Glenn debated Alan Dershowitz last week in New York City on whether the U.S. should strike Iran's nuclear facilities. The debate was hosted by The Soho Forum and Reason. You can listen to the full debate HERE. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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| So the reason I began the debate at that podium by reading a bunch of studies and historical examples is because I know how easy it is to sell wars to A population that has been hearing for decades that there's some country we are about to attack, we want to attack, who's so evil and is our enemy. | |
| And we constantly watch the government and the media being able to sell these wars to people by getting them all pent up with fear-mongering and then fake promises about how easy the war is going to be. | |
| And that's why I started by reading how since 2005, everything you've heard tonight He says the agreement with Iran, a potential agreement with Iran, is in the past. | |
| It is in the past. | |
| That's why we should learn from it. | |
| He who forgets history is doomed to repeat its mistakes. | |
| strike them in the next two months, it means they're absolutely going to proliferate. | |
| And none of that has ever happened. | |
| He says the agreement with Iran, a potential agreement with Iran is in the past. | |
| It is in the past. | |
| That's why we should learn from it. | |
| He who forgets history is doomed to repeat its mistakes. | |
| Everything that I read you about the weapons inspectors, about the agencies, about Western Europe, all said the same thing, that when we integrated Iran back into the international community, they opened up their nuclear facilities, let inspectors in, and there was no progress being let inspectors in, and there was no progress being made toward nuclear weapons because countries only seek nuclear weapons when they feel threatened. | |
| That was the example I focused on so much because I knew Professor Dershowitz would rely on it so much, hold it up as the model that he wants to show you. | |
| Oh look, Israel struck the Iraqi facility in 1981, let's do it again. | |
| The problem was, as everything I've read you demonstrated, is that it was the striking of Iraq's nuclear facility in 1981 that led to this massive attempt, this increased attempt on the part of Saudi Arabia and Iraq and other countries around the world to try and get nuclear weapons. | |
| The more we to tell the world, we are the United States, we bomb whoever we want. | |
| We go around the world and we just bomb whoever we feel like bombing. | |
| That is when other countries are going to be incentivized. | |
| Now, it is amazing to me to sit in 2024 and hear someone make all these story promises about how easy regime change will be, about how great it will be. | |
| You have so many examples of regime change words that have been sold to you in the last 20 years. | |
| Everything he's saying about what will happen in Iran, oh everything will flourish in the Middle East, there will be peace in the Middle East, everything is going to break out, that was all said with Iraq. | |
| And the only real outcome of regime change in Iraq, aside from all of the deaths that it caused, was that there was a power vacuum in the Middle East that led to ISIS and it drove Iraq further into the arms of the Iranians, and we spent 15 years and trillions of dollars in endless wars when we were told, like he's trying to convince you now, oh, it's a very easy operation. | |
| We're just going to be a month there. | |
| We're just going to bomb them, and then we're going to win, and we're going to walk away. | |
| Now, I do think that the point of the United States and the role that we're playing in the world is one we haven't spent much time focusing on, but one that we should end with. | |
| Because what he's saying is, anytime that we look at any place in the world, we don't like the government, the government's not doing what we say. | |
| Again, we don't have any problems with dictators or with tyrannical governments. | |
| In fact, the core of American foreign policy, since the end of World War II, throughout the Cold War, and then into the War on Terror, is we want dictatorial regimes. | |
| It's much easier to install them because they're there to keep the population, many of whom would be anti-American because of their perception of all the wars that we start, under control. | |
| Those dictators are there in all these wonderful countries that we're told we should replicate, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt and all those Gulf states. | |
| They're there to keep the population down, and we're happy with it. | |
| We support those countries. | |
| We don't go around the world attacking other countries or trying to remove their government because we want to give those people freedom and democracy. | |
| We only do it when we see a government that doesn't do our bidding. | |
| And that was fine to do at the end of World War II when we had supremacy. | |
| Maybe it was fine when the Cold War fell and we had supremacy in the 1990s. | |
| This is now a multipolar world. | |
| If you look at why so many countries are going to China, are joining BRICS, are leaving the Western influence, it's because of the resentment that this kind of mentality is spawning. | |
| What do you think the world is going to do as they watch the United States continuously assert its unilateral and singular right to start wars against other countries who are not attacking us? | |
| Because we have been told over and over since birth That our country is the shining beacon on the hill. | |
| That we are the emblem of democracy. | |
| That it's only other countries, those bad countries, like Iran and Russia and China, where bad things happen. | |
| We're the good countries. | |
| Our wars are good. | |
| I think if there's anything that the last 20 years of history should tell us is that we have to start thinking critically about all of this propaganda, thinking critically about what the role of our own country is in the world, and all of the devastation and misery and suffering and bloodshed and instability that happens | |
| Whenever our government or our media convinces us to support yet another war, this would be the worst of all of those wars because of how big Iran is, because of how sophisticated their military is. |