top tier stuff at half the price you'd pay with other brands. Go check them out at quince.com/potp for free shipping on your orders and 365 day returns. That's Q U I N C E.com PotP free shipping, 365 day returns. Great quality clothes, very reasonable prices. Definitely go check them out. All right, let's get back into the show. Yeah, no, absolutely. And then I will say, of course, particularly with the, the, the situation with Israel, it's also now creating enormous turmoil within our, our own country. And that people, you know, it's, it's, we're seeing, we saw mass protests through 2023 and 2024 about destruction of Gaza. I'm not sure as school season is just starting up here again now, we might be in for, for more of those. Of course, you also see it's one of the things that's interesting and I'm curious to kind of get your, your take on this because this is what a lot of people speculate about. But one of the things that's, that seems to be interesting and somewhat different about the relationship with Israel than any of these other conflicts is that you have these situations like say, okay, Joe Biden's running a presidential campaign. And then of course, as we know, then Kamala, he dropped out and Kamala Harris came in or he dropped out and then Kamala Harris came in, he was escorted out and then Kamala Harris came in. It was clearly just politically speaking here. Right. Which is something that politicians care about. It was an enormous political albatross around Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's neck that they were on the hook for supporting this policy in Gaza. A huge portion of the Democratic base was just a poor, appalled by it. I think. I remember seeing polls where it was like 70% of Democrats considered it a genocide. So you got 70% of your base thinks you're funding a genocide. And it really hurt them enormously also in the, in the sense that there was no protesting against Donald Trump's campaign from the left because the left was all too busy protesting the genocide in Gaza. And so they, they, it really was a political problem for them. This year, obviously in Donald Trump's administration we've seen time and time again where It's a real political problem for him. Not just that his base is divided on this. He's losing. You know, he's got guys like Tucker Carlson and, and Megyn Kelly and Candace Owens and, and even Charlie Kirk to some degree before he died, you know, like, who were really, like, divided. Like the most influential people are divided over. We don't really want to get in this war with Iran. Then when he, when he tries to take the Iranian off ramp that they give him and pushes for a ceasefire, Israel goes and Bo again. And he's furious about this. You can just tell. And, and obviously it's in Donald Trump's interest for this thing to be wrapped up. And yet, so with both major political parties, even though this thing is in their interest to get rid of their very immediate political interest, they still are giving unconditional support to Israel and they still will never will just kind of, it feels like at least we'll never see a moment with Trump that was like the moment he had with Zelensky, as much as that didn't work out. And now he's back to not as good a place. But it just seems like this is this, I think, mixed with the fact that our government and our media class has lied to the American people about every major crisis for the last 30 years, and they've all been exposed. The mix of those two things leads people to jump to conspiratorial conclusions, like, why is it that this tiny little country halfway around the world, who we do not rely on for anything at all, why is it that both major political parties seem to be completely controlled by this country?

A (44:23)

Well, it's. It's a measure of what you're discussing that most people polled today are convinced that the Israelis had a hand in killing Charlie Kirk. Now, I, I have not. I mean, I, I know who Charlie Kirk was. I think we spoke three or four times in short interviews. He asked me to come on, and I did. But also when it became clear that I was an opponent of this policy in Gaza, that was it. I was out. I don't know if you go back and look at one of his Turning Point USA events, and I think this was, oh, gosh, maybe, maybe a couple of years ago, Michele Bachmann was there as a representative of the maga, right, or something, and she stood there and said, yes, the Israelis should kill all of them. I'm 100% for this. They should all be killed. I almost fell out of my chair. Who the hell is this woman? Does she know what she's saying? Does she have any idea what she's saying? This is a terrible thing. And I know, having worked with President Trump briefly face to face, and I liked him. I gave him enormous credit in 2019 for resisting the pressure to go to war with Iran when we had this Global Hawk shot down on the Air Defense Identification Zone's periphery. And if you know international law, any military aircraft that flies along that Adiz Air Defense Identification Zone, and in the case of Iran, that runs right down the middle of the Persian Gulf, and General McKenzie, who was a CENTCOM commander, had specifically asked for that Global Hawk. Then he plotted the route for the Global Hawk right down the middle, right along that Air Defense Identification Zone. And the Iranians looked and they went back and forth and asked, what do we do? What do we do? What do we do? Finally said, shoot it down. Well, under international law, they had the right to do that. That was legitimate. It was unmanned. It was not manned. And so President Trump's question at the time was, was it manned? No, it was unmanned. He said, so no one was killed? No. And he said, well, then, I'm not prepared to launch a war. And they had this thing ready to go. This strike package was there because you had Bolton in the White House, you had Pompeo over at State, you know, the neocons were there with, I'm sure McCain and Cotton and everybody else on the phone, go, go, go. Let's go get them now. And he wouldn't do it. And he actually asked the question, well, if we do this, this strike, how many people are we going to kill? Everybody sat there and, well, 6, 700, something like that. And he said, for an unmanned aircraft. So I'm not going to do it. The other question that came up later, but it was in the undergrowth, I would say, of the discussion, what do we do after we strike Iran? All right, you kill six or seven hundred people, you destroy batteries of missiles or radars or something, then what? And this is the biggest problem right now. Whatever you want to do with Russia, whatever you want to do with Iran, whatever you want to do with Venezuela, after you do it, the question should be, now what? And that's never asked. Well, we got to go to Vietnam and fight communism. Okay, we go over there and we fight. It doesn't work, then what? This is the problem. There's no second question. There's no serious debate. What are the implications? And nobody stands up and says, well, it's really not in the interest of the American people in the United States government to be drawn into a war just as it wasn't in our interest to go into World War I. Yeah.

B (48:12)

Well it seems to the extent that the question then what even gets mentioned, it almost seems like they just like, like they just write a fairy tale and that, you know, it's, it's the, we'll be greeted as liberators and it'll be a cakewalk, you know, so they, they just assert that everything will be sunshine and rainbows. And in fact there were around the 12 Day War, which we'll see if it's referred to that in history or not, but around this, this recent war with Iran, there were Israeli officials who were posting pictures with the son of the Shaw, kind of implying that like that's the. Then what? That we'll just waltz in with this because everybody will embrace hereditary monarchy that was imposed by the west to begin with. And I remember just being blown away by how, how far fetched the idea that the son of the Shah would come into power and that would calm everything down and then Iran would turn into a liberal democracy or something. And you just sit there like after, after the last 20 years of results that any adult wouldn't look at that and go, okay, but you know, what if maybe that doesn't work out quite like that. And what if actually there are several different factions who would like to seize power and what if many of those factions are more radical than the current people in power? And what if it takes a full military occupation to actually ensure that the people you'd like to see in power get in power? Because that seems to be what it always takes. Like if you, you could do a regime change like you did in Libya where you do a drive by regime change and the country becomes a failed state and is an absolute disaster. But if you actually want to have a say over who you're putting into power next, you're going to have to be occupying that country. And of course, as, as you know better than most, that often is only maintained for the extent that the occupation is maintained. As in Afghanistan where it's literally was a matter of days.

A (50:13)

Well, stick your hand in a bucket of water. You displace the water. So as you remove your hand, the water returns.

B (50:20)

Right.

A (50:21)

There are cultural means all over the world in regions. If you want to know what Iraq is going to look like in 20 years, don't look at the United States, don't look at Great Britain, don't look at Sweden, don't look at Japan, look at the other states that border Iraq. They're going to be a little bit of Iran, they're going to be a little bit of Syria, they may be a little bit of Turkey. In other words, this is reality and these things are not easily changed. Genghis Khan used to say, occupations turn soldiers into jailers. The Mongols didn't occupy anything after they took over. They stuck a new bunch in there and said, all right, this is the deal. You can rule. I am leaving a small contingent of Mongols here to make sure that you don't get out of line like four or 500 people. But you got to pay these, this tribute to us on a routine basis. Otherwise you're free to do pretty much what you want. Well, that actually worked. And of course, all you had to do was slaughter a few hundred thousand people. Everybody got the idea, clearly. But my point is that he was smart enough not to occupy.

B (51:33)

Right.

A (51:34)

Occupations are bad news. And we have this terrible problem with wishful thinking. If China becomes prosperous and successful, has a wonderful economy, they'll all become liberal democrats. No, they're Chinese, right? They have a culture and a civilization that's 5,000 years old. What do you expect them to do? They're going to be Chinese. And Chinese are not like us. Sorry, it's not the same group of people. Not the same set of values. And by the way, their values are not necessarily wrong. Neither is their civilization or their way of life. We got to get out of this business of sort of declaring ourselves the model for everybody else. We're not. And we, we really, really need to focus here at home. You know, we have this thing we talk about on the Chinese side, the one belt, one road. And if you go to the Department of Defense. Oh, that's a danger. Really? Oh, yes. They're building all this infrastructure across Central Asia and down into the Middle east and every. They're linking everybody by roads and rail. And this is a danger. I said, well, why? Everybody's going to trade and this is going to be successful. They hope. Maybe we ought to plug into it. What do you mean by that? Well, you know, we're a maritime and aerospace power. We're only a land power in the western hemisphere. In other words, we don't own anything in the Eastern hemisphere. I'm sorry, that's a big wake up call. We don't own a damn thing over there. So we could plug in. We have not looked at the things that we could do. You know, we can cross the ocean from Rochefort in France to the east coast of the United States with fast sea lift. I mean, New Brand new ships that are faster than anything anybody's seen. We can get everything that comes into rush four on rail. We can put it right on a ship. We can rush it across to Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Charleston, Corpus Christi, wherever you want to go. Offload it onto super fast rail and ship at lightning speed across the United States to Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Puget Sound, and then send it from there to Japan or China or Indonesia or Southeast Asia. We can actually do it faster and better than the Chinese can across Central Asia because they've got to go through multiple countries. And every country you go through, what happens? Hey, Amy, pay me now. You have to secure it. But we speak one language from the Atlantic to the Pacific, at least in theory, and we have one set of laws, one country. There are no extra payments. So we could do a land office business if we saw ourselves that way. But is anybody talking about it? No, no, no. We want to invade Venezuela. Doesn't make any sense. And what happens to the heartland, all the people that bought into the MAGA story and voted for Donald Trump, if we built what I just described, the people in the heartland who've been abandoned, who've been deindustrialized, they would profit. It would spur growth there. But we need to invade Venezuela.

B (54:56)

All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Monetary Metals, an amazing company that is revolutionizing the way you invest in gold and silver. They have been paying interest in silver and gold for over eight years, helping you grow your wealth in real tangible assets. Finally, there's a true alternative to saving in dollars, a yield on gold and silver with Monetary metals. Look, here's the deal. A lot of you guys own precious metals. If you're owning precious metals, you're probably either keeping them physically at home, in which case they're just collecting dust, or you're having them professionally stored, in which case you're paying fees on your precious metals. But with monetary Metals, or you own precious metals that work for you, they generate interest paid in additional ounces. So this is just a no brainer for people who own precious metals. This is the best way to do it. Go check them out@monical-metals.com. that's monetary-metals.com. all right, let's get back into the show. You know, it's as I'm listening to you say this, I can't help but think that all of it seems so communistic in, in theory, like just the. And I mean just like look like the neoconservatives themselves, the original real neoconservatives were ex communists. They were Trotskyites who came over. That's why they were neo conservatives. And if you really look at it objectively, they weren't very conservative about anything at all. And there, and of course, as, as you were talking about like, you know, the, the, the occupation going from, you know, fighters to jailers, they also, essentially the ask of them is to become a communist government. They also, they have to go in there and basically become the state that's going to dictate everything for these people. And you're asking your military to do something that isn't possible to do, which is to be a true socialist government that's deciding what resources go everywhere. And just the, the basic idea that we like, even if you were going to say that, hey, I reject cultural relativism and I think that American culture is superior to Chinese culture or something like that, it's like, okay, but then the question really becomes, what are you going to do? Enforce that at a barrel of a gun? I mean, if you, if you believe that you could set an example and you could say to the rest of the world like, hey, I think you guys would be better off having a bill of Rights and doing liberty the way America does liberty. But the idea that we are going to go around the world and say, stamp out every other way of life and impose hours is frankly, if nothing else, utopian. It's just not of this world. The. You know, I remember there was a, there was one point shortly after October 7, and Israel began to launch its offensive in Gaza. And Joe Biden, president at the time, kind of debatably in name was the president at the time he was asked, he goes, you know, you already have this conflict in Ukraine. Can America afford to be backing another war now in Gaza? And Joe Biden went, of course, this is the United States of America. We can do it all. And I do think it's like, wow, you really talk about being born on third base and thinking you hit a triple. You were this, this corrupt Delaware senator in the. Who happened to be lucky enough to be in the unipolar moment. And you just still are living because you don't even know what year it is. You're still living in this, this idea that like, America can do whatever it wants to. And like, do you not just look at the 37 trillion in debt and, and the massive crisis that we had at the time at, at the southern border and the massive crisis of homelessness and that we have the worst racial and political and tribal divides of my lifetime. And you still have the attitude that we can remake the entire world. Even staring in the face of all the failures that you've supported over your career, it's hard. It's just hard to imagine that these people haven't been. Haven't snapped out of this.

A (58:59)

Yeah, well, good luck with snapping them out. Yeah, you know, I, you know, Washington said when he left office, give us 20 years of peace and we will become so prosperous and economically strong that no one in the world will challenge us. That was his answer to the military question. And then he also argued, along with Alexander Hamilton, that we can be the engine of prosperity not just for ourselves, but for others. And if we're successful, others in the world will want to imitate us and emulate us. That was the answer to Thomas Jefferson, who wanted us to join the French Revolution. Think about that. Jefferson believed that, you know, we were the model and that would have been wonderful. As Alexander Hamilton in Washington said, we like Thomas Jefferson, but he doesn't understand the, the Austrians, the Russians, the Prussians, the British. Everybody will land on the North American continent to crush us. We don't want anything to do with that. They were right then. They're still right now. We can turn this thing around, but we're not going to get there where we're headed, that's for damn sure. And it doesn't matter at this point, I think who's in power. It's not going to work.

B (60:19)

Yeah, well, that's why I think it's so important that you continue your efforts and, and explaining this stuff to people, because it really is. No, you really do have such an important, such an important knowledge base. And kind of you, you really are somebody who has the knowledge and the wisdom to, to explain this to people. And I'm super, super grateful that you took the time to spend with us. I'd love to do this again real soon. Please, before we get out of here, let my know where they can go to find you and follow you and, and anything else that you.

A (60:49)

First of all, on 4 4October, when we had this VIP dinner in the evening, your friend and my friend Scott Horton is going to be there. So if you can break away and stick your head to the door, we'll tell you where it's going to be and we'd love to see you. You could at least show up and have a free drink, whatever.

B (61:06)

Okay? Absolutely.

A (61:07)

Now, beyond that, you know, you can plug my name into anything and generally you'll find it on YouTube or you'll see something on the Net. And I've written a lot of things. I've got a paper right now that I wrote for RFK Jr. At his request, back in the fall of 2024. Actually started earlier than that because I was supporting RFK Jr. Then he went to the Trump team and so forth. And, you know, look, that paper is worth looking. I think I said, send it to your producer. It's called Taming the Warfare State. You know, a lot of the things that the Secretary of War mentioned, those are all addressed in some detail. And so, anyway, bottom line is just Colonel Doug McGregor. You'll. You'll see anything you want. But I do have a website. It'll take you there if you just plug in my name. But the bottom line is the national conversation is our attempt to begin a movement in a fundamentally new direction, and we hope it will be successful. But it's just the beginning.

B (62:11)

Yeah, well, it's something the country desperately needs, so I am rooting for it. Thank you again, sir, and thank you to everybody for listening. We'll catch you next time.

A (62:19)

Thank you, Dave.