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Jan. 3, 2020 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
47:02
🚨EMERGENCY POD: Escalation With IRAN 🚨

Political analysts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman cover the breaking news that the US government has assassinated Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian general, and moved America one step closer to all-out war. They discuss the implications, the risks, the madness that's unfolding by the second. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hey, everybody.
It is January 2nd, 2020.
We are two days into the new year and we are taping an emergency podcast.
I am your co-host, Jared Yates Sexton.
I am here with my co-host, Nick Haussman.
Things are going down, Nick.
Without question, this is a response and our penance to doing a podcast that was actually a little bit positive last time.
Yeah, we started out 2020 with an eye towards the future, with a little bit of hope, and then on the second day of the year, U.S.
forces have taken out one of the main Iranian officials, Qasem Soleimani, and we are now in a state, if not in a state of war, we are in a state of possible war.
An escalation that I don't think anyone had foreseen, and certainly from reports Donald Trump making this decision, which is what the Pentagon has said, did not warn our diplomats, our intelligence agents, members of Congress, or anybody who would usually be warned of this.
I'm in shock.
I assume you're in shock, Nick, and here we are.
At least Eric Trump knew about it ahead of time.
He had posted on social media, no less, on New Year's Eve, quote, about to open up a big old can of whoop-ass, icon of the American flag, hashtag don't mess with the best, hashtag USA, USA, USA.
So subsequently deleted, but they're hanging out in Mar-a-Lago.
The Southern White House, isn't that what he called it?
Their version of a situation room is the balcony or the terrace where they eat dinner with all the other guests.
So I have no doubt that everybody at Mar-a-Lago probably knew about this going ahead of it happening.
The consensus seems to be, and it seems reasonable, that Trump has certainly, specifically had just no conception of what this act does and what it means.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, you know, like just you stating those facts really upset me and bummed me out, like, and pissed me off, Nick.
I mean, they're hanging out at the President's country club where all of his supporters come around they just had this like disgusting New Year's Eve party and undoubtedly were celebrating what would come to be an escalation in a possible war with Iran and just thinking about that is is one of the more frustrating things I've thought about a very long time.
Well, let's not get too far ahead of our skis because obviously Soleimani is a terrorist.
I don't think anyone's going to disagree with that.
And he was responsible for lots of deaths, lots of American deaths.
Tons of blood.
Tons of blood on that dude's hand.
and a lot of just destabilizing the region for years.
And I certainly think that people in Israel would be happy to hear the news of a guy like this being taken out.
So it's a weird torque here because on one hand, this guy deserves to be taken out as a sort of war criminal.
But you have to kind of wonder what the timing of this is because this is not just a thing that's happening in isolation.
This is a run up or a lead up to a lot of other events that's been happening very recently.
And so the worry then becomes, well, then what is the retaliation?
Because there is no doubt Iran will retaliate.
Yeah, and so let's get everybody up to date.
So, Suleimani is, depending on who you ask, is either the second or third in charge in Iran.
And Suleimani is, or was, now that he's been assassinated by the United States of America, was in charge of outreach programs by Iran, which means going into other countries like Iraq and Syria and destabilizing situations, you know, creating chaos and murder situations.
An absolute barbarian and butcher who deserved death.
I mean, nobody's going to make that argument that this person is better off alive than dead.
The question now is this major strike, which Iran has to react to, has to respond to, the question is whether or not the United States government, particularly helmed by Donald Trump, is capable of organizing an intelligent plan.
And whether or not they're capable of organizing a cohesive strategy in handling something like this, certainly by hanging out on social media and noticing that members of Congress weren't aware of this, intelligence experts weren't aware of this.
And you have to think we have diplomats, we have U.S. citizens, we have dignitaries around the world who in moments of war are supposed to be alerted and allowed to find safety and fin for themselves.
They were not made aware.
So nothing that I've seen from Donald Trump in this administration tells me that they're prepared for a situation like this.
So, if you're talking about a strike, that's one thing.
If you're talking about whether or not this is an administration capable of carrying out a complicated procedure like this thing, I have my doubts, Nick.
Oh, there's a lot of things to unpack here because, remember, the State Department has been decimated from within.
It doesn't exist!
Right.
It's a shadow, it's a shadow State Department.
It really doesn't have, it barely has enough people to man even the most important roles.
Like, we have a Secretary of State, so at least, like, that role's filled.
But, like, beyond there, there's a serious drain of any kind of depth of thought of the situation.
So normally, like, when you'd have a president in this situation, they'd have Everything.
the top of the most expert people, the smartest people in the room, weighing in and being able to play out all different scenarios, and then a really thoughtful president could sort of absorb all of that, and then the meaningful way to make a decision.
So we don't have that at all.
You know, we have, we have Jared Kushner, right?
He's in charge of the Middle East, right? - Everything, he's in charge of everything. - So let me throw this out there because I've spoken to Trump supporters in the past who have actually supported what Trump was doing in like North Korea, for instance.
Primarily because it's so radically different than what we've been trying all these other years to no avail, okay?
So I'm like, okay, I can kind of follow that train of thought to some degree that, you know, we need to take this is that notion of tearing it all down, tearing the government down.
We need something completely different.
And that's going to be, you're going to see, that's going to really work because look at all the other presidents that couldn't even get anything done.
And I can almost feel like this is the same kind of argument they can now say.
Oh, we've always been very thoughtful and weighed all of our options and really tried to be, you know, the leaders of the free world and, you know, the most powerful army in the world.
And we don't, who needs that when we can just, you, you, you know, kill the contractor, a U.S.
contractor by lobbing a missile over in Iraq.
Well, we're gonna take out you know, then I think he's a number two guy in Iran and and and now here we are and they actually might rally around this just like Iranians are gonna rally around the death of Soleimani and That's that's why the Iranians might be able to whip up enough support in Iran to like support a war if they want to then go and escalate this even more and
Yeah, I would like our listeners to think about foreign relations and foreign policy as a three-dimensional, four-dimensional chess game, right?
Because it's been set up that way.
Now, I have my problems with U.S.
foreign policy.
I have major, major problems.
I just wrote about this and researched this, and I think it's a major disaster how we've treated U.S.
foreign policy.
I think it's been brutal and awful and clumsy at times.
But they've constructed a game, right?
Now imagine that you're playing this four-dimensional chess game and just a total buffoon of a man, let's call him, I don't know, Donald Trump, rambles over and just flips over the board and says, what do you do now?
Right.
So we have had one move after another.
We've had this very delicate strategy that has been put together.
And yes, it's been against our best principles and against the things that we say that we care about.
But now that he has come across and done these reckless things, we have so many touch points now.
Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and all of these people have interconnecting threads, right?
And they're all based on being anti-American.
That is at the heart of all this stuff.
There's the American hegemony and then there's all the stuff happening over on the side that is either against us or is quietly against us and working against our interest.
This is going to be a chain reaction one way or another.
I don't know how it isn't, right?
Iran gets threatened in a major, major way, and all of a sudden, one thing after another happens.
We're going to have an asymmetrical situation that I have to tell you, and I don't think our listeners will disagree, Donald Trump's not capable of handling.
He's not a thinker.
He's not a strategist.
He's not a person who grasps any of this.
He is a moron who ended up being president and is incapable of being president, even on the best day of America, right?
Like, even on the day where America is humming along to its own machinery and he doesn't have to do anything, he's still overwhelmed and over his head.
This international crisis is way beyond his means.
Sure, well in this situation that you're describing, I mean at least, at least thank goodness we have the total complete cooperation of all of our allies, right?
We have all of the allies that traditionally have been in line with us are completely in line with us and have agreed with us and I feel really strong about that, don't you?
Quick question, Nick.
Has Donald Trump spent his three years in office isolating our allies?
Oh, now let's talk about that.
Because yes, America's first, you know, and we want to sort of be a populist, you know, and not interventionist.
However, He's now getting into a war.
Here's the thing that I think people would hang their hats on if they did support Trump was that, oh, he's not going to get us involved in all these damnfalutin wars out 5,000, 10,000 miles away from our country.
Well, and by the way, it kind of felt like that was the case up until now.
His retaliation in the past has been, well, hey, Russia, we're going to bomb an airport, and we're going to tell you exactly when and where.
you know, in the past has been, well, hey, Russia, we're going to bomb a airport and we're going to tell you exactly when and where.
Just make sure no one's around and that you can then fix that within a day so it's not a big deal.
Just make sure no one's around and that you can then, you know, fix that within a day.
So it's not a big deal.
Like that would be his retaliation.
That would be his retaliation.
And that's almost like compared to this, it's unbelievable how quickly that has ramped up.
And like that's almost like compared to this, you know, it's unbelievable how quickly that has ramped up.
And then so you have to start to wonder, like, where is all this coming from?
Because either it's the five year old response, which is sort of where maybe his mental age relies on these certain things.
Or is there still more influence from, you know, the main players here who could benefit from a certainly destabilization in the Middle East and higher oil prices?
There's a real question there.
If Russia stands to benefit from that, does Venezuela benefit from that?
Again, these are the places where we're not supposed to be, you know, having deals behind anyone's back with.
These are the horrible, horrible regimes across the world.
Well, I want to talk about the Cold War dichotomy really quickly. - Exactly.
So, Iran has been understandably distrustful of the United States for 60 years now.
I believe it was 1953 that the United States equipped a coup in Iran.
That we still have not been forgiven for.
That coup, which weirdly enough, if anybody wants to study the history of it, looks a lot like what Russia has been doing with us over the last couple of years.
It's been a disinformation campaign, a lot of propaganda, and like behind-the-scenes international intrigue, right?
So Iran had a reason not to trust us.
So in the Cold War dichotomy, So, if you don't trust the United States, Nick, just real fast, pop quiz, who do you trust if you don't trust the United States in a Cold War situation?
The other major power in this scenario, I imagine, would be the Soviet Union.
Yeah, you trust the Soviet Union.
So, Iran has been working for years and years and years with Russia, and has had tons of alignment and basic interest with Russia in places like, let me check my notes, Iraq and Syria.
So these are tons of places where Iran has been with Russia.
Now, I personally, and maybe it's the late hour of the day, I would feel a whole lot better, Nick, if we did not have a President of the United States that I had to question whether or not his allegiance was with the United States of America or Russia.
That's me personally.
Call me old-fashioned.
Call me a paranoid American, but I would feel a whole lot better if we had a president who had America's interest in his heart over Russia's.
Okay, Boomer.
But that's just me.
That's seriously, I mean, yeah.
Now let me ask you this.
Can we pivot for a second?
What was a guy like Qasem Soleimani doing just, you know, landing at the Baghdad airport?
You might wonder.
Here's a guy who's number two in Iran.
Supposedly Iraq is a friendly country to the U.S.
and certainly Baghdad of all places is an area of the country that the U.S.
controls and keeps somewhat safe.
So what that tells me is how brazen they are operating in Iraq.
How he can feel like they could just yeah, we're gonna land our plane in the in their normal Airport be greeted by the you know head of the Ministry of whatever he was who also got is part of the collateral was it was killed It feels really strange to me in a way without that was my questions like what was he doing?
Just kind of you know taking American Airlines into a you know a regular terminal and thinking that that was gonna be okay in the first place Yeah, and that's the nature of what America has wrought.
Unfortunately, American foreign policy has been what I like to call double-jointed, right?
So we like to say that we are about freedom and liberty and the pursuit of humanity.
But unfortunately, we've always had the double joint, which is we'll support dictators if they are in American interest, right?
We'll take fascists as long as they're aligned with America over Russia or, you know, whatever we're fighting at the at the current moment.
This situation is we have known for forever that Suleimani has has had interest in Iraq We've understood that Iran hasn't had interest in Iraq And so we've looked at Iraq and we've said this is how this works and this happens over here on the side And then the question is what do we do about it?
Are we at a state of war or are we in a Cold War situation, right?
Are we in provocation this move this move this move?
This is a case where It probably called for a surgery with a scalpel or a laser, you know, scalpel, but instead we used an axe.
And that's where we are because we have had one foreign policy misstep after another.
And we're not getting off here recording tonight until we talk about George W. Bush in Iraq, because that has to come into the conversation.
And H.W.
too.
By the way, we can talk about Clinton because there's some eerie parallels going on to some degree.
So, you know, and we can talk about Hillary.
It all kind of wraps into this because the attack on the embassy was really interesting and raised my antenna when it happened a couple days ago, where it felt like, in fact, somebody had reported that after like a day and a half, they had heard people in the crowd saying, OK, they heard what we had to say.
Let's all go home.
And it just made it sounded too rational to me.
Whereas normally like Benghazi, for instance, was, you know, supposedly this attack on the embassy.
And, you know, but we find out later that it was orchestrated more by terrorists.
And it wasn't just a bunch of like students, I suppose, you know, wanting to protest.
Although this one now feels that way.
And in my mind, they breached one of the walls, as far as I understand with reporting.
So, I almost feel like this is now, like, that was the dry run.
And now that they know what they can do, what they can't do, they probably got a sense of, like, what the, you know, the defense is at that embassy.
Like, I don't know.
My mind would be, like, that's where I would look at first, as far as if that's what's going to be the retaliation, that they're going to actually, you know, really do a much more coordinated attack.
The chances are what happened at the embassy were psyops, right?
This is a psychological operation that is supposed to distribute some sort of message.
Like, this is a thing that can happen.
You are not safe in Iraq, and there is a movement here that is anti-American.
And by the way, if you trace that back to Iran, like, undoubtedly, that's how that happened, right?
And so, like, we have these major powers.
And do not get me wrong, America and Iran, this is not America versus Iraq.
Right, so like in the lead up to the Persian Gulf War, everyone's talking about the mother of all wars, right?
This is the war to end all wars.
That was a big stage show.
That was its own PSYOP.
This situation, America versus Iran, if it actually becomes a hot war, is an actual war, right?
This is the kind of thing that like reverberates around the world and it becomes very, very large.
But most of the major powers compete in one PSYOP after another.
This is a demonstration of our power.
This is a demonstration of our power.
And usually what ends up happening from one PSYOP to the other is you retaliate by a PSYOP.
Right?
You retaliate by one notion of propaganda and then you do this over here and you do this over here.
The question now is, did we have a situation where we reacted to a PSYOP by bombing a leader and assassinating them in an act of war?
I mean, that is like...
That is a crazy escalation that I can tell you there's not a member of US intelligence right now that feels like that is a natural escalation.
That is like ramping up in a way that you don't understand.
Well and it's not horribly easy to make a comparison of what that would be like from our side, our point of view, but you know so it's not it might not quite be like murdering Mike Pence That's exactly what it's like.
All right, we can go that far.
It's something like that.
And here's the thing I get worried about, and I don't know if people really understand this, because after enough of these wars like in Vietnam and then Iraq before, we've been exposed to some degree when we're trying to fight wars across the world.
But this is not like going to war against Iraq and Saddam Hussein's forces who give up after about a week of fighting.
Iran is a million-man army, very well-equipped, very well-trained, in their own backyard.
So you're talking about a war that I don't think the U.S.
military could win, even with the help of Israel, which has another one of those armies that's really well-equipped and really well-trained as well, and it's at least there closer.
I worry about Israel too, because why not just retaliate against them?
They're much closer, much easier to retaliate against at this point, barring any kind of these sleeper cells we're talking about that might even be in America.
I don't know.
I don't put a lot of credence in that.
But that's really the concern.
This would be a war that would never end.
And if it did end quickly, it would be because Iran won decisively, short of the military, short of nuclear weapons.
Yeah, I'm really worried about that because I think there is a real thread of American exceptionalism that believes that if America enters a war that it has been ...ordained by the universe or some benevolent force to automatically win.
You know what I mean?
That's the American ideal, is that we are the carriers out, the champions of a good and moral universe.
This could get really ugly.
And Iran is a center of the Middle East.
And if there is a perception that this is in any way a religious war or a crusade, which was the fear during the Second Gulf War, right?
Like there were pockets, and obviously that's how we end up with not just Al Qaeda, but we end up with ISIS.
You know, the supercharged idea of a religious war.
That's Iraq, but if it happens in Iran, I mean, there could be ramifications of that that I don't think that most people are really ready for.
I don't think this is a war that most people understand how bad it could get.
And it isn't just going to fight a war.
It isn't just bombing strategic locations.
It's an asymmetrical thing.
I mean, Iran, if you want to get historical, Iran is where things like suicide bombings were founded in the Iraq-Iran War, right?
This is where we came up with the idea of martyrdom as a weapon of warfare.
And by the way, I just want to point this out because I think this is really important.
We're already talking about the steps of war, which is an American thing.
This is a really dangerous part of it, is as Americans, our natural instinct, no matter what the conflict is, we start talking about, oh, how do we win?
We do this, we do that.
Well, guess what?
Tomorrow, there's a real possibility, or the day after that, there's a real possibility that American media and American pundits and American speakers and talking heads are going to lend themselves to these efforts regardless of whether we started it or we didn't start it.
Right?
Because that's the American way.
And the dangerous part here is Donald Trump is the type of figure who could take advantage of something like this, and his authoritarian tendencies and his fascistic tendencies could be enabled in all of this.
It's a really, really dangerous situation.
If anyone doubts that, they should take a look at the Iraq War, because that's exactly what happened with George W. Bush.
Oh, I mean, I thought you were going to say H.W.
Bush, too, because he was the one guy, I suppose, who was smart enough not to go all the way into Iraq and try and take it over because of where you could possibly be right now.
But here's the thing that you could easily touch upon with your background and experience is why a lot of the evangelicals will get behind the notion of a war because they feel like, great, this is the beginning of the end times.
They think it's the apocalypse.
They think it's the apocalypse.
And I have to tell you, there's a part of me, and this is really hard to talk about, but there's a part of me that tonight is back in my hometown.
Because once you learn this stuff, you don't unlearn it.
You know what I mean?
When you grow up in an evangelical community, everything makes your antennas go up.
This kind of thing, for a lot of people, they've been looking at Donald Trump as the fulfillment of a prophecy of the end times.
The idea that there will be somebody who rises up and leads America because it's the benefactor of a moral universe and God.
They look at this and they say, here's one more step toward it.
And that is, it sounds crazy coming out, but for people who are raised in it, it's as natural as walking, Nick.
Like that, that's exactly how a lot of people are looking at this thing.
Yeah, and then it also folds into this notion of, uh, yeah, well, all those other really smart people for all these years have been so wrong and haven't been able to solve this problem.
So let's, why not, like, let Jared Kushner get in there, a guy who was, you know, bought his way into Harvard, who was not smart enough to actually go to the nightly school anyway, and who has so much on his plate covering everything in the White House he's got to do, and then also take care of this.
That is also what's frightening.
And then, you know, even to talk about W for a minute, you know, they were able to make up evidence, right?
It's pretty clear now that none of the evidence they said they had, if you use the word evidence, was not really, you know, was not legitimate to get us into the Iraq War, you know, after we went into Afghanistan.
But, you know, here's another one of these things where it used to be, and this ties into Bill Clinton.
Bill Clinton had a pretty meek response to the attack on the coal in 98 because he was in the middle of an impeachment.
And he was worried that politically it would be a real problem for him.
It looked like he was trying to change the subject and get into a real war.
And then ultimately maybe he would have killed bin Laden, right, in 98 before the, you know, the September 11th attacks.
So, but here we have the big fear, we've always feared, was that Trump was going to start a war on purpose to deflect from any of the political unrest that he was causing himself here, i.e.
the impeachment process, which is not going well.
And we talked about in the last episode, which is what we're seeing that the majority of people in America want him removed.
So this is the problem where maybe this is the 4D chess that he's playing is that he knows this is going to lead to some really major war and what he also probably remembers is that when this happens in other times generally the president gets a natural bump in approval ratings because we all had our heartstrings tugged about war defending you know of America and the values across the world so that's the worry is that he's going to somehow start this and I don't think anyone's going to agree with him that it's going to end up
I hope you're right.
him even in the few months heading into the election in 2020.
So I think this is going to end up backfiring anyway, because like you said, he's just a moron.
I hope you're right.
As somebody who came of age watching the Iraq war, my cynicism of American media and American culture is very, very strong.
The moment that bombs start going off, and you brought up Trump bombing a deserted airstrip, right, in Syria.
And actually, I don't know if you remember this or if our listeners remember this, but there was a moment when even MSNBC, which is a strident opponent of Donald Trump, was...
I mean, you can go ahead and say the Revolutionary War, but let's go back to the Mexican-American War.
And they started showing like video of the missiles going off.
And there's this thing that happens with our media.
They immediately, and this goes back.
I mean, you can go ahead and say the Revolutionary War, but let's go back to the Mexican-American War.
The American media is just obsessed with war and what it means for America's place in history.
And the moment that the bombs start going off and the shots start getting fired, all of a sudden it becomes a waving American flag.
And I was actually, This was really chilling.
Most of the time when Donald Trump does his shit, I look at it and I say, oh man, this is ridiculous and so transparent.
Tonight, before the Pentagon announced that they had actually ordered the bombing that killed these people, Donald Trump tweeted an image.
He tweeted an image of the American flag.
And that really hit me.
And I was like, that's all you need.
You just need to show the flag, right?
You need to say this is an American thing.
This is America protecting itself.
And this has a long history that goes from George W. Bush back to James K. Polk, right?
This is how you go and you conquer territory and you further the idea of American exceptionalism.
And the American media, because it has financial interest in showing it, and because ratings go up, and because they make money during war, and because the idea of American exceptionalism is very, very popular, they forward this thing all the time.
So, we're having this conversation tonight, January 2nd, 2020, as it's unfolding.
There's a real possibility within a week's time, within two weeks time, within a month's time that we're going to see something very bizarre happen and we're going to see things move.
And right now, yes, it does feel as if we're all very, very suspicious of what Donald Trump is doing or why he chose to do this, particularly in the shadow of impeachment.
I don't know if that's going to be the case.
If we start getting aircraft, you know, in the Middle East, if we start getting, you know, cruisers in the Middle East, if it becomes a live, live war, if there's a terrorist attack, if something happens, I don't know that we have that same cynicism.
And that's what really frightens me.
Well, let's not forget that a lot of our major wars are started on a figment of our imagination.
There's very compelling evidence that the Gulf of Tonkin didn't really happen.
It was UFOs.
I don't know what that was, but it wasn't that, and that got them into the war.
We certainly know what they did with the trumped-up evidence in 2003 to go into Iraq after Afghanistan.
Actually, those are both.
One was Democrat, one was Republican.
That is a real concern because you know as we learn these things it's like we end up getting to these wars where people die on both sides needlessly and you know the one thing about if we want to talk about the fall of Iran when the Shah took over in 79 that was when Jimmy Carter was still the president
You know, Jimmy Carter is arguably the smartest president we ever had, and the smart people tend to recognize that there sometimes is value to having to deal with someone who might not be really great on human rights.
And by the way, it's very pejorative.
Like, you know, obviously these tyrants are terrible, but they understood that they might have to deal with that and accept that in exchange for stability.
Stability sometimes ends up being a little bit more important than having to completely stand up to regime change in these countries where we couldn't afford to rebuild the country anyway.
So I think that's also the worry here because, again, what is the endgame?
Is this going to lead to a war with Iran?
Do we think we're going to win that war and then install another sort of puppet at the head of that country?
And then is it going to go as well as, well, Iraq next door?
Because it hasn't gone well.
Well let me ask you a question, Nick.
Just a rhetorical question that I expect you to answer.
Do you think that the Trump administration has even a shadow of an idea of what comes next?
No.
Okay!
So that's a reason to be terrified.
Right.
And we also know that because they didn't talk to the people that they should have talked to in the government.
They didn't talk to anybody!
Yeah, this is on the whim.
You know, obviously, okay, so let's go through this.
They obviously got intelligence that they knew he was flying in, right?
And they obviously were already embroiled in a little bit of this tit-for-tat back-and-forth thing with, you know, they were oil tankers in the Gulf, and then, you know, they killed the contractor, and then we had the embassy.
So, you know, there already was a little bit of expectation of, I guess, something in retaliation for Well, can I ask you a quick question?
embassy by these you know in a relatively non-violent you know thing so um so so obviously somebody had to be talking to him and they had to have that there was there must have been a meeting that looked somewhat official and normal but yeah um it's really crazy when you think about what that scene must look like well can i ask you a quick question because this has been running laps in my head for i i don't know the last couple hours
is it a coincidence that this just eruption that's taking place in iraq and now with this escalation with iran somehow or another took place at the same time as north korea moving beyond our conversations is it a cool what Wow.
I mean, my instinct would say, yeah, I would think it's a coincidence, but you think there's a connection?
I don't know.
My whole point here is that there has been a strategic undermining of American influence and power for years, for years now, that culminated in the election of Donald Trump and everything that came after.
Donald Trump has mismanaged every single American foreign policy interaction and relationship, period.
And all of a sudden, for all of it to come together at one time, that makes me feel weird.
And that makes me feel like I have to question how all of this stuff came together at once and how it's all coming to a head at once.
It feels, by design, and maybe it's a clumsiness, maybe it's the fact that Donald Trump can't handle being President of the United States, which, by the way, granted, is...
Factual but for all of this to come together and by the way listen.
I'm just gonna say this because it's 11 26 p.m.
Eastern Time It's weird that this all takes place in the 20th anniversary of Vladimir Putin taking control of Russia I'm just throwing that out there.
It's a weird coincidence, Nick.
That's all.
By the way, what I was trying to... I thought maybe you were getting at was there was a direct connection between North Korea and Iran, but I think what you're saying actually is absolutely true is the president is in a period of weakness, right?
In a position of weakness.
He's impeached.
And this is why a lot of the Republicans would argue, you can't impeach the president.
You're now going to tie his hands.
He won't be able to do anything foreign policy-wise.
And that's irresponsible of you to do that.
But then on the flip side, great.
This is what North Korea is seeing.
Great.
We have a chance now because he won't retaliate because he's stuck in this impeachment thing.
Same with Iran.
That all makes sense, too.
And then what that ends up leading to is, yeah, Trump is going to go overboard, perhaps.
This is why he went, what he did, to really, oh, I'm going to show you that I really, my hands are not tied.
And that ultimately goes to the bigger question that has never been answered in the 60, 70, 80 years of the country since, from, you know, Vietnam till now is, Can a president declare war without approval from Congress?
Which is the legacy of George W. Bush.
And all of this has to be thrown back.
And I have to say, again, as a person who came to age as the Iraq War happened, we cannot throw all of this on Donald Trump.
George W. Bush owns a lion's share of this business.
And not to mention George W. Bush, but the neoconservatives who powered him, the Project for a New American Century, the neoconservatives who kneeled at the altar of Leo Strauss, Who all believed that the only thing that mattered was the myth of America as a crusader.
It didn't matter what they did, what actions they took, as long as they positioned themselves as the champions of the world.
And that's who we have to thank for where we are now.
Because none of this would be happening if it wasn't for George W. Bush and the neoconservatives.
Okay, but at the very least, and I'm with you on all of that, the Iraq war then was like seven on one.
And who was one of the allies?
Russia!
So, at least there, it was an overwhelming force, international coalition, that made it easy on everybody to kind of make sure that we could get that taken care of.
Now, what are the odds, if we ended up getting embroiled in a war with Iran, what are the odds we're going to get help from anybody?
Germany?
France?
England?
Like, maybe England, maybe Canada.
You know, maybe Australia will send like a hundred people to help, but you're talking about a very isolated war between just us and them, and that's what's really scary to me because it's going to end up being unnecessary.
Well, why would they?
And when people die, then how do we maintain, how do we ever rebuild what America stands for, and how do we ever regain our confidence in what our government can do and what the United States is?
Why would anybody join this conflict?
Again, this was a unilateral action that had absolutely... I mean, they couldn't even alert the people within the United States government, much less the people outside of it.
It's not like they talked to anybody.
It's not like they cleared this with anybody.
It's not like they planned this with anybody.
This was a decision that happened within the mind of one human being, Donald John Trump, and that was it.
And let's get to the actual announcement by the State Department of the actual attack.
By the way, there was such a long delay, right, of when they finally confirmed this.
Oh, unbelievable!
I mean, which is also horrible, because we need to know.
We need to know what our government stands for.
But interestingly enough, when you look at the actual press release that they sent out, it said, the first phrase is, at the direction of the President, the U.S.
military is taking decisive defensive action to protect U.S.
personnel abroad by killing Qasem Soleimani.
That's not a coincidence by the way.
What's that?
That's not a coincidence that that is the first clause of that announcement.
Right, and it was very notable because, and we've seen this before, especially because we haven't even talked about withholding funds for Ukraine, but we've seen that phrase before where They're like, not throwing him under the bus, but they need to make sure in writing that this has nothing to do with anybody but the President doing this.
And also I think the subtext would then be, we don't agree with this at all and shouldn't be doing this, and yet we have to because the President has the power to do this and backed by the Department of Justice.
I mean, listen, we haven't talked about the redactions that were done on all these FOIA releases we had recently on the Ukraine stuff.
This is where it also becomes more dangerous when you have a Department of Justice who is basically the personal lawyer for the president and his intent on increasing his power.
That's when these wars are also started and easily and manipulated by the law to like somehow come up with like random reasons why he's allowed to do this and we need to change.
That's going to be one of these episodes.
It's going to be our ideas for fixing all these things so it can't happen again.
Yeah, for years and years and years and years, people have been saying, you know what, executive overreach is going to be a problem.
And they said, oh, we have competent people who are presidents and they'll take care of it and it will be fine.
And it has bit us in the ass.
We now have a president who, you know, you can say whatever you want about striking Iran.
It was an act of war.
That's what it was.
It was an act of war and a declaration of war, which actually resides within Congress.
This is a person who has moved beyond it.
It is an extra legal unilateral decision to declare war.
And I personally, and I tweeted this earlier, if a competent politician, a brilliant politician, was dealt this hand, I would still be concerned.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, if a really, really competent, talented politician was given this, a president who knew what they were doing, I'm sorry, but Donald Trump has failed at everything he's ever done.
have a completely incompetent and I'm sorry, but Donald Trump has failed at everything he's ever done.
Right.
And he's now created a situation that even the most talented politician is probably going to fail at.
I don't like our odds.
I don't like our chances.
I don't like thinking about what our media is going to do and what our culture is going to do.
Trumpists are going to go crazy with this.
Nationalism is going to go nuts.
Authoritarianism is going to go nuts.
This is a really, really dangerous situation and I don't think people realize that yet.
Yeah, and we saw in the, with OW, how they were able to pit, you know, if you're not going to vote to authorize, you know, attack on Iraq, then you are not a patriot.
And we're going to see that all over the place on this one.
And we can also, interestingly enough, point to the fall of Iran, originally, when the Shah took over in 79, was probably a direct result of the fact that, you know, in the early, in the mid 70s, we had Terrible.
the CIA because they were doing this too much and taking over other countries.
So in an effort to like clean that up, that's sort of what led to the Iran falling, which is now kind of where we are now, which goes back to the original point of how bad we are at foreign policy and how short-sighted we are.
You know, myopic.
Terrible.
No, it's terrible.
And you know, one thing that I always gain hope from is you talk a lot about the idea of America being able to lead based upon our principles and our ideas, right?
Our vision for the world.
When we do stuff like this, we violate it.
Right?
By undertaking actions like this, and you can sit here and you can say that Suleimani should be dead and that's fine, but the idea that we do this without taking the necessary precautions or having a plan or anything even approaching a three-dimensional idea of what we are doing and an actual idea.
I mean, the idea that the president would order this man's death and then tweet out a picture of the American flag as if this is a black and white situation is crazy.
And to continue behaving this way is just to invalidate our position and to endanger all of us.
I mean, listen, I understand that this is going to sound dire and this is going to sound pessimistic.
We are more endangered tonight than we were last night.
That's what's happened today is we have entered into a period of danger and a real situation where America is imperiled and America's citizens and goals are imperiled because this president is incompetent and cannot plan and is incapable of carrying out the duties of his office.
That's where we are tonight.
Now, think of it this way.
A lot of these conflicts end up being resolved by literally having to sit down and shake hands with these people that we call terrorists.
This is the key to what foreign diplomacy ends up being about.
Now, why would Iran not trust us?
Well, I'm old enough to remember we had an agreement to prevent them from getting nuclear weapons that they were following.
Now, again, were they still plotting attacks and killing people, Americans too, in other countries?
Yes, that was still going on.
That was never really part of the agreement.
But when you begin to see, like, okay, we have the agreement they're not going to develop nuclear weapons, we can kind of go from there.
There's an opening then to begin more discussions and to figure out a way where we can limit more sanctions and then in exchange for better behavior and maybe get somewhere.
That's, like, the key.
This, the other alternative, which is just, you know, tit for tatting, going back and forth until we have a war, will never end up getting us where we want to go.
And that's all these conflicts happen that way.
And I remember talking to, you know, a die in the wool, drink the Kool-Aid Republican years ago telling him, you know, like the war in Afghanistan is going to end when we sit down with the Taliban.
This is like 2006 that I said this.
The guy went screaming out of the room at me, wouldn't talk to me.
You know, how dare I even, you know, conceive of that.
Well, guess what?
Last year, we sit down with the Taliban, we shake their hand, we're coming to a framework of an agreement, and that's what's going to ultimately cause, again, that word stability in the region.
It's not going to be great for women, or children, or even men who don't want to be devout Muslims and live under Sharia law, but there's going to be stability there, and at least somehow we can maybe go in a practical manner, figure out a different path to help make that work better, but the alternative is another 9-11.
Yeah, and you know, if our listeners want to understand what's happening, they need to think about the idea of game theory.
The idea is you're either in a game or you're not in a game.
Right?
When you're not in a game, you're communicating honestly and openly, and you're talking about things.
Right?
Like, you're talking about what I want to do, and what do you want to do, and then you go from there.
Game theory is the idea, I make a move, you make a move, I make a move, you make a move, and that's when the missiles take off.
And the latter is the most dangerous thing that humanity has ever cooked up.
It's the idea of I am an enemy and you are an enemy and we're going to go back and forth and we're going to play this game.
We can't play the game.
And tonight what happened was it was another move in the game and it was a fatal move.
It killed a bunch of people, it took a player off the board, and so we're Ron now has to respond by taking another player off the board or taking multiple players off the board.
We win and humanity wins when we're not taking players off the board and when we're actually talking and that's what a lot of these diplomats have been saying is we have to communicate and we have to work together and that's not what's happening here because this is a dysfunctional dangerous government and that's where we're heading and and and God help us because this this really really is a dangerous situation that we have to work to to dismantle.
So I don't know where else to go with this.
Thank you for coming through tonight with us.
This was an emergency muckrake podcast that I think was necessary.
I think the next few days are going to be really dire and really important.
We'll be back next week and as needed.
These are going to be really dangerous times and I think that we need to keep our eyes clear and keep clear minds and open hearts.
Thank you everyone for paying attention and listening and supporting us.
I am at J.Y.
Sexton.
Nick is at Can You Hear Me?
SMH.
Thank you for everything.
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