A (2:59)

I would say probably what describes my view the best is that US Interests do not equal Israeli interests. These are two distinct matters that we're talking about here. Sure. Can there be areas of overlap? Sure. Just like with any other country on planet Earth. But from a baseline assumption that US Foreign policy is supposed to work on behalf of the security, prosperity and freedom of the American people, I do not see U.S. interests as concomitant with Israeli interests, particularly today.

B (3:33)

Okay, so what I'd like to know is what do you think of as the United States interests in the Middle East? For instance, in particular, what are the United States. What would the United States like to see in the Middle east and vis a vis itself and other countries in the Middle East? And what would Israel like to see? In what specific ways do their visions for the Middle east diverge? And how does that translate into specific policies? And maybe, as you formulate that answer, why don't we start, in fact, with what is it that makes the quote, unquote, special relationship with Israel, which is a term everybody uses. What is it that makes that relationship special? Where did this come from? What's the origins of that? And then maybe from there, explore some of these other issues.

A (4:25)

The US Israel relationship is special. It is unique. It is unlike any other the United States currently has abroad. And you see this, for example, in the rhetoric of American officials. You'll never hear American officials go to the lengths that they go to justify the US Relationship with any other country as they do with Israel. I mean, the term special relationship came from jfk, that he called this a special relationship akin to only what we have with the United Kingdom. President Joe Biden used to say, if there wasn't an Israel, we would have to create one. Nancy Pelosi said at an APEC summit that if the US Capitol came crashing to the ground, the only thing that would remain would be our steadfast support for Israel. So, you know, that's pretty astounding rhetoric. And that's coupled with more than $330 billion, adjusted for inflation, in aid since World War II, primarily military aid and a slew of other, you know, arms deals, intelligence cooperation, and so on and so forth. But I always get asked, you know, why is this relationship special? And I point to three reasons. They're not mutually exclusive, they overlap, they reinforce one another. But the three reasons are broadly, the first being normative, the more cultural moral arguments. You know, Post World War II, this feeling of guilt, you know, this association with this country in the Middle east, you know, this idea that the United States has grafted an American image onto Israel. It's a Western outpost and a barbarous land, so to speak. And there's this idea of Israel being the quote, unquote, only democracy in the Middle east, so we need to support it. That's the more normative angle of things. The second one is the domestic political, you know, what we always hear about, you know, the Israel lobby and so on and so forth. It's, you know, the constellation of different actors who try to push U.S. foreign policy in a pro Israel direction. And you're often not rewarded for going against that consensus. And then the third is strategic, the idea that American interests equal Israeli interests. You know, Lindsey Graham calls Israel our eyes and ears in the Middle East. Benjamin Netanyahu calls Israel America's unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Middle East. And it's that third one, the strategic one, where I usually focus in on, and I argue that this is fundamentally not the case, that American interests in the Middle east do not equal Israeli interests in the Middle East. And viewed from a perspective, from a very limited perspective of American interests, our interests in the Middle east are limited and easy to accomplish. I would say we have three the free flow of oil out of the region, preventing terrorist attacks against the American homeland, and preventing the emergence of a regional hegemon. Any one actor to dominate the region. All of those pretty easy to achieve and don't require special relationships with Israel or any other country in the Middle East.

B (7:24)

Now, the United States has a particular reason for being. And by the way, another reason way you can tell that I'm out of sorts and out of my normal. I think I have my MIC flag upside down. This goes to show. It's like when the. Maybe it's because we're in wartime, you know, or it's a desperate situation. It's like the. When the US Flag is hung upside down. This is the same here. That's a distress signal that this thing is this way. But anyway, the United States obviously has particular reason to dislike Al Qaeda, and yet it seems like Israel does not have that same reason or that same animosity toward it and is rather, you know, has its own issues with Hamas and Hezbollah and so on. It seems to prioritize that to the point where nobody seems to bat an eye that we have a former Al Qaeda guy now in Syria, you know, running Syria. And this is just like, oh, well, you know, everybody has a bad background. You know, everybody has some things. And his background was the way this was explained to the American public. Well, yeah, I suppose we all, you know, maybe you smoked a cigarette behind the high school or something, but, you know, you don't really have that kind of a background. Can you elaborate on this? I mean, because it does seem that the United States would, if it were pursuing its interests, would prioritize particular bad actors in the Middle east in a different order from how Israel does.

A (8:48)

Absolutely, I would agree. And this is a point that is a fantastic point because so many people gloss over. This is the different types of Islamist inspired actors in the Middle east, the ones that we are opposed to and that threaten the United States are fundamentally different than those that threaten Israel. Those that threaten us. Al Qaeda and ISIS are part of a global transnational Salafist jihadist movement that wants to target the so and so far enemy being the United States and the west for propping up dictators in the region, meddling in the Middle east and stuff like that. The Islamist oriented groups that Israel fights, like Hamas and Hezbollah, are rooted in a local context. These are rooted in resistance primarily to occupation, and they use terrorism and so on and so forth. But they are not part of this broader global Salafi jihadist movement, as is Al Qaeda, as is isis. We're talking about two different entities here, both of which appeal to Islam and try to use that to motivate people to join them and to do horrible things, but that ultimately have two very different political objectives.

B (10:02)

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A (12:30)

Precisely. I would say Israeli foreign policy at the current moment, and we can argue, you know, how long this is held, but Israeli foreign policy is focused on what I would call a very expansionist and aggressive foreign policy. And because of the special relationship, the US Israel relationship, they're able to pursue this agenda while being insulated from the political, economic and military costs that are needed to pursue such an agenda. The United States subsidizes this agenda, you know, whether it be through money, whether it be through military force, like we're seeing now in American lives. But the United States has a and I think the war with Iran is the perfect example. Look at those three interests that I mentioned that the United States has in The Middle east, oil, terrorism and hegemony on the oil matter. Look at the global oil market right now. Nothing that we're doing vis a vis Iran secures that interest. In fact, it's the opposite. Oil is. This is the largest disruption in the global energy market, market in history, according to the iaea. And this is because the United States went to war with Iran. Look at the counterterrorism question. I'm never one to saber rattle about, you know, terrorism threat to the United States. I think it's been overblown for a long time and used to justify a lot of horrible policies. But things such as this generate the animosity towards the United States that feeds nefarious actors that want to target and hurt the United States. I mean, the term blowback itself, the very term that we use all the time now, blowback was coined by the CIA in 1953 when it was discussing Operation Ajax in Iran to overthrow Muhammad Mossada and reinstall the Shah, talking about the possible ramifications, negative ramifications for the United States. So these policies come with real risks to me as an American. What Israel is doing in the Middle east is, is first and foremost designed to advance that expansionist and aggressive agenda. And I would argue that this agenda is not concomitant with American interests. I would argue that the very logic of the special relationship hinders our Washington's ability to recognize this, whether they fear the political costs of going against it or whether they genuinely believe that subsidizing this agenda somehow benefits the United States. But going back to the original point that you had at the beginning of the show, you know, this topic being forced on us, it really has, because it's so blatant and it's so out in the front. I have friends who come to me who know what I do for a living, who have zero interest in the Middle east or anything like that. And they say, you know, hey, did you see what Israel did today? And I was like, I didn't even know you. You, like, kept up with this. But, you know, it has been forced on the American public because it's just so out in the open now.

B (15:21)

Can you try to. We know the expression straw man. Somebody argues against a position that nobody actually takes and then triumphantly declares victory. The opposite of that is to steel man somebody's position. Try to come up with the best, strongest arguments for your opponent before you then refute them. So how would you steel man the argument that Israel is in fact a strategic asset to the United States? Now, as I say I hear this argument made. Not that often, but I do hear it made most of the time. It's just you're an anti Semite for criticizing Israel. I mean, that really is what it's reduced to. I do hear people saying, oh, you're not necessarily an anti Semite for criticizing Israel. Yeah, quote, not necessarily. It's just that everyone who does it gets called that. So I guess someday down the road, a thousand years from now, somebody will successfully criticize the government of Israel without being called an anti Semite. But among people who actually want to have a discussion, the 3% out there, they do make an argument that in fact the relationship with Israel advances certain strategic goals of the United States or in some way benefits the United States. Can you steel man that argument?

A (16:31)

Absolutely. And again, I think you hit on a critical point, is this argument's often not made, it's often just taken as a given that Israeli interests equal American interests and people are, you know, are often confused when you ask them to explain, well, hold on, how do these interests align and how do Israeli actions advance American interests? And that's where, you know, you often get ad hominem attacks or just looks of confusion because they take it as a given. But to steel man this argument, there's a couple things. The first and foremost thing that I think the advocates of this relationship will put forward is America is fight or Israel is fighting America's enemy. They're fighting them over there, so we don't have to fight them over here. That is typically what is part and parcel to the strategic asset narrative, if you will. That's always what I refer to it as, is the strategic asset narrative. And this has been the case since the Cold War. They'll point to, you know, combating Arab nationalism and keeping the Soviet Union out of the Middle East. They'll point to, you know, terrorist groups. We already discussed how that's not really the case though, because the Islamist inspired groups that they face are fundamentally different than ours. And then they'll point to combating rogue states like Iraq and Iran. I would argue that many of these enemies, even dating back to the Cold War with the Arab nationalism, many of these enemies were either a product of the special relationship or exacerbated because of it. One of the chief reasons why the Arab nationalist states turned to the Soviet Union was because the United States emphatic embrace of Israel. They were just, this wasn't, you know, some crazy out of nowhere thing. They were counterbalancing against a superpower casting its weight behind their adversary. So they turned to another superpower. You know, we discussed how the Islamist inspired groups like Hamas and Hezbollah root their agenda and their focus in, in, in a local context. This is fundamentally different from the Salafist jihadist movement that was spurred during the, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which grew into Al Qaeda. And these groups that came to target the United States, they're just two very different things. And the third one, rogue states like Iraq and Iran, Iran in particular, I think is the epitome of this, is Iran's ability to undermine American interests in the Middle east are inherently limited. They pose no threat to the American homeland. The threat that Iran does pose to American interests is often exacerbated by our own militarism, like we're seeing now. And these states are not problematic for us. They're primarily viewed as problematic for Israel. So again, you're seeing this equating of Israeli enemies with US Enemies. You're equating American interests with, with Israeli interests. And I would also add, probably the thing that I receive the most also as a pushback is the idea that Israel provides the United States with critically needed intelligence. Yeah, I get that all the time.

B (19:37)

Yeah.

A (19:38)

And again, I caution folks here, because the intelligence that they provide us is on Israel's enemies, groups like Hamas and Hezbollah and stuff like that that are only relevant to the United States because of the special relationship. You would never hear the words Hamas and stuff like that if it wasn't for the special relationship. So it's on their enemies. It behooves them to give us that intelligence. If they view these actors as so threatening, it would behoove them to share this intelligence with the United States. Third, I would say Israeli supplied intelligence to the United States is often dramatically inflated, designed to push the United States in a specific direction. You know, the intelligence is often inherently political. And then also, you know, I'm not a fan of the national security state, if you will, but let's not pretend ourselves that the United States doesn't have a global intelligence apparatus capable of surveilling just, you know, just about anywhere, and does not need Israel to be its eyes and ears in the Middle east or elsewhere.

B (20:37)

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Head over to agoristtaxadvice.com woods all right, so I want to talk about this topic in the future as well with other guests because as I said, this is the debate that nobody for some reason wants to have. Even though this is a practical question, either the relationship is beneficial or it isn't, it seems like reasonable question to ask. I've been going back reading some of the history of the United States and Israel back to the late 40s, from the very moment of Truman, Harry Truman, implicitly extending recognition to the new state of Israel, apparently 11 minutes after it officially declared its independence. And from that moment you can see specialists, domestic policy advisors, officials throughout the US Government, reasonably certain, George Marshall among them, all speaking about tremendous pressure that the President is under to take a particular side, well, the Israeli side, of course, but to adopt particular policies vis a vis Israel. And some of that pressure, well, especially early on we read Clark Clifford, who was a domestic policy advisor to Truman, just frankly saying, you have a whole lot of Jewish voters and they're going to want you to do this. And you have people in the State Department, other U.S. officials, saying that is not the reason that the commander in chief should be making decisions. It shouldn't be a matter of we have to balance domestic political considerations. We should do what's best for U.S. interests. And you see these words, the words pressure and influence used over and over again throughout the US Government at various levels, describing what's happening with the president and Middle east policymaking. That word pressure comes up over and over again. And sometimes they're talking about on the domestic side because they think there's a voting bloc that votes in this way. Now, parentheses today, I would say that it's not the case that American Jews vote as a bloc in favor of policies like the war in Iran. I think to the contrary, they would be more likely to vote against it, a whole lot of them. So that's not even clear that that holds. It could still be that there are big donors and that sort of thing, but in terms of domestic politics, it's not so obvious that an ultra, ultra Likud position is a winner politically. But there's that. But as time goes on, the word pressure then starts to be used to refer to the government of Israel exerting pressure on the United States, not domestic pressure groups as much as the government of Israel. And a lot of people will say, well, how dare you accuse Donald Trump of being influenced by the government of Israel. You are depriving him of. Then they use this left wing word agency. You know, can't he make his own decisions? And ultimately, of course, the buck does stop with him. And doggone it, he should be making his own decisions. But I think it's. We're capable of saying metaphysically, yes, he absolutely can make his own decisions, but in the real world, he does seem to have been put. I don't know what the nature of the pressure is, but it does certainly seem as if he's been influenced by Israel and by certain hawks in the US And I think in his case, he's uniquely susceptible to pressure because I think he's in a sense like a George W. Bush, that he's not super learned, he's not particularly book smart. And so it's a case of it can be a case of whoever speaks to him the most recently gets his ear. I mean, you saw that Vivek Ramaswamy talked to Trump like One day before, he gave a speech about cbdc, central bank, digital currencies. Trump hadn't known a thing about that. The day before, Vivek tells him, no, no, no, we've gotta be dead set against it. And he comes out completely against it the next day. So I think he is a very suggestible guy. I don't think there's anything wrong with noting the obvious about it.

A (26:16)

I would completely agree. I think we know now Trump is often, this might be oversimplifying it, but often influenced by the last person he spoke to. He's just somebody who is amenable to being influenced, if you put it that way. But I want to go back to your point about pressure and so on, because it's really important and we often are told, you know, oh, this pressure doesn't exist, so on and so forth. For a project that I'm working on, I read through Harry Truman's memoir, very long and dry, but if I could read one sentence to you here where he's talking about the pressure that he faced at the time for recognizing Israel. And he said the facts were not only that were there pressure movements around the United nations unlike anything that had been seen there before, but that the White House too was subjected to a constant barrage. The persistence of a few of the extreme Zionist leaders, actuated by political motives and engaging in political threats, disturbed and annoyed me. This is from Harry Truman's very long memoirs. And this is that second of those three reasons that I gave you why the special relationship exists and what makes it special. This is the second part, the domestic political part. And as we've progressed since 1948, those three reasons have oscillated in terms of importance. So at the beginning of the US Israel relationship, the strategic part wasn't even a thing. It was purely or 99%, this idea that there was a normative connection with Israel. And the domestic political part, the pickle

B (27:54)

that we seem to be in. And here I do say we, because I don't say we when I say we bombed Iran, because I don't feel like I bombed Iran. But we now are all in a bit of a problem here because, and I'm pretty sure you've pointed this out at this point, the regime in Iran now is, if anything, more defiant for obvious reasons, and is more likely to pursue a nuclear weapon for even more obvious reasons than before. And so given that, they say that the objectives of this conflict with Iran have been crystal clear from the beginning, but they've been anything but crystal clear, as you And I both know, and it certainly sounded as if one of the desired outcomes was the replacement of the current regime with some something else. We don't even know what the something else was, but it would have to be one that would absolutely not pursue a nuclear weapon and be friendlier to the west and to Israel. That certainly seemed like that was what they were looking for. But now that I think the US government and Israel have got themselves in a position in which in order to accomplish the goals that they at least implicitly seem to have set out for themselves, I don't know that short of nuclear weapons you could accomplish that at this point. And at least the US doesn't want to be the pariah of the world, so probably would not go that route. So if you have to stop short of replacing the regime, well, you've now made the regime worse. Yes, it's true you've degraded their conventional military capabilities, but, well, that's a short term outcome. They'll rebuild those. So is the result now that we're just going to have a war with Iran every five years? I mean, what could the future possibly look like in this situation?

A (29:45)

Yeah, I would say going off the point first about this disconnect between, you know, we've seen many tactical successes. I don't think there was any doubt that the United States and Israel could drop a lot of bombs, kill a lot of people, destroy a lot of stuff. But it was always a question of to what strategic end. And of all the various justifications that we saw or heard for this war, who took precedence? The nuclear program and the regime. And on both ends, I think we have pretty clearly not reached those ends. The highly enriched uranium is still in Iranian hands. They will likely retain this after the war. You can't bomb away research and development know how anyways. They had the technological know how of how to proceed with their program. That was why everybody really was stressing a political solution. Because that's really the only way to quote, unquote, stop the program was a diplomatic solution, but the regime now is hardened. It is led primarily by a more extreme cadre, the IRGC guys, Mujtaba Khamenei, the new Supreme Leader. There was actually a great deal of controversy around whether he was supposed to be Supreme Leader. If Ayatollah Khamenei would have died, not in the context of a war, I think we could be pretty safe in saying that Mujtaba Khamenei would not have been Supreme Leader. He didn't have the religious credentials. The Islamic Republic was founded on rejecting dynastic rule, but given the ongoing war, the IRGC was able to essentially force this guy through. So you're now dealing with a more hardened regime. The leader of this regime now, Mojtaba Khamenei, has had his father, his mother, his wife and his daughter killed. I don't think he's going to be ready to sit down with the United States for meaningful negotiations, if that's even possible. So it begs this question that you mentioned earlier about American and Israeli interests. I would say the foremost American interest right now is not getting bogged down in a long, prolonged war of attrition with Iran that they are positioned better than we are to win. It's on their home turf. For them, victory is just survival. And we've already, you know, we've already seen what can happen, you know, given the impacts on the global energy market. And if Trump doubles down and sends ground troops and so on and so forth, then I think you're going to see that get a whole lot worse because Iran has been holding back in certain capacities in terms of going all out on energy infrastructure and so on in the region. If Trump escalates, they will likely escalate in kind. So I think the foremost interest for the United States is not getting bogged down in another costly Middle east war. But from the Israeli perspective, the Israelis want the United States to continue destroying Iran's conventional capabilities. And Israel wants to be able to adopt its so called mowing the lawn strategy that it adopts in Gaza and Lebanon, which is this idea that we'll launch periodic military raids to continue degrading our enemy and keep them in a state of chaos.

B (32:44)

Yeah, exactly.

A (32:46)

And this is something that a lot of us raise the alarm about prior to the war even starting, because we said, hey, the Iranians hear this rhetoric, right? Like, they hear people say, like, you know, the Israeli officials talk about mowing the lawn in Iran, they hear this, and Iran is going to want to demonstrate to the United States and to Israel that you can't do that here. And the only way to do that is to inflict pain on the United States and on Israel. And for Iran, the key of their strategy right now is to raise the political and economic costs on Donald Trump of this war, primarily through the energy market, until he feels the heat and needs to back down. And in that sense, the Iranians have the advantage here. It seems that Washington was quite unprepared for this, even though just about anybody could tell you that Iran was going to target energy infrastructure first and foremost and go after the Strait of Hormuz. But now we're in this strange position where Trump wants to see some sort of victory, but also in an ideal world, get out before things get a whole lot worse. And if I had the ear of the president, what I would say is take the tactical victories that you've achieved and get out. Try to make a deal with Iran here. Recognize that the only options that you have, primarily further escalation, are not going to yield any further benefit. We've reached the point of diminishing returns and do not fall for the trap of a prolonged war with Iran.

B (34:15)

It's hard to see what more you could get at this point. And as I say, you walk away. And a critic could say, well, yes, we know, as you say, we know you're physically capable of dropping bombs. Nobody needed that demonstration. You could do that, and that could harm the conventional capabilities of Iran. But you have not made it impossible for them to, or you have not installed a regime that you could be assured would never conceivably have a nuclear weapon. It's still quite conceivable you haven't even more hostile regime now. So it's hard to walk away from that and say we're better off than we were before. And not to mention, by all accounts, other than Witkoff and Kushner, it seems to me, by all accounts, there was, if you're concerned about nuclear weapons in the possession of Iran, there was a pretty good deal developing on the table, such that the Omani representative who is helping facilitate the talks went and talked to JD Vance, tried to explain to him what was going on, that it looked like it was a genuine breakthrough. And incidentally, you can say a lot of things about Iran like, oh, well, they can't be trusted to keep this or that. But really, which is the side that can't be trusted? And by the way, I'm here in Las Vegas. I was waiting to get my rental car the other day. So I'm stupidly reading the news on Twitter, which is where I, you know, I get a lot of newsletter ideas. I read what people I follow write. And somehow I was in this thread in which somebody described Iran as 90 million radicalized Islamists. And I thought it is unbelievable what Americans have allowed themselves to be snookered into believing. I mean, even the official position of the US government is not that Iran is 90 million radicalized Islamists. I don't know where that came from. I don't even think Mark Levin thinks that, because, remember, after all Initially, they wanted to, quote, liberate these people, which means they believe at least some fraction of them are not, quote, radicalized Islamists. If you look at or go to Tehran, that is not what you encounter. But yet, for some reason, somebody put it really well that we have a chunk of America that is so misled that they brainwash themselves, they propagandize themselves with arguments that our own government isn't even making. But anyway, I'm throwing too much at you at once. But for some reason that enraged me so much that this person is so out of it, and yet that person has just as much a vote as you do. John Hoffman.

A (36:58)

Iran is ideologically diverse. You know, there's a lot of genuine opposition to the regime, and a lot of people do not want clerical rule. Of course, the regime does have a certain base within the country. But the story of Iran, for anybody who studies Iran, will tell you the very first thing is diversity. I mean, even the 1979 revolution itself was not a predetermined Islamist victory. There was a lot of competing factions, nationalists, communists, just, you know, ordinary folks, middle class. So this idea that we're up against a country of 93 million radicals who want to get a nuke tomorrow to wipe out every American is just beyond the pit.

B (37:44)

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A (40:07)

It's hard to pin it on any one individual factor, but when I was in high school, you know, my generation, I'm 30 years old, we grew up only knowing. Yeah. Yes. Don't let the lack of hair fool you.

B (40:22)

Well, I mean, I don't know when I hear, you know, you're a research fellow, I don't know for some reason that there's so much dignity to that that I assume you have to be 40 to be that. Okay.

A (40:31)

No. So I finished my PhD program early, thankfully. But, you know, for me, it was growing up Primarily in post 9 11America and being sold a bill of goods that just when you start pulling at the threads of these narratives, they just collapse almost immediately. And, you know, I went off to George Mason and started studying this and had some great professors, and it was one of the few things I was good at. And then George Mason offered for me to stay and do a Master's and a PhD program. And to me, preserving the American republic requires more, perhaps, than anything else, curtailing the warfare state abroad. And this is something I genuinely believe in, and it's something that, you know, the Cato Institute believes in. And it was kind of, you know, when I left my PhD program and came to Cato, it was a great home for me to push for a foreign policy that works on behalf of the American people, not elites in Washington.

B (41:36)

She So you must have been five or six when 911 happened.

A (41:40)

Yes, six.

B (41:42)

So I was. When it's not the same thing, obviously, but I remember being 8 years old when John Lennon was shot and I came home from school and my mother told me all about it and I vaguely knew John Lennon was in the Beatles, but it didn't really mean anything to me. But I still distinctly remember my mother telling me about that. And that was of much less significance than 911 as a 6 year old. I'm just curious, like, were they talking about it in school? Did they know how to talk to 6 year olds about something like that?

A (42:12)

The only thing that I remember from that day was school ending, us getting out early and my parents being very concerned because we had family members who lived in and around D.C. and up in New York. So that's really all I remember from that day. But I think growing up, hearing these narratives about existential threats in the Middle east or the narrative that we just spoke about 90 million Islamist extremists in Iran ready to come at our throats, for me, these narratives were often put forward or the special relationship with Israel put forward and just taken as a given. Nobody growing up especially, you know, challenged these narratives, wanted to get, you know, behind the real roots of the problems. And to me it was just far too simplistic. And I think we see now today the United States continuing a lot of the mistakes and failed policies that led to, you know, previous disasters. But I think the American people, if Washington isn't changing, I think the American people from the bottom up are starting to recognize the disasters of U.S. foreign policy. And I think are truly my generation and the generation below me are truly fed up.

B (43:33)

Yeah, I understand that. I'm telling you, and I'm sorry, I don't mean to sound like your dad, but I was already teaching at the time of 9, 11, and I'm telling you, the before and after, it really was a. It was a major change, I think, in the psyche of Americans because we really had had this kind of glorious independence from the rest of the world in the sense that we had the, you know, we had the two oceans, the whole thing. And then suddenly this radical vulnerability appeared on the scene. And at that time, of course, a lot of Americans could not for the life of them fathom what was going on. Virtually none of them knew anything about the recent history of the past several decades that would have involved a foe that despised the US regime that much that it would carry out an atrocity like that. And that was a moment where I remember thinking to myself, well, I mean, for all we knew, this was going to keep happening. There were going to be more attacks. How were we to know? But it really was a question of, well, now the question has to be posed to America. Has to be posed. It's either live like this and maintain your empire or be a republic. Again, be a normal country. And, you know, there's no guarantee that bad guys won't still come after you. But the history of US involvement abroad over the past 75 years is one of massive goodwill toward the United States in the Middle East. Massive goodwill being not only squandered, but completely inverted to the point where the US is viewed so negatively in place after place that, yes, I understand, if somebody did something bad to me or bombed my town, I wouldn't just go out and shoot random people in response to that. I get that, like, that is an alien way to handle situations like this. I totally get that. I don't excuse that in any way. But what I was thinking at the time was, it's not a matter of excusing it. It's a matter of just knowing this is going to happen. If you play the Empire game, this is going to happen. And so the question is, is it worth it to the American public, not to policymakers, not to war profiteers, not to foreign countries? Is it in the interest of the United States to play the empire game when we know what the collateral damage of it is, apart from the expense, the loss of life, the pointlessness of it all, the opportunity cost, all the things that could have been built but weren't built because the money was squandered? At some point we have to have this conversation. Do we want an empire or not? And even after 9, 11, in the years that went by, nobody sat down with America and spoke frankly and honestly and said, if we want an empire, there are going to be costs. I guess Ron Paul came the closest to, in effect, putting that to America. How much do you really want this empire? Doesn't benefit you in any way. The British Empire did not benefit the average person in Britain in any way other than making him feel puffed up and proud of himself. Well, that's cool, but in terms of your pocketbook, this is not helping you. We don't get these conversations because we're never spoken to frankly by anybody in the regime. And why would we be? We're spoken to in cartoons. We're spoken to in ways that flatter us. Oh, the only reason that our government might be disliked around the world is that we're all just super awesome and they're envious of us. It's all just crazy nonsense. It turns out the rest of the world doesn't like Hillary Clinton any more than we do.

A (47:09)

You know, you're not wrong. And a lot of times I'm asked in interviews, you know, about the war and stuff like that, and it is all very depressing and a lot of doom and gloomy, but I think there is room for optimism. If we look at polls in the United States, I think the American people, yeah, like, I think this is coming to the forefront whereby Americans are fed up with this. They recognize this disconnect between empire and republic. And I think this whole ethos of America first, you know, if American interests are the safety, prosperity and freedom of the American people, I believe empire undermines all three of them. And I think the American people are starting to agree. It creates enemies faster than we can deter them. It squanders our resources and it grows the executive and the overall, you know, national security state here at home to the detriment of our civil liberties. And I think we're starting to see the formation of a very interesting coalition left and right and, you know, academic nerds like myself who are starting to push back and are starting to get real traction.

B (48:23)

I guess the remaining problem is that even though you're right about the changes in attitudes and what the public opinion polling shows, it's like it doesn't matter which side you pull the lever for because you're still going to get those policies. The question is, are these trends in public opinion ever going to manifest themselves in real life, in real policy making? I mean, maybe eventually, but who knows how long that'll take?

A (48:47)

No, that's the problem is the political capital is not behind this new way of thinking. Yet I think we're moving in that direction. I get asked all the time, you know, when do you think this change will happen? And, I mean, it's truly impossible to know. But the more that the American people are able to put forward these alternative ideas, challenge these conventional narratives, not be pressured into silence and, you know, to really question what should be America's role in the world? What are we after? What does it mean to be an American? And so on and so forth, I think more people are asking those questions today, and I'm hopeful in the sense that this leads to better policies, even if we're fighting an uphill battle. And it takes a while. I think now this constituency cannot be ignored.

B (49:42)

John, how do people follow you?

A (49:44)

Sure. So they can follow me on Twitter. My Twitter handle is at Hoffman H O F F M A N the number 8 and then John J O

B (49:52)

N. All right, so I'll link to that. Tom woods.com 27:47 well, I appreciate your time. As I say, I wanted to talk about things that would still be of importance. Even if by the time people hear this, the whole thing has somehow miraculously wound down, these are still open questions that we're going to have to reckon with one way or another. So, John Hoffman, thanks so much.

A (50:14)

Thanks, Tom. Always an honor.

B (50:16)

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,

A (50:20)

make yourself

B (50:20)

and those you love less vulnerable to the regime, both mentally and physically.

A (50:25)

Get more forbidden information tomsfree books.com and be sure to subscribe to the show wherever you listen. See you next time.

B (50:41)

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