 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this Tuesday, March 21st. Second show of the day. Everybody's having a great week. You enjoyed the show this morning. Back for more. Appreciate that. A frazzled day, a crazy day. So I apologize. I'm a little winded, I guess. Too much going on in my life right now. So anyway, we are going to talk about Iraq today. We're going to talk about the one Iraq 20th, yesterday, 20 years ago. The United States invaded Iraq in 2003. So we will talk about that invasion, what it means, and all of that. Was it justified? Why did it fail? Did it ever have any meaningful goals? And what are the consequences, long-term, short-term, long-term consequences, of the one Iraq? So we'll talk about that. I also thought, since we're talking about Iraq, we do a little bit of modern history of Iraq. I'm not going to go back to prehistory, although Iraq has an amazing, I mean, really both of civilization in many respects is in Iraq. So we're not going to talk about prehistory. We're going to start with World War I and talk about, just highlight some of the history beyond that. Because my guess is most people just don't know. Most people don't know what the history was. And I don't think most people understand why the war was fought, why it failed, what the goals were. And again, the consequences are going to be interesting. So a lot to cover today. Some of you have told me that you like kind of the history shows, where I cover a lot of history and go in depth into a particular topic. And so we're going to do that today. So hopefully you'll enjoy that and get some value out of it. This is one of those topics that many people disagree with me about. Some people literally hate my guts about. Anything to do with war, people don't like me over. But that's OK. We don't shy away from those topics. We embrace them. And for those people who do not want to be part of the show because some of the topics I cover they disagree with, so be it. It is a, MacArthur, do a history show on Iwakwande. I did a, if you're interested in the more ancient history of the Middle East, I did do a whole series of talks on the history of the Middle East, a short history of the Middle East. You can find those on YouTube, audio only. But they are available and all available for free. And I can't remember how many hours it is, but it's a history of the Middle East that includes a history of Iwakwande, which is quite an amazing history. I mean, Iwakwande, in the 10th and 11th centuries, Iwakwande, the best library in the world by far. I mean, it was the biggest, best, amazing. All the Greek texts were translated into Arabic. They were all there. It was just stunning, stunning place. And then, of course, the Mongols, I mean, a variety of things happened between this and this. But the Mongols, of course, flattened Baghdad, the capital of Iraq. Of course, there was no such thing as Iraq back then. So that is where we want to start today. All right. As you know, you can support the show by Super Chat, ask questions. You can do stickers. We've already got Daniel. Thank you. Catherine, thank you. And Fred Halper, thank you, who've already supported the show with stickers. The evening shows do have a goal of $650. I think we missed that goal this morning by like $50. So maybe we should add it on to this. And yeah, let's do that. We'll make the goal today $700. We'll see. I can be ambitious, right? We can try that out. So there we go. We've just changed the goal to $700. And let's see if we can achieve that. That'll be great. That's how we fund the show. That's how we keep it going. On tomorrow we'll have a morning show. On Thursday, I'm doing an interview. Somebody you've never met, I'm sure. You don't know, I'm sure. Because he's young and I don't think known, very known within the projectives community, but a really interesting young guy. So hopefully that'll go well. We're going to talk about racism and civil rights. And we'll talk about the civil rights movement in the 19th century. Civil rights movement before and after the Civil War. So talk about reconstruction. I think it's going to be, I mean, I'm going to learn a lot from it. So it's one of those interviews I'm looking forward to, because most of the stuff my guest is going to talk about, I know nothing about, or I know very little about. So I'm looking forward to learning something new, which I don't, it doesn't usually happen. So that will be on Thursday at 7 PM East Coast time, 7 PM East Coast time on Thursday. Then on Saturday we've got an AMA. On Sunday we'll have a member's only show. So member's only show. Let me just ask all of you guys, if there are topics you guys would like to talk about in the member's only show. So if you're a member, you can use the super chat feature to mention some topics that you would like covered in the member's only show. We'll do that on Sunday. And then I can't remember what we're doing on Monday, but we're doing something on Monday. Ooh, David, thank you. Vadim, thank you. Roosevelt, thank you. But we are, we're doing a show on Monday. Monday night we'll do a show. I might have, we'll see. I know I owe you guys movie reviews and mass TV series reviews and I keep promising to do them and I never get to it. I still haven't got to it and it's just gonna have to wait probably until I get back from South America. But my life is up, I don't know what the term is. Anyway, it's all over the place and it's hard for me to, it's hard for me to go in and set some time aside to watch movies. All right, let's see. What else do we want to do? All right, I think we've set it all up. So let's talk about Iraq. I want to show you a map of Iraq. How about that? There's Iraq, there's a map of Iraq. You can see Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait. We'll talk about Kuwait in a little while. You can see Iran. Iran you can only see part of. It's a massive country that goes to the East towards Asia. You got Turkey here in the North. It's got a border right at the top there with Iraq. And of course you've got Syria, Jordan, we said. And then Israel and Lebanon are to the left, to the west of Jordan and Syria. To the west of Syria is Lebanon. To the west of Jordan is Israel. So you've got, it's interesting that they have a dotted line separating Jordan from Israel. Because I guess this map, they don't really recognize the existence of Israel. Israel is all dotted lines. You see that? Isn't that interesting? I don't know where I got this map from, but yeah, it's not a Israel-friendly map. It's a map of Israel-Heders. So it doesn't really exist. It's just a dotted line. Anyway, so this is the map. You can see Iraq. You can see where it is. There's Baghdad. In the South you can see Basra, which is close to Kuwait. In the North you can see Ibril and Mosul, which are the northern, and if you go east of Ibril, that's the Kurdistan, that's the Kurdish area in Iraq. So this map of Iraq, this entity, this political entity called Iraq, really came into existence in 1917 when the British, or really 1920, but in 1970s the British seized Baghdad and ultimately all of Iraq or modern Iraq. During the First World War, and they seized it from the Ottoman Empire that had been ruling this part of the world from 1534 to 1918. In 1920, the League of Nations approved a British mandate over Iraq, so they gave it to the British. But just as a temporary thing, while Britain sorted it all out, there was of course a revolt. They wanted to be independent. So what Britain did is it appointed Faisal, the son of Hussein Ben Ali, Bin Ali, who was the Sharif of Mecca as king. Now Mecca is in Saudi Arabia. They plucked somebody out of Saudi Arabia and said, we can't give you Saudi Arabia because that is owned by the Saud family. So we'll give Faisal, we'll give Faisal Iraq in exchange so they don't fight over Saudi Arabia. I mean, that's literally what the British did. So they had promised a big chunk of the Middle East to both the two families, the Hussein Ben Ali's family and the family of the Sauds. And at the end of World War I, they had to choose between the two. They gave the Sauds Saudi Arabia and they gave Faisal one of the sons of Hussein Ben Ali. The other son became the king of Jordan. They gave him Iraq. In 1932, Iraq becomes a dependent and then during World War II, but then we occupy Iraq for a while. But basically in 1958, so this monarchy of the Husayns, this monarchy rules Iraq from basically 1932 when the mandate ends until 1958 when the monarchy is overthrown by a left-wing military coup led by Abed al-Qarim Qasim. And Iraq leaves the pro-British kind of alliance and becomes its own thing. This is 58, 63, Qasim is ousted in a coup led by the Pan-Arab Barth Party. The Barth Party is an interesting party. It's the same party that rules Syria. It is a proto-fascist political party, a party that was inspired by Mussolini, I mean explicitly by Mussolini. It was founded by Arab intellectuals who had gone to Europe to study and learn the ways of the West and they came back with the ways of the West. Fascism, secular dictatorship, basically governing all the activities and the Barth Party basically ruled Iraq and ruled Syria. And indeed Saddam Hussein in a sense was part of the Barth Party. So the Barth dominate starting in 1963. They lose power, they gain power back and forth. Anyway, this is like a super unstable country, constant fighting, constant different clans leading this. But the Barthists who were secular and I think it's important that they were secular, basically they established power during most the 60s and 1970s. In 1972, Iraq nationalizes the Iraq patrolling company. We'll get in a minute where the oil fields are. And then it gives, and then it's, Saddam Hussein comes to power in 1979 as part of the Barth Party takes over from President Al-Baqar, who was the first Prime Minister of the Barthes. All right, so this brings us to Saddam Hussein, 1979. Saddam Hussein is the dictator of Iraq. He is a secularist, he is a fascist, he runs everything, the oil company has been nationalized, the oil company is run and all its revenues are provided by the government. Iraq is an interesting country because it is split, about 55%, 60% is Shiite and the rest is Sunni, putting aside the Kurds in that northeastern piece. The Shiite basically dominate the south, the Sunnis dominate the north and the west. If you think about it, Saudi Arabia to Iraq south is Sunni, primarily Sunni, they have quite a few Shiites. Kuwait is Sunni, Iran of course, is the power behind the Shiite and they affiliated with the Shiites of southern Iraq. Iraq culturally is tribal, it is quite religious, religious both in terms of believing but also religious in terms of traditions. But the focus really is tribalism, they are tribal leaders even among the Shiites, they're different tribes within the Shiites, different tribes among the Sunnis. This is a tribal society and a big part of the way a dictator rules such a society is divide and conquer. Keep them divided, prevent them from uniting against them, make sure they hate each other and that way you are the unifying factor. So Iraq internally is relatively peaceful because even though they hate each other and they resent each other because of this centralized government and a military that oppresses any kind of revolt. The oil is primarily in the Shiite areas and the Kurdish areas of all places, so in the northeast and the south and yet all the oil revenue flows to the government, the government is, most of that ultimately goes to the Sunnis, yes, the Sunnis in the north of Iraq. All right, so that's kind of background to Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein comes to bar 79, in 1980 he launches a war, first among many wars. He launches an eight year war against Iran. Now this is a brutal war. This is a war in which at least a million people die, a million. This is a war that is fought along a long border. And remember many of the Iraqis fighting against Iranians are Shiites, they're fighting Iranians who are Shiites, relatives in many cases. This is a war that is, again, brutal in terms of casualties. It runs for eight years. It is a war that ends basically with a stalemate. Nobody wins this war. The United States, because the United States, of course, is because of the Aitul Khomeini coming to power in 1979, the United States is the enemy of Iran. The United States basically is providing weapons to Iraq and supporting Iraq, primarily in order to keep the Iranians busy, primarily in order to draw down kind of waste away the Iranians. I think it doesn't help. I actually think this war perpetuates the Iranian regime. It unifies Iran under kind of a form of nationalism in spite of the authoritarian governance of Aitul Khomeini. But it is, again, this is a brutal, horrible war in which, a war started by Iraq in which both the Iraqis and the Iranians suffer massive casualties. A lot of Iranian soldiers, teenagers, young teenagers in many cases, they get slaughtered in the battlefield. It's just a, the whole thing is a horrific, murderous, barbaric thing and part of kind of the legacy of Saddam Hussein's rule over Iraq. In June 1981, okay, so 7980, one of the things that Saddam Hussein is doing, not only is he going to war with Iran, but he's also building a nuclear reactor with the intention of building nuclear weapons. He is ambitious. He wants nuclear weapons and he's got this reactor and he's got scientists working on it and he's got the French helping him and it's something that is seriously trying to achieve. In June of 1981, Israel launches a raid which is pretty an amazing mission, we can talk about it sometime, in which Israel destroys. I mean, think about it launching airplanes from Israel going all the way to Baghdad, launching air to ground missiles and basically destroying the nuclear reactor, completely devastating it. So that puts an end to Saddam Hussein's nuclear ambition. Billions of dollars go down in smoke. In 1988, you know, the Saddam Hussein decides to oppress the Kurds, to reverse the autonomy that had been granted to them. As part of that, as part of an attack on a Kurdish town of Halabah, he uses poison gas where thousands of people are killed, thousands of people are killed in poison gas. I don't know if you've ever seen pictures or documentaries or anything that describes how people die of poison gas, but I mean, dying is dying, but there are more horrific ways to die and less horrific ways to die. You know, a bullet in the head, a bomb that just takes you to pieces, that's a pretty straightforward way to die. Poisonous gas, God, that is a brutal, horrific, slow, disgusting, and I'm not gonna describe it, way to die, so it's just a brutality of it is pretty horrific. Anyway, he used poison gas on his own people and the Kurdish people up in the northeast. In 1990, two years after the Iran war is over with a stalemate, Saddam Hussein is not done yet. He's got ambitions to take over the Middle East. He invades Kuwait, and he annexes Kuwait and declares Kuwait to be part of Iraq. Kuwait, of course, has a lot of oil fields, has a lot of oil. It is a rich part of the world. It increases Iraq's control of the oil supply significantly. It expands it. And of course, it also now, his willingness to invade Kuwait creates a real challenge for the Saudis. If you think about Saudi Arabia, all of its, most of its oil fields are in the eastern part in the northeast, not that far from the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border. Taking you Kuwait suggests, ooh, maybe the next move is to take pieces of Saudi Arabia where the oil is and maybe this could, the ambition of Saddam Hussein is really dominate the world supply of oil. In February 1991, now remember that Saudi Arabia kind of has a deal with the U.S. The U.S. basically has a deal where it will defend Saudi Arabia and in exchange, the Saudis will guarantee the supply of oil. And I'm not sure that deal is still in place. We've sold them sophisticated weapons. They now have their own military. They're quoting the Chinese. I don't know. I don't know what transpires between the U.S. and the Saudi Arabia these days. But certainly in 1990, the United States thought that they had a responsibility in defending Saudi Arabia and defending the oil supplies of the world to go in and kick the Iraqis out of Kuwait and to make clear to them that they will not dominate the oil of the world. And you could make an argument whether that war was just war or not. It is a war. It didn't really make Bin Laden angry. I don't think there's anything. What made Bin Laden angry is that the Saudis couldn't do it themselves. I mean, Bin Laden hated Iraq because Iraq was a secular state. I mean, Bin Laden used that later on as an excuse saying that the Americans occupied the holy land, which is Saudi Arabia, because they placed their troops there. But the very, what was I gonna say? That was not the reason Bin Laden attacked us, put it that way. Now, okay, so let's see. So that takes us to February 91. If you're a member of the First Gulf War, Bush places troops along the Iraqi border, the Kuwaiti border. He has a coalition of countries. The only country of significance that wasn't invited to participate in the coalition is Israel. The United States launches an attack on the Iraqis in Kuwait. This attack is real shock and awe. It's the first real extensive use of smart weaponry that the world has ever seen. Now, Israel had used smart weapons to destroy the nuclear reactor. Israel had used smart weapons in Lebanon in 1982. But that was small scale. This was big scale. And this was all kinds of smart weapons, coups missiles, and all kinds of smart weapons from airplanes basically destroyed. I mean, I remember this war, and I remember America's thinking, oh my God, the Iraqi has this massive army. It's well trained. It just fought a war with Iran. It's one of the great armies of the world. America's gonna have a hard time beating them. And I was like, you guys have no clue. America would wipe them out like that. And indeed, they wiped them out like that. It took days. And the Iraqi army was devastated. It was almost cool because it was like shooting ducks in a barrel. Is that it? Shooting ducks in a barrel? Is that a metaphor? And they kicked them out of Kuwait. Many people in the United States said, the United States at that point should have gone to Baghdad and kicked out Saddam Hussein, a man who had shown a willingness to go to war over and over again, a brutal dictator, somebody who clearly had no legitimacy as the Wula, if you are, but the Bush administration decided not to go to Baghdad to settle for clearing out Kuwait, which is what they did. After the war, immediately after the war, the southern part of Iraq, the Shiites and the northern part of Iraq and the Kurdish population were belled against Saddam Hussein, basically engaged in a civil war. And the United States established a no-fly zone to prevent Iraq from using airplanes to suppress the population who was revolting against it. Anyway, the civil war was ultimately crushed and oppressed against Saddam Hussein, the wonderful guy oppressed his own people, destroyed them, killed thousands. And so I'm just giving you all this history partially because so many people are like, oh, why do we have to go to, isn't it terrible that we deposed Saddam Hussein? No, of all the things we did, the one good thing was that we got rid of a monster. I mean, he was really a monster. In 1991, also a weapons inspection program was set in place to monitor weapons of mass destruction, both nuclear and chemical, because you obviously had them. In 1998, Iraq ends the cooperation with the UN over weapons of mass destruction inspections. In 2002, they returned, but they are all kinds of reasons why it is viewed that Iraq has breached their agreement. Okay, so this leads us up to 2003 in the invasion, at least in terms of Iraq. You've got, and the key point of Iraq, is that it's not just a war, it's not just a war, it's not just a war. It's not just a war, it's not just a war. And the key point here is, and I gave you all this because I believe in giving concrete and evidence to my statements, Saddam Hussein was a brutal, illegitimate, barbaric, horrific dictator of Iraq who did nothing but destroy his country, steal its wealth, oil, invade his neighbors, which you could argue who cares about the neighbors. But again, from the perspective of Iraqis themselves, they went to war repeatedly, over and over again for nothing. And their wealth was destroyed, their lives were taken, and they were oppressed and they rebelled against this guy on several occasions, including right after the First Gulf War in the 90s, in the early 1990s. All right, I'm not going to go over the whole 9-11 story, but you know 9-11 happened, and the interesting thing about 9-11 was, and I've talked about this elsewhere, but this is worth repeating and repeating and repeating because it's the key to understanding all of our failures post 9-11 with regard to the Middle East. The Bush administration, and indeed most people in the United States refused to name the enemy. They refused to say that the enemy was, you know, radical Islamists, jihadis, totalitarian Islamists. You know, call them what you want. I don't think it's Islam too broad, too wide, too unidentified. You know, it wasn't Malaysians who attacked us. It was people who believe they can use and need to use and must use the religion of Islam to control human life, to control all life, to control the entire world. Megalomaniacs who believe that they will impose and should impose and can impose Islam on the world. Now, if you identify that as the enemy, then what you do is you identify all the people who control all these views and other people who support these views and perpetuate these views and fund these views and educate these views and get these views out there into the world. I should get rid of the map. And they are the enemy. They are the enemy. And you go to them and you basically tell them to stop immediately or else. And that would have meant one would have viewed Saudi Arabia as a bigger enemy, as a potential enemy. You certainly would have viewed Iran as an enemy. You know, Afghanistan was a problem because that's what being enlarged is a tax. So you have to take care of that. But Pakistan was a place where these kind of ideas were being taught widely in the population. Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Muslim Brotherhood, you go on and on and on. There's a long list, but these are the places. And Turkey moving in that direction even. And these are the countries you have to worry about. These are the countries you have to really do something about. These are the countries that are the hinge in which you just, you know, whether there's going to be more terrorist attacks, whether this is going to grow, whether Americans are going to have to live in fear or not will be determined. But if you do that, one kind of country is not relevant to this particular discussion. As brutal and as awful and as horrific those countries might be. And those countries are secular dictatorships in the Muslim world. Iraq was not funding Islamists. It was cooperating here and there with Islamists, but it was not a major force in the Islamist movement. Why? Because Sunam Hussein was afraid of the Islamists. The Islamists were his enemy. The Islamists wanted Sharia law in Iraq. And Iraq was basically a secular country. I mean, it wasn't secular in the behavior of the people because the people were religious and that's really important for us to understand. They were religious and they're tribal. But Sunam Hussein was secular. He was an atheist. And he ruled as an atheist. He wanted power. He wanted control. He wanted wealth. He wanted orgies. He wanted to do whatever the hell he wanted to do. And his children were atheists. He wasn't supporting Islamist causes. Indeed, he'd gone to war with Iran, which is the fountainhead of the Islamist cause. So if you identify who the enemy that struck you in 9-11 was, Iraq would never have made the list. It wouldn't have been an issue. But here's the problem. A, if you identify the real enemy, then you have to deal with it. And that might mean conflict with Saudi Arabia, who supposedly is a friend. It might mean conflict with Pakistan, which might have actually nuclear bombs. Although I think both countries could have been dealt with without any bullets fired, any bullets fired. But you have to recognize that religion was what motivated the terrorism. And religion, in this case Islam, but religion is the enemy. And George Bush, a born-again evangelical, could not do that. For George Bush, the born-again evangelical, Islam was a religion of peace. He said it in front of Congress, as all religions are religions of peace. It is impossible for a religionist in the modern world to portray another religion as violent, horrific, dangerous, because that has implication for his own religion. So religion, the Islamic religion, particularly interpretation of the Islamic religion, was never identified. Never identified as the actual enemy that we faced. Or at least the ideology that animated the actual enemy that we faced. And therefore, post-911, we didn't know what the hell we were doing. So point one about the Iraq War, we didn't know what the hell we were doing. Iraq was not part of the 9-11 response. It had never been. And even if Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, let's say they found weapons of mass destruction, why is that, who cares? Were the weapons of mass destruction being used against Americans? No. Do we have any proof that they were going to be used against Americans? No. I mean Syria, which was ruled by Bashar al-Assad, had weapons of mass destruction. We know they had weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, during the Syrian Civil War recently, they used those weapons of mass destruction, gas, against their own people, just like Saddam Hussein had done. Did we invade Syria because of weapons of mass destruction? Weapons of mass destruction was an awful excuse, even if it were true. So I have no problem with the idea that they didn't find weapons of mass destruction. They did find weapons of mass destruction. That was never the issue. Why do we care? Are we there to clean up the Middle East from weapons of mass destruction? Then we should have had a much bigger war. No. We supposedly there as a response to 9-11. Weapons of mass destruction had nothing to do with 9-11. Indeed, Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9-11. Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11. Wrong war, wrong country, wrong place. So that's the first among many problems. One, we didn't identify the enemy. But there was another big problem, and that had to do in here. Here, you have to give the blame to a group of intellectuals, a group of intellectuals who had been wiggling their way into power since really the 1970s. A group of intellectuals that really got established in the 1960s. On the right, they had origins on the left, really on the Trotsky left, on the Kami left. And these are the Neoconservatives. The Neoconservatives, a group established by a number of people, but most well known is Irving Kristol, in the early 1960s, started out as just anti-Soviet left, but then turned to the right and became conservatives. They were, what I think Irving Kristol once called it, they were liberals mugged by reality. And they always maintained that liberal sensitivity to altruism. And they always maintained the international liberalism kind of Woodrow Wilson, if you will. And they were heavily motivated for a very long time by anti-Soviet Union, anti-communism. But the Neoconservatives, which became more and more dominant within the Republican Party through the 70s and the 80s, by the 1990s and by the Bush administration were the dominant intellectual force within the Republican Party. The dominant intellectual force. And they had, they basically had, you know, come to rule the foreign policy establishment within the Republican Party. And they had a conception, which they'd written about throughout the 1990s, you know, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, they needed an alternative enemy. And this conception had two themes to it. One theme was conflict is a good thing. War is a good thing. They get this from the progressives. War is a tonic foundation. It gives people a focus. It unites. It gets us all wrapped around a flag. We all get excited about war. War unites the country. We stop, we forget about our petty disagreements. We forget about the petty problems within the country. We unite around one big common cause. Gives people a purpose. Thank you, Jure, absolutely. Gives people a purpose. And they, you know, you can find, even David Brooks who today, you know, is a, I don't know if anybody considers himself a conservative anymore, but he used to be saying that what America needs is a good war. And the problem was that the Cold War had ended. America had won. And now we are fragmenting this is, again, conservatives love the Cold War because the Cold War united us. We had a purpose. So they were looking for an alternative. And if you read their writings in the 1990s, the early 2000s, and particularly after the First Gulf War, they discovered their new purpose. The new purpose that America should unite around is to bring democracy to the world. It's to change the world and bring democracy. And they had this idea that everybody loves democracy. Everybody wants freedom. Everybody wants to be free. We just need to help liberate them. We just need to go there and show them the way and they would all jump on the bandwagon. They would love us because everybody in the world wants democracy. And we can do this. We can bring democracy to the world. And this will be a... What a greater purpose for America is to be the bringer of democracy and freedom to the peoples of the world. And if we need to go to war for that, that's fine. If we need to sacrifice some of our kids for that, that's fine. It's for a greater purpose, bigger purpose than yourself, a greater cause, freedom in the world. Democracy. And when 9-11 happened, this was their chance. This was their chance to go into various parts of the world and change them and show people that it could be done and build a model around it. And they thought, wow, we've got this opportunity in Afghanistan to go in and not just defeat the enemy, but actually reshape Afghan society in our image. And the Afghans, just as soon as we give it to them, they'll embrace freedom immediately. But the real prize for them was Iraq. Iraq was clearly run by a horrible monster. Iraq was relatively to the Arab world's secular place. Iraq was relatively to the Arab world an educated place. They thought, what could be better than taking over Iraq, turning it democratic. Remember, the war was called Operation Iraqi Freedom. Turning it democratic, making it free, establishing this haven of economic progress and political liberalism in Iraq that would let them spread throughout the Middle East and transform the world, and it would be their legacy to the world. Now, I know when I say this, people go, oh, come on, Iran, you're just being naive. Nobody actually thinks that. No, these people thought it. They wrote about it. They spoke about it. And they were the people inside the administration advocating for the war in Iraq. They named the war Operation Iraqi Freedom. And they had the ear primarily both of Bush and of Cheney. Neither one is a neocon in and of themselves, but they had the ear of those people because they dominated the foreign policy establishment among the Republicans. The Republican Party was dominated foreign policy-wise by neocons. So they got the war they wanted. So the goal of the war was to bring democracy to Iraq, not to defeat our enemies, not to secure American lives, but Operation Iraqi Freedom. And it's how we fought the war. We try to fight the war by minimizing casualties, particularly early on, Iraqi casualties, not American casualties. Americans died. Nobody cared. But Iraqi casualties. The war, of course, was won very quickly in a sense. Occupied. Saddam's kids were captured. It took a while to catch Saddam himself. He was captured in December. But basically, you know, the Iraqi army was disbanded in May. A big mistake to disband the Iraqi army. You know, and by May 1, George Bush basically said mission accomplished on an aircraft carrier. But here's the thing the neocons didn't understand. What the neocons didn't understand was that people don't want to be free. Freedom is a massive achievement. Freedom is something you have to work hard and have to lay real intellectual foundations for people to appreciate, to want, to fight for. And the reality is the Iraqi people had no desire for freedom in the sense that we mean it in the West. They weren't happy with Saddam Hussein, but were not like they wanted the alternative to be some Republican government. They wanted their ruler to rule over them rather than somebody else's ruler. So instead of chewing American forces, liberating them from a monster, which they should have, if the Iraqis really cared about their own country, if the Iraqis really cared about their own life, if the Iraqis really had an appreciation for freedom and liberty, they would have cheered the Americans and viewed this as an amazing opportunity. This massive country was sacrificing itself for their benefit. They would have said thank you, America, and embraced it. Instead, they did not. They rejected it. They fought the Americans. They started an insurgency. Shiites, and then they took it as a great opportunity to kill each other. Shiites killing Sunnis. Sunnis killing Shiites. Al-Qaeda established itself and found many, many people within Iraq to help it out. Established itself in Iraq by 2,400s. Thousands, hundreds of Americans were dying. Fallujah became a symbol of the insurgency, and American forces didn't clear out Fallujah, you know, by bombing it to smithereens. They cleared it out house by house, door by door, and American troops died. Because the fact is that we fought this war caring more about Iraqis than about Americans. Because it was never clear what the Americans' self-interest was. So this is a purely altruistic war from the beginning. I mean, some people say we fought it for the oil, or we didn't take the oil. We didn't give it to American multinational corporations. We just let the Iraqis have it. And the Iraqi government controls all the oil in Iraq today. We then helped them establish democracy. We got all the tribal leaders together, and they set up a constitution which enshrines Islam in the constitution. And now you get battles between Shiites and Sunnis, and Iran has a huge influence, because they have an influence on the Shiites. And Iranian political parties, supported political parties, fight for the elections. And, you know, again, a horrific constitution, a terrible constitution, fighting. Finally, we killed a leader, the killer leader of al-Qaeda, but then we... And then in order to suppress the insurgency, we give the Iraqis suitcases full of cash. This is Petraeus' way of winning wars. We give the Sunnis in the north, who had supported al-Qaeda. We give the suitators of cash not to support al-Qaeda anymore. So they stopped supporting al-Qaeda. We give them turn against al-Qaeda and kill al-Qaeda. But then a lot of...a few years later, those suitcases of cash are then used to fund ISIS. And ISIS comes out of using American money, American weapons that we'd given the U.K. Army. That's ISIS. And I'm not going to get into the whole modern history and everything that happened with ISIS and all of that. The surge of American troops, the withdrawal of the American troops in and out and so on, were already running out of time. But it's a disaster, right? Iraq is not a friend of the United States. We lost thousands of American kids there. Iraq is much closer to Iran than it had ever been. Iran is a strategic enemy of the United States. Iraq was not... We still have troops in Iraq. Still have troops in Iraq, so they're a little bit nice to us because there's still some soldiers there on the ground. We still have troops in Syria in spite of the mythology about Trump evacuating our troops or bringing troops home from Syria in Iraq. He did not. They're still there. But Iraq is, by any means... They still have elections. They still have democracy. They fight all the time. It's a very violent place because of the tribal niche of the whole thing. The elections are not about ideas. The elections about which gang gets to control the oil. It's all about gang warfare. There's no ideological aspect to it. So it's a complete and utter disaster, which was completely predictable, and I predicted the disaster that is Iraq. I even predicted ISIS over and over again throughout the 2000s. You know, every opportunity during the 2000s, I said, this is what's going to happen. It has to be a disaster because it's a war with no purpose, no goal, and the goals that are purported to have are impossible. Bringing democracy to Iraq and then to the rest of the Middle East. That's ridiculous and absurd and nonsensical. I even called, I think, in 2004 for the United States to leave Iraq immediately and to withdraw because kids were dying there for no reason. It took until 2009 before US troops withdrew from the cities. They were there for six years. Inside cities, they were clearly hostile to them. What are the consequences of this? Well, a few things. Let's start in the Middle East. In the Middle East, the main consequence of this is, it has increased Iran's power in the Middle East dramatically. It has basically granted Iran a corridor through Iraq to Syria and Iranian troops today who are now in Syria helping Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian brutal dictator, rule Syria, but also threatening Israel and supporting their troops in Syria, supporting their allies, the Hezbollah in Lebanon. So Iran, a strategic enemy of the United States, has been bolstered. It's much, much stronger than it used to be and now occupies a dominant position militarily in the Middle East. Now, the weakness of Iran we know is internal, but externally it's much stronger today than it was in the past because it has basically free movement in Iraq. It controls at least parts of the Iraqi government. It has allies, strong allies within the government and of course it controls Syria and therefore it has power over Lebanon. So Iran has achieved its aim of positioning its troops on the Israeli border, which they've always wanted. So in the Middle East it's less friendly, at least that part of the Middle East is less friendly to American interests than it was before the war, but more than that. The world, Middle East countries as well as other countries around the world, have learned how weak the United States is, have learned that the United States does not prioritize its own interests, it does not fight to win, it does not know how to cut its losses and get out, it does not know how to win a war. This was proved to the world that America is a, not exactly a paper tiger, it has the mightiest military force in all of human history, but it won't utilize it right, it won't utilize it effectively, it won't utilize it to win. It fights stupid wars. Well if it had a real war would it fight any better? I don't think anybody believes it would. The world has learned that from both Afghanistan and Iraq. Do you think this doesn't inspire Putin? Of course it does. Do you think it doesn't inspire Xi? Of course it does. Do you think it doesn't inspire the next Islamist nut down the road? It will inspire. America is weak. It's incredibly powerful, but unless you're willing to use your power and use it wisely, the power is useless. The power is useless. America of course is divided. What the Iraq war did ultimately is not unite America, but divide it. And it has basically made war unacceptable to Americans. Americans despise fun entanglement. We thought that happened after Vietnam. And to some extent it did, but it suddenly happened now. Americans won't go to war, don't want to go to war. It explains part of the resistance even supporting Ukraine. It might explain part of ultimately our inability and unwillingness to defend Taiwan. It certainly explains the aggressiveness of Russia and China looking at us, observing us. It also made us deeply distrust our leaders. I mean Bush and our generals, and this is true of Obama, this is true of all our political class, and our generals and our military class, lied to us, both faced lied to us, lied to us about the goals of the war, lied to us about how it was going, lied to us about every aspect of it, and everybody knows this. Nobody trusts these people. These are the people who told us about weapons of mass destruction. These are the people who told us they would bring democracy to the Middle East. These are the people who told us this would be an easy war and we would win it quickly. And yet we lost the war. And we lost 3,000 young men and women. And we made our enemy more powerful. And ultimately ISIS came about. ISIS came about with our money, with our weapons systems. ISIS came about because of our weakness. Yes, ultimately we destroyed ISIS. I think the Russians, the Iraqis, the Syrians, the Turks had more to do with destroying ISIS than we did, but we destroyed ISIS ultimately. And ISIS is for the most part destroyed in that part of the world. But it terrorized and murdered and killed how many people? America is weak. America is unfocused. America cannot be trusted. These are some of the modern day implications. And the elites, the intellectuals, the foreign policy, quote, establishment cannot be trusted, cannot believe them. And if you think about Trump's election, if you think about the attitude towards the neocons, if you think about the attitude towards all experts in foreign policy and all ideas about foreign policy, nobody wants to hear them, nobody's interested, nobody cares. We were betrayed, we were lied to, we were stabbed in the back once, nobody wants to have that again. And for America to deploy forces overseas in a war is unthinkable. Even if it is a war that ultimately will be required and not to defend ourselves, it's unthinkable. And you can see again the resistance today, even if us applying weapons to somebody else fighting a war that is in our interest for them to win. But at least on the Republican side, no, no, no. We don't trust. We don't trust the army, we don't trust the military, we don't trust any of these people. And those are dire consequences when you lose complete trust. I'll do a show on trust sometime soon. But when you lose complete trust, society can break apart. Society can go into a state of chaos and anarchy. So Iraq is a horrible war. It is a war that, you know, has lasting consequences in American culture and America's ability to defend itself. It's a war that cost us gazillions of dollars, cost us thousands of lives, and cost us our trust in our own institutions. And it cost us, I think now if you look, look at Saudi Arabia courting the Chinese, look at Iran cozying up to the Chinese. Look at Saudi Arabia and Iran cozying up to one another. Nobody takes the United States of America seriously in that part of the world anymore. We're a clown show, a sacrificial clown show. And the consequences are going to be felt in the way the world out there is shaped in its attitudes towards America and its willingness to poke us, its willingness to go against us in a variety of different ways. All right. That is, that is what I have to say about Iraq. So I'm open to questions about this, of course, about anything you want to ask questions about. I encourage people to do 20 or $50 questions. We are $368 short of our goal, which I said at $700 today. So I hope, I hope we can make those numbers. We are, yeah, we've raised almost half of that, but we've still got a way to go. So I'm hoping there's some whales out there who are willing to put some serious bucks into this. Let me just quickly browse the $20, $50 questions to see if there's some that have anything to do with the actual, okay, let me take, Richard seems to have a series of questions that are related to this. Richard says, why is it that there are no non-objectivist intellectuals who are pro-American, but also acknowledge the folly of self-sacrifice of trying to force democracy on people that despise us? I think there are people, but they come to the wrong conclusion. Their conclusion is, because, you know, this was sacrificial, we can't force democracy on people. Therefore, we should disengage from the world. Therefore, we should stop trying to engage with the world. We should isolate ourselves completely. We should not intervene, not in terms of policemen of the world, because I don't think we should be, not in terms of being democracy, I don't think we should be, but we should not intervene in the world at all. We should disengage from the world. That is the conclusion of the pro-American side who acknowledge the folly and self-sacrifice of trying to force democracy on people. Their conclusion is, well, we shouldn't stand up for democracy. We shouldn't advocate it. We shouldn't be a moral beacon for freedom. And we shouldn't try to defend ourselves by the use of force out there. We should just disengage. We should leave the world alone. So protect the shipping lanes now. Let's just build all the industry at home. So, you know, we just disengage. Just leave it alone. We don't need the world. That's their conclusion. And then Richard says, why did the U.S. not focus on Iran and North Korea, both more hostile countries and more, and both further along in pursuing nuclear weapons programs during the early 2000s, do you think a war with Iran or North Korea would have gone better? No, I actually don't think a war with anybody would have gone well, because we had a self-sacrificial way of fighting wars, of wars of engagement, our lack of willingness to actually win, our unwillingness to set a target, our willingness to define victory as a target. It doesn't matter who we would have fought, we would have lost. And in that sense, disengagement might be a good idea, because if we're going to lose, we might as well not start the war. So if you're going to lose, if you can't win, don't go to war. War should only be engaged in when you think you can win. Why didn't we choose, I don't think North Korea was relevant as a target in those days, and North Korea is a complicated target for reasons I talked about a couple of years ago, or maybe three, four years ago now, because of the proximity of Seoul, South Korea to the North Korean border, North Korea is not an easy military target. You can do it, but it's very, very hard. But Iran should have been the target in 2003. Iran should have been crushed. It should have been devastated. In order to symbolize, this is what happened to Islamist regimes. This is what happens. So don't strive towards Islamism because you're going to get destroyed. Not go after the secular government. Go after the Islamists. Go directly after them. The reason they didn't do it is because they couldn't convince the international community. They used, remember, they used the weapons of mass destruction as a means to get the international coalition to go along as if America needs allies for this. Because they'd never defined the enemy as Islamism, it wasn't clear why Iran, why go to Iran. Everybody agreed in the world that Saddam Hussein was a monster. People didn't agree that the Iranian regime was a monster. So they couldn't get a coalition together. They couldn't get support. And then they themselves, they thought that if Iraq fell and Iraq became a democracy and Iraq became this wonderful free place, then Iran would fall by itself. I mean, literally, this is what they wrote about. They wrote about this. So they did not want to go to war with Iran. Again, it all comes down if you don't define the enemy. Don't define the enemy, then you can't win a war. You don't even know who to fight the war with. Richard Ossin says, this is an important, very important topic to me. I appreciate your coverage of it. One of the earliest memories was seeing the Twin Towers collapsing on the news and I remember growing up in the fear of another 9-11. Yes, I mean, 9-11 is one of those monumental events in American history that shaped a generation. Unfortunately, it shaped it in wrong ways. It shaped us to be cowards. It shaped us to fear. It shaped us to have TSA. It shaped us to be afraid of the world and to be afraid of engaging with the world. It proved us we cannot win again after Vietnam. At 9-11, while al-Qaeda clearly has been decimated, so has America in many respects. It taught us not to trust our leaders. It taught us that they lie to us, that they deceive us, that they don't tell us the truth. 9-11 was a crucial part of the decline of America that we're witnessing over the last 20 years. Richard Ossin says, were there any good guys in the Bush administration, maybe John Bolton, who recognized the disbanding of the Iraqi army was the wrong idea and had a coherent strategy about how to approach war in the Middle East? Not really. There was one Catholic intellectual, Cote Vila, who is today an awful theocrat type, has become a theocratic type, part of this new theocratic right. But he was very good on war. He had a very good attitude towards war and winning war and how to do it. But he was writing for the Clement Institute in those days. Still is, I think. So Cote Vila was very good on this. Daniel Pipes was good on some of this. Bolton was mixed, but better than most. But again, most of them assumed that Iraq was a necessary war. They just disagreed about how maybe we fought it. But very few identified, nobody as far as I know, identified Iran as the real enemy. Cote Vila identified the way we fought the war as a real tragedy and a way in which we expressed our weakness as self-sacrificial and horrific. So he was good on that. But no, sadly, Daniel Pipes sometimes, but there was almost nobody out there, maybe with exception of Pipes, who had in the administration or out of the administration, who had a proper conception of what to do with them at least and how to deal with them at least and how to fight a war. I mean, John David Lewis, the objectivist, the historian, was a fantastic voice on this and the necessity of victory and why the way we fought the war in Iraq, not just the fact that we fought it, but also the way we fought it, were going to be unbelievably destructive to America's future. I mean, he was a powerfully important voice around that. A great loss that he died of cancer. I can't remember when now, but a long time ago, unfortunately. But he was there to criticize everything about the war post-911. You can still find his books, by the way. All right, we have made progress. We are now only $290 short, but that's still $290 short. That's, you know, $15, $20 questions. So it's certainly doable, but no under $20 questions. Only $20 and above questions, please. And we need about 15 of them, or we need, I don't know, five, six $50 questions. That'll also work. So let's take a $50 question from Harper Campbell. Harper says, is Putin's war in Ukraine ominous about what's to come? Is there a lot of many nationalistic ethnic conflicts? Or have people learned from Russia's failure? Thank God for Western military technology. Putin had won in a week. Other despots would get ideas. Yeah, I mean, thank God that Putin was stopped and that Ukraine war will not be won easily by the Russians if it will be won at all. I don't think it will be. But I do think that the fact that Ukraine wins buys us a lot of time. It buys us a lot of time. It takes, if Ukraine wins, it takes an element of mysticism and Russian mysticism out of the equation. It takes one enemy off the table. You still have to deal with China. You still have to deal with all the ethnic nationalist conflicts. But one big conflict is off the table. And one big player that's funding the conflicts and supporting the conflicts and putting fuel in the conflicts is gone. So I think victory over Russia in Ukraine, which means kicking Russia out of Ukraine, is going to go a long way of buying us a huge amount of time. Huge amount of time. And that's why we should support it. Because it'll buy the West a lot of time. Now, we in the West are going to screw it up. I like to screw it up that time that we're granted. But at least it'll be outscrew up. It won't be a screw up as a consequence of losing the war to the Russians. People learn from Russia's failure. I doubt it. I doubt if they've learned anything. I doubt what they've learned. But yes, thank God for Western technology. Another $50 question about Vadim. Iran, have you ever seen 12 Angry Men? Movie 1958. I saw it last night. And what I thought provoking movie. Yeah, I mean, 12 Angry Men is one of the greatest movies ever made. There's a statement for you. Although it's not much of a movie. It's more of a play. But because it's all filmed in one room. But it is one of the best scripts. One of the best dramas ever. It is brilliant. It is amazing. If you haven't seen 12 Angry Men, I encourage you to see it. It is a movie about epistemological theme. Thank you, Jeremy. $50 from Jeremy. Thank you, Jeremy. Really appreciate it. It's got an epistemological theme. It's how do we know what we know? It's a story of a murder that happens. And the evidence seemingly all points to one young kid having committed the murder. But as some of the jurors start asking questions. Challenging people's pre-existing assumptions. And asking them to think logically about the evidence. Suddenly, you know, you question what you know and what you don't know. And is there reasonable doubt? I mean, I think 12 Angry Men is the original 1958 version. It's a brilliant, brilliant epistemological movie about knowledge. About what you know and what you don't know. What you can be certain of and what you can't. What you know beyond a reasonable doubt and what you don't. I don't know what Fran Casey is saying. It's so bad you're on. I don't know what you're talking about. 12 Angry Men is a brilliant movie. And again, you could map out the objective epistemology over it. You can map out the different issues about knowledge and what we know and evidence and objectivity and what it means to be objective onto that movie. And the dialogue is actually brilliant. And the acting is brilliant. You know, I wouldn't go by the modern version of it. There's a 2000 and something version that was made for television, I think. But the 1958 version was at Henry Fonda is, I think, brilliant. I think brilliant in every aspect of it and how it's made. Yes, you have to go rewatch it. I mean, acting is excellent. Again, you have to, you know, it's black and white. It's acting, old style acting. It's not naturalistic acting of today. It's drama. It's dramatic acting. I think that the way the camera work is brilliant, the way their close-ups on people's faces is brilliant, the way you can see them rethinking their positions visually, which is incredibly powerful. All the actors around that table are excellent first-rate actors. So go watch it again, Franck Casey. I think it's worth a watch. All right. Wow, we're making progress towards that goal. Thank you guys. So we're now $178 short. So that's just, what, nine $20 questions and we're there. So thank you guys. That $50 from Jeremy really, really, really helped. That got us to the goal very quickly. I mean, $350 now would get us there super fast. So consider that. All right. Andrew says, why is Follow the Money persuasive for many people as an explanation for war and other people, world events? And what do you think of the profit motive as they cost? Well, because they hate business. They hate profit. They hate money. This is true of the left and libertarians, many libertarians. So, and they think of the world as materialistic. So this is a Marxist present way of looking at the world. And I think libertarians, many libertarians are Marxist in this sense. Everything is about money. Everything is about material wealth. Everything is about the material. Ideas don't matter. Ideas have no substance. They have no currency in the world. Everything is moved in the world by muscle, money. Physical force, physical resources, natural resources. So Follow the Money is a Marxist way that is often taken up by the right. A Marxist way to express the fact that ideas don't matter. Now look, often following the money does make sense. And often following the money is an important aspect of this. And certainly some people make money off of wars. But that can be the reason for the war because the number of people who make money off of wars is very small. And the amount of money they make is not that. And the question is how was sold? Why are there so many people who support them? Remember Iraq war in the beginning was super popular. Super popular. And you know people don't recognize that ideas move history. Ideas move history. The Neocons are responsible for the Iraq war. James asked, you say enlightenment ideas are implicit in the culture. But aren't altruistic ideas just as implicit? I never had a parent or teacher tell me explicitly that it is my moral duty to sacrifice strangers and never be happy. Well, really? I mean maybe a parent or a teacher never said that, but a political leader constantly say that that you need to sacrifice for your country, sacrifice for a greater goal. Jordan Peterson keeps saying that. And he keeps saying you should sacrifice for meaning, meaning found out there, something greater than yourself, something bigger than you. So I think a lot of preachers say that. So I think it's all over the culture in explicit ways. It's just often subtle. I'm sure people have told you that you should care for the poor and you should care about people who don't have and care about people who are not as fortunate as you are. So no, altruism is explicit and implicit in the culture. And look, altruism and egoism, altruism not egoism but altruism and enlightenment values are in constant battle in the culture. They're in constant battle in people's souls and in constant battle politically and constant battle in every aspect of our lives. That battle is what shapes the world around us. It's the battle between the enlightenment and between these ideas of duty and sacrifice and collectivism. And they're everywhere around us, explicitly and implicitly. Our love of technology is more enlightenment. Love of government bailouts is more altruism. Fen Hopper says, can you tell me about prexology? Someone recently said, Ayn Rand should have incorporated Mises prexology into philosophy and it suffers subjectivism without it. I looked into it but couldn't make sense of it. Yeah, I mean the problem is the exact opposite that Mises should have integrated Ayn Rand's philosophy into his ideas and dumped the whole idea of prexology. Prexology basically starts with human action. Everything is human action. Human action is the only axiomatic thing. It's the only thing that exists. It defines everything. And there's no conception of ideological motivation. There's no conception of morality. There's no conception of philosophy and ideas. And so, no, I mean prexology exactly is the opposite in many respects of Ayn Rand's philosophy and what guides human nature and what are human beings. There is action. There's desire. There's utility. There's values. There are things you want. That's it. Why is it good for you? Can we judge it? How do we judge it? The questions that philosophy asks are not really part of prexology. Anyway, it's been a while since I read prexology, so I apologize if that's not as deep and not as encompassing as it could be if I'd read it yesterday. Shazmat says, if a man is unwilling to allow trans women to opt out of Social Security or own an AR-15, does that make the man transphobic? I don't know. If a man is unwilling to allow trans women to opt out of Social Security, but nobody can opt, what does that mean to opt out of Social Security? I don't even know what that means. Or own an AR-15, does that make them transphobic? No, I don't like the whole phobic stuff. I don't know what phobic means, trans or homo, just phobic, Islamophobic or whatever. Phobic is a fear. Is that making somebody who fears trans? No. You know, one has to find out, why don't you want the trans to own an AR-15? It makes them probably, probably makes them in some way biased. It probably makes them somewhat not protect the idea of equality before the law, but I don't think it makes them fearful of trans. People are trans phenomena. It might make them not like it, but I don't know that that particular concrete does it. You have to dig and find out why. What are the reasons? Maybe there's a semi-rational reason. I don't know. Richard, do you think that Russia and China see our growing national debt as a threat to our national security? I wonder whether they saw this as their moment to strike while we are distracted, particularly with the COVID stimulus. I mean, I think they see our national debt as what and our inability to do anything about it and our willingness to do anything about it as part of American weakness, you know, and part of our challenge. But I don't think they, I don't think China or Russia questions our ability if we needed to to ramp up production and to become a military powerhouse again, because we could even without debt. I think what they question is our will to do so. Our will to do so. I do think that with the great financial crisis of 2008-9, 9-11, the great financial crisis, and now our response to COVID and now our response to this bank crisis, these are all cues to our enemies that we are weak, that we have no clue what we're doing, that we, you know, we are economically and maybe militarily a paper tiger, that we're just not the powerhouse that we think we are, that we claim we are. So I think that all adds up ultimately and you have to think about the financial crisis of 2008-09. You have to think about, you know, just America's low growth rate, our debts, just a whole structure of economy which is not particularly healthy and even though it's healthier than China and Russia just by a long shot, they can see the decline of what they call American capitalism. They can see that fading and declining. And they're right. Friend Casey says, what can you say about Canada's part to play in the Iraq war? It seemed like they just followed America's lead but did Canadian politics impact American politics? No, I don't think there was any impact of Canadian politics on American politics. There certainly was impact of American politics on the Canada's. But yes, I think they followed America's lead. They were part of the coalition of the willing. They played a role suddenly in Afghanistan. I'm not sure in Iraq. I can't remember if they played a role in Iraq. But Canada, you know, look, Canada, Canada is like Europe. Its security is guaranteed by the United States. I mean, in many respects, there's no Canada without the U.S. U.S. supports Canada. The U.S. provides it with a nuclear umbrella. The U.S. provides it with military troops. We saw that when they were panicking about the little balloons flying over there, the hobbyist balloons above Canada. Canadian Air Force didn't shoot them down. The American Air Force shot them down over Canada. Canada's just a... Canada was in the Second World War. I don't know why you say they weren't in the Second World War. The Second Iraq War they weren't. That's right. They weren't in the Second Iraq War. They were in Afghanistan though. But Canada is a country that depends for its security on the United States. And I don't think Canada has had much impact on American politics. One way or the other. Michael asked, would invading Iran instead of Iraq being more of a bloodbath in terms of occupation, was Bush close to invading Iran, were there high-ranking members of his administration and wanted to invade Iran instead? No, I don't think it would have been more of a bloodbath. Iran and Iraq fought a stalemate over an 80-year war. I don't think there's any reason to believe Iran had a stronger military than Iraq's. It was about the same. We would have whipped their ass just like we did with the Iraqis. I don't think the insurgency would have been worse. In some ways it would have been easier to handle. They wouldn't have been as much internal fighting between Shiites and Sunnis. We could have focused on who the enemy is. And again, I don't believe in going to war unless you're willing to win and do what's necessary to win. And if we'd done that with Iran, there would have been no insurgency, just like there would have been no insurgency in Iraq if we'd fought the war properly. If you fight the war weakly, if you fight the war without commitment, if you fight a self-sacrificial war, you'll get an insurgency guaranteed. You have to have the stomach to fight a war properly otherwise don't go to war. As far as I know, I can't remember now, there were suddenly people out there intellectuals and maybe some in the Bush administration arguing that Iran should be the target. Some were saying once we're done with Iraq or go to Iran, it gives us a land base from which they invade Iran. I was hoping that would be the case, but it never materialized and nobody ever took that seriously. Particularly once the problems in Iraq started. Martin asked, do you think that a lack of shame in itself is appealing to many people in regards to Trump's phenomenon? I mean, there's a sudden sense, yes, he's fighting, he doesn't give a damn, he doesn't care. Finally, somebody who doesn't just give into the left doesn't just succumb to the left. Yeah, I mean, there's a sense in which they latch onto that lack of shame. There's also a sense of which they admire his not giving a damn, not caring about anything. There's a certain admiration for that. It's a nihilism that I think appeals to a lot of people. Things are so bad, let's just blow it all up. But also, just in a culture that's so immersed in altruism of one form or another, somebody's saying, I don't give a damn, I don't care what people think, I don't care about what people say, I'm just gonna say it, even if it's vulgar irrational stupidity, I think people respond well to it, positively to it, not well, positively to it. And I think that's part of his, quote, appeal, which is bewildering to me, but part of his appeal. I try to understand even things that are bewildering to me. All right, I need six $20 questions, guys, six or three $50 questions or just stickers. If everybody right now puts in a couple of bucks, we're done. So maybe we can just do a bunch of stickers for two, three, four or five dollars. We've got 95 people watching live. Maybe we can get it up there. Maybe we can get this up there to $700 just with a few stickers to appreciate the effort and appreciate the value produced. This show is funded to a large extent. Monthly contributors and Super Chat. That's what funds the show. We still don't have significant sponsors that can fund the show, fund the show ongoing. So I rely on the Super Chat. It's just not the greatest thing I know because I bug you about money and who the hell wants to hear me bug you about money? People leave. I can see as I talk about money, people are leaving. There we go. Another five left. Sorry. All right. Rafael asks, would love to see an episode about James J. Hill. He would be honored to have a few words from you. J.J. Hill, the great railroad tycoon. Yes, I should do a show on J.J. Hill. That would be fun. So thanks for mentioning that, Rafael. Let me, I'm going to copy and paste that onto my to-do wish list kind of place. All right. Great. One of the great, great businessmen of American history. Linda, thank you. Really appreciate it. Linda just did $3. Everybody listening right now did $3. We'd be done. Thank you, John. $5. Joss says, love the mix of show types. Now a member here and on Patreon. Fantastic. Thank you, guys. Liam says, is France a failed state? No. It's a mess, but it's not a failed state. It is the riots, the demonstrations in the streets. That's kind of par for the course of France. Happens every few years. This is all caused by the fact that the pension reform act was passed without a vote of parliament by the government. And, yeah. Shahzabad has reminded me about the MASH episode. I mentioned this earlier. I know I owe you the MASH episode. I know you've had, you're losing your patience with me, as you should. I apologize. I don't know. I'm going to get to it. I really am. I really, really, really am. I've got a bunch of flying to do. I'm going to make that part of it. And I'll do it a show from while I'm traveling. So sorry, Shahzabad. I apologize and thank you for the support. And he did that, complained about me, and he gave me $20 at the same time. So you got to love Shahzabad for the immense support he provides me. And for the good movies he has me watch. Daniel says, bag that battery. They were the first to make one. Oh, I didn't know that. Gail says, I love the historical aspects. Helps integration. Thank you, Gail. Glad you like it. Oops. Let's see. All right. We're $100. Just $100. We should be able to make $100 in the next few minutes. But it has to be a few minutes. I've got about, I don't know, 10 questions still. Are there any decent Arab countries you would consider visiting or living in, or are they privileged savages for the most part? Well, I mean, they're not all savages. But a lot of people visit places like Dubai and United Arab Emirates and that part of the world and enjoy themselves. And a lot of people do business there. I wouldn't visit. But they're very rich places, very cultured places. But if you're a woman, beware. Particularly if you're a woman with darker skin and they might confuse you for local. Beware. They treat tourists differently. So, yeah, it's, I wouldn't. Tunisia is more liberal. Egypt certainly is a place, you know, that I think many of you should and could visit. It's fairly safe and lots of history and lots to see. And the people are friendly. So, you know, there are lots of Arab countries that are worth visiting. Tunisia, Morocco, I wouldn't. But that's just me because I've said the things I've said about Islam and written the things I've written about it. But I think a lot of you can and should. You know, again, Morocco, I think, Egypt, Tunisia, Dubai and the Emirates, although again, I wouldn't go there. Michael says on a positive note, I was seeing a lot more objective YouTube channels. I think your on-book show has switched a lot of people on to become motivated enough to want to spend these ideas. Cheers. Yes, a lot of content. What we need now is a lot of subscribers. We got a lot of content. You guys are consuming a lot of content on all these channels. We need many, many more subscribers, subscribing to all this content. But step one, we have. We have people producing content. That's good. Not your average algorithm is going to a sex club in Morocco. Shouldn't sex be viewed as a very personal private matter? Well, it depends what you mean by a sex club. I mean, you're going to have sex in public. Then, yeah, I wouldn't do that if you're going to, I don't know, just have sex randomly at a club with a prostitute or something. Wouldn't do that. Yeah, a strip club. You know, I see some potential value there. So I wouldn't condemn anybody. I've been to strip clubs. I wouldn't condemn it as immoral. You're not having sex. There's a certain appreciation for the female body that you can have at a strip club and women can have at a male strip club. That is, can be fun if it's not, if it's done infrequently once in a while and is a good strip club in the sense that it has some sensuality associated with it and is not a dive, not a horrible place. Michael says, do both rights and morality come from preservation of life? Well, rights come from morality. Rights are a moral concept. They come out of morality. And morality comes from the need to survive. The need to survive as a human being. So the preservation of a particular kind of life. The preservation of a human life. Oh, on the Leroy says, thank you for the time and knowledge you're on. That's 20 bucks. Thank you. All right, just $87 to go. I wonder if we can do it. Wonder if we can do it. All right, Richard says, come on people, hit the goal for today. Thank you, Richard. Bash, Banigan. Was the Vietnam War a limited war by the United States? I don't know what you mean by a limited war. It was a terrible war. It was a bad war. Americans should have never gone to war in Vietnam. Like Iraq, it had no purpose. It had no goal. It was to allow the South Vietnamese to vote. What they voted for didn't matter. It wasn't a war for capitalism. It was a war against communism, but not even too explicitly. It was a limited... Yeah, a limited war in the sense of not being total, yes. You know, they did not... Until very late, they did not bomb North Vietnam. They did not bomb the capital of North Vietnam. Again, it was a very, very limited engagement. It was not aimed to win. It was, again, a war of self-sacrifice. And the United States should never be there. It was a national interest served by going to war in Vietnam. David Starr, off topic, would you like to connect the Community Reinvestment Act, countrywide financial, Fed low rates, COVID spending, high inflation, Fed high rates, coming down to... Dot, dot, dot. I mean, the Community Reinvestment Act is important, but I don't think it's as important as a lot of people attribute it. And I used to know this inside out, but the Community Reinvestment Act required banks to invest in communities that they couldn't normally invest in, so it required them to make loans to places where they shouldn't, required them to keep mortgages to people who shouldn't have gotten a mortgage in terms of risk, in terms of their financial risk. A lot of times, the Community Reinvestment Bank was used as blackmail against bank mergers, so banks had to pay... pay leftist community groups. A lot of leftist community groups made a huge amount of money and proliferated around the country because of the money they got from banks, squeezing them to get approval for mergers because of the Community Reinvestment Act. So that's another one. Let's see. Oh, that's right. I have to review this novella as well. So it's another good one for traveling. While I travel to... It won't let me copy it. Okay, now I can copy it. No, I can't. Why won't it let me copy it? Oh, yeah, copied it. So the Community Reinvestment Act caused banks to do stupid things. Well, not too stupid, but it caused banks to do things that they had to do, including big mortgage just to people they shouldn't have gotten it. I don't think the Community Reinvestment Act was a big factor in the financial crisis. I know a lot of people do think that, but I don't actually think that's the case. Community... The countrywide fiasco, the bankruptcy of countrywide had more to do with the ridiculously low interest rates and the fact that the government was encouraging more and more people to own homes. It was a big project in the Bush administration to get home ownership in the United States up from 63% to 70%. So they were doing everything they could to do that, and there was real regulatory pressure to do it. It didn't primarily come from the Community Reinvestment Act. It came from just this idea of home ownership as the primary value. It came from Freddie and Fanny who were buying up all these loans without even questioning any of it. So Freddie and Fanny were a big part of that, but that's government policy. Freddie and Fanny are government institutions. But less the Community Reinvestment Act. So I actually delved into that, and it's less that. Again, you could find all this in my course on the financial crisis, which is again available on YouTube for free. And then, of course, the collapse of banking during the financial crisis led us to QE, quantitative easing, and ultimately to low zero interest rates, which together with COVID spending led to high inflation, which led to higher interest rates, led to the recent bank collapse, which will lead to the recession, and on and on and on we go. Statism. That's statism. All right, thank you, Mary Benz. Really, really appreciate it. Mary Benz took us over. Well, with Robert took us over the goal. So we're at $763. Thank you, guys. Robert says, just curious what the energy market like before the Department of Energy. Well, it was a market. People drilled for oil, bought and sold, and I think there was a government... The energy functions were under some of the other departments of the government, like the nuclear stuff was under the Department of Defense and the land leasing was under the Department of the Interior. But there just was... Who needs the Department of Energy? Just have a market. Market for energy. And that's what it was before the Department. It's just like, what was there before the Department of Commerce? There was commerce. You don't need the Department of Commerce. You just need commerce. Not in your average algorithm. Is there greater than 90% chance Israel bombs you on in the next few years? What will the response from the international community look like? Will everyone blame Israel? I don't know that it's 90%, maybe it's 75% in the next few years, depending on how many years you make it. Will everybody blame Israel? Absolutely. The response from the international community will be horror and disgust and disappointment and depending on who the President of the United States is, it would be the same for the United States. And here I think, if Israel bombs Iran without U.S. approval, without U.S. sanction, it doesn't matter if it's a Republican or Democrat, the U.S. is not going to be happy with Israel. By the way, the Bush administration stopped Israel from bombing Iran, Obama administration stopped Israel from bombing Iran, the Trump administration stopped Israel from bombing Iran, I'm sure the Biden administration will do whatever they can to stop Israel from bombing Iran. LMF says, what mechanism would prevent bank runs in a free market? A, nothing. You could have a bank run in a free market, but the reality is the true free banking don't have an experienced bank runs. The Canadian system in the 19th century, the Scottish system in the 19th century, never experienced bank runs. And part of that is because people trust their banks because they're well-diversified, they're diversified geographically, they're diversified in terms of industry, they're diversified in terms of products. You know, the banks also have reserves, they have liquid reserves, they have gold. And while they lend out, they lend out money in a free market to have to be cautious about a bank run, so they have a lot more reserves than they do in the world today. The world today, the government-required reserves are very, very low, 10%, let's say, in a free market, banks have anywhere between 50% to 100% reserves, they have a lot more reserves, they're a lot more prepared for a bank run because their life depends on it and investors have no motivation to do it and deposit their motivation because they don't want to lose all their deposits and there's no government to bail them out, so they have to really think about how to do banking. And there are going to be mechanisms that you can't even imagine, insurance against bank runs because that's how markets work, they figure out solutions to problems. Whoops, what did I do? Undo, start. Why are objectives generally far more sympathetic to the right and vice versa than the left when they disagree on so many issues like abortion? Well, I think because the left is fundamentally Marxist or was fundamentally Marxist and that's just the opposite of everything objectivism holds, I think nominally in the past, at least, advocated for individual rights, the left was anti-American, objectivists are not, the right tends to be pro-American. Again, that's all changing, the right is becoming much, much worse, it's becoming much more like the left, but at least in those days it was. Yeah, so I think all of those parts of it. Why are they still sympathetic today? I don't know because today people, I think objectivists should realize what it's really about and how horrible it is. Why can't Trump just stay in Florida instead of flying to New York City to get himself arrested? I think it has to do with, I don't know, the reality is I don't know, but my guess is he would be extradited to New York anyway by Florida and that's even more embarrassing, so I think it's easier for him to go there to get arrested. Plus, for him it's a publicity stunt. Although he doesn't like it, he is worried about it. Justin, last question, off topic, in your opinion what's the difference between colonialism and imperialism? Colonialism is a form of, you can have imperialism without colonialism. Colonialism is about colonizing another country. It's about having settlements there, moving your people there, having, you know, so Britain colonized, let's say South Africa by having Brits go to South Africa and live there and start farms and communities and it wasn't just an army there controlling the population. That would be imperialism. Pretty much every, pretty much, anyway, they often go together. The Spanish certainly colonized as a means to empire, but I'm not sure every empire requires colonies, requires your people to go. Rome was a colonizing empire. I think it ruled over other people without having its people from Rome go to all these other, set up colonies. I think that's the right answer. Thank you, Justin. Alright, thanks everybody. We made our goal. We exceeded it by $63, so that is fantastic. Thank you to everybody who contributed, particularly those who did $50, $100, $20, but really everybody, it's great. Thank you for all the questions. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please like it before you leave and share it and let people know if they were interested about the Holy Rock thing, there is a show that kind of summarizes it. You know, I could have talked for another three hours about Iraq easily, easily getting to Fallujah and getting into the surge and getting into the details of what actually happened there during the 2000s. I don't know that interests you but we had the time maybe one day if somebody's interested in funding a show like that, I can certainly do it. Have a great rest of your week. I'll see you tomorrow morning for one of our news episodes. Bye, everybody.