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Dec. 31, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

19:29

Do NOT Go to War with Iran Over Iraq!

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	This is Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain.
	It is the last day of 2019.
	I was originally going to do a donation pitch and just ask you for your help and your support after a particularly brutal year for philosophy.
	And please, if you can, help out at freedomain.com forward slash donate.
	But events have overtaken my particular plans and preferences, as they often do in a chaotic world.
	Yesterday, U.S. F-15s in five attacks hit munitions depots on a command center of the Iran-backed Qatayb Hezbollah militia in Syria and Iraq.
	This, of course, was a retaliatory raid for a rocket attack on a U.S. training camp that killed an American contractor and wounded four U.S. soldiers.
	Recently, the U.S. carried out five airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, targeting facilities controlled by this Qatayb Hezbollah militia.
	Group killing 25 people and wounding 51.
	In the inevitable blowback, CNN has reported that the U.S. Embassy in Iraq is being attacked by what are being referred to as protesters.
	Now, the protesters have specifically disavowed any attack upon the U.S. Embassy, and in fact, it is...
	An Iran-backed militia group that is attacking.
	So this is from Jack Posobiec.
	Since the US invasion in 2003, Iranian influences deepened in Iraq through a wide variety of Shiite militias.
	Several militia leaders and politicians spent years in exile in Tehran during Saddam Hussein's reign.
	The goal of the militias is to institute something called Ivalayat-i-Faki.
	What does that mean? They want to establish an Islamic republic in Iraq ruled by Shia mullahs as exists in Iran.
	Of course they do.
	That is the goal and that is the plan.
	Jack also said Hezbollah took over Baghdad under Obama.
	This is a militia attack, not a protest.
	And we'll get to the philosophy of it in a moment.
	I want to give you a little bit more background.
	Laura Ingram wrote, notice that the experts who pushed for invading Iraq in 2003 have been urging military escalation in the same region as we enter 2020.
	The only way Trump could lose in November is to forget why he won in 2016.
	The issue of war and presidential elections has been long and complex.
	There is a sort of perceived wisdom that if you're in the middle of the war, you don't change your leaders.
	As the old saying goes, you don't change horses midstream.
	But, particularly when America is attacking communist countries, the leftist anti-war movement has had some significant effect.
	The Korean War contributed significantly to Harry Truman's defeat.
	In the New Hampshire primary way back in the day, and his 1952 decision to not run again.
	Lyndon Johnson, well, the entire Democratic Party was undermined, if not shattered, and his chances for re-election kind of blew up with the Tet Offensive of 1968.
	Anti-war candidate Bobby Kennedy got into the race and that really helped, of course.
	And what's been described as America's worst military adventure, Jimmy Carter's response to the seizure of U.S. hostages in Iran, well, it burned up the last year of his presidency and really helped Ronald Reagan displace him significantly.
	So there are a number of foreign policy decisions that are going to have massive impacts on the U.S. election, in particular Afghanistan, Iran, and North Korea.
	Now, North Korea does not appear to be particularly bellicose at the moment, and after a certain amount of tough talking, none of the direct threats have materialized.
	Trump, of course, is eager to make good on his promises and withdraw 14,000 troops from Afghanistan, but Here's the reality.
	The Taliban remains quite strong.
	They have allies in the region.
	And the Afghan army doesn't have the same kind of dedication to protect the existing structure as the Taliban has to take and overtake it.
	Particularly guerrilla warfare is about willpower and dedication and those with the deepest and most fundamentalist beliefs tend to prevail.
	They can't prevail against weaponry but they can wage a war of attrition against the will of the opposing group and that is of course a significant risk in Afghanistan and it could end up the way that it ended up In Vietnam with an agnomious defeat that happened in Saigon in 1975.
	And here's the thing, too. So Afghanistan is America's longest war.
	America has been at war for well over 90% of its history, despite, of course, peaceful neighbors to north and south to a large degree, giant oceans to the east and west.
	But the reality is wars that are inconclusive are very, very tough to end.
	And this goes all the way back to the First World War.
	So the First World War...
	Until the entry of America in 1917, both sides in World War I were fighting themselves to attrition and exhaustion.
	But you see, without a decisive victory, as happened in World War II, without a decisive victory, it's very hard to start the next war.
	Because people look at the last war and say, well, what the hell was the point of all of that?
	You get 10 million people dying in combat in the First World War.
	You have 20 million people dying of the Spanish flu as the soldiers return to a heavily starved and weakened population.
	And so you've got 30 million odd deaths coming out of World War I. The destruction of sound currency, which sounds kind of goofy and geeky, but set the stage for the next wars.
	I mean, one of the reasons why so many countries had to go off gold-backed currency was because they were running out of money to fight the war.
	And so if you destroy your culture, you destroy, I mean, as I've said before, almost all the wealth of the Industrial Revolution was burned up and destroyed.
	All the wealth that had been generated through a huge amount of suffering in the Industrial Revolution was burned up and destroyed in World War I. And so when you have tens of millions killed by war or by disease or by famine, And you have people, men in particular, shattered in mind, body, and soul.
	There really was no such thing as shell shock before World War I because wars were short and relatively brutal, and of course medicine was so primitive that prior to the 19th century you were better off not going to see a doctor than going to see a doctor.
	And so shell shock was the original description for What we now know as post-traumatic stress disorder, which is you put men in ghastly, horrible, rat-infested, disease-ridden, starvation conditions, in trenches, in inclement, horrifying weather, with incipient death all around them, for year upon year, it breaks them.
	And they could not understand why men who'd received medals for valor ended up not Being able to go back to war, not being able to fight.
	And they couldn't understand it. They thought maybe the brain had been hit by some sort of shock and it had jellied itself.
	And so we understand that the destructiveness of the modern warfare scenario has produced people, largely men, of course, really, really shattered mind, body, and spirit, who need to be careful by loved ones, who need to be in institutions.
	You had war widows all over the place.
	You had children growing up without their fathers.
	And so if in World War I everyone had just gone home again and no particular territory had been Gained or lost, then people would say, well, what the hell was the point of all of that?
	And so here's the problem. You go into a place like Afghanistan, known as the graveyard of empires for a good reason.
	You go to a place like Iraq, and you take it over.
	And remember, you know, back in 2003, well, you may not if you were still so young.
	But the story was, oh, we're going to be greeted as liberators, they said, about the American troops and so on.
	And, you know, there is all of this undermining and backlash and Iran-inspired militias and funded militias and so on.
	And so if you go into these places, and then years later, after immense suffering, immense draining of blood and treasure from an already depleted treasury, And then you go back and it all just goes back to hell in a handbasket.
	It may be worse than it was before.
	Well, it's tough to sell the next war if you can't achieve a decisive victory.
	In the last war, and this is why they were fighting to stand still in World War I, because they could have faced a revolution when nothing changed and all this death and suffering had been for nothing, really was the greatest blow ever to strike the Western world.
	And it's the same thing if when Trump pulls the troops out of, I hope he does, out of Afghanistan, well, sure, Taliban's going to take over, they're going to wage guerrilla warfare, and it's going to end up as bad, if not worse, as it was before, and then everyone's going to say, well, that was 17 or 18 years of a living hell, or 19 years maybe, no, 18 I think, of a living hell and for what?
	For what? It's the same thing with Iraq, right?
	And it's the same thing with everywhere that people go.
	Now, there are huge problems when you withdraw, but they can resolve positively and peacefully if you look at, say, Vietnam.
	When America got out, Vietnam ended up a relatively stable country, I think at least until George Soros got his way.
	So this is an important thing.
	This is one reason why, without a decisive victory, the wars are endless, because Without a decisive victory, trillions of dollars are spent, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of lives are burned to the ground, and America ends up with a crippled population to maintain.
	And nothing gets solved.
	And really, it's not designed to be solved.
	It's designed to make money to allow sadists to inflict suffering and the military-industrial complex to gain power, to subjugate the population.
	It's designed for the media to make a huge amount of money because war drives views, which drives clicks, which drives ad revenue.
	But it's nothing to do with actually solving problems and so on, right?
	So the war can't end because It's inconclusive and destructive ending shows how useless the war was all along, which makes it tougher to sell the next one.
	So I wrote on Twitter, the U.S. spends $2 trillion training, arming, and supporting the Iraqi government.
	Then, a couple hundred hostile militiamen waltz into a $750 million embassy compound and start shooting.
	Not sure America's indebted children got their money's worth.
	So this is really, really important.
	The U.S. Embassy, I think it's the most expensive embassy in the world, $750 million compound, $2 trillion, that's trillion, $2,000 billion spent on arming and training and supporting the Iraqi government and its security forces, and they can't even keep a couple of...
	100 people with guns out of the U.S. Embassy right in the heart of U.S. power in Iraq.
	That's the government. It's not designed to protect you.
	It's not designed to secure Iraq.
	It is designed as a giant money laundering scheme for psychopaths.
	My concern as well is—it's always the timing.
	Always got to look at the dominoes of these things.
	And there are two forces, I believe, at work here that are going to drive the U.S. into some sort of military escalation or confrontation, ostensibly, of course, with these Iraqi protesters, which they're not, but really with Iran and their funding.
	Of these militias.
	So one is on the Democrat side.
	So the Democrats, of course, the articles of impeachment still haven't gone to the Senate.
	They're going to delay. Nancy Pelosi does not want the articles of impeachment to go forward, I believe, because they're going to have to allow some kind of cross-examination of the case, and that's going to expose a lot of corruption on the Democrats' side.
	And so the impeachment looks to be a big bust.
	Plus, of course, the American people don't want it anymore.
	They recognize it's just a kabuki theater show from hell.
	And so if you can't impeach, then maybe you can go to war.
	And that's another thing.
	Iranian side, of course, Iran is facing a lot of pent-up resentment and insurrection and protests and so on at home.
	And so if they can lure the U.S. into a military confrontation in the region or they can engage the U.S. into attacking Iraqi or Iranian forces, then they can wave this Satan America, death to America stuff in their general population, and it will do a lot to quell the rebellion that is going on in Iran.
	So there are two forces that can benefit politically from the war, and that is a very, very dangerous.
	Combination. Now, also, because there are elements in the world that believe America is going to be consumed by an endless, driving-the-news-cycle, hysterical impeachment trial, well, That's a good time to make a move, right, when America is weakened politically.
	So when the Democrats launch these kinds of soft coups within America, it not only has effects in America, it has effects on the world stage, because the enemies of America then perceive America to be weakened and distracted and navel-gazing, its own political turmoil and troubles, which means that it's a good time to make a move if you are looking to exploit America's incipient weakness.
	Now, it's also, I wrote on Twitter, Iranian-backed militias are attacking the U.S. Embassy in Iraq.
	The country, Obama, gave $1.6 billion in cash to.
	Now, there's reports of the $150 billion.
	That didn't come from the taxpayers.
	That was the unfreezing of Iranian assets overseas.
	But, yeah, the $1.6 billion in cash, that was very real.
	And that's just absolutely terrible.
	So, Jack Posobiec has also recently tweeted, Breaking QRF called in.
	100 U.S. Marines are on the way to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
	So, it looks like we're going to see what the opposite of Benghazi really looks like.
	Now, I do want to talk about something quite deep, quite philosophical.
	It's very, very important. Those of us who are prominent on social media, I've got close to a million YouTube subscribers, 450,000-odd on Twitter, and a bunch of other places as well.
	Fairly prominent, I suppose.
	It's a complicated relationship with social media.
	Yeah, there's shadow banning. Yeah, there's suppression.
	Yeah, there's a dance around the edges of the Overton window of acceptable discourse.
	I get all of that. And they have a tough time with it as well, because they get a lot of pressure groups from hysterics trying to deplatform people.
	But here's the reality.
	This is the truth of the David versus Goliath situation that is going on between social media, And the military-media industrial complex.
	The military, of course, wants wars.
	The war profiteers want their blood money.
	But the mainstream media wants war as well for a variety of geopolitical reasons and also for the aforementioned profits that war generates profits.
	Another reason why I've never wanted ads and why I rely on your support to keep doing what I'm doing.
	But the mainstream media constantly bays and begs and manipulates and promotes war.
	I mean, they promote danger in all areas of your life.
	Just look at their relationship to criminality.
	The mainstream media wants three things.
	They want You to be disarmed, they want countless dangerous criminals to be released from prison, and they want to suppress the capacity of the police to defend you.
	That's just shoveling you directly into harm's way, because if you're frightened all the time, you can't resist growing state power and media manipulation and lies.
	So out here on the outskirts, where the true drums of truth can be beat, There are those of us working assiduously and powerfully and hard, and often in ways you can't see, against the warmongering, baying dogs of the mainstream media.
	And this is another reason why they hate us and want to lie about us and want to suppress us and all that kind of stuff.
	It's not just competition from a financial standpoint, you know, come not between the beast and his prey.
	That is what we do. We stand between the beast of war and his prey, in this case.
	These citizens in Iran, Iraq, who knows, wherever, Afghanistan and so on, right?
	So, while the mainstream media is baying for war, social media is unraveling the lies about war.
	Oh, it's protesters in Iraq that are attacking the U.S. Embassy.
	No, it's not. They're not mourners, they're not protesters.
	A militia backed by Iran, according to all reports that I've seen from credible sources.
	So as soon as these lies are promoted, they can be undone.
	If social media had been strong in 2003, I believe the invasion of Iraq and all of the resulting disasters that occurred would not have occurred.
	Social media was not strong enough at the time to stop the invasion of Iraq, to stop the invasion of Afghanistan, to stop the incipient destruction of Libya?
	It has been strong enough to prevent escalation in Syria, and we are gaining strength in our anti-war efforts.
	And I'm not a pacifist, don't get me wrong.
	If there's an invasion, you fight back like crazy.
	If there's an imminent invasion, you fight like crazy.
	But, come on.
	Oil? Give me a break.
	Just drill, baby, drill, is stop waging war.
	Stop waging war. Those of us who are out here pushing back strenuously against the murderous pro-war narratives who are working hard to unravel and end these endless often desert wars, it's a tough fight.
	It's a tough fight and there is a significant price to be paid in terms of reputation, in terms of falsehoods, in terms of the destruction of character that is attempted and so on.
	It's a harsh price to pay.
	It's not like we have to strap on guns and go wade into the beaches on D-Day, right?
	It's a mere act of willpower and a strict and strong adherence to deep and principled values that allows those of us to stand up against this storm and blow the hell back.
	Because we have gained so much technology now that war is not an activity we can engage in.
	There are dirty bombs.
	There are suitcase bombs. There's blowback.
	There's poisoning of the water supply.
	There are chemical weapons that can be released everywhere.
	The blowback potential is so catastrophic and so significant that the relentless and endless poking of the hornets' nests of trouble spots around the world is going to result in something completely catastrophic.
	I mean, you could argue that it already has in terms of the migrant crisis, but it's going to result in something completely catastrophic that's going to make 9-11 look a lot smaller and that's not something that we want because then people's fight or flight is activated and when you get that much cortisol running through your system that much adrenaline running through your system you start joining the baying pack of vengeance seekers and you basically become a puppet under the control of those who want to kill and eventually will care less about your death as well so war It's not something we can indulge in,
	a disastrous bloodsport hobby of the elites throughout most of human history.
	It has become the potential end of us all.
	And we can study war no more.
	We can engage in anything but a defensive war no more.
	Bring the boys and the women back home.
	Let us start the new decade fresh, And clean and peaceful.

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