 Let's start on on the Middle East. Let's start on foreign policy and on what is was announced by Trump administration as his withdrawal from Syria, bringing troops back from Syria. He promised in his campaign that he would end wars and bring all the troops back. Also the commitment that Turkey has made to basically invade Syria as soon as the American troops were out of the way. Now, I think it's important to first remind you that this is not really a new story. I did a whole show on this way back. I think it was in December. And at that point in time, this is when Trump made the decision to withdraw troops from Syria, and he had made the decision during a phone call. At least as far as his aides know, that is the time he made the decision, because that's the first aid of it. He made the decision during a phone call with Erdogan, who is the leader, the president, the authoritarian leader of Turkey. And during the conversation, Erdogan, who is itching to go into Syria and basically destroy the codes that are based in Syria? Is itching to go into Syria in order to get rid of this past that he has on his southern border, which are other codes? And who knows, reinforce his position in the Middle East. Turkey has suffered quite a bit in terms of prestige in the Middle East recently, and this is an opportunity for him to go and assert himself. And during the conversation, basically Erdogan told Trump, hey, you know, your mission's over. You've defeated ISIS. What the hell are you still doing there? You should leave and let me go in and take care of things. I promise I will prevent ISIS from rising up again. And Trump supposedly said, oh, yeah, that's a good idea. I'll leave. And John Bolton was on the call at the time and almost fell over. He was so disgusted by that. Clearly, Erdogan was playing Trump and the whole call was designed to achieve completely different purposes. And here he was basically being played and basically being manipulated to leave Syria so that Turkey could invade. Now we'll get to whether America should be in Syria and why we should stay and all that. We'll get to that, I promise. But let's start setting the framework. According to some reports, this conversation is what ultimately led Mathis, Secretary of Defense at the time to resign. Why? Why would anybody be upset? After all, ISIS is seemingly defeated. And why should America keep troops in Syria? And why not let Ugoan do whatever the hell he wants? It's his part of the world after all. Well, lots of reasons. But let's start off with the first one, which many people are citing today. And that is the fact that the Kurds, the people who the Turks want to basically wipe out, basically slaughter, the Kurds are the ones who'll be fighting with Americans. They'll be fighting against ISIS. Since ISIS came into being, they have been the only effective force on the ground against ISIS. Indeed, America hasn't devoted that much resources to the fight against ISIS. This is mainly the Kurds and our support of the Kurds. All the other support, all the other Syrian, all the other Syrian opposition parties, all the other Syrian insurgent groups were pathetic, and many of them were aligned with groups like al-Qaeda. It turned out the Kurds were the only reliable ally of the United States. They said, now that goes way back, all the way back to the war in Iraq, the Kurds actually sided with the United States and fought with the US against Saddam Hussein and against the insurgency afterwards. And they were the ones who fought against ISIS. See, you've got an ally, an ally who's fought with you and again, assuming, assuming that destroying ISIS is an American self-interest, they helped you achieve your self-interest. Now, I don't know that I want defending them forever, but it suddenly seems wrong to then, as soon as the mission is accomplished, to turn around and allow a NATO member, a so-called ally of the United States, to wipe out the actual ally that actually helped you defeat ISIS. It seems wrong, right? Iman, unjust, horrific. What are other allies of the United States going to think as the United States abandons the Kurds? In favor of what? In favor of Turkey, which is a country that has systematically over the last 20 years, a little less than 20 years, being taken over by Ogoan and his gang, being turned into more and more and more of a theocracy. I was just reading yesterday how in Turkey they have been continued because they've been doing this for a long time, but they're continuing to shut down newspapers, shut down intellectuals, shut down think tanks, shut down anybody who would oppose this regime, shut down any secular voice in the name of Islam. So a country that is clearly moving towards ISIS, towards radical Islam, towards Islamic totalitarianism, is a country we are going to unleash with American weapons because they are NATO member and they're an ally and we send them weapons. So we're going to leave a real ally, an ally that has fought side by side with American troops, that has fought a clear and mitigated American enemy, ISIS, in favor of a country that supported ISIS when ISIS started out, supplied ISIS with paths that made it possible for them to sell oil, made it possible to bring in weapons, made it possible for them to resupply, helped ISIS in a variety of different ways that are well documented. Intellectually, philosophically, ideologically is not dramatically different than ISIS. We're going to let them wipe out, wipe out our ally. I mean, I can't think of many more horrific foreign policy choices that somebody could make. And all, all in the name of, by the way, make America great again, or America first, America first. This is in America's interest, only a pragmatist, only somebody who can only think short term, who cannot think long term, only somebody with no zero principles, and only somebody who doesn't understand what America is or what American interests are could advocate for such a policy. But that is exactly what the President of the United States is. He is an unprincipled pragmatist who knows nothing of what America stands for, what America represents, and what is in America's long term interests. Turkey is a country that if it wanted to destroy ISIS could have done it themselves. If they were truly a NATO member, and as ISIS attacked European country after country through suicide bombings in France and in other countries, Turkey could have invaded Syria, wiped out ISIS, and gone back home. But Turkey did the opposite. Turkey helped them. Turkey facilitated ISIS. And Turkey did everything in their power to prevent the Kurds, the one fighting force on the ground that actually fought ISIS, prevented them from actually achieving victory. They did in the end, with a lot of help from the United States, but not because of Turkey, but in spite of Turkey. And again, that's who we're siding with. We're siding with the Islamists. We're siding with the allies of ISIS. All because we have a foreign policy guided by an unthinking pragmatist. And it's astounding, right? It's astounding. I mean, all these facts out there, they're known. None of this is a mystery. Now, granted, Americans don't know much about the Middle East. They know almost nothing. Granted, people forget very quickly what they knew five years ago, particularly about a far off region like the Middle East. But Mathis knew this. Bolton suddenly knew this. Many of the people surrounding the president know this, but this president doesn't care. It doesn't matter what I order. He made a campaign promise and he has to fulfill it. The campaign promise was silly, was stupid, and he is going to fulfill it in spite of it all. Now, should we have troops in Syria? Well, we should have wiped out ISIS. We should have never let ISIS come into being. We should have never allowed the Saudis and the Qataris and the Kuwaitis to create ISIS. We should have never left suitcases full of cash in Iraq so that that could fund ISIS in its beginning. We should have never let al-Qaeda come into being. We should have destroyed al-Qaeda. We should have destroyed the inspiration for al-Qaeda and ISIS and every other Islamist Sunni or Shi'ite group in the world, Iran. We should have clamped down on Saudi Arabia. Yes, we should have done all of that. We should have been principled 30 years ago, 1979, when Naidullah Khomeini took over the American Embassy on November 4th. It's coming up on the 30th anniversary, just a few more weeks. We should have struck hard back then, and Ayn Rand said so in a Q&A. She was asked about Iran, and she said the very fact that we did not respond with military force immediately after that, she said, we will pay for that. We will pay for that for decades. She was a genius because we're still paying for it. We have, at every step, at every single step, we have allowed the Islamists to grow, to become more substantial, to become stronger, to become bolder. We allowed Iran to threaten Americans to subsidize. They used to have a line item in their budget called terrorism, to fund terrorism all over the world. We allowed the Iranians to kill Americans. We allowed the Saudis through charities and all kinds of other mechanisms to fund madrasas all over the world to teach an ideology of hatred of the West, of hatred of America, of violent ideology of Jihad. We allowed all that to happen. We did nothing. No, we helped them. We subsidized it by subsidizing Saudi Arabia, by selling them weapons, by pretending they're our best friends for 30 years, 30 years, almost to the day. We have emboldened, we have emboldened the Islamists. And we continue to do so. Now, in the form of a Gwan in Turkey, now in the form of leaving Syria. So my point is this, should we be in Syria? Not if we're not going to win. Not if we're not going to recognize who the enemy is, call him by name and destroy him. Destroy him. Question. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, wins or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of the stare, cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist roads. Using the super chat. And I noticed yesterday when I appealed for support for the show, many of you stepped forward and actually supported the show for the first time. So I'll do it again. Maybe we'll get some more today. If you like what you're hearing, if you appreciate what I'm doing, then I appreciate your support. Those of you who don't yet support the show, please take this opportunity, go to uranbrookshow.com slash support or go to subscribe star.com uranbrookshow and and make a kind of a monthly contribution to keep this to keep this going. I'm not showing the next