April 10, 2017 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:16:18
3646 Debate: Military Intervention In Syria | Stefan Molyneux and Bill Mitchell
Do you support President Donald Trump’s military intervention in Syria and the Middle East as a whole? Bill Mitchell joins Stefan Molyneux for a thorough discussion and debate on the recent military action in Syria, the threats of regime change, the possible removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the history of American foreign interventions, the reliability of U.S. intelligence, and if this damages Trump’s how this impacts the America First campaign promise. Bill Mitchell is the host and creator of YourVoice Radio and one most influential non-candidates on social media the election cycle - with 200,000+ Twitter followers and millions of impressions daily.Follow Bill on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mitchellviiYourVoice Radio: http://www.yourvoiceradio.com
Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio, back with Bill Mitchell.
He is the host and creator of Your Voice Radio and one of the most influential non-candidates on social media during the last election cycle.
He has close to 200,000 or more Twitter followers and millions of impressions daily.
You can follow Bill on Twitter, twitter.com forward slash MitchellVII and Your Voice Radio, of course, you can find at yourvoiceradio.com.
Bill, thanks a lot for taking the time today.
Great, Stephan.
Great to see you.
So we're going to have a chat about Syria and Trump and chemical weapons and proportional responses and all other kinds of good and juicy stuff.
And sort of first off, when it comes to the lobbying of the Tomahawk missiles into Syria, there are significant international and constitutional legal problems with that.
Given that that may be a one-off affair, I'm not sure that it's worth devoting a huge amount of time to a relatively small military incident that's deep in the rear view.
My concern is next steps.
What happens from here?
And there are contradictory messages coming out of the Trump administration in terms of, well, you know, the Syrian people should be deciding who's in charge, which they actually used to before the civil war.
They used to be able to decide.
And of course, people forget that Assad was voted in.
And he also had, during the initial time, That there was complaints about his administration, his regime.
This is back in the day before the civil war started in the 2000s.
He actually did try and meet with dissident groups and opposition groups.
And he said, you know, I'm happy to make accommodations, just not if you're pointing a gun at me.
And there was actually a vote wherein a coalition of different parties actually got more seats than his Barthes party.
So there were some reforms going on at the time, back in the day.
And then it escalated, and partly because it's kind of a proxy war.
It's a proxy war in many ways between the people who are pro-Assad, right, the people like the Russians and so on, and the people who are pro-rebels, which is the Arab League and to some degree the United States, who got involved very early and turned what could have been something relatively peaceful into much more of an escalating crisis.
So, my concern is what happens going forward.
And as far as regime change goes, I think that there are strong cases to be made for the immorality, unwisdom, and fundamental impracticality Right.
First of all, I think what's important that we need to notice here is that as a brand new president of the United States, you only get one chance.
To make a first impression on the international stage.
And when Donald Trump came out and condemned Assad for these gas attacks, if he had done nothing, we wouldn't be talking about all this right now.
We would be talking about Donald Trump as a weak leader, Donald Trump as Obama 2.0.
You know, when can we count on Donald Trump to take action?
But the fact that he not only took action, but took swift and decisive action and did a good job with it.
It had the effect that he wanted to do, so he was competent.
This sent a message to the entire world that this is a man not to be messed with.
Now, going forward, anytime Donald Trump makes a threat on the international stage, it has teeth.
If he hadn't done this, where would he draw the line?
Let's say there's another gas attack.
Does he do nothing then?
Let's say North Korea does something provocative.
Does he do nothing then?
When does he finally stand up and do something?
To me, this was brilliant strategically.
We had vast agreement from the other leaders of the free world, and people were like, oh, well, there are a bunch of globalists and stuff like that.
I tell you what, if you want to keep a free world, you got to have them on your team.
So we have a vast agreement there.
Donald Trump, I don't know if it was synchronicity.
I don't think it was planned because, of course, you couldn't plan that in advance.
But the fact that the Chinese president was right there with Donald Trump when this took place, and now China is saying, yes, we want to work with you on trade, and we're going to take a neutral position on this.
And we started sailing in the direction of North Korea, and China isn't saying we're going to blow you guys out of the water.
To me, these are all good things.
I think that as a new president of the United States, there is nothing wrong with exerting strength and showing strength going forward.
Does the Trump team really want regime change?
That's your question.
You know, I think that is the absolute last resort.
As you agree with me, that is fraught with problems.
In the Middle East, regime change is a problem because the people that are living in these countries tend to be People that have been under oppression for a long time, they're not accustomed to a democratic government, and so they don't tend to handle it very well.
You tend to get a very non-secular government in there.
So that's the last resort.
But I think Trump's end play here is that he wants safe zones in Syria.
He wants to end the refugee crisis.
He sees the refugee crisis as an existential threat to the Western world because ISIS is using it to funnel terrorism into the Western world.
They would have had no other way to get there except for the refugee crisis.
But I think that he's not going to be able to get those safe zones unless he keeps regime change on the table.
If he said, under no circumstances will we do regime change, he weakens his position.
If he says, if push comes to shove, we're going for regime change, he's much more likely to get cooperation from Assad and from Putin I think safe zones are his real concern here, his real goal here, because that would solve the refugee crisis.
Well, going back in time, and I do want to talk about the refugee crisis and the safe zones, I've certainly been a fan of that as a solution for some time.
You can help 12 to 13 times more people in the Middle East by creating safe zones and resettling them in the Middle East, although there are safe zones called vast swaths of Saudi Arabia that could be used that aren't being used.
But let's go sort of a bit more of a historical look at things because if we just look at the tip of the iceberg, we don't get a sense of its size and weight.
So Western intervention into the region has been going on literally for hundreds of years.
Napoleon had his forays into the Middle East.
The French were in charge of the Middle East.
They took over at the end of the First World War and it lasted until the end of Western colonialism around the world in general at the end of the Second World War.
And so France was in charge of Syria for decades.
And Syria, of course, has a wide variety of ethnicities and races and religions and pretty fundamentalist religions, to put it as nicely as humanly possible, all kind of jammed into the same place.
And so after centuries, well, and certainly in the 20th century, many decades of Western control over the region, the moment the West leaves, there does seem to be some peace that gets established in Syria.
There is a ruling party, the Alawites, that's put in by the French, which elevated them from a minority status to a majority status.
And the Sunnis and others who didn't have any political power got frustrated and started to advocate for change.
There was peaceful change going on in Syria, and there's no indication that it ever would have escalated to a full-on civil war if the United States and others hadn't sort of stepped in.
So my concern, Bill, is that if we just look at Syria, we can see that the current instability, the current civil war is being fueled in part, in part.
And I don't want to just pick out on America here because I'm fully aware there are lots of other countries who are funding and fueling and driving this conflict for their own geopolitical and religious reasons.
But since we're talking about U.S. choices here, I'm going to focus on the U.S., but I don't want this to sound like America, you know, picking on and the only bad actor and so on.
But there's no indication that the relatively peaceful reforms that were ongoing in Syria in the 2000s would have escalated to this bloody, brutal, extended six to seven year civil war if it hadn't been for America, you know, applying sanctions and getting in.
Now, initially, of course, the aid that the Americans gave was called non-lethal aid.
It's sort of six of one, half a dozen of the other, because you give the rebels non-lethal aid, then they have more money with which to buy weapons.
So, to me, if I look at sort of the history of Syria, this is obviously a very brief sprint through what's going on.
Massive amounts of Western intervention have produced the current mess.
And, you know, the one thing that I think we can learn from history is to try as best as we can not to make the same mistakes again.
And we're just talking Syria.
Looking back in time, we can also dip into places like Iraq and Libya and Afghanistan and other places where these interventions have been tried.
The boots on the ground have been tried.
Rapidly, foreign aid, food, medicine, everything has been thrown at the situation.
And the result has been, as you know, the creation of a power vacuum in Iraq, which has fostered the growth of ISIS, which has then moved into Syria.
We have a resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan that now controls significant amounts of areas.
It is a very, very great challenge.
And I would actually, historically, arguably completely impossible to go into the Middle East, the reasons we can get into later, and try and affect positive change.
The growth of democracy, of a republic in the West, was preceded by thousands of years of Greco-Roman philosophy, of John Locke, of Thomas Paine, of the Founding Fathers, of the Enlightenment, of the Age of Reason, of the Renaissance, of the Catholic Church, and the Protestant Church, and The individualism and it's a huge cultural momentum that occurs over hundreds, if not thousands of years.
And the idea that you could just go in with a lot of bombs and bullets and reproduce that evolution appears to be one of the great delusions of the modern age.
And I don't think that Trump should commit to something that A, is completely illegal internationally, the invasion of another country that's not directly threatening you, and B, has never been proven to work throughout history.
Yeah, well, here's the thing.
I think that what Donald Trump wants, the last couple of days I've been talking about a political solution.
I think that what they want is they want Russia to come in and rein in Assad and get this thing under control and solve this refugee process.
I have talked about Twitter this entire time.
The end game, in my mind, for Trump is to solve the refugee crisis.
The refugee crisis is the channel that has been sending terrorism throughout the world and destabilizing the Western world.
We've avoided it somewhat because we've limited how many refugees have come in here and we've tried to do a better job vetting them.
But this is the great danger.
This is the great cancer.
If you have a freckle on your face, it's just a cosmetic problem.
But if that freckle becomes a melanoma, then it dangers the whole body.
And that's where we're at.
Will Syria be a melanoma?
Will Syria be a cancer to the world?
People have said, Donald Trump promised to make America great again.
What's he doing over in Syria?
Fixing the refugee crisis is making America great again.
It's important.
Does invasion work into that?
I think that is a highly unlikely outcome.
I think that an interesting dynamic took place here.
At least in the last eight years, Putin has been able to strut around like the cock of the walk, like a tough guy, beating up on people that were lesser than himself and looking like he was unstoppable.
This is the first time in eight years that Putin has been stopped.
Now, why do I say Putin has been stopped?
Because Trump gave him warning that these missiles were coming, and what did Putin do?
Nothing.
He did nothing.
And now they're saying, oh, if you hit us again, we're coming after you.
Well, you did nothing the first time.
I guarantee you that weakened Putin on the national stage.
That is the first time in the last eight years, at least, that Putin has had to step down.
So what does Putin want?
Does he want a conflict with the United States?
Does he want World War III with the United States?
I don't think so.
So what's his other option?
His option is to rein in Assad and let these safe zones I think that's a long-term strategy.
I think that's a long-term goal.
You're right.
It's very difficult for Western nations to go in there and create regime change in places like this, because it's just a different culture.
One of the reasons why we were able to so successfully turn Japan around after World War II is they are united as a culture.
They were able to take national pride and unite around that as a culture and remake themselves.
The problem in the Middle East is you have so much sectarianism and so much division on a religious basis, and people tend to be a little bit crazy about it.
It's extremely difficult.
I agree with you on that.
It would be an extremely heavy lift for this to work.
But I think that Trump's boldness, his bold leadership on this, has had a dramatic effect.
Not only that, But he's become really the leader of the free world now.
I mean, the rest of the world has stood up and said, yeah, this guy means it.
He doesn't mess around.
He didn't go before Congress.
He didn't wait for six months.
He didn't rattle the saber.
He's just like, bam, there it is.
I think this is a whole different ballgame now, and we'll see.
But Donald Trump is very strategic.
And if you try to analyze what he is doing on a linear basis, you are probably going to get it wrong.
And I think that's what a lot of people have done.
There's a lot of knee-jerk reactions out there.
But I think that people are turning around.
I'm reading a lot of articles where folks are turning around and saying, you know what?
Overall, on a global basis, this was a good move for Trump and it's going to work out well for us.
Okay, so let's talk about the refugee crisis.
So first of all, the refugee crisis is not the refugee crisis.
A significant proportion of the people flooding into Europe are not coming from Syria, are not coming from unstable countries, are not coming from war zones.
They are coming from the Middle Eastern and North African and other countries because they get lots of free stuff in Europe.
It is not a migrant crisis that is primarily or even universally driven by the war in Syria.
So solving the problem in Syria, while a great thing in theory, is not going to do anything to stem the fundamental drivers of the refugee crisis.
Plus, of course, they may not want to go back, right?
I mean, there's the welfare state in some countries in Europe gives people from the Middle East or North Africa 10 times the income they could earn at home with backbreaking labor.
And they can sit around with free food, playing on their free MacBook Airs.
And it's really going to be tough to undo this problem.
So I don't think that the refugee crisis, even if we call it that way, is going to be solved by dealing with problems in Syria.
And what caused the refugee crisis?
Well, Well, three things.
Number one, ridiculously generous welfare programs.
Number two, a failure to enforce borders.
And number three, Western interventionism and other countries' interventionism in the Middle East, which we know with Iraq, with Syria, with Libya, with Afghanistan.
Not in the Middle East, but you understand.
And so I fail to see how it is a productive solution to attempt to deal with Europeans' ridiculous addiction to highly beneficial and self-destructive welfare programs and unwillingness to enforce their own borders to deal with a problem that in part comes from Western interventionism into the Middle East We're good to
go.
I look at it, can I go up to a young American man, a fresh-faced, apple-cheeked young American man, and say, I'm sorry, you need to go into the Middle East and you need to risk being killed, maimed, tortured, brutalized, delimbed, because, well, because Europe is too generous in its welfare state and won't enforce its borders.
So I'm afraid you're the one who has to suffer for that.
Yeah.
Well, first of all, we don't have, to my knowledge, a draft in the United States right now.
Those who sign up to fight in the military sign up to fight in the military.
So, I mean, if they get sent somewhere by our commander in chief, they should expect to do that.
Regardless, I think...
No, but can you make a case for it that they should go?
I didn't say anything about the draft.
Let's say it's just some young American soldier.
Can you say, I'm sorry, you need to go and risk life and limb in the Middle East because the Europeans won't enforce their borders?
I don't know.
Here's the thing.
You say that this is a refugee crisis from all over the world.
Yeah.
But before Syria, did we have a big refugee crisis?
No.
It was a catalyst.
And if Syria could be the catalyst for this big refugee crisis that sprung up everywhere, solving the refugee problem in Syria can help to be a catalyst for the rest.
Now, the problem that Europe got is the same problem we've got with illegal immigration.
They are what we call an attractive hazard.
If you have a pool in your backyard, and you don't build a fence around it, and the neighborhood kids sneak in and drown in your pool, you can get arrested for allowing an attractive hazard.
This is what Europe has become with their welfare programs.
This is what the United States has become with illegal immigration, with their welfare programs.
We have become an attractive hazard.
That needs to be solved, too.
This is not just a one-point problem.
This is a problem that has many, many different points that all need to be dealt with.
But because you can't solve the problem all at once, doesn't mean you shouldn't try solving a part of it.
And that's what I think Donald Trump is trying to do.
He's trying to solve at least the Syria part of it.
He's not a king.
You know, he's not the lord of the planet.
He can't make Europe do these things.
But one of the next things that I've seen is that he seems to at least With this move on Syria, be emboldening our allies as far as dealing with the situation with Assad and taking a strong stance with the situation with Assad.
I think that this will not end up with an invasion.
People are like, oh, are we going to invade tomorrow?
You remember, when we invaded Iraq, it took months and months and months of buildup.
It was a big deal.
I don't think there's going to be an invasion.
I don't think there's going to be regime change.
Russia decides—here's the thing.
One thing I've said about Trump all along, that a great negotiator wins because they make their opponents believe it is in their best interest to do what the negotiator wants.
And I believe that Donald Trump is setting this up so Russia will believe it is in their best interest to rein Assad in, which is what Trump wants.
See?
You don't win negotiations by defeating people and breaking their necks.
You win negotiations by making them feel like they won by agreeing with you.
And I think that that is what Donald Trump is trying to do.
Always remember that we're not dealing with a typical politician here.
We are dealing with a strategist.
We're dealing with a strong negotiator.
We're dealing with somebody that does not have just one step, but has many steps along the way.
And many of those steps are intended to throw you off the trail, to confuse you.
And deceive you.
That's the whole point.
It's like playing chess.
We talk about chess all the time.
When I make a move, and my purpose in that move is five moves later to take your queen, I'm not going to say, by the way, I'm moving here to take your queen in five moves.
It's intended to deceive you.
It's intended to make you make bad moves.
And I think that that's what Trump is doing here.
So you and I are in agreement.
Invasion is a bad idea.
Regime change Bad idea of last consequence, but I also say that taking invasion and regime change off the table as a possibility is also a bad idea.
If you want the lamppost, ask for the moon.
Regime change, invasion is the moon.
I think Donald Trump wants a lamppost, which is solving the refugee crisis in Syria.
He can't deal with the welfare state in Europe, but he can deal with the refugee crisis in Syria, and I think that's what he's trying to do.
I think that as far as the refugee crisis goes, funding less military protection of Europe will help a lot.
Because one of the reasons Europe is able to afford its ridiculous welfare state is because it's offloaded a lot of protection from their own countries, and they've gotten lazy.
They've been under the umbrella of Western protection, of American protection since the end of the Second World War, and they've gotten lazy.
And they've forgotten that the world is a dangerous place full of horrible, dangerous ideologies, full of desires to invade and conquer other lands and other ideologies and other countries.
They've gotten lazy, fat, soft, complacent, and they've just thought that they can solve all the world's problems with big hugs and lots of money.
And that has a lot to do with American interventionism.
American interventionism also includes providing the umbrella of American military protection to Europe.
And if the idea from Europe is transmitted to America, right?
America says, well, we're going to solve this problem by political solutions, or maybe there'll be some sanctions, or some economic pressure, or maybe there'll be a ground invasion, or maybe there'll be more bombing.
Don't worry.
We'll go to Syria.
We'll solve this problem.
And again, you pointed out Syria is the source of the refugee crisis.
No, this started with Iraq and Afghanistan.
Iraq created ISIS. ISIS created attacks upon civilians.
Civilians fled.
Libya, of course, was created.
And remember, the Russians listened and were fine.
With the UN resolution to do boots on the ground to solve problems in Libya.
Oh, it's not going to be regime change.
It's not going to be regime change.
The Russians are like, oh, okay, fine.
We'll let you go ahead and do it.
Boom!
Straight to regime change, straight to a failed state, straight to floods of migrants going into Libya.
So the fact that Russia is a little skeptical about what the world plans to do in Syria well after they saw what happened in Libya, which Russia has to deal with a lot more than anyone else because Russia has the largest contact of any country outside of Israel with the Islamic world.
So they have all of those challenges.
But if America keeps rushing in to solve all of these problems, if America keeps saying, don't worry, we'll flex our geopolitical strategy and our military might and this and that and the other, Well, what Europe's going to do is say, okay, great.
Well, we don't need to reform the welfare state.
We don't need to enforce our borders.
Don't worry.
Uncle Sam's got it.
Now, if America stops doing that, then the Europeans and the people in the Middle East and the people in North Africa who actually are surrounding the problem, they'll have to get off their damn couches, dust off their boots, go out and start solving these problems.
Maybe America can facilitate.
Maybe America can negotiate on behalf of others.
But I really dislike the idea that America just says, don't worry, we got this.
Everybody can just relax.
That's not how these problems are going to be solved, because this is what America has said for the last 70 years, and we've ended up with an ideology that's threatening to overrun the civilized world.
Yeah, well, you know, this is what Trump has said about NATO. You know, and during the campaign, they're like, oh, Trump wants to get out of NATO. No, he just wants NATO to carry their fair share.
You know, I mean, Germany, they're supposed to pay 2% of their GDP towards defense.
And what does Germany pay, like 1.2%?
Oh, and the guy, the German defense minister says, it's impossible for us to pay any more.
It's like, well, we have all the money in the world for migrants, but it's impossible and completely impossible.
It's not impossible.
It's just, that's what you say when you want America to pick up your bills.
Right, right.
Yeah, but desperate people do desperate things.
And when Donald Trump goes to these nations, they say, oh, that's fine.
It's impossible.
That's fine.
We're just going to close all our army bases and go home.
See you.
And then he starts closing them right away.
I'm just speaking hypothetically.
All of a sudden, they're like, they have their come to Jesus moment.
It's like, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute.
And this is the thing.
This is the thing, I tell you, from this whole Syrian exercise that has Been the best thing for Donald Trump is the speed and the determination and the execution with which he did this.
Part of the reason why these things we did in Libya and Iraq and stuff failed was not just the idea of doing them that failed, but the execution was horrible.
It's horrible, beyond horrible.
I think when we went to Iraq, we said the whole war would cost us like a billion dollars or something like that, or some ridiculous amount.
They weren't realistic.
It was like Vietnam all over again.
They didn't go in to win, and they didn't go in with an endgame.
I think that whatever Donald Trump does on these things, he's going to have an endgame in mind.
I guarantee you, on that missile strike, The endgame wasn't blowing up some planes on a runway.
He's got a different endgame in mind.
He's got the picture.
All the pieces are laid out in front of us.
And sometimes it's confusing for regular folks because if I took a puzzle and threw it on the table in front of you, and I said, what's this a picture of?
You wouldn't know.
You know, you see colors, blue, green, you know, you don't know.
It's only when the puzzle comes together, does it make sense?
And Donald Trump is a guy in his mind that, as a strategic thinker, knows what that picture looks like.
He's holding the box top on his hand.
He knows what it looks like.
He knows how the puzzle pieces fit together.
And he likes the fact that everybody's confused by what he's doing.
I guarantee you, if you're a supporter of Trump and you're confused by this, I guarantee you his enemies are twice as confused as you are.
And that's good from a standpoint of that.
You know, Bill, if analogies were arguments, I'd concede already.
But tragically, they're not, right?
So there are, of course, you know, let's say Assad is some crazy, crazy bad guy or whatever, right?
Well, I mean, he has been fighting a civil war armed by a lot of overseas elements for six years, and it has been a crazy time in the region.
But would you not say that a significant proportion, if not perhaps even the slight majority of world leaders, are bad guys relative to sort of Western-style governments, relative to a limited government republic, that they're bad guys as a whole?
Well, there are good guys and bad guys out there.
Let me throw in something real quick.
This has been a question that was asked throughout this whole thing.
Was this really Assad that did this?
Why would Assad do this?
Assad was winning.
Why would he do this?
I think that Assad did this.
And the Pentagon, all their intelligence said, yeah, we got the tracks of the airplanes.
We see the craters where it landed.
It was in the middle of the street.
It wasn't in some building where weapons were stored.
Okay.
If you're going to believe our intelligence, that's what they said.
Okay.
I think that Assad did this because we came out and said, okay, Tillerson came out and said, no, we're not going to seek any regime change in Syria.
Assad can stay.
Then he goes out and does this sort of thing.
Why?
Because this area was a very heavy rebel area that he was having a difficult time with, and nothing terrorizes chemical weapons.
It was a terror move.
Okay, so let's accept that.
I want to pause that because I'm willing to accept that as an argument with the caveat that I'm a very much innocent until proven guilty kind of guy.
And particularly when it comes to something like war.
I really, really want to see lots of proof.
I want to see independent investigations.
Do I trust the American intelligence agencies implicitly and 100%?
No, and neither do you, because these are the same intelligence agencies, what they said, you were a Russian bot or something like that, and when in fact you're like a slightly aging Max Headroom.
But they also are the intelligence agencies that said Russia was colluding with Trump and they hacked the election and so on.
These are the same intelligence agencies that said that it was a slam dunk, they were weapons of mass destruction, the same intelligence agencies that did not predict the fall of the Soviet Union or the rise of Al-Qaeda or 9-11.
I mean, these are not...
Agencies with a significantly great track record of the military-industrial complex as a whole.
I mean, the Pentagon right now is saying, well, sorry, we can't find six and a half trillion dollars.
Trillion, not billion, trillion dollars.
The third of the entire national debt.
They can't find it.
And, you know, Tillman, they said he was killed by enemy fire.
He was killed by friendly fire.
Private Jessica Lynch, the whole rescue story was cooked up.
They vastly underestimated or underreported the number of civilian deaths from drone strikes and so on.
Look, I'm not saying they're all liars, some very honorable people in the military.
I'm with you as far as that goes.
But it's innocent till proven guilty.
And that standard should be the very highest when it comes to war, which is why, of course, the Constitution reserves the right of Congress to declare war.
Congress, because you need a debate.
You need it to be back and forth.
You say it's a great thing that he defied the Constitution and defied the standards of international law, broke them in order to launch this strike.
I do not I don't think it's a bad thing.
Let's say that Assad is a really terrible guy and it was a war crime to...
Okay, well, it's a war crime to invade countries.
It's a war crime to engage in acts of war without that.
But anyway, let's put that aside and let's say that he...
It's okay that he defied the Constitution.
I didn't say that it's okay that he committed war crimes.
This attack on Syria was neither of those things.
If it was, he'd be up on impeachment hearings.
Right now, he's not.
You know, he's getting praised, generally, in Congress for this.
So I disagree with you on that point, that what he did in Syria was some sort of, you know, defying the Constitution.
I believe, as the commander-in-chief, he had a perfect right to do what he did.
But it is an act of war, right?
I guess.
What do you mean you guess?
Let me ask you this one, Bill.
Let's say that some Soviet sub was off the coast of San Francisco and dropped 59 tomahawks into San Francisco.
Would you consider that an act of war?
Yeah, because we'd declare war on them.
We'd fight back.
Did Russia fight back on this?
Russia could have attacked our destroyers immediately.
Russia could have shot down most of these Tomahawk missiles.
They did nothing.
This was an attack.
Was it an act of war?
I guess you could call it an act of war.
It is within Donald Trump, in my opinion, right to do what he did.
And I think, strategically, it was an absolutely brilliant move.
And I think that this did more to head off war in the Middle East than doing nothing ever could have.
And to make Why did North Korea and China take pause?
Because now Trump is unpredictable to these guys.
Now Trump is a guy who actually said he'd do something, and within 24 hours he did it.
And he did it big time, and it succeeded.
This is something they are not used to dealing with as an American president.
So from a strategic standpoint, this to me was a brilliant, brilliant move, and I stand behind it 100%.
I'll put the sources below.
I'll put the sources to this below, but the legal opinions that I've read or the opinions that I've read.
If the United States has not been attacked or threatened, congressional approval should be sought, not merely for legal purposes, but also to ensure that complexities have been thought through and public support for a risky intervention has been won.
As explained by Harvard's Jack Goldsmith, a former Bush Defense and Justice Department official, in the absence of a cause rooted in self-defense or a Security Council resolution, there is no international law justification for military attacks against another country, even one whose regime uses poisonous gases against its own country.
You and I are not lawyers, so I'm just going to put that out there, but there's certainly a case to be made that it was a violation of domestic and international law.
I don't think that's particularly what people want.
But let's talk about T-Rex, right?
Let's talk about Secretary of State.
Right.
So he said that the future of, I mean, we're paraphrasing here, but the future of the Syrian government should be decided by the Syrian people, right?
And do you feel that that had something to do with why Assad may have used these chemical weapons?
Or let's just say he did for the sake of argument.
Do you think that Tillerson's statement about letting, like about not, when he took regime change off the table, do you think that that had something to do with why Assad used these chemical weapons?
Yes, I do.
So that was a mistake on the part of the Trump administration?
Because they said this and then what happened was 70 people died.
Yeah, it wasn't a mistake.
He wanted to see how he'd react.
He wanted to see what he'd do.
And he's like, okay, we're going to give this guy a chance.
And he reacted very badly.
So it wasn't a mistake on Donald Trump's part.
It served the purpose of exposing this guy for what he was.
Yeah, I have no problem with the fact at all.
Give the guy a try.
Donald Trump approaches this sort of thing the way he approaches buying a building.
When Donald Trump would buy an old building, what's the first thing he'd do?
He'd see if he could renovate it.
He'd bring in his engineers, he'd bring in his architects, he'd bring in all of his construction guys like, can you renovate this building and make it up to Trump's standards?
If the answer was yes, they would renovate it.
If the answer was no, they'd tear it down and build a new building.
I think that that move by Tillerson was an attempt to renovate Assad.
Can we renovate this guy?
Can we make this guy a peaceful world player?
Can we solve this refugee crisis?
With him still in power, can we do this?
And they put that out there, and he sent the message, no, you can't.
No, you can't.
It's going to take something stronger.
And I think that this entire attack on the airbase, one of the purposes was to get Russia to see it as in their best interest to reel this guy in on the world stage.
So we'll see if I'm right or wrong.
I've been right a lot in this election.
Time has proven me right a lot.
We'll see if I'm right or wrong on this, but I'm fully committed to this idea.
So they put this out as an attempt to see how Assad would react, and then they perceived that he reacted with this chemical attack, and therefore they reacted with another violation of international law, which was an act of aggression against a country which had not threatened the United States.
And this brings me to the larger question, Bill.
Why is it?
America's job.
And this is a very big question because, of course, a lot of Trump supporters, and you know them as well, if not better than I do, but a lot of Trump supporters were very, very taken in and very, very strongly responded positively to this argument, you know, we're no longer going to follow the false song of globalism.
It is time to make America great.
I am aiming to become the president of America, not the president of the world.
Why is it America's job to solve a regional problem thousands of miles away.
Why is it America's job?
Is the argument that if America doesn't do it, nobody else ever will.
If America is not in there, stepping up and solving these problems, which arguably has made them considerably worse over the decades, but why is it America's job?
You know, it's sort of, if you're going to use analogies, I guess I'll throw one in of my own, which is this.
If I see some person out in the lake and they're drowning, And, you know, some Johnny Weissmuller, only Bill and I get that reference, but some Johnny Weissmuller ripped guy in a Tarzan suit says, I'm a champion Olympic swimmer and lifeguard.
I'm going out to save this person.
Well, I'm not going to jump in the water because, hey, it's taken care of.
So if the argument is only America forever and ever, amen, can deal with these problems, then America will never, ever stop being the world's policeman.
It's completely impossible.
It will never happen.
In which case, saying we're going to make America great again when you're going to be the world's policeman forever and ever, amen, was a false promise.
If, on the other hand, America doesn't rush in to try and solve these problems, then other countries will step up to try and solve these problems.
In which case, then pursuing some sort of solution in Syria is actually elbowing other people aside who have a much greater direct interest in the region because they're closer and who have probably better abilities to be able to solve it because, you know, they're closer, similar languages, sometimes similar histories, cultures, religions, and so on.
Do you think that if America doesn't rush in and try and solve these international problems all the time, that other countries will never do it?
Yeah, here's what I think.
I think the entire premise that you just stated, I don't agree with it.
I don't agree with the premise you stated, that this is a regional problem.
What is America over here doing with Syria, this regional problem over here?
The refugee crisis made this an American problem.
The refugee crisis is an existential threat.
One of the things that Donald Trump has been doing with these executive orders is trying to limit refugees coming in from these countries where they could be a threat to us.
Donald Trump has got that in mind, solving this refugee crisis, and that is making America great again.
Here's the question.
Is America being the leader of the free world?
Is America leading from the front and being respected?
Is that making America great again?
If you're the only ones that think you're great, you're not great.
Okay.
Donald Trump wants the whole world to think we're great.
And I trust you.
I trust me.
After this strike, we are stronger on the international basis than we were before.
We've got more leverage on the international basis.
But for what?
Leverage for what, Bill?
What does America...
What do the American voters who voted for Donald Trump want Donald Trump to do when their infrastructure is crumbling, when the finances are a complete wreck, when the military is...
What is it that you want America to be able to do on the world stage that you need all of this violent leverage for?
Right.
We want to be the leaders of the free world.
Why?
Why?
Why do you want to be leaders of the free world?
There's so many problems to solve in America, and that's what Donald Trump was voted in for, to solve the problems in America, not to solve the problems overseas.
Why do you want to be the leader of the free world?
The world is a dangerous place.
The United States is a bag of water, and the world is full of sharp, pointy things, okay?
If we do not take the world seriously, realizing the world's a dangerous place and that we need to protect ourselves in that world is not globalism, okay?
That is Americanism, okay?
That is nationalism, protecting ourselves in the world.
The surest way, here's the thing, it's one thing to say, we don't want war, but if all your enemies say we want war and we're saying we don't want war, that's a great way- Who's threatening America, Bill?
Who's threatening America?
You don't think that the Middle East, you don't think that any of this stuff that's going on is a threat to America?
I disagree with you.
I just disagree with you.
I think that America will be stronger and safer once this refugee crisis is solved.
So there's two ways, of course, in which Americans can be threatened by the problems in the Middle East.
Number one is people from the Middle East coming over and blowing things up in America.
We've been free frank about that.
And we agree with that because that's happening.
That's happening all throughout Europe.
That's happening in America from time to time as well, the mass murders and so on.
So that for sure is one way in which America can be harmed.
Now, I'm sure you're fully aware of this, that the, you know, I mean...
As you know, Al Qaeda and Bin Laden came out of the Americans arming and supplying money and weaponry to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, to fight against the Soviet invasion.
And that, of course, grew into Al Qaeda and 9-11 and so on.
So you just don't know.
You don't know where it's all going to happen.
I mean, do you know, of course, I'm sure you do, that bombs that have been dropped by Saudi-led forces in Yemen have been found to have been sold from America.
So American bombs being used to bomb civilians.
They just bombed a place, 25 kids dead, 97 in total, from America.
America selling arms all over the world.
It's sort of weird to me that the American government is one of the biggest arms dealers in the world and then says, well, you know, the world is a very dangerous place.
Well, maybe if you stop selling weaponry to everyone, it will be a slightly less dangerous place.
That could be something that could potentially be pursued.
So the first problem is people coming into America to do harm.
Now, that can be dealt with through immigration restrictions and controls, without a doubt.
And, of course, America virtually shut down We can't end up in Fort Bragg We can't get to Langley,
we can't get to the American bases in America, but we sure as hell can taunt America and provoke America until America brings its troops here, in which case we can IED the hell out of them.
Or, as you know, happened in the Gulf War, a quarter million Americans can come home with very serious and in some cases permanent and debilitating medical ailments for unknown causes, maybe related to vaccinations against biochemical weaponry or something like that.
And so that is by far, they say, listen, we're going to bankrupt America because we're going to draw America into a succession of interventions into the Middle East, whether they're direct boots on the ground or indirect or whatever it's going to be.
We're going to keep taking down the elephant with the endless mosquitoes of foreign intervention.
And that, to me, is very much under the control.
America is not going to solve the problem of refugees getting into America with ISIS-embedded fighters or other radical-embedded fighters by trying to go and blow things up in the Middle East.
That's how you got it in the first place, and arming and training people in the Middle East to become fighters against superpowers.
Well, they just turned it from Russia towards America, sublimation.
So saying, well, you know, we've got this problem of people who want to do harm to America, well, you can solve that with immigration reform, and you can solve that by not putting American troops in harm's way, which is exactly where the radicals want them.
Yeah, let me ask you a question.
Let's go back in history for a minute.
Did Germany ever attack the mainland United States?
Did that happen?
Okay, are you glad that we fought Germany in World War II? That is a complicated question.
And if you want to go back in time, hold your thought there.
Let me go back in time even further.
The question is, why was there a World War II? And most historians, and I'm not a professional historian, but I've done my reading, and historians in general say that World War II was a result of a domino that fell sequentially from World War II. Now, why was World War I provoking World War II? Well, one of the reasons, of course, was that the Allies in World War I were able to impose a truly devastating and humiliating peace on Germany.
Why were they able to do that?
Because America, against what President Wilson said he was going to do, entered the war, what was it, April 6?
It was just a couple of days ago, the 100-year anniversary, April 6, 1917, I think it was.
And with the overwhelming support of the American military, the Allies were able to impose a crushing piece on Germany, which led to the humiliations, which led to, I mean, the reparations.
One of the reasons why the German economy got destroyed, the middle class got destroyed in the 1920s, was that the German government had to print massive amounts of money to pay for these insane reparations that they still would have been paying up until the 1980s.
And this provoked a collapse of the economy, provoked the rise of Hitler, and so on.
So American interventionism into another continent's military affairs arguably led to the Second World War.
So I'm sort of always wanting to go back to the beginning and say, okay, well, how did all of this get started?
Not to mention, of course, the fact that American interventionism in World War I led directly to the creation in 1917 of the communist dictatorship, which then spread around the world, causing 150 million deaths.
Because, as I mentioned on the show before, Germany said, well, we can't fight a two-front war.
We've got to take Russia out right away, so let's arm and fund the rebels called Lenin and company through Finland into Russia so they can kill the Romanovs and establish a communist dictatorship, which they did do and took Russia out of the war.
So interventionism is setting an unholy series of events in motion.
Nobody knows where it ends up.
It seems easy to go up front.
Well, we've got this great military.
We can go in and do X, Y, and Z. But the events that get set in motion can be very difficult.
Now, that having been said, that's sort of a precursor.
I'm very happy to return to the Second World War example that you were making.
Yeah, here's the thing.
If we had not taken the leadership, okay?
Now, we stayed out of World War II. Nobody wanted to get in it.
And then Pearl Harbor brought the fight home to us.
But Japan attacked us in Pearl Harbor.
Germany didn't.
But if we had not taken the leadership and gone to Europe and attacked Germany, All of Europe right now would either be Nazi or they'll be communist because the Russians came in.
So one of the two.
So if we had not taken that leadership role, and a lot of people were against it, trust me, more people were against that than against the Syria attack back then.
So if we had not done that, then the unintended consequences would have been far, far worse.
So this is my position on Trump.
Because you don't know everything the future is going to bring, it is never a bad idea to show strength.
Okay, and you only get one chance to show strength as the new President of the United States, one first impression, and he made an outstanding impression with his decisiveness, the quickness of his action, the success of what he did.
Also, when you look at all these things, these failed things that happen throughout the world, most businesses fail.
Why?
Because they were a bad idea?
No, because their execution was poor.
And a lot of these things that have failed throughout the world, Didn't necessarily fail because they were a bad idea, but because the execution was so poor.
And this is one of the things, one of the messages that I think Donald Trump sent to the world with the Syria attack was, that if Donald Trump acts, the execution will be outstanding.
And you need to watch out for that.
So I think this has presented Trump with a tremendous lever going forward.
If he makes any threats in the world now, they'll have teeth, unlike Obama, that nobody took him seriously.
Which again begs the question, why when America is so cripplingly in debt and has decaying infrastructure and terrible schools and why is America one have military teeth around the world?
That's number one.
I'm with you in that Trump is a ridiculously competent man and things are going to be possible for Trump that would seem impossible before.
Although he has significant challenges in the domestic arena, Trump has achieved a lot of great things.
And I want to link to a list below off Reddit that Trump has achieved some really, really great things.
But a lot of the stuff that people wanted him to achieve domestically is, you know, repeal of Obamacare, control of immigration, tax reform and so on.
It's all stalling.
So the idea that Trump can affect magical change in Syria when he's having a great deal of difficulty in his own country where he's actually the president and has majorities in Congress and other places...
I don't know.
It's asking a lot.
But there are some basic realities that Trump cannot change.
So Trump cannot change some basic realities.
And I'll just give you a couple of them, and then you can tell me if I'm astray.
So the destruction of Germany and Japan and their resurrection from formerly ridiculously martial and despotic societies into relatively peaceful Western-style democracies is a significant consequence.
Now, two things.
Number one, the countries were completely destroyed.
Let's not forget that.
I mean, barely two bricks were left standing in either country.
I mean, we all remember, of course, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but there were dozens and dozens of Japanese cities that were destroyed.
You know, made of wood and completely firebombed.
There was the firebombings in Dresden.
If you're willing to almost completely destroy the country, that's one thing.
And that's a pretty tough thing for a lot of people to see in America now.
That's number one.
Number two, the average IQs in Germany are north of 100.
The average IQs in Japan are 103, 105, 106.
They are very, very smart countries.
And for a variety of reasons we don't have to get into here, the last time that there were significant...
Pretty credible estimates on the average IQ in Syria.
They came up with 83.
83 is a catastrophically low IQ, and it's really, really hard to have any kind of functional democracy with a population that has an average IQ below 90.
Now, 83 is a couple of decades ago.
It's gotten even worse since then because the smartest people have left, have gotten out of Syria.
And I'm not just talking about the migrant crisis, I mean anybody.
Who had any kind of intelligence and professional degree and capacity to get out would have gotten out many, many years ago, if not decades ago.
So my guess would be that the average IQ in Syria is tragically, and you know, can't change this, can't wish it away.
It's a basic fact of life.
Compared to, you know, 105, we may be talking about 25 IQ points low.
low.
We may be talking about an IQ of 80 or even below.
And so you simply cannot build a modern Jeffersonian democracy.
The founding fathers, they got out decades ago, the founding father equivalent in Syria.
They're gone.
And this is partly the fault of the West.
We want to go out and cherry pick all the third world smart people so we get instant taxpayers in the West.
We don't have to trouble about educating them and giving them health care when they're young.
They can scoop them up.
But what that means is that the third world generally gets progressively worse and worse because the smartest people are out.
Now, this basic reality that you have some very toxic ideologies, that's not going to change.
And I know you say regime change is a bad idea, but still mysteriously think that it should be on the table.
But if there is regime change, what's going to happen?
Well, you're either going to get some crazy radicals in charge who are going to impose Sharia law.
And that's the basic difference between the two groups who are opposing Assad.
One of them is more of a nationalistic Sharia law implementer, and the other ones want the caliphate, which is the international.
So you've got the difference between national socialists and communists when it comes to the implementation of these pretty bad ideas.
So who are you going to replace things with?
You can't have a spontaneous Jeffersonian democracy when you have a population that has an IQ at that level.
I mean, I wish it were different.
I wish there was a way to—we wish you could put something in the air or water that would change it.
But Trump being in charge, he can do wonderful and miraculous things, but he can't change basic reality.
And so the idea that we're going to go and solve this problem at the source when you're dealing with this kind of population, it explains everything that happened in Iraq.
It explains everything that happened in Libya.
And Syria is arguably in an even worse situation.
Yeah, I don't think that Donald Trump's endgame is going to be regime change or invasion.
I think his endgame is trying to solve the refugee crisis.
Look at what happened with China, okay?
What did we do with China?
We threatened all these trade wars, tariffs, and all this stuff.
And everybody's saying, oh, Trump will bankrupt us with these.
They'll just rise the prices.
That trade war, it's awful.
And what happened?
China came to America.
The president met with Donald Trump.
Then he went back and he said, you know what?
We're going to work out some trade things.
We're going to make this work, okay?
What has Donald Trump done?
He's created a better trade situation by threatening the trade war, but never doing it, never has to take place.
Donald Trump, by threatening the invasion, by threatening the regime change, gives him leverage to get what he really wants.
You always ask for more.
When I was a headhunter for 30 years, if I had a client that said, I'll pay your candidate $150,000, I would always say, I think he needs $165,000 to do this deal.
I don't think he's going to- I'd say that through the whole process.
Okay?
Because you always ask for more than you want.
That is how negotiation works.
I tell you, a lot of people that have been arguing about this are so linear.
I wonder if when they go into the car dealership, they just pay sticker.
I mean, you know, you don't negotiate that way.
And Donald Trump is the most patient negotiator that I've ever seen.
Also, you refer to the fact that the Obamacare thing is stalled, the tax stalled.
No, those are in process.
Everything that is happening is happening according to plan.
That's a whole different subject for a whole different moment.
The whole Ryancare thing, if Donald Trump was really behind Ryancare, it wouldn't be called Ryancare, it would be called Trumpcare, because Trump puts his name on everything he believes in.
He never did.
He never believed in it.
He was using that to marginalize Ryan, marginalize the establishment part of the process.
Please understand, I'm not saying he's not going to be able to get his domestic agenda through.
I'm just saying it's difficult and time-consuming.
And my particular concern, you know, I mean, I have not abandoned Trump.
I have not turned on Trump.
I want to put forward criticisms, in particular because I'm desperate for Trump to be able to achieve some of his domestic agenda.
And I think being dragged into overseas wars...
Or even overseas interventions or sanctions or any kind of these interventions, I think is going to really interfere with what really needs to happen to make America great, which is the achievement.
So I'm not, you know, I know you've got this like fake base and they turn on him.
No, no, no, no.
For me, this is like I am desperate for Trump to be able to achieve his domestic agenda.
Now, the being dragged into, this is from the New York Times, the So, first of all, intimidating China, intimidating other countries.
For me, you know, if you need to impress or intimidate people, you're automatically in the subjugating position.
You're in the weaker position.
I think you should not bring that to negotiating tables.
But a lot of Chinese are actually thrilled by this attack and by the possibility or the mixed signals that are going out regarding regime change.
And this is what they say.
This is from the New York Times.
Many Chinese are thrilled by the attack because it will result in America becoming mired in the Middle East.
And this is a quote.
In some sort of conflict.
And I don't know what it's going to look like.
If it's regime change, it's a complete disaster.
And he will never, ever be able to achieve his domestic goals, in my opinion.
You can't start a huge, viciously expensive war.
And we know that the long-term costs of the Iraq War and Afghanistan War are well north of five or six trillion dollars.
And so if he gets involved in another war, you can't have any kind of reasonable tax cuts.
I mean, it's just not going to happen because the outlays...
And then the destruction.
How are you going to lower the price of healthcare when you're regularly shipping people broken and wounded in body and spirit back from foreign conflicts?
So the idea that this is really, really great to intimidate others on the world stage and so on, again, that's only important if you think that America should be playing some kind of decisive and proactive role on the world stage.
I think it's time to stay home and fix problems at home.
Yeah, I think in order to make America great again, you need to be the leader of the free world.
It doesn't mean you need to be the world's policeman in every tiny little conflict, but the important ones, the big ones.
Here's the thing that people don't realize about Donald Trump.
And this was reflected in the election.
Donald Trump wins where it counts, okay?
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in the United States.
Why?
Because she won California two to one.
You can only get 55 electoral votes.
She can win California 12 million to one and still only get 55 electoral votes.
Donald Trump won where it counted.
He made this move on Syria because he decided, you know what, in my worldview and what I want, this This move matters.
This gives me leverage.
This gives me a chance to be a bold leader in front of the world for the first time on the national stage, the first crisis that Donald Trump ever faced.
And he faced it boldly, decisively, and he did a good job at it.
So I think that that is part of his larger, bigger plan.
Do I think that we need to be the policeman of the world?
No.
Do I think we need to be the symbolic leader of the free world?
One of the things that I said on Twitter that's been very popular is I came up with a word called setism, hashtag setism.
And the whole idea is that because of Donald Trump's boldness and his decisiveness, he causes other weak-kneed world leaders around the world to grow a set, to be bold and be stronger as well.
And I think that this move was a pure setism move.
And I think that we're seeing around the world, we're seeing more strength.
And more standing up than we've seen before.
So we'll see how this all plays out.
I could be completely wrong.
This could be a complete disaster, but I don't think so.
I think it's going to work out for the best.
Here's the thing, is that when it comes to stuff like this, a lot of it comes down to execution.
Like I said, in business, you have lots of great ideas that go by the wayside because the managers didn't know how the hell to do it.
They didn't know how to execute.
I believe Donald Trump knows how to execute.
I think this is going to work out for the best.
I think this is going to make the world more peaceful.
I think it's going to be good for US domestic policy because when people feel sure of our safety, And they feel sure of our trading partners.
You know, a lot of our economy is trading with Europe, trading with other parts of the world.
And they feel confident in that.
It's all going to be better.
A strong America is a safer America.
I believe that very strongly.
And I believe that Donald Trump, through what he's done, has made us a stronger America.
And do you believe that all countries have the right to initiate military action against those who break international law?
Do I believe all countries?
Because, you know, let's say Assad did this terrible thing and it was a horrible thing.
He killed his own people, although it's a civil war.
Everyone's killing their own people.
Good heavens.
In the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, quote, killed his own people.
All civil wars result in the killing of your own people.
I just, you know, this is just a piece of propaganda that's thrown up.
Not by you, but I just wanted to sort of make that point.
So my question is, if we say, well, Donald Trump is justified in dropping bombs into Syria because...
This leader did a bad thing, broke the rules of law, whatever it is, right?
My question is, is this a principle that applies to everyone?
I mean, you know, it's a philosophy show.
I've got to get some principles out of this, right?
It can't just be my team good, your team bad.
That's not philosophy.
That's like sports with howitzers.
So is there a principle that you would like to get behind, which is not particular to Donald Trump, but is allowable for every political leader, that if there's a country anywhere in the world which does something egregious against its own people, that any and all countries are justified in launching military attacks in that country?
Here's what I think.
Here's the reality of the situation, real world.
When it comes to powerful nations, I think powerful nations do whatever the hell they want until somebody stops them.
I think that's the reality.
You can have international laws.
You can have all this other stuff.
That's fine.
It's nice to talk about, sit around the coffee table.
So might makes right.
That's your argument for the justification.
Trump has the power to do it.
Therefore, it's fine.
Because might makes right.
Might makes right.
I'm not telling you the way it should be.
I'm telling you the way it is.
The way it is, powerful nations do what they want until somebody can stop them.
That is the reality of the situation.
Here's the amazing thing about this thing in Syria.
You know, Putin did nothing to stop it.
Putin knew this was going to happen.
What, an hour before it happened?
Did nothing to stop it.
He knew what was going to happen.
You mean the tomahawks?
You know, the tomahawks, or at least his army did.
You know, they warned him that it was coming so that a bunch of Russian military personnel wouldn't be killed in the attack.
Or Syrians, you know, for that matter.
What do you think he should have done?
What do you think he should have done?
He should have launched fighters and shot the missiles down.
Those don't go at the speed of light, you know?
They're just rocket powered.
He could have shot this down.
He could have shot them down with assets that he had on the ground there.
You mean he should have directly engaged American military power?
Right.
He should have gone out into the middle of the ocean there and blown up our destroyers.
He could have done all that.
He didn't do anything.
Wait, are you saying that if you were in Putin's shoes, you would have directly engaged the U.S. Navy and started World War III? Because I know that the American would kick my ass in a war.
No.
See, here's the thing.
Is that- Oh, he should do that, though.
If he had the power, he should do that.
If he had the power to do that?
I don't know.
That's a hypothetical.
He doesn't have the power.
Let's talk about realities as opposed to hypotheticals.
He doesn't have the power to do that.
Here's the thing.
Is that if America were to invade Syria, this would make a tremendous troop buildup around Syria before it took place.
Russia would almost have to attack our troops to save any face at all.
Then we'd have World War III. Does Putin want World War III? No, he doesn't.
So what does he do to prevent that from happening?
He reels Assad in, and he makes Syria a safer place.
Donald Trump does what I call microleverages.
He creates relationships where people are leveraged against one another, and it all works together.
I think that's what he's doing.
He's creating microleverages here.
So this is my philosophy.
It's the way I think.
You know, from being my friend for a long time, that I hold my positions and opinions very strongly.
And I don't, you know, I don't say, my joke is, you know, I don't say things, you know, to be popular on Twitter.
They just end up that way, you know?
I say a lot of things that are very unpopular at the moment, and a lot of people end up agreeing with them in the long term.
So we'll see.
But so, but by, because I remember a lot of Trump supporters, and myself as well, were very appalled when Hillary Clinton started threatening military action against Russia.
And the idea that in order to do something in Syria that who knows how it's going to work or what's going to happen and who knows like Trump is getting information from his intelligence sources right from the intelligence agencies around him.
Those intelligence agencies are not unbiased.
There is, as you know, a military-industrial complex that likes war, that likes profit, that likes money.
There are lots of soldiers who live for war, and there are lots of generals who really enjoy exercising their muscles and weapons in war.
So we know for sure that intelligence agencies massage information and change information and put out misinformation, which we've seen happen countless times.
And it's not just America.
This is all over...
There's a lot of propaganda and information.
Nothing's unbiased.
And so, you know, Trump is getting the information that he's getting from these agencies and making his decisions accordingly.
There is absolutely a rush to judgment.
We don't even know.
Let's say that these bombs were loaded with chemical weapons.
They took off from the airbase.
They bombed.
And, you know, there are indications, as you've pointed out, that they didn't bomb buildings.
They bombed roads, in which case they couldn't have been accidentally setting off chemical weapons or whatever.
Let's say all of that happened.
We still don't know if Assad ordered any of that.
I mean, we know if you remember, of course, the Mai Lai massacre that occurred in Vietnam when troops went nuts and killed hundreds of Vietnamese, raped and killed hundreds of Vietnamese in a local village after being under fire for months.
And they actually never directly engaged the enemy.
They're just constant traps and booby traps.
They were just they went nuts.
And of course, this was not ordered from up front, from up top.
It was something that happened locally on the ground.
We don't know.
We don't know any of this stuff.
We do know that ISIS has access to chemical weapons because there's a giant chemical weapons lab at a university in Mosul, which was occupied by ISIS for quite some time.
But that's neither here nor there.
If your argument is that America should push to the brink of potential third world war in order to achieve something in Syria, I really think that should go through Congress.
I really think when it comes to the possible continuation of life on this planet, I really do think that's not something that Donald Trump should be in charge of.
I really think that should be up for a very, very vigorous debate in Congress.
And, you know, I can see other people having other cultures, other countries, other carbon-based life forms having significant desire to have input in that.
And I don't think that there are many Americans who would say, yeah, I'm willing to push a confrontation with Russia, with a nuclear-armed power, in order to do what in Syria?
Well, there's a bad guy in Syria.
Well, there are bad guys all over the world.
Where on earth is that process going to stop?
I don't think that's what...
I think what Donald Trump has done is make that far less likely to happen than it would have happened before.
Now, you know...
Wait, wait, wait.
Far more less likely for any intervention with Russia?
See, it's different from Iraq.
Russia was not in Iraq.
Russia is in Syria.
You go into Syria, you're going up against Russia.
Much less likely.
Much less likely.
Sorry, I was talking while you were talking.
My apologies.
What is much less likely?
Because of this hit on Syria, some sort of conflict with Russia, some sort of world war with Russia is far less likely than it was before.
You know, I tell you what.
No, no, no, no.
Not being involved in Syria means that your confrontation with Russia is far less likely.
Dropping bombs into Syria and some of these tomahawks missed and who knows who they might have hit, right?
And if Russia had decided to shoot back, that would have been direct confrontation with U.S. military might.
So no, getting involved in a proxy war or getting involved with arming people, I mean, for heaven's sakes, just last year, America bombed the wrong place and blew up a bunch of Russians.
I mean, this is what happens when you're in these kinds of theaters, when you're in this fog of war.
If you don't want to have confrontation with Russia, which I'm, by the way, all for, why are you involved in Syria to begin with?
It's a local problem that needs to be dealt with and has actually been exacerbated by America being in there from the beginning.
It's not a local problem.
You and I are working from a completely different premise, so we're never going to agree on this.
I don't believe that Syria is a local problem.
Here's the thing.
Let's say Assad does this once, we do nothing.
Donald Trump condense him, then does nothing, so he instantly becomes Obama-like, Obama 2.0, because he makes threats and does nothing.
He's immediately, Trump is automatically a weak leader on the world stage, which is obviously wonderful for America.
So let's say that Assad gets away with us once, so he does it again.
We do nothing again.
Then let's say that maybe North Korea, you know, fires a missile and hits a Japanese ship, you know, and then we do nothing again.
At what point do we step up?
Well, hang on.
First of all, as you know, Obama was not a weak military leader on the world stage.
Obama was the first U.S. president to be at war every single day of his presidency.
Obama, I guess after nobly hanging his peace prize around his chicken neck, Ended up dropping 100,000 bombs over the course of his presidency on mostly Muslim countries in the Middle East.
So that is not weakness.
And secondly, let's say, heaven forbid, let's say that North Korea does fire a missile at a Japanese destroyer.
Hey, you know what's not happening?
It's the U.S. being threatened.
That's what's not happening.
That's between Japan and North Korea.
Every single time there's a conflict in the world, the idea that America needs to go and drag its blood and treasure and blow up its young people, Japan has its own military budget.
Japan has its own culture to defend.
And they can do it themselves.
Yeah, I disagree.
I think America should be the leader of the free world.
I think if we're not, the world will devolve into chaos.
The world looks to us for leadership.
To say that Obama was some sort of great military leader, Obama led from behind.
The only way that you get anywhere from leading behind is backwards.
Obama might have dropped a lot of bombs, but he tended to drop the bombs when he had not acted for so long that he had to do something to cover his butt.
Obama was not a great leader.
No, no, I didn't say he was great.
I said he was forceful, 100,000 bombs.
I didn't say he was great.
And sorry, I just wanted to correct myself.
When America bombed, when American forces bombed in Syria, they blew up a bunch of Syrians, not Russians.
So I just wanted to correct that.
Exactly.
I got my nationalities confused because it is a kind of tangled thread in there.
I just wanted to put out the correction.
So is it my understanding, Bill, that your principle is that when there's conflict between any two state agencies in the world, America needs to step in, choose sides, commit forces, get involved anytime there's conflict between two state actors in the world?
If Trump thinks it is, yeah.
You know why?
I elected him for his judgment, his instincts, and his leadership.
And if Trump thinks it's a good idea, then it's a good idea.
This is why I elected him.
So Trump can't make mistakes.
He's infallible.
You're basically the Pope here, right?
So Trump can't make mistakes.
I'm not going to question everything the man says.
You know, Donald Trump does not have to call me and ask for a hall pass every time he wants to leave.
I elected him to lead.
We are stuck with Donald Trump for four years.
Here's what I understand.
When I referred to a fake base and all that stuff, I was talking about people who said, I'm abandoning Trump over this.
To me, this was fake base.
These were never Trump supporters in the first place.
People said, I fully abandoned Trump over this.
I know you didn't.
I know that Paul Joseph Watson initially said that he did, but then he walked that back.
So, yeah, you guys aren't back.
You just disagree with Trump on this.
I understand that.
There's nothing wrong with disagreeing with Trump.
As a matter of fact, I think Trump loves when people disagree.
It's like the whole thing with Romney.
You know, he looked at Romney for Secretary of State.
The base freaked out.
He loves that input.
He learns from that input.
It's part of his strategy.
Yeah.
You know, just because this is my opinion on this thing.
You have your opinion on this thing.
We're going to see how it turns out.
But the die is already cast.
You know, this is the move that Trump has made.
And if Trump decides to make another move on the world stage, I elect him to be president.
I elect him to make those choices.
He doesn't have to call me every time he wants to do one of those things.
But Bill, you don't want to completely abandon your own independent thinking for the next four to eight years, right?
I mean, Trump does need that kind of feedback, just as we all do.
I agree with him.
I agree with the things he's done so far.
I see the strategic brilliance in everything he's done so far, even Ryancare, the thing in Syria.
Everything that's taking place so far, I see the strategic brilliance of it.
I am a strategic thinker.
I'm not going to say I'm like Donald Trump.
He's way, way beyond me.
His bank account would prove that.
I tend to see strategically the way he does.
And to me, it's all been brilliant so far.
He's playing long ball.
He realizes this game is four quarters long.
He's not going to try to win the game in the first quarter.
He's setting the stage for the big victory.
And one of the things we notice in the primaries, in the general election, and even now, is that Donald Trump peaks at the right time.
He peaks when it matters.
A month before the general election, everybody was saying, there is no way this guy could possibly win.
I was saying, he's absolutely going to win.
There is no question whatsoever.
And he won because he knows how to surge.
He knows how to peak right at the end.
He knows how to bring all the pieces together, how to take advantage of all those micro leverages right at the end.
So, Stephan, I have tremendous respect for you.
You were friends.
We just disagree on this point, and that's fine.
That's okay.
I have one of my best friends in the world.
You should hear us argue.
It's terrible.
But we disagree on this, and we'll see how it turns out.
But I think this was a bold move.
I think it's going to be beneficial in the long run.
We'll see.
I don't think we're headed towards World War III. I don't think we're going to ever invade Syria.
I don't think we're ever going to really get regime change in Syria.
I think if there's a regime change in Syria, it might be Russia that does it.
If Russia decides that Assad is no longer in their favor, they'll get rid of him in a second.
And that's what Donald Trump is doing.
He's making Russia realize that it is in Russia's best interest to work with Trump on this And that's their long-term benefit, and that's what a great negotiator does.
You have to understand the strange bedfellows aspect of this, wherein Trump is bombing somebody who was attacking Trump.
You understand that to be ISIS's air force in this conflict is something that I think, you know, when you end up in these places where it's like, well, I'm bombing the guy who's attacking the people I said I was going to attack, you may be in a situation where there's no particularly great outcome.
Let me give you the last word.
We'll let people, of course, puzzle through what it is that we've talked about.
I really, really appreciate the conversation.
I'll give you the chance to put in your two cents.
I'll put in my two cents, and then we'll call it a day.
Okay, yeah.
As far as Assad fighting ISIS, Assad isn't fighting ISIS to save the world from ISIS. Assad is fighting ISIS to save his own backside, okay?
And this is one of the things that Trump has done.
By threatening regime change, he makes Assad worried about his own backside.
And so, Assad is going to change his behavior, hopefully, in our direction as a result of that.
My question also about him fighting ISIS, just because there's a war in hell doesn't mean the devil is heaven's friend, okay?
And just because Assad is fighting ISIS doesn't make him America's friend.
He's not fighting ISIS for us.
He's fighting ISIS to save himself.
So, you know, this doesn't mean that he's a great guy all of a sudden.
So Churchill should not have allied with Stalin in the Second World War.
Well, it worked, didn't it?
Right.
Even though Stalin was a mass-murdering psychopath who killed millions of his own people, the West allied with him in order to fight the evil of Nazism.
So the fact that—and Churchill said this about, you know, when he said—he was questioned about this alliance.
He said, well, if— If Hitler invaded hell, I'm sure I could find some good things to say about the devil.
So, allying yourself with bad guys is a long tradition within the West, and if you brought up the Second World War, without allying with Russia, it would have been pretty tough to take down Hitler.
Sorry, please finish your thought, and then I'll go ahead.
That was my thought.
We just agreed to disagree.
I think people were probably tuning into this show expecting to see some sort of name calling or fight or something like that.
They don't realize that you and I have known one for a long time.
We're just having a debate here, a debate on the ideas.
That's good.
I think it's good.
We have different opinions, but that's good.
That's how this all works.
We all work it out.
So my final thoughts is that the goal of being the world's policeman has caused a huge amount of problems in the world.
You can, of course, point to the occasional success, and I would argue that they're often temporary, but if you look at the involvement that the West has had in the Middle East, in particular over the past 70-plus years, or maybe since the end of the Second World War, There has been a slide into theocracy, into dictatorships from several formerly free countries.
Look at the pictures of Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and so on in the 1960s.
The women weren't in burqas.
They could go to schools.
There was lots of positive stuff happening.
But when the West begins to bomb and to control, and as we all know with Iran, to overturn legitimately elected forces, Leaders, you know, we can call them regimes and dictators and so on, but the reality is that Bashar al-Assad was elected and was working with moderates to reform the government when he received significant pushback until Western powers and other powers went in and started fighting this proxy war, which is very, very cruel to the local population.
And so this intervention, there are arguments that millions and millions of people have been killed as the direct result of Western intervention in Third World and other countries in the last 70 years and so on.
It is a big, big problem, a big quagmire.
When America wades around waving its weaponry all over the world, other people tend to step back from the problem.
So you're only pretending to solve problems that otherwise would be solved by local people.
And you could, of course, argue if America was in a flush of economic success, if it had all of this surplus, if it had full employment, if it had all these wonderful things going on.
Well, okay, maybe you can spend a little bit of treasure playing guard with countries overseas.
But given what has happened to America, particularly over the past 20 years economically, the hollowing out of the middle class, massive numbers of people not even in the workforce, hundreds of thousands of vets permanently disabled by countless wars, and what to show for it?
Iraq did not turn out to be better.
Libya turned out to be better.
Syria did not turn out to be better.
Syria did not turn out to be better.
This idea that you can walk around pointing guns at people and create paradise is not how things work.
You need philosophers to make the world a better place.
You need ideas to make the world a better place.
And you need a receptive audience to those ideas.
That's how the West became great.
The West did not become great because it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire.
The West did not become great because it was conquered by all other nasty empires in history that you could imagine.
The West became great because spontaneous intellectual movements arose from within the West and eventually overflowed and pushed aside dictatorships and monarchies in the West.
It has to be something spontaneous that emerges from within the country.
We can aid them with ideas.
We can aid them with arguments.
We can aid them with all of the hard-won and hard-fought Separation of church and state, free market, limited government, constitutions, bills of rights, all of this stuff has been invented, and it was hard won by the West.
From the Magna Carta onwards, from the Roman Empire onwards, it was hard won by the West.
It has been developed, it can be transferred, but there needs to be receptivity on the part of the populations as a whole, and while they're still enmeshed in particularly tricky ideologies, that is not going to happen.
It's an intellectual movement that needs to happen, not a military movement, and America has more than enough problems to solve on its own.
Hey, if America is a paradise by the end of the first term, I'll be happy talking about foreign interventions in the second, but I think it might be premature.
So thanks everyone so much for listening and for watching.
I wanted to remind you that you can follow Bill on Twitter at twitter.com forward slash MitchellVII.
You can check out yourvoiceradio.com.
My name again is Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio.
You can check out my website at freedomainradio.com or if you want to listen to podcasts at fdrpodcasts.com, follow me on Twitter.
