 So, the altruism, the selflessness, the religiousness of America made it weak, made it unable to deal with 9-11. And the way our government dealt with it was by lying to us, by creating fictions, creating excuses. You remember, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? As I said at the time, why does it make a difference if you rock his weapons of mass destruction? Let's say they do. They have massive quantities of chemical weapons that they're using on their own people, which they did for a while. They used them in the codes. Why is it our business? Syria, when I was in the Israeli army in military intelligence, we knew that Syria had chemical weapons. They had chemical weapons. And yet, did that mean that the United States should invade Syria and take those chemical weapons away from them? Why is it any of our business? Indeed, the Syrians use the chemical weapons against their own insurgents, against their own civil war. But is that our business that a bad guy has chemical weapons? No, not unless they're planning to use it on Americans. Why ever go to Iraq and lie to the American people about the reason you're going? I mean, you could argue the reason was to bring democracy to the Middle East. I think they were serious about that the New York Conservatives were. Maybe it was about finishing a war that they started 10 years earlier under Bush I and they wanted to see it through finally. So that was an awful, sadistic, horrible, disgusting human being and not one American soldier to die in order to get rid of him. He was the responsibility of the Iraqis. Now, I'm not against wars. I'm against wars of self-sacrifice. I'm against wars against people who are not our enemies or not our explicit threatening enemies. The war should have been waged against Iran. It should have been waged against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, but Iraq? Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11. Iraq had nothing to do with the many terrorist attacks against the United States. Saudi Arabia was funding terrorists in those days, funding the schools, funding the madrassas where they studied the ideology that led to terrorism. Qatar, the United Emirates in those days were all funding the terrorists, funding al-Qaeda, ultimately funded ISIS. They were the enemy, but Iraq? Iraq was a nothing. By the way, American troops are still in Iraq. Iran is Syria, one of the great myths of the Trump administration. They never bought our troops home, not from Afghanistan and not from Syria and not from Iraq. We still have troops there. So 9-11 revealed the American government as weak, as deceptive, as manipulative. It manipulated our patriotic feelings in order to pretend that they was doing something in our favor. 9-11 revealed that we were a paper tiger, that we would not really fight, that we were going to lose more wars as we lost in Afghanistan. It's not only Russia that's a paper tiger, so is America. And it revealed our politicians as cowards and liars. And I think it is the beginning of the real distrust, I mean distrust. We always, Americans have always been skeptical about government, skeptical about politicians, didn't really trust them that much. But I think there was a real shift during Bush's presidency, a real shift. It was 9-11 and the financial crisis, they completely demolished our trust in the quote elites, in the experts, the experts told us, oh, Iraq will become democratic and bring change all over the Middle East. The experts told us, oh, America's going to win this war and turn Afghanistan into this wonderful place. The experts told us that, oh, these wars were going to be quick, easy, and al-Qaeda was just going to disappear. We're going to get blood and all of that was going to just happen. We were told it wasn't Muslims, it wasn't Islam, even though we all knew it was. Now Muslims, not Islam, don't worry, it's not religion, God forbid it can't be religion. How scary would it be if it was religion? And the consequence of this is that the American people lost all trust, all faith in politics, in elites, in talking heads. And they absorbed this idea that we're cowards, our politicians are cowards, and they absorbed the idea that America did not place its own interests as primary. And this explains the popularity of the American First slogan and the American First, because it has no content. There's no content to the American First idea that they're talking about. They don't know what it means to have an American First, partially because they don't know what America is, but they don't understand enough to know what that is. But it sounds good, and it sounds the opposite of what we did in 1911. In 1911, we placed the interest of Afghans in front of our own, Afghans civilians in front of our own when we didn't bomb the hell out of Afghanistan. We placed the interest of Iraqis and Syrians and everybody else ahead of our own. So America First sounds like a good slogan until you discover how empty it is of any kind of content. By the way, I've told this story before, but you know that the original attack, the initial bombings and initial attack of the United States on Afghanistan was called Operation Infinite Justice. And as the planes are heading towards Afghanistan to launch Operation Infinite Justice, the Saudis complained to the Bush administration that infinite justice, only Allah has infinite justice. How dare the United States use a term like infinite justice to fight good, solid Muslims? And what did the Bush administration do? Tell them to go to hell? No, it changed the name of the operation. And note that operation, the war against Iraq was not called Operation Defend America. Operation kill the bad guys. It was called God. You walk your freedom. I don't think we needed a bomb the Saudis. The Saudis would have caved if we just threatened and put a little bit of pressure on them. They would have caved. But we did nothing. They were friends. They were allies. They, you know, and when we formed the coalition, the coalition of the willing, you remember that the coalition of the willing to go after Iraq, the one country we excluded, the one country that the United States explicitly excluded from the coalition of the willing was Israel. Why? Not to offend the Arabs. Not to offend the Arabs so we can't have Israel. It's a sign of weakness, just pathetic. So in many ways, 9-11 is when Americans realized that the ideas that we have are empty. The futile, the nonsense. In a sense, the left has been chipping away and chipping away and undermining and chipping away at America for sense of progressives. And they kept on doing that. They were consistent. They kept on. But what happened to the rights and to kind of the center, kind of patriotic Americans, Americans who still believed in America, is that they were the ones who became disenchanted. They were the ones who gave up and they were the ones who actually felt for the empty slogans of an America first, nothingness and a hatred of the elite for being an elite, a hatred of experts for being experts, lumped everybody in, but all because of 9-11. Now I also think financial crisis had a big part to play from an economics perspective, but certainly 9-11, from a perspective on America and what America is and what it stands for, what it represents, I think it was 9-11. And I think that turned America. And it is, we're living with the consequence today. The consequence had been Obama and Trump and pathetic Biden and the complete capitulation of America. And I don't know how America will recover. And what's interesting is that while we've got a lull in terrorism, generally the Islamists seem to be quiet. They have taken a real beating. ISIS has taken a real beating, I think primarily from the Russians, most of them from the Americans in Syria. And the Kurds were very good at killing ISIS in Syria. The al-Qaeda is taking a beating. We have managed to kill off its leadership. But, and the Muslim Brotherhood, while victorious in Egypt and actually gained American support in Egypt, then was defeated in Egypt and now they're suppressed by the authoritarian regime of Sisi, General Sisi in Egypt. And yet they are still there. The ideology has not gone away. Even in Africa, we hear less and less about them. They, at some point, they grew and they grew and they grew and they succeeded and they achieved things and then it all collapsed on them. ISIS collapsed and in Africa, they reached a certain limit that they couldn't go no more and they collapsed. But they're still there. They're still teaching the same lessons. They still view the West as unbelievably weak, although maybe a victory over Russia will change that. They view America as an enemy. They view America as weak. Certainly our pathetic retreat from Afghanistan shows them that that is true. And they're taking their time. One of the things you can say about the Islamists is they have their perspective as a perspective of generations, not a perspective of years. They're taking their time. They're building up. They're recruiting new people. Boko Haram is still out there, but it is weak, much lower profile than it was a few years ago when ISIS was at its peak. All of these organizations are just al-Shabaab in Somalia. They're all just lower profile, quiet, building up. Of course, now with the Taliban taking over Afghanistan, they now have a new home, a new base of operations. They're playing the very long game. They're out there. They'll wait. Nothing's urgent for them. They will take their time. There will be Islamic terrorism in the future. And who knows how we'll respond then? Who knows? We're so pathetic and weak that it's so hard to tell. It's so hard to tell. So the enemy's still out there. It's been subdued. We've done enough to subdu it. Not enough to destroy it and wipe it out. Not enough to destroy it and wipe it out. All right. Nothing positive here. But this is the battle. The battle is to reimagine what America is. The battle is to remind Americans of what we used to think America was and to give it content. To return America to the land of individualism. To return America to the land of liberty, a land of freedom. The land of individual rights. To return America to its declaration of independence, to its constitution. Maybe it's too late. It's over. But then, I don't know why we're wasting our time. And I don't think it's over. I don't think it's too late. Otherwise, I wouldn't be doing this. And if you think it is, what are you doing here? But that's the only hope. The only hope is to educate Americans about what this country really is and what its potential really is. And doing that by showing them it's great achievements. This is a great country, the greatest country in human history. But the achievements are all the consequences of its virtues. It's real virtues. Not religion, not altruism, not collectivism, not statism. It's real virtues. And that's going to take a long time. And that's going to take a lot of work. And that's going to take a lot of allies to help us. And, phew, God, there's almost nobody out there to help us. That's the depressing thing. The pressing thing is when I read the comment section and all the apologists for Russia and the apologists for all the bad ideas out there, they so outnumber the good guys that it makes it very difficult to be optimistic about our potential in the future. Thank you for listening or watching The Iran Book Show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening, you get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to iranbookshow.com. 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