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Oct. 2, 2024 - System Update - Glenn Greenwald
01:26:26
Iran's Missile Retaliation Against Israel: What Does It Mean For The U.S. & The Region? Plus: VP Debate Reaction On Locals

TIMESTAMPS:  Intro (0:00) Massive Escalation in the Middle East (7:46) Outro (1:24:27) - - - Watch full episodes on Rumble, streamed LIVE 7pm ET. Become part of our Locals community - - -  Follow Glenn: Twitter Instagram Follow System Update:  Twitter Instagram TikTok Facebook LinkedIn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Good evening, it's Tuesday, October 1st.
Welcome to a new October 1st.
Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight... Iran earlier today launched roughly 200 ballistic missiles toward Israel in retaliation for numerous Israeli acts, including Israel's destruction of Iran's embassy in Damascus, its assassination of a Hamas leader invited to Iran for its presidential inauguration, the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and the military invasion this week of Israeli forces into the sovereign country of Lebanon.
That is to say nothing of the now year-long bombing campaign by Israel of Gaza that has resulted in the complete destruction of its civilian infrastructure as well as the deaths of tens of thousands of Gazans.
The message Iran sent to Israel today is one that is quite common and foundational to international affairs.
No country can simply go around bombing and killing and invading other countries at will, as Israel has been doing, without suffering consequences inside of its own country.
The CIA has long had a term to describe that reality, blowback, And many regarded the 9-11 attack in the United States, the October 7th attack in Israel, and today's missile attack from Tehran as examples of this unavoidable reality.
Now, this is the second time Iran has launched missiles toward Israel in the past five months.
Back in April, the Iranians purposely used some of their slowest and most primitive drones and cruise missiles that it knew would be almost entirely intercepted by the U.S. and its allies while doing no damage.
A result that was further guaranteed by the fact that Iran gave the U.S. and others advanced warning of the attack with enough time to position their military assets to intercept those missiles.
And that's exactly what happened.
Almost none fell, let alone injured any Israelis.
But this time, earlier today, the Iranians actually used more sophisticated weapons, guided cruise missiles that can reach Israel in 12 minutes.
And while some were shot down by a combination of US Air Forces and the Israeli Iron Dome, many were not shot down and landed and exploded in parts of Israel, including in Tel Aviv.
Still, Iran's attack was clearly designed to be very limited.
Rather than copying Israel's tactics in Gaza and Beirut, namely purposely flattening apartment buildings with hundreds of innocent people inside, or bombing schools and refugee camps, the Iranians aimed almost entirely at legitimate military targets.
Not a single Israeli was killed, at least as of now, or even injured by today's attack.
In fact, the only reported death from all of those missiles was of a Palestinian man in the West Bank killed by shrapnel.
Indeed, Israel killed far more Palestinians in Gaza today.
Let me say that again. Israel today killed far more Palestinians in Gaza, more than a dozen, Then the Iranian missiles managed to even injure Israelis, the total of which was zero.
Nonetheless, this attack is being treated as some sort of apocalyptic and unprecedented event, not only by Israel, but also by its bipartisan sponsors and puppets and financiers inside the US government.
Many American politicians who have long craved war with Iran going all the way back to the invasion of Iraq.
And by that I don't mean an Israeli war with Iran, but a U.S. war with Iran, are exploiting today's attack to insist that the U.S. must now join Israel in imposing, quote, devastating consequences on Tehran and other Iranian cities.
In other words, for the U.S. to wage yet another war on behalf of this One foreign country in Tel Aviv.
Now, there are all sorts of important questions and serious implications to consider from today's events.
First among them is, who inside the US government is actually making these decisions to involve the US more and more in Israel's various wars with its neighbors?
The person certainly is not Joe Biden.
Who spends his days drooling and vacantly staring into space at the beach in Rehoboth, Delaware, nor is the only other person in the executive branch who was theoretically elected, the Vice President Kamala Harris, involved given that she spends all of her time on campaigning to replace Joe Biden.
And how dangerous is this situation for the region, for the U.S., and for the world?
We'll examine all of that tonight.
Then, the Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance of Ohio and Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walts of Minnesota will participate in a debate tonight against one another in New York.
Vice presidential debates typically have little to no effect on the outcome of elections and this debate in particular will likely be even more overshadowed than normal by the events in the Middle East.
I have no doubt a big part of the debate As is true for virtually every presidential election in recent history, will involve arguing over which party, which candidate loves Israel and is more devoted to Israel more.
Now, once that debate is done, I will have reactions as I've done for the prior two presidential debates and for the conventions, and we will have a reaction immediately following the conclusion of that vice president's debate.
And for tonight, at least, we will put that reaction that I will tape or broadcast actually live exclusively on our local platforms for our members, and then we'll likely cover the debate even more on tomorrow night's show based on whether or not anything meaningful or significant happened Before we get to all that, a few programming notes. First of all, we're encouraging our viewers to download the Rumble app.
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We have a lot of exclusive content, including Michael Tracy, who will be tonight at the vice presidential debate and in the spin room afterwards.
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As a reminder, given that we will have the reaction after the vice president's debate posted exclusively on Locals, actually broadcast live exclusively on Locals, that will be in lieu of the normal after show that we do immediately following tonight's show.
For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
I can't recall many things quite as surreal as watching Israel, the country that has spent the last year mercilessly bombing not just the civilian the country that has spent the last year mercilessly bombing not just the civilian population, but all of the civilian infrastructure of Gaza day after day after day without the slightest to
Essentially making Gaza completely uninhabitable for a long time for the civilian population there as was intended.
There was a new study published today by Oxfam, the part of the United Nations that tracked such things that documented the fact that more women and children were killed in the first year of this Israeli war in Gaza than any conflict in decades, certainly in this century.
This is a country, Israel, that as well just got done invading Lebanon, its neighbor, after all this sanctimony that we've heard from the United States for years about how borders are sacred.
Things like the Russian invasion of Ukraine, invasion of a sovereign state, or things from the brutal, distant past of the 19th century, even though many of the people saying that, were responsible for the invasion of Iraq.
And now suddenly, the United States is unbothered by the invasion of the sovereign country.
They're supporting it, cheering it, financing it, and arming it.
And so here you have a country, Israel, that has not just been bombing Gaza, is not now just bombing Beirut, flattening apartment buildings, killing close to a thousand people just in the last week alone in Lebanon, is bombing Syria whenever it wands various parts of Damascus.
And then somehow they just turn around today and depict themselves as this kind of besieged victim.
As they were just minding their own business, not harming a fly, and out of nowhere Because they're an apocalyptic cult or the religious extremists, Iran decided to launch a very limited and targeted attack on Israel that didn't harm a hair on the head of a single Israeli, let alone kill any Israelis.
Even though if Iran really wanted to, they obviously have the capability to do so.
And now all of the discourse in the United States, in Western Europe, and in Israel, the very small slice of the world typically referred to as the international community, Are all rushing to compete with one another to who can vow with more passion and belligerence that they stand with Israel, that they're ready to fight for Israel.
As though this all just took place out of nowhere.
Sort of like as though September 11th took place out of nowhere.
Why did they attack us? We're just a peaceful country who never bothers anybody.
Whereas if October 7th happened in a vacuum, oh, everything was so great between the Israelis and the Palestinians until October 7th.
Things were so peaceful. Everybody was so happy.
And it's out of nowhere.
Hamas attacked for no reason, no apparent reason whatsoever.
And now the same discourse is being offered to explain the Iranian attack today on Israel.
And I think it's very important to note that this discourse, this narrative, Is only offered inside the United States and Western Europe and Israel.
The rest of the world does not see things this way at all, at all.
But American politicians have decided that even though they constantly claim that China is this great existential adversary of the United States, That we don't care about isolating ourselves from the world.
We don't care about alienating the rest of the world in order to stand with Israel or to fuel the war in Ukraine, even if it means alienating countries in every region on every continent of the world and driving them to China, which is actually what's been happening.
It's a complete contradiction of alleged interests All in the name of defending this one foreign country and tying ourselves to them and to everywhere that they have.
Now, just to give you a few of the basic media accounts that described exactly what happened today.
Here from The Guardian, you see the headline, Iran attacks Israel.
And This is actually a video from the Guardian showing the launch of a bunch of ballistic missiles.
As I said, ballistic missiles are much faster, more powerful, more controlled than the very slower cruise missiles and drones that the Israelis purposely used in April, pretty much all of which were intercepted easily.
A lot of these missiles shot by Iran today are no joke.
They're very fast. They shot 200 of them, confusing the Iron Dome, making it impossible to intercept even a majority of them.
and some of the video here from the Guardian demonstrates what it looked like over Tel Aviv.
The Iron Dome, but most of them freely falling to Earth and then exploding once they hit their target.
I mean, there were dozens of these missiles that you could just watch.
There you see some of them just falling right into the ground, hitting, blowing things up as they explode.
These were the first images.
It looked extremely severe.
Those were Tel Aviv.
This is what was happening over Jerusalem.
And you can see the extent of this, and obviously people reacted to this as though it was some kind of apocalypse.
Wow, this is like a major attack on Israel.
Now, you might recall that the one in April was viewed similarly when they saw all those missiles aimed at Israel.
There was all this kind of discourse about how this changes history forever.
This is gonna, you know, explode the Middle East into this conflagration of fire and brimstone.
And yet once people realized how limited that attack was, how purposely primitive it was designed to symbolically retaliate but not in fact retaliate, it took people just a couple of days to rein in that rhetoric.
And I suspect I at least hope, maybe don't expect, but at least hope that once people understand what actually happened here as opposed to the immediate visual that was depicted, the same thing will happen, namely that almost all of these missiles were precisely aimed at things like air bases of the IDF,
the Mossad headquarters, Unlike what Israel has been doing in Beirut and Gaza, deliberately targeting residential buildings, blowing up entire neighborhoods of civilians, blowing up hospitals and schools and refugee camps run by the UN,
ensuring the death of thousands upon thousands upon thousands of civilians, this is exactly the opposite of what Iran did, namely, clearly purposely targeting Military installations to the point where not even a single Israeli was killed because they had telegraphed in advance that this was coming.
The Israelis were able to vacate those places, put people in bunkers.
Here is, this too is from I believe The Guardian.
We can check on what the source of This is a recorded video from somebody who was in Tel Aviv using their cell phone to track some of these missiles.
So you can see a lot of these missiles are falling and exploding, meaning the vaunted iron dome was not a match for a lot of these missiles given how fast they were falling.
These missiles can travel from Iran to Israel in 12 minutes.
And when that many are shot, it is impossible for the Iron Dome to intercept them, especially given how fast they are.
Here's a little more information from the New York Times report earlier today.
Iran launches about 200 ballistic missiles at Israel.
The attack, which ended shortly after it began on Tuesday evening, was a sharp escalation in the long-simmering conflict between Israel and Iran and could tip the region further into turmoil.
The article reads, quote, Iran fired at least 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday evening.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps said in a statement that the missile attack had been in retaliation for the assassination of Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, Hamas's political leader, and an Iranian commander.
The Iranian commander who died in the bombing in Beirut.
The statement said Iran would launch more missiles if Iran were attacked.
So in other words, Iran has made clear, like they did in April, this is the end of our retaliation.
We retaliated, we stated the reasons why, and even though we didn't kill a single Israeli, this is the end of our retaliation unless you come and attack us and then we're going to retaliate even further and presumably with a lot more aggression the next time.
So essentially it's up to the United States and to Israel to determine the extent to which this escalates.
Obviously there's a lot of different options that the Israelis can use.
The Israelis will retaliate.
They almost have to. The question is, will they treat it as some kind of all-out war and just start bombing oil refineries in Iran or nuclear facilities in Iran?
Or will they just do a kind of tit for tat?
Which is not really within the Israeli political culture at the moment.
Here from CNN, just to give you a sense for I think the most significant part of this is actually watching missiles fly over Tel Aviv because in a lot of ways the Israeli Social contract with Israel, with the Israelis is, look, we're a right-wing government.
We're going to be extremely aggressive in how we treat our neighbors.
And now we're not even going to pretend to be interested in a two-state solution.
In fact, we're going to annex the West Bank and force out every Arab from Gaza, which is obviously the real purpose of that war.
It has nothing to do with hostages.
And in exchange, we promise you that you'll get to just kind of continue your life, your great life.
In Tel Aviv, you'll get to have your nice restaurants and your dance parties and your beaches because those are secular Jews who don't have these grand visions of greater Israel.
And that's the way that you get the population to support these wars.
It's always the case that as long as the government wages war in a way that doesn't really affect the population, you rarely see the kind of protests that you see when the population is affected.
Compare, for example, the anger and protests over the Vietnam War where young men in huge numbers were being drafted to go fight a war in a jungle for reasons that nobody understood.
And how angry that made them and how many protest movements there were over it.
How much disruption there was.
Versus the war on terror when there was barely any impact to the United States.
The only people fighting were people who were voluntarily enlisted in the United States military.
There was no draft. And there was a little political pushback, but no real opposition.
If a country can go around bombing everybody else, as long as the population stays unaffected and safe, They're always going to be fine with it.
Why would they care? That's the reason why the U.S. population has been basically indifferent to how many countries the United States has bombed over the last 30 years because almost never other than 9-11 and a couple other very small incidents did it ever come back and affect U.S. soil.
And even though No Israelis were harmed or killed.
Seeing how many missiles the Iranians were able to fly over and land in Tel Aviv I think was psychologically shocking and probably a little terrifying in a way that might be actually healthy for the Israelis to feel given how much they've been imposing that exact sort of terror and far, far, far, far, far worse On their neighbors for at least the last year and obviously for a lot longer.
So here is a video from CNN where Jim Sciuto was on a Roof in Tel Aviv, obviously thinking that he could safely stay there while reporting on air live on CNN while Dana Bash, the hardcore Israel supporter, was hosting this show.
And you can see the reaction of Jim Sciuto that probably replicated in many, many Israelis in Tel Aviv who always thought they were so protected and safe when they realized that actually they may not be so safe.
And now what we're seeing in addition to those intercepts is we're seeing fragments falling to the ground.
It's like a deadly fireworks display over Tel Aviv.
And you're talking about Tel Aviv, Jim.
We are looking at pictures right now.
We are looking at pictures of Tel Aviv, what you're describing.
Oh, God. Okay, guys, we got to get off the roof.
These are coming down. Now, let me just say, before I show you the rest of this, do you hear that CNN reaction?
Dana Bash was like, oh, my God.
Oh, just like seeing a missile explode in Israel.
She's like, I mean, Dana Bash, you might remember, after October 7th, went on air and, like, recited a four-minute Jewish prayer.
And needless to say, she never did anything like that.
Over the many times that Israel has bombed its neighbors, killed children in Gaza, she has an emotional investment in Israel like a lot of CNN personalities do and you can see it manifest there.
She's gasping on air while she watches something happening in Israel that is a tiny minute fraction of what has been happening in Gaza over the last year and Beirut over the last 10 days.
And other places in the Middle East, including Syria, that Israelis attack with complete compunction.
And just to give you a sense for how alarmed they were, watch the rest of this.
Oh, Jesus. Oh, God.
Okay, guys, we've got to get off the roof.
These are coming down right next to us here.
Please do, Jim. Please do.
They're coming down. One just about...
We've got to go inside.
Jim, please take cover.
Can you see missiles falling everywhere, flying through the sky?
We are listening and we are watching.
All right, so that's how CNN reacts when they see a few missiles falling near Tel Aviv.
And the difference in their reaction could not be any starker or more glaringly different than when they hear about or talk about or see huge numbers of dead babies and children and women and innocent men as we've seen day after day after day since October 7th in places like Gaza.
Yeah.
Now, one of the Things I've seen a lot of people saying today is that the reason there were no civilian casualties in Israel, even though a lot of military targets were attacked by Iran, is because the Israelis are more civilized And therefore they don't put their military installations in civilian areas or in other words use civilians as human shields the way we hear almost every day that people that Hamas does or that Hezbollah does and the only reason why Israel has to kill so many civilians is because Hezbollah and Hamas engage in this extremely evil act never before seen in history of putting their military installations near civilian infrastructure Now,
the whole claim is so preposterous.
There is no area in Gaza where you can sort of mark off and say, here are the military installations.
You put a neon sign up, military here.
Gaza is one of the most densely packed places on the earth.
It reminded me of the US trying to fight the Taliban who are basically just ingrained into the Afghan population.
They were Afghans who believed they were defending their country first from the Soviet invasion and then from the US. There was no clear demarcation where the Taliban said, oh, we have our military here and then our civilians way over here.
Nor do the Israelis have such clear demarcation even though they constantly claim that only their evil terrorist enemies embed their civilian infrastructure into their military infrastructure into civilian population.
In fact, late last week we reported on a map of Tel Aviv where it shows that the Israeli Command and Control Center for the IDF was purposely built underground and right above it It's nothing but civilian infrastructure,
shopping malls and art galleries and places where civilians go so that there's no way to bomb the underground primary command and control center of the IDF without bombing civilian infrastructure as well, dropping bunker busters in order to get at that.
So if anyone is using human civilians as human shield, it's the Israelis.
And that's true of multiple locations, including the Mossad headquarters, which is located in Tel Aviv, near civilian infrastructure.
And in the course of his report, and now he's donning one of those helmets and the press vests, Inadvertently but very, very explicitly and clearly talked about how so many Israeli military targets are completely integrated into the civilian population in Tel Aviv.
Here's what he said. The U.S. intel view that among the targets were Israeli airfields, but also, and this is crucial, the headquarters of Mossad, the International Intelligence Service of Israel, which is inside Tel Aviv.
It's in the northern part of Tel Aviv, but it's in the city.
It's in a densely populated area.
And of course, the concern is if you're firing, even though Iran might consider that a military target, it is in a densely populated city with civilians around it.
And that's just one more layer of escalation.
So CNN is saying that Israel's key military facilities, including its Mossad headquarters, were built right next to and around and in very close proximity to pure civilian infrastructure like residential buildings and shopping malls?
I thought only the evil terrorists do that.
Civilized countries take their military installations and put it in some open field somewhere with a big neon sign saying military installation here far, far away from civilian populations and civilian infrastructure.
Only the evil Hamas terrorists and Hezbollah terrorists are sociopathic enough to put their military installations near civilians and that's why Israel so unfortunately, so regrettably It has to kill civilians, not because it's its fault, but because Hamas and Hezbollah purposely make it so that their military installations are nearby or even underground civilian installations.
Exactly what the Israelis have done in Tel Aviv, as we reported a few days ago using Google Maps and a New York Times report, but as Jim Sciutto said today, That yeah, they're clearly aiming, the Iranians are at military targets.
The problem is that those military targets are very closely embedded into the civilian infrastructure of Tel Aviv.
Now, there were Israelis killed today, six of them in fact, but not from the Iranian missile attack.
Before the attack started, maybe an hour or two before.
There was an attack by two either Israeli Arabs or people who had entered from the West Bank or from Gaza, I believe they were Israeli Arabs, who purposely went around.
There were two shooters and they shot as many Israelis as they could find near a bus.
And six of them are killed and several were injured.
So here's the New York Times report.
Quote, six killed and several injured in Tel Aviv shooting.
Quote, the authorities describe the shooting which took place on a light rail train as a terror attack.
No group has claimed immediate responsibility.
The Israeli police and emergency services said at least six people were killed and 12 more injured when two gunmen opened fire on a light rail train in Tel Aviv shortly after residents were urged to seek shelter from an Iranian missile attack.
The police called the attack an act of terrorism and said the gunman, We're, quote, neutralized on the scene.
They urged residents of the city to remain calm and followed the directions of the military's home front command shortly after the shooting.
Israel's air defense system intercepted a swarm of missiles over Tel Aviv.
Loud booms and bright explosions filled the sky.
Quote, the police forces are handling the scene under a missile attack, the police said in a statement about the shooting.
Quote, the event is under control.
Now, there was video circulating of that shooting of Israelis in action.
We're going to show you some of the video just because it's been all over the place and it gives you a sense of what happened.
The video is pretty graphic.
It clearly shows the shooter shooting at innocent bystanders and killing some of them.
So if you don't want to see that, you should turn away.
But we're just going to show you a small clip of it just to give you a sense for what actually happened.
Part of Tel Aviv called Yaffa, which used to be almost 50% Arab and 50% Israelis.
It's been gentrified over the years.
The Arabs have been driven out.
There's still a decent-sized Arab population in this part of Tel Aviv, but mostly Jews.
There's no word yet on what the division was of the victims, but here's some of the video. but here's some of the video.
And you can see some of the bodies strewn on the street as well.
So those were the only deaths in Israel.
I'm obviously not trying to minimize it.
I'm just saying that ironically for all the talk about how Iran launched this unprecedented attack on Israel, the only deaths of Israelis from any violence was that attack that took place prior to the attack.
Now, I think it's worth Remembering not just what's been happening in Gaza but what's happening in Beirut as well where it wasn't six Lebanese civilians who were killed but close to a thousand over the last seven to ten days while the Israelis air bombed Beirut Remember,
they blew up pagers and other mobile devices, including walkie-talkies, many of which were in civilian locations like supermarkets and street fairs and restaurants.
And the Lebanese government has been Urging the international community for support given how much destruction has been brought to Beirut and how many people have died just in the last 10 days alone.
In case you're somebody willing to Embrace this narrative that, oh, why would anyone attack Israel with missiles?
They're just minding their own business.
They don't hurt anybody. From October 1st, that's earlier today from NPR, quote, Lebanon's government urges international community for support amid Israel's invasion.
I think that's part of what's important as well, is that Israel had begun by air bombing, by using those kind of controlled explosions, but now the Israeli military, the IDF, has crossed the Lebanese border into that sovereign country, something we've been told for two and a half years when Russia did it, was the gravest crime against the international order.
And so here's how Lebanon is responding.
And quote, Lebanon's caretaker, Prime Minister Najib Makati, warned on Tuesday that his country was facing, quote, one of the most dangerous phases of its history, urging the U.N. for emergency funding for civilians impacted by the conflict.
Israeli airstrikes have killed more than a thousand people in Lebanon over the last two weeks, according to the Lebanon, to Lebanon's health ministry.
The U.N. says around one million people, nearly a fifth of the country.
One million people in Lebanon, nearly a fifth of the country, have been displaced from their homes while fleeing this bombardment after just 10 days.
Here is a report from Bloomberg on how, quote, Israel and Hezbollah are slipping closer to an all-out war.
This was from several days ago.
So this has been something that has been talked about for quite a while now, that the Israelis seem hell-bent on using the The war in Gaza to open a new front in the northern part of Israel in order to enter southern Lebanon by arguing that Hezbollah has been attacking Israel nonstop since October 7th in solidarity with the people of Gaza.
And yet if you look at the chart, the data chart, as presented by the armed conflict location and event data, here is the Chart showing how much violence and how many missile strikes have been used by the Israelis versus Hezbollah since October 7th.
So the yellow is the amount of Hezbollah strikes across the Israeli border and here in the purple Is the amount of Israeli attacks into Hezbollah.
So basically 80% of the attacks, the cross-border attacks since October 7th have come not from Hezbollah but from Israel inside Lebanon where it's about 20%.
Many of the attacks have come from Hezbollah.
So, if you live in the United States, if you live in the West, you probably would think exactly the opposite was true, that Hezbollah has engaged in this sustained, overwhelming attack on the poor Israelis, and the Israelis have basically done nothing until recently, when in fact, it's been an incredibly lopsided use of violence, as is typically the case where Israel is involved.
Now, you can again think whatever you want about Is Israel right to destroy Gaza?
Is Israel right to destroy southern Lebanon?
To flatten buildings in Beirut?
To kill 1,000 people in a week?
To internally displace 20% of the Lebanese population?
To continue to bomb in Syria whenever it feels like?
Something we hear almost nothing about.
Whatever you think of that, it's right, it's wrong or whatever, obviously Israel is not going to be able to just continuously bomb and kill and attack and invade multiple neighbors without at some point those neighbors reacting and trying to impose harm on Israel.
That's just not how the world works.
That's just, and never has been and never will be.
Because people have dignity, people have a sense of survival, and at some point when you do enough to a group of people, even if they're weaker, even if they don't, like Israel does, have the richest and most powerful country behind them, arming them and funding them, and using its military to defend Israel, even if they're weaker in that sense, they're still at some point going to draw a line and say, we're not going to tolerate this any further, we're going to also impose harm on you.
You might remember that there's a president of the United States, a sitting president of the United States named Joe Biden.
And as everybody knows, and it's the reason the Democrats forced him out of the race, he's not actually a cognitively functional person.
He can pull himself together sometimes to like read from a teleprompter, but it's been more than obvious for a long time.
Americans have known it for a lot longer than the media or Democrats were willing to admit it that Joe Biden is mentally incapacitated and obviously cannot make informed, complex decisions about the United States' role in all of this.
And yet, he did appear yesterday at the White House where he was asked to comment on what the Israelis are doing in invading Lebanon.
And he made his views As clear as Joe Biden in his current mental state can possibly make them.
Listen to what he said. The fact that Israel may be now launching a limited operation into Lebanon.
Are you aware of that? Are you comfortable with their plans?
I'm more aware than you might know, and I'm comfortable with them stopping.
We should have a ceasefire now.
Thank you. So that was pretty clear, especially for a politician like Joe Biden who has spent 50 years reflexively defending Israel almost more than any other politician in Israel.
You note he was asked about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
He did not say, I understand why the Israelis are doing it.
I'm comfortable with their right to self-defense.
He said, no, I'm not comfortable with it.
What I'm comfortable with is a ceasefire to stop the Israelis from entering Lebanon.
So based on that, it seems pretty clear that Joe Biden did not authorize that invasion, did not say that the United States government should support Israel's invasion of Lebanon, much less get involved heavily and militarily with its own assets in order to facilitate an invasion of Lebanon that Joe Biden, the president, in theory, constitutionally, Said yesterday he actually opposes in a pretty angry way at the Israelis.
And at some point, who can blame Joe Biden?
I mean, he's been saying all sorts of things about what the Israelis should and shouldn't do, and they've been ignoring him in the most humiliating way possible.
And yet, Joe Biden's statement yesterday has almost no connection to or reflection in What has become U.S. policy toward the Israeli invasion, which is U.S. officials are actually backing the Israeli military invasion into Hezbollah.
So you have a president of the United States saying he's not comfortable with this invasion, what he's comfortable with is a ceasefire to prevent it, and then somehow people inside the U.S. government, unelected people who are unnamed, It seemed to have just overwritten what he said, as happened many times, by the way, during the Trump presidency too.
Trump actually ordered soldiers and US military assets removed from Syria and various generals and the CIA tricked him by just kind of moving it around, pretending that they did it, but really just defying his orders openly and the media celebrated them for that.
And I know it's a conspiracy to suggest that there's a deep state, a permanent power faction in Washington that gets its way no matter the outcome of elections, but this is classically that.
Politico, to its credit, asked that question, like, who's making these extremely consequential decisions?
About what appears to be the increasing U.S. willingness, eagerness to involve itself militarily in Israel's, not just their attack on Gaza, which we've been financing and arming and defending and isolating ourselves from the world to diplomatically shield, but also militarily to be more and more involved militarily, deploy more military assets to the region, put more soldiers of the United States in harm's way.
Given what we just heard from Biden yesterday that I'm not in favor of this invasion, you now have the U.S. government doing the opposite.
And so Politico is trying to find out, who is it that's running the government?
A question we've been asking for a long time and are kind of shocked that so few people have.
This was yesterday in Politico, quote, U.S. officials quietly backed Israel's military push against Hezbollah.
Quote, the officials urged caution and stressed the need for diplomacy, but the timing was right for such a military shift, they concluded.
So, here you have Joe Biden saying, I'm very concerned about this invasion.
I'm not comfortable with it.
The only thing I'm comfortable with is a cessation of conflict between Israel and Lebanon.
And on the other hand, you have, quote, U.S. officials making the decision that, quote, the timing was right for this invasion and therefore they are supporting it because, quote, they concluded The time was right to do so.
Here's the text. Now, that statement alone...
Should be stunning.
That's a massive scandal.
That the people of the United States elected to make decisions for the executive branch about war and peace and foreign affairs apparently decided that they don't want this Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
And yet U.S. officials Who supposedly work under Joe Biden and are required to carry out his policies and will made a completely different decision.
Namely that they think the Israelis should be invading Hezbollah or invading Lebanon and that the U.S. should be supporting it.
Quote, presidential advisor Amos Hochstein And Brett McGurk, the White House coordinator for the Middle East, told top Israeli officials in recent weeks that the U.S. agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's broad strategy to shift Israel's military forces to focus on the North against Hezbollah in order to convince the group to engage in diplomatic talks to end the conflict,
the officials told Politico.
So, just to underscore the point here, Joe Biden, very publicly, yesterday, said he's opposed to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, is very concerned about it, and does not want the U.S. supporting it.
Instead, wants the U.S. pressuring a ceasefire.
But somehow, these two people who are named here, Let me just get that.
Presidential advisors Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk, the White House coordinator for the Middle East, told Israeli officials something completely different than what Joe Biden said.
Namely that inside the White House, they, Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk, elected to absolutely nothing.
Want the Israelis to invade Lebanon and will do everything possible to encourage it.
The article goes on.
This is not trivial opposition.
You have inside the Pentagon, the State Department, and the intelligence community deeply concerned that if Israel invades Lebanon and the US supports it, that that could drag American forces into yet another Middle East war.
That's pretty significant.
And yet, somehow, all of that was overridden by Hochstein and McGurk and, quote, other top U.S. national security officials.
The article goes on, quote, behind the scenes, Hochstein, McGurk, and other top U.S. national security officials are describing Israel's Lebanon operation as a history-defining moment, one that will reshape the Middle East for the better for years to come.
The thinking goes Israel has obliterated Hezbollah's top command structure in Lebanon, severely undercutting the group's capabilities and weakened Iran, which has used Hezbollah as a proxy and power projector.
The internal administration division seems to have dissipated somewhat in recent days with top U.S. officials convening Monday at the White House with President Joe Biden to discuss the situation on the ground.
Most agree that the conflict, while fragile, can offer an opportunity to reduce Iran's influence in Lebanon and the region.
Do you have any confidence that Joe Biden is participating in these meetings in any sort of a serious way?
Here is a headline from the TRT World asking this question about who exactly these people are inside the White House who seemingly single-handedly disregarded the consensus of the State Department, the military, the intelligence community, and apparently Joe Biden.
That supporting the Israeli incursion into Lebanon could lead the United States, drag the United States into a conflict, another Middle East war on behalf of Israel.
And so the question is, can the U.S. envoy to the Middle East, an Israeli army veteran, end the war?
So one of the people that Politico says, one of the two, was most responsible for overriding those concerns and signaling to Israel that they should invade Lebanon and that they will have The support of the United States government,
if they do, despite what Joe Biden said as well, is this person, quote, Amos J. Hochstein, who was born in Israel to Jewish parents and served in that country's military, is an odd choice for the U.S. to deescalate tensions in the Middle East, including the Gaza war. Oh, do you think that's an odd choice?
Somebody who was born in Israel and served in the Israeli military?
Who seems, for whatever reason, to have a free hand to override the concerns of most of the US government executive branch and the president that we should not be encouraging or supporting Israel's incursion into Lebanon because of the very significant chance that the United States could be once again drawn into a new Middle East war.
But when you have a president who's not functional, when you have an executive branch that is headless, Where the president is drooling on a beach and the vice president is doing nothing but focused on her presidential election, you're going to have these turf wars and somebody's going to emerge victorious, someone who the public doesn't even know, let alone elected, to make the most consequential decisions that a country can make about whether to risk involving itself in a new war.
One of the ironies of all of this is that supposedly The view of the United States is that sometimes it's necessary to use military force in order to make a diplomatic solution possible.
That's one of the ways the US has been justifying the Israeli bombing of Beirut and the incursion into Lebanon.
Oh, sometimes you have to use military force in order to de-escalate.
Sometimes you have to escalate to de-escalate.
Sometimes you have to use military force to foster a diplomatic resolution.
Here was Axios on September 21st expressing this view, quote, "U.S. fears war in Lebanon, but hopes Israeli attacks will push Hezbollah to a deal." Quote, "Israeli officials said their increasing attacks against Hezbollah are not intended to lead to war, but are an attempt to reach, quote, de-escalation through escalation." Kind of like burning down the village in order to save it.
The official said Israel believes putting more pressure on Hezbollah could push the militia to agree to a diplomatic deal that would return citizens to northern Israel and southern Lebanon, irrespective of the deadlocked negotiations to establish a ceasefire in Gaza.
U.S. officials told Axios they recognize Israel's rationale and agree with it, but stress this is, quote, an extremely difficult calibration that could easily go out of control and lead to an all-out war.
Which, not to spoil things, actually is what ended up happening.
Here is Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman, a longtime vocal supporter of Israel.
When he was on MSNBC, when he served in prior administrations, now that he's the State Department spokesman, he's pretty much been the point man every day to stand up and not only defend the Israeli destruction of Gaza, but U.S. financing and arming of it.
And here is what Matthew Miller had to say about the U.S.'s view of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
I think sometimes people either misinterpret or have their own version of what a ceasefire A ceasefire is not one side in a conflict unilaterally putting down its arms and stopping the conflict.
It is an agreement for both sides to stop the conflict.
And in this case, what we have proposed is a 21-day ceasefire where both sides would stop attacking the other and we would reach a diplomatic resolution.
And we are going to continue to engage with our Israeli counterparts, with Lebanese counterparts, and with other countries around the world to reach that objective.
But at the same time, there are a couple other things that are true as well, which is that number one, military pressure can at times enable diplomacy.
Of course, military pressure can also lead to miscalculation.
It can lead to unintended consequences.
And we're in conversation with Israel about...
So this 21-day pause or whatever that they were saying they were working towards obviously did not happen.
But this principle that he defended that sometimes the only way you can get a diplomatic solution is if you show that you're willing to use military force and that military force can facilitate a diplomatic resolution.
Couldn't one make that exact argument in defense of Hezbollah's shelling of northern Israel in order to pressure the Israelis to stop bombing Gaza?
And there's been a lot of reports That Nasrallah and Hezbollah made very clear to the Israelis that they would agree to a peace, a ceasefire, as long as Israel agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza.
And when the Israelis heard that, they concluded we're never going to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza.
They've made that very clear as even the U.S. has tried to pressure them and everyone else unsuccessfully.
They want to destroy Gaza and take it over, make it uninhabitable, drive those people out.
That's the real goal, not the hostages or anything else.
And the Israeli's officials anonymously said to media, the reason we decided to kill Nasrallah is because he knew he wouldn't accept a peace deal.
He made that very clear unless we agreed to a peace deal in Gaza, which we're not going to do.
So this principle, sometimes you have to use military force to facilitate a diplomatic resolution, when Matthew Miller was invoking that in defense of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, isn't that also true, that principle, for what Hezbollah was doing?
We're going to shell Northern Israel in order to put pressure on you to agree to diplomatic solution in Gaza.
And by the way, isn't that also a justification for what Iran did both in April and today?
Oh, we need to show a little bit of military force just to make clear that we have that capability.
Not because we want out at war, but because that's sometimes the only way to facilitate a diplomatic resolution.
But as we know, these principles only operate in one direction.
Sort of like the principle that Sovereign countries and their borders are sacred.
That principle gets invoked to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but it gets instantly disregarded when it's time to justify the US invasion of Iraq or the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and then suddenly borders are not sacred at all and sovereignty absolutely means nothing.
And while a lot of Americans Drowning in Western propaganda and American propaganda also apply these principles in a one-sided way.
Do you think the rest of the world is that fooled?
Do you don't think they see what the United States does with its power and the way it invokes these concepts when it suits them and it disregards them when it doesn't?
I can promise you the rest of the world sees that.
Here was Jake Sullivan today, the National Security Advisor for the Biden White House, vowing very unequivocally That the United States will absolutely involve itself in this new Middle East conflict in order to defend Israel.
Thank you, Jake.
In April, after Iran struck Israel, the U.S. issued a number of sanctions as a consequence.
This morning the President said there would be severe consequences if Iran carried out this attack.
What are those consequences and are they more severe than sanctions?
Totally legitimate question, and that answer will come based on the conversations and consultations we have with our Israeli counterparts.
It's too soon for me to stand before you today and give you an answer.
What I can tell you is this.
We are proud of the actions that we've taken alongside Israel to protect and defend Israel.
We have made clear that there will be consequences, severe consequences for this attack, and we will work with Israel to make that the case.
Thank you very much. So as always, Israeli wars are American wars.
We are responsible for them.
We pay for them. We finance them.
We get involved with them. We stand by Israel.
We fight with Israel in new wars if we have to, no matter what the rest of the world thinks.
Now, by the way, very easy to forget that as all of this is happening, And last week the U.S. announced it was sending $8 billion more to Ukraine, drawing down $8 billion more of the authorization to send weapons to Ukraine to continue to fight a feudal losing war with Russia.
And the very next day announced that it was sending $8.5 billion to Israel to fuel all this.
Parts of North Carolina and other parts of the Appalachia are drowning as a result of a hurricane.
And the people who are the victims of that are getting very little help from the federal government.
And that's because, as we've seen for many years, the establishment wings of each party have high priorities, none of which include the welfare of the American people.
The only real priority that they ought to have, in theory that's what they're elected to serve.
The right-wing journalist Sean Davis noticed the following about Mitch McConnell today.
He said, quote, Mitch McConnell represents a large swath of Appalachia.
In the last week, he has tweeted about the UN, Israel, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Hezbollah, and defense spending, but not a word about Hurricane Helene or North Carolina or flooding or helping the dying Appalachians.
Which to me is about as perfect of an expression of the priority scheme of the bipartisan rolling class in D.C. They love to spend huge amounts of money on foreign wars.
They love to finance other countries.
They're obsessed with who they're going to bomb.
And as the communities that they represent continue to be destroyed, including Basically drowning to death in a hurricane with very little federal intervention or federal resources being sent, they don't even pretend to care that much because in fact they don't.
Now, while all of this is happening, as I said today, although there's been all this kind of hysteria about this attack on Israel and how terrorizing it was to Israelis, And what a monstrous assault this was on Israel, even though not a hair on the head of a single Israeli, as far as we know, was harmed.
The Israelis killed far more people, far more Palestinians, just today alone, than all these scary, terrible, monstrous missiles from Iran that landed in Israel killed.
Here from Reuters, quote, fighting rages as Israeli bombardment kills tens in Gaza.
Quote, at a refugee camp, Israel killed at least 13 people.
There has been no immediate comment by the Israeli army on these particular strikes.
Palestinian Um Hussan al-Durma was in Deir al-Bala where the bodies were taken.
Quote, they targeted 14 sleeping people, adults and children.
What can I tell you?
They were not doing anything. They were sleeping.
Palestinian medics set another strike on a school sheltering Gazans killed multiple people.
Could you even imagine Dana Bash?
Making that sound that she made when she saw missiles falling harmlessly on Tel Aviv.
Oh my God! It really is the case.
There's just no getting around it.
That so much of how we see the Middle East, so much of our policy there, so much of how we react, is based on the same calculation that the Israelis have embraced.
Namely, that Jewish lives, the lives of Israelis, are infinitely more valuable Than the lives of Arabs in the region.
There's just no denying it.
That's the only thing that can explain how we can watch tens of thousands if not more innocent people in Gaza be obliterated over the last 12 months by Israel and then all of us turn around today and act like Israel is the besieged victim when not a single Israeli died on a day that they killed more Palestinians.
All of this coincided with a new report from Oxfam International that was released yesterday.
And the title shows that it's a study analyzing how many innocent people were killed in Gaza by the Israeli military over the last year.
And here's the title, quote, More women and children have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli military than any other recent conflict in a single year.
Quote, conservative figures show that more than 6,000 women and 11,000 children were killed in Gaza by the Israeli military over the last 12 months.
Data from 2004 to 2021 on direct conflict deaths from the Small Arms Survey estimates the highest number of women killed in a single year was 2,600 in Iraq in 2016.
A report by the organization Every Casalty Counts examined information on over 11,000 children killed across the first two and a half years of the Syrian conflict, or an average of over 4,700 deaths a year.
UN reports on children in armed conflict over the last 18 years shows that no other conflict killed a higher number of civilians in one year.
And for all the talk about how brutal and savage the Russian war in Ukraine was, There's been a higher number of children killed by the Israelis in Gaza than the total number of civilians, Ukrainian civilians, killed by Russia in the entire war over the last two and a half years.
And so when it comes time to hear about how the US government has to defend Israel because Israel is besieged, there were Israelis going on television today saying, what country could possibly live like this?
How can you tolerate this?
With absolutely no self-awareness of what they've been doing to the people surrounding them.
Wiping out entire families every day.
Killing a thousand people alone in Beirut over the last week.
When you actually look at it in context, it really becomes truly remarkable just how distorted the narrative is.
But again, I just want to emphasize This narrative is believed in the United States, it's believed in Israel, it's believed in Western Europe, it's believed in almost nowhere else around the world.
And I see a lot of conservatives who defend Israel above all else constantly saying, oh, who cares what the rest of the world thinks?
Well, if you're somebody who believes that stopping China or limiting China's influence is this existential overarching priority, which they often say it is, Saying I don't care what the rest of the world thinks is the dumbest possible thing you could possibly say.
A major reason China has been strengthened, as we're going to show you in a little bit, is precisely because of the perception in the world, not the, quote, international community, meaning our Western European allies in Australia and the United States,
but the actual world, the whole rest of the world, about what the US is and what it has been doing and how that's alienating people and driving them into the arms of China.
Let us finally face it.
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I just want to add a few more points of context about the Israeli conflict with Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. Lebanon, Syria, and Iran.
Basically a five-pointed war that Israel is dragging the United States into, not exactly against the U.S. wishes.
I just want to point out as well that from the very beginning of this conflict, back in October of last year, Every expert we've had on to talk about it, Professor Stephen Wald of Harvard, John Mearsheimer in Chicago, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, so many others, have warned that the greatest risk is that Iran has long,
or rather, Israel and Netanyahu have long had as their main goal finding a way to start a war that the United States would fight in and fight with them against Iran or have the United States just attack Iran on its own.
And Israel seems to get closer and closer to being able to do exactly that.
Now, Iran was very clear about why it launched these missiles today, and it also was very clear after it was done that that is the end of their retaliation unless Israel attacks them, in which case there will be more waves of attacks on Israel.
Just like they did back in April, they launched that effectively harmless attack.
And once it was over, they said, we're done.
That was in retaliation for what you did to our embassy in Damascus.
And for all the talk about how Iran is this apocalyptic cult, this death cult that loves death, the restraint Iran has shown, given what has been done to it by Israel, you could almost make the cases excessive.
And if there's an apocalyptic death cult, It's the one based in Jerusalem, at least as currently composed by that government.
Here from MSNBC, Iran says the attack on Israel today was in retaliation for killing Hamas and Hezbollah.
In particular, one of their top commanders was killed in the bombing of Beirut.
They had a political official from Hamas invited onto Iranian soil for the presidential inauguration that Israel violated their sovereignty by killing.
And so they're making very clear exactly what it is that they have retaliated against and why they chose to make it such a restrained response yet again today, in contrast to Israel's virtually complete lack of restraint When it comes to what they've been doing in Gaza over the last year and Beirut over the last 10 days.
Here there was the New York Times in August noting how extreme and even remarkable Iran's restraint has been.
The headline was, quote, why Iran has not yet retaliated against Israel for Hamas's leader's killing.
You may remember that. Once that happened, Iran said, we don't care this time.
We're launching a major retaliation against Israel.
We don't care that the international community is trying to persuade us not to.
We understand the threats being made against us.
None of that's persuading us.
And yet it really didn't happen.
And here the New York Times reported the following, quote, Tehran is under pressure to avenge the assassination of Ishmael Hania, but analysts said it is balancing multiple factors as it weighs a response.
Quote, a spokesman for Iran's foreign ministry, Nasser Kanyani said that, quote, it is necessary to punish Israel, echoing comments from other senior Iranian officials, but he also said that, quote, Tehran is not interested in escalating the regional conflicts.
Does that sound like an apocalyptic death cult to you wanting to blow up the world because they crave martyrdom and death and don't care about what they have to do in order to start a war?
If anything, the exact opposite has been true.
At the time that they launched that attack back in April, even American media outlets such as CNN reported the following, quote, Iran's attack seemed planned to minimize casualties.
While maximizing the spectacle, quote, this was a complex mission.
Over 300 drones and missiles navigated above Iran's neighbors, including Jordan and Iraq, both with US military bases, before penetrating the airspace Of Iran's mortal enemy, Israel.
Israel's allies helped shoot down the bulk of these weapons, but couldn't prevent what was long believed to be the Middle East doomsday scenario.
The Islamic attack's first ever attack on Israel.
The Islamic Republic's first ever attack on Israel.
Yet it was an operation that seemed designed to fail.
The Iranians designed that retaliation in order to fail.
When Iran launched its killer drones from its own territory some 1,000 miles away, it was giving Israel's hours of advance notice.
The symbolism of the attack did the heavy lifting, but virtually none of them landed in Israel, let alone harmed any Israeli infrastructure or killed any Israelis.
The New York Times on April 13th summarized the impact.
Israel reports light damage after Iran launches large strike.
Iran fired more than 300 drones and missiles at Israel overnight.
The U.S. military shot dozens of them down, but most were intercepted by Israel's military.
Earlier today, the Times of London, or rather the Times of Israel...
Made this report, quote, global chorus against Israeli ground operation in Lebanon raises pressure for ceasefire.
So it was noting that much of the world would oppose the Israeli invasion of Lebanon that they did anyway.
Seemingly with the green light from a former Israeli, from an Israeli born former member of the Israeli military who is now burrowed in the White House, Amos Hochstein and a longtime hardcore neocon.
Who worked with him to signal to the Israelis that the U.S. was on its side in this invasion, even though huge parts of the executive branch were not.
The U.S. warns of how the fighting will impact the Lebanese.
European nations fret even a limited incursion could get bogged down.
Russia, China, Turkey urged the IDF to withdraw.
Italian Premier Georgia Maloney said Tuesday that a de-escalation at the regional level is urgent and necessary.
The protection of civilians remains the priority along with guaranteeing the security of the Italian military contingent of UNIFEL present in southern Lebanon, she said in a statement.
Russia's foreign minister said Moscow, quote, strongly condemns the attack on Lebanon and calls on the Israeli authorities to immediately cease hostilities, withdraw their troops from Lebanese territory, and engage in a real search for peaceful ways to resolve the Middle East conflict.
Referring to the raids, the statement of the Russians said, quote, it is obvious that such a step taken by the Israeli military and political leadership following the assassination of a number of Hezbollah leaders will lead to a further escalation of violence in the Middle East region.
China, in a foreign ministry statement, said it, quote, is highly concerned about the current situation between Lebanon and Israel and is deeply concerned about the further escalation of regional tensions due to related military actions.
Turkey condemned Israel's ground offensive as, quote, an unlawful invasion attempt and called for its withdrawal of its troops.
Quote, this attack must end as soon as possible and Israeli soldiers must withdraw from the Lebanese territory, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
Now, unless you're someone who thinks none of these countries matter, like the biggest countries in the world, like China, and a country with the largest nuclear stockpile, Russia, The countries building a serious counterweight to the U.S. and NATO in BRICS and a serious economic system outside of U.S. control,
precisely in retaliation for and response to these kind of things, then you can dismiss all those countries, but the reality is you should at least be clear that claims that, oh, the whole world is behind Israel with the exception of a couple of rogue countries, the rogue countries are the United States and Israel.
If you look at UN votes on the conflict with Gaza, on the conflict with Lebanon, you will see that a tiny number of countries are willing to support things like Israeli settlements, the Israeli bombing of Gaza, while much of the world is bringing war crimes cases against Israel and voting overwhelmingly at the UN to stop it.
I just want to leave you with this.
Obviously, I'm going to talk a little bit after this clip about the dangers of what we're facing, just to put it into final context.
But we've shown you this before, but it has special resonance now.
A woman named Fiona Hill, who's a British and American foreign policy specialist, has been a longtime hawk aligned with people like John Bolton.
She's a hardcore hawk when it comes to Russia, a hardcore supporter of Israel.
Basically has been a member of the U.S. security state for a long time, defending bipartisan foreign policy dogma, involving ourselves in all these wars.
And yet she's renowned to be very smart, despite her defense of policies and dogma and orthodoxies that have been very destructive in the world.
And in May of 2023, She went to a conference called the International Center for Defense and Security, basically a gathering of Western defense officials and security elites.
And she went there to warn them that while we are locked in this Western bubble of propaganda thinking that, oh, the whole world supports our support for Ukraine and sees that cause is so just and supports what we're doing as well.
The reality is the rest of the world is forming a confederation against the United States and against NATO. Based on the perception, which as she says is right or wrong, she thinks it's wrong, but nonetheless, based on the very solidified and growing perception that the world would be better off without U.S. leadership because the U.S. throws its bullying weight around through its use of military force as evidenced by what it's doing in Israel and as evidenced by what it's doing with Ukraine.
And she warned them the defenders of these policies that Xitu defends that what this is doing is it's causing the West and the U.S. specifically to lose key support on every continent in Latin America and Africa and Asia where it had long dominated and instead is driving those countries into the arms of China which for all its flaws they perceive as more benign for a lot of reasons including the not insignificant fact That China has not fought a war since 1979,
that's 45 years ago.
Haven't had a war in 45 years.
And even that 1979 war was a pretty light one month border conflict.
So we always hear about how China is evil and the aggressor and a military threat.
But in that 45 years, while China has fought no wars, the United States has bombed countries and fought wars and invaded countries and engineered coups more than you can count.
And while Americans very rarely hear that perspective, the rest of the world sees it and hears it all the time.
And what's so remarkable is not what she said but the fact that it came from someone like Fiona Hill.
So I just want to show you the key two minutes of this speech that she gave where she tried to sound the alarm while also throwing in some caveats about how she's on their side and believes what they believe but the rest of the world doesn't.
Now, since 1991, the United States has seemingly stood alone as the global superpower, but I would argue that today, after a fraught two-decade period, shaped by American-led military interventions and direct engagement in regional wars, the Ukraine War highlights the decline of the United States itself.
Now, this decline is relative, of course, economically and militarily, but it is very serious in terms of US moral authority.
And again, we've heard quite a lot about that as well.
Unfortunately, just as Osama bin Laden intended, the US's own reactions and actions have eroded its position since the devastating terrorist attacks of 9-11.
America fatigue, and we actually heard about that last night on the panel, as you might recall.
I'd already had that in my notes, and then we heard one of our panelists actually say it.
America fatigue and disillusionment with its role as the global hegemon is widespread.
And this, I would argue, also includes in the United States itself, the fact that we frequently see on display in Congress, news outlets, and in think tank debates.
For some, the US is a flawed international actor with its own domestic problems it should be attending to.
And for others, the US is still a new form of imperial state that ignores the concerns of others and throws its military weight around.
Well, why am I saying all this?
Because in the near term, this is particularly detrimental for Ukraine.
And I think we've heard a lot about that over the last year.
Because globally, the war in Ukraine is viewed as one in a long series of dramatic events since 2001 driven by the United States.
America's heavy-handed conduct of the war on terror alienated the vast swath of the Muslim world.
The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, hot on the heels of Afghanistan, revived the horrors of U.S. Cold War interventions in Korea and Vietnam.
U.S. inaction in conflicts like Yemen and selective interventions in Libya and Syria underscored U.S. foreign policy inconsistency.
I'm relating to all the things that I've been hearing myself over this last year from all kinds of interlocutors.
And it goes on.
I'd actually argue the whole speech.
But the point is a warning that while you may think US military action and US military alliances are noble and designed to promote democracy, basically no one else believes that any longer.
And why would they?
Why would they? I mean, the world watched for two and a half years the U.S. justify feeding Ukraine weapons based on the sanctity of internationally recognized borders and the system of laws and the rule of law in the law-based international order.
And the minute one of the U.S.'s closest allies wants to invade a sovereign country, the U.S. does nothing but cheer and justify it and fund and arm it.
Or the U.S. goes around constantly yapping sanctimoniously about the need to protect democracy, and that's why we're in Ukraine, when everyone knows except Americans that our closest allies are the most savage dictators on the planet, like the Saudis and the Egyptians and the Emiratis.
So the idea that, oh, we're benevolently motivated to spread democracy, well, in bed with and propping up the worst regimes of dictatorship and tyranny on the planet...
It's something that goes unnoticed here because of how rare it's stated.
And if someone does state it, they're accused of hating America or being unpatriotic or whatever.
But the rest of the world sees that a lot more clearly.
And even someone like Fiona Hill is trying to warn about the dangers of that.
And she says it's a danger to Ukraine because we've contaminated that cause with our involvement.
But it's also driving these countries into the arms of China.
Back in the 90s, they didn't have an option.
The U.S. was the only superpower.
China has now emerged as an alternative with an increasingly strengthened alliance behind them.
So even if you don't care about the morals of what the U.S. is doing or the ethics of supporting Israel or whatever, strategically, in terms of U.S. interests, you can see how detrimental to U.S. interests it is for the U.S. to continue to align itself with these kinds of wars.
And the one thing I just want to add is that you can go back During that war on terror period where those neocons who had been urging regime change in Iraq before 9-11, people like Bill Kristol and his partner in the Kagan family, Victoria Nuland's husband, and then immediately exploited 9-11 to finally get what they wanted, which was a war in Iraq.
What they really wanted more than anything Was regime change against Iran, just for purely coincidental reasons.
The main things they wanted was to remove the governments of all the countries that Israel most disliked and felt threatened by, including in Syria, which we ended up trying to overthrow the Assad regime.
Removing Saddam Hussein was a huge present to Israel.
Netanyahu was a big, big proponent vocally and publicly of the invasion of Iraq.
But what they most wanted was to move from Baghdad to Tehran.
And the only reason it didn't happen was because of how poorly the war in Iraq went.
But these are now the people, the people who wanted that and still want it, ingrained in both political parties.
And so the desire to have Israel find a justification and the U.S. to find a justification for entering this war to remove The Iranian regime to control the Iranian country again and its resources by imposing a puppet like we did with the Shah of Iran.
It's very, very strong.
It's driving a lot of this.
And the question is, at the end of the day, do you think the United States' resources and treasures and the lives of American soldiers should be risked in order to go to war for Israel and remove a government that The Israelis find threatening, just like we did in the war in Iraq.
And that is the question that every American has to face.
I have no doubt tonight's vice presidential debate will include nothing but arguments over which party will be more pro-Israel.
So you can have that to look forward to, but ultimately at the end of the day, that's the question that I think all American citizens should be asking themselves.
Alright, so that concludes our show for this evening.
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Tonight being Tuesday, ordinarily we would do that, but instead we're going to stream live my reaction to the vice presidential debate as soon as it ends.
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