 Welcome back to the war economy and state podcast. This is the foreign policy podcast of the Mises Institute and We're back again. There's about a monthly podcast and so here we are back for our October episode I'm Ryan McMacon. I'm executive editor at the Mises Institute and with me is my co-host Zachary Yoast who's one of our foreign policy experts and we're gonna talk a little bit about this time how ethnic conflicts from the old world are brought over via immigrant groups and then they form into interest groups that then try and convince the US government to become involved in a variety of foreign conflicts that really have nothing to do with the United States as a nation as Protecting its borders or the people within it And so let's just look at some of the bizarre politics that result from this And I think one of the first things we can look at and while it doesn't apply directly to the United States It certainly is the same phenomenon. I think we can start on this with the Canadian Parliament's recent efforts to praise a former Nazi for fighting the Russians and the the thing has died down a little bit because it's now been replaced by the The new war in Israel between Hamas and the state of Israel But we'll actually talk about that a little bit because that ties in also to our topic but just last week we were still talking about how the Canadian Parliament under Trudeau under the ruling party had showcased and given not one but two standing ovations to a 98 year old former member of the Waffen SS who had served within one of the SS's Ukrainian groups and In spite of what what supporters of that group might be telling you this group participated in a variety of massacres of ethnic Poles and Jews in Poland that That similar volunteers from that group had staffed Concentration camps in Poland as well where of course plenty of ethnic Poles and Jews were also butchered and Yet what we're being told is that Because these people fought against Russia that we're now supposed to praise them See it was just such a bizarre and surreal thing to watch as The Canadian Parliament was praising someone who fought against the Canadians in World War two Because I guess members of Parliament don't remember that I mean you can imagine if an ordinary citizen were out there praising Some other country because they fought against the Allies in World War two that person would probably be denounced maybe called a traitor and social media and elsewhere But if you're Ukrainian and you fight the Russians, which of course they weren't even really just fighting the Russians They were fighting the Soviets which included a lot of Ukrainians by the way so these were Ukrainian nationalists fighting their own countrymen and then fighting against the Poles and Now here we are a few decades later saying oh well, that's great Because the current memo is that Russians are awful. So now we're gonna praise these groups But what's remarkable and what really feeds into our topic for today is that this isn't a one-time thing That Ukrainian nationalists have really set up shop in Canada and to a lesser extent in the United States as well where you can find memorials and plaques praising Nazi groups That were staffed by Ukrainians within Canada and the United States. It's the same group that This this guy who was praised by the Ukrainian Parliament or by the Canadian Parliament was in It's the the 14th of often SS Galitsyn as it was called because it was named after Galicia Southern Poland and Western Ukraine Although what at the time was really just you know, Southern and Eastern Ukraine but and and that's something we can mention too is that Western Ukraine was really under the boot of Poland for a long time but if you go around both with the United States the United Kingdom and Canada you can find a number of memorials to the Nazis basically who served in These units and make no mistake. They transferred Non-Ukrainians in and out of the leadership. There was clear integration with the SS overall and with the Third Reich state and tried to portray these groups as somehow on the margins and having no interest in the Perpetuation of the Thousand Year Reich is simply wrong These people including this guy praised by the Parliament took oaths specifically to Adolf Hitler and carried out efforts to Bring about the final solution against the Jews in Eastern Europe and yet you can find at cemeteries and at Ukrainian churches in the UK the US and Canada memorials to these people and they're praised and Said to be great heroes and a lot of that is because groups of Ukrainian Nationalists came to the United States thousands eight thousand of these former SS soldiers were imported into the United Kingdom Into groups they then formed interest groups in some cases even lobbying for and getting government money to build memorials to Nazis and They are now very powerful in some local circumstances like Alberta The University of Alberta is known as a hotbed of a Ukrainian influence where they've set up some endowments and such through The university there and through the local government and you can find local communities in the US connected to where there are local groups of Ukrainians as well who are Really either just outright praising Ukrainian Nazis are now actively involved in covering it up and so that's just really one example of The sort of bizarre politics that are brought here and then of course these groups are very involved in trying to get Americans to pay for and maybe even die in wars against the Russians because this particular and pretty small Eastern European group has managed to get to gain a hearing in Congress and from the White House and Create additional support for what the Pentagon wants to do anyway, which is start another war And so these little interest groups then offer additional support To what the regime wants to do in terms of its endless wars And you can see that in a variety of groups, of course not just in Eastern Ukraine or not just among Ukrainians and Ukrainian nationalists and that's that's something that you've noted Before we started talking here today is that going back to the very beginning we can look at how some of these groups started being an issue and how People who were wary of this had warned the United States against getting into a lot of these conflicts Because they really just in no way actually benefit the United States So why don't you tell us a little bit about some of the early history of these some of these bizarre ethnic politics and bedfellows that form as a result of the of old world conflicts being brought to the US Just a few comments on the crazy Nazi situation in Canada Why it can be confusing to some people as you note is that this area of what is now Ukraine was Shifting all over the map in terms of who controlled it if you look at Poland today It's borders and Poland before World War two Poland was just short of picked up and moved to the West What is now Western Ukraine where basically all of them basically Galicia Which is where all these sort of people who joined the SS came from was part of Poland until the Soviet Union invaded Poland with Nazi Germany and annexed the area and Just to unders like I think a point people Don't get when they're like oh, they weren't really Nazis, you know, they just were in favor of Ukrainian self Self-determination it's like you can argue that's true to the extent that they didn't join the SS and Then they killed, you know ethnically exterminated Poles because they joined the SS They joined the SS because they wanted to ethnically cleanse the poles and a really great example of this is this controversial city in the in Western Ukraine that starts with an L and how you identify that city Sort of like a flag of what your politics are. I believe that the city is currently called the valve before in Soviet times it was called Leviv In Polish no, no, it's love. It's Leviv now Yes, yes, but with Poland it was Levov with with W. Yes, yes, with W Yes, yes, and before that it was Lemberg and Lemberg is where Mises was born when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, so just sort of a connection there and the that plays into the whole dispute within Ukraine just for context of why the situation is so complicated because Ukraine there is this sort of Galician identity and then That gets more muddled and mixed the further East you go we're in the very eastern part of Ukraine as you might expect people very much identify with Russia and In the middle of the country, it's more of a mix So that just is some context of why the situation is so convoluted, but anyway back to the United States. I Mean, yeah, as you've said from the very beginning during the there's sort of two components to it One is ideological and the other is ethnic and There's lots of examples of both throughout American history at the beginning. It was more ideal Ideological when the French Revolution broke out lots of people are like yes freedom Screw the British we should you know declare war and join the French and we had an alliance with France from the Revolution and France wanted us to do that and George Washington Just sort of was like, uh No, he just chucked the whole alliance out the window I mean everyone now is obsessed with American credibility our first alliance We literally just said no we just said well this doesn't really work for us and the excuse was oh There's a new French government. So the alliance isn't with them, but it's a pretty that's a pretty valid excuse though I mean, well you say also in the at the core issue is there's no American interest whether France was Under the monarchy or not I suspect Washington would have done the same And we should know that Washington even among the mainstream scholars consistently ranks in the top five of the greatest Presidents. Yes. So to be a good presence just chuck out the window Stupid alliances as as Washington did that's a good lesson to learn I think there's a saying variously attributed to different people throughout history, but that states have no friends Only interests and I think that's a very helpful Thing to keep in mind and so then one of the next huge sort of examples of Americans working themselves up into a Moral fervor was the Greek war of independence which was sort of the Ukraine war of the day in terms of Capturing the popular imagination and part of it was due to so many people were classically educated So they just imagined like oh these heroic Greeks have your these Homeric heroes are fighting against the evil Turkish Muslim oppression And in reality if you know anything about the Greek war of independence was not like that at all it was sort of mostly hill bandits and There's hilarious stories of what happened to American aid that was shipped over there and it's also where Lord Byron died because he was so obsessed with he was a Greek abu As the term has come to be coined. He had no military experience, but he had a ton of money. So they just Went to Greece and they put him in command and then he died of disease during a siege But anyway, there's a really great quote from a book called a diplomatic history of the American people Which I will read in 1821 the Greeks had revolted against Turkish tyranny the Enthusiasm for their cause which speedily sprang up in America had numerous roots The Greeks were imitating America's revolutionary blow for liberty. They were challenging the despotic policies of the holy alliance They were Christians battling against Muslim infidels and they were the classical creators of Western civilization The so-called Greek fever was further heightened by atrocity stories. The Turks reputedly collected bushels of Greek ears Pro-Greek enthusiasm also took the form of sermons or rations balls mass meetings poems Resolutions in Congress and the solicitation of funds Yale College students alone contributed $500 and then it goes on to say how Secretary of State John Quincy Adams was just like We're not gonna get involved in any of this So all aid was private aid and that was also screwed up as is generally a tradition Then we can go to sort of what I understand to be one of the first ethnic examples of sort of foreign lobbying foreign lobbying slash using America as a you know Pedestal for advancing green resources from the old world and that is the Finian raids after the Civil War, which is I'm not sure how widely this history is known, but After the Civil War all these Irish veterans, you know trained in the military and once and whatnot literally invaded Canada on several occasions like by the hundreds and the thousands and The plan was you know, oh well basically take Canada hostage and use it to as a marketing chip for Irish independence and There was tons of Irish immigrants in the United States at the time and they also had a large influence on politics the whole Chamonix Hall in New York City was sort of an ethnic political, you know interest group effectively Let's see this has also played a role in the Cuban Revolution there was lots of yellow journalism in the United States of reporting Spanish atrocities all that sort of stuff another very important Example of this is the China lobby And here I have a short quote from perilous partners of which Co-authored by Ted Galen carpenter and Malau innocent by the way Ted carpenter gave a really superb speech at a recent Mises event that everyone should check out on the current state of libertarian foreign policy, but He says the influence of the China lobby made any suggestion of reducing or qualifying US support for Chang This is Chiang Kai-shek politically hazardous John Newhouse a senior fellow at the World Security Institute who analyzed the influence of lobbies on US foreign policy concluded that the China lobby quote was the superpower of lobbies representing foreign causes in the United States That was an accurate depiction as he notes from the 1940s when Chiang addressed a joint session of Congress to the 1970s no US president challenged the so-called China lobby which opposed all contacts with mainland China Then it goes on to list all these politicians from the air era who were exceedingly Pro to Taiwan one of whom was nicknamed the senator from Formosa So Moving on going back to Ireland. I mean literally people were fundraising for the IRA in the 70s and whatnot during the troubles I think Peter King was heavily involved in that There's a joke About Iranian expats. There's this video on like the Hill TV or something of this Iranian expatriate from LA or something being interviewed where he's like Oh, it's good that the US is invading Iraq, but really I ran they need to bomb Iran And it's like the most sane Iranian expatriate was the joke Then of course, there's the Israel lobby which people will well know about but it's The point I tried to emphasize is the Israel lobby is not anything of an aberration in American politics We also have Venezuelan lobby I mean the Armenian lobby although the Armenian lobby is tiny So that's why it's taken them a hundred years to get the US to recognize the Armenian genocide and whatnot It's all sorts of interest groups Earlier today on Ballotpedia. I looked up the list of caucuses in the United States Congress I mean it's insane the number of foreign caucuses, I mean basically the caucuses that are There to represent foreign interest groups, I mean it's from big ones like you might expect to literally an Assyrian caucus I mean, it's All over the place. So this There's a long history of this in America Yeah, and we should note that it can be even integrated into the political parties themselves, right because Jefferson hated the British so much The Democratic Party starts out as a very anti-British party and That colors policy a lot Whereas the Federalists and later the more wig in Republican side of things was more pro-British When you look at a lot of the rhetoric around the War of 1812 the British were kind of dismayed and Didn't understand why the United States would side With the French a cent that's the way the British saw it was that in the War of 1812 They couldn't believe the Americans were basically declaring war on the British while the British were involved in trying to End Napoleon's Despotic rule in Europe. They're like I thought Americans are pro-freedom, right? Like we got Napoleon running around trying to establish a Europe-wide police state This this guy hates freedom of any kind and the Americans are fighting us And but a lot of that just came from anti-British sentiment within the Democratic Party And then later, of course, he started to get a lot of Irish In and that just made of course the anti-British side of the party far more invigorated than so that continued Then for a few more decades after that so you could you can go back and you can trace just straight up Anti-British policy based on which party is in the White House or is in charge of Congress throughout much of the 19th century and So yes, as you say, it's the Israel lobby is hardly something that's unique in American political history And I would as it that is as a side note. There is one major exception to this and that is German Americans German Americans are the largest ethnic group in America, but Are very odd I guess I could say we are very odd. My last name is Yoast in that most German Americans don't identify as such or even know they are and I think this stems from a whole bunch of different reasons tons of German immigrants came to the United States before the state of Germany Existed in my own case my Yoast great great grandfather who came was not from Even Germany which had just been established at that time. He was from Austria, Hungary and his wife was from Switzerland so both Germans, but not from the state of Germany and There is actually a German caucus In in Congress, but it was not formed until about ten years ago so That is interesting and also I think Murray Rothbard has written about in his like thing about pietists I forget what that essay is, but he wrote about how sort of like the Germans were sort of this pro-freedom group that people tried to mobilize but I think Really what what this shows is that there are sort of like a jeckon hide of American foreign policy We have George Washington's farewell address, which I want to read some excerpts from in a little bit But we also have the you know the Greek aboos and the Franca files and all of that from the beginning Robert Nisbitt has an excellent quote in In his book the present age where he says something like the history of American foreign policy is full of moralism Where Americans and John Neersheimer has written about this Americans don't like to think in terms of real Politique and national interests and whatnot. We like to think of like moral crusades And people can identify where this comes from. I mean, I think part of it comes from the whole mentality of the city on the hill Whereas if you think of yourself in that way and if I think at the beginning the city on the hill idea Was like we can be a shining example for all the they're not get savages and the in the rest of the world But that easily gets corrupted and there's clear history of that happening the war for righteousness by Professor at Hillsdale whose name escapes me is a really great example of that history But it becomes Where the city on the hill were a good example to where the city on the hill It is our moral duty to descend to the dark depths of savage humanity and save them from themselves so I think that is Part of this Jekyll and Hyde mentality and You would think given all the rhetoric and contemporary foreign policy that You know the American tradition is running the world. Everyone now is freaking out. Look America is not involved Biden is weak the world's falling apart and that Those of us in favor of realism and restraint are some sort of aberration from the norm This is not true at all. This is exactly completely false And really the current status quo only emerged in World War two really And there's a book We'll put it in the show notes the books name escapes me, but it just came out Detailing how we went from like America when row doctrine to America running the world in their course of like five years. It's important to recognize Just how new that is As a tradition and I think that they recognized as well that embracing one ethnic group or another could could also drive conflicts at home and Could be a problem in domestic politics as well and you just didn't want to be seen as Supporting one particular group over another and then of course if you were the Democratic Party Then you just had this big hodgepodge of a variety of different ethnic groups with none particularly dominant You had in the 90s. There's so many German immigrants But but as you know, right not necessarily from Prussia or in a particular single state but Germans overall as a group came as did tons of Irish and then later you started to get some of the southern European Ethnic groups and a lot of those gravitated toward the Democratic Party, which until the 1890s was actually the laissez-faire party so often tended to be the party that actually shied away from a lot of war involvement and government spending and It was channeled pretty well All of that that new immigrant energy came to the US actually embraced localism and laissez-faire Within the Democratic Party and so that was a remarkable thing that happened then Whereas you see just openly encouraging the opposite now where this we're just constantly hearing about oh this country did this horrible thing to that other country and There's completely no recognition of the actual complexity that exists Back in these countries in the old world and that's what you see with the Ukrainian thing Where I got a lot of angry emails from people, which is predictable because anytime you write about Eastern Europe You always get a bunch of these people Sending you a bunch of emails But they were like well, you know the the Ukrainians they they had to make a choice between the Nazis and the Soviets and My favorite is when they learned something about World War two last week And they think they're gonna blow your mind with with some new facts They're like did you know that Stalin caused a famine in Ukraine? That's why the Ukrainians didn't like him like a G. Thanks. Thanks for that tidbit Which by the way these the Glesians who joined the SS were not part of the Soviet Union during that famine by the way All the people died in the famine their relatives fought in the Red Army Oh, and that's by the way one of the reasons that they were able to trick the UK and Canada into giving them Statuses refugees in their countries was that they convinced these countries that they were really Poles And since Poland was an ally and not part of the Soviet Union They got they got Bennett They got support from the church and from a variety of Western governments saying well, you can't you can't send polls back We we got to give freedom to these polls and not force them to live under the Soviet Union And so that was something that went in their favor as they pretended to be Polish in many cases But we might note by the way that the polls Did not join now. They were legally barred from joining the SS, but the amount of collaboration among the polls To help the Germans was very very low and was never institutionalized the way it was in a lot of foreign countries You never had the sort of pro-Nazi Polish nationalist groups in Poland that you had in Ukraine So the polls walked that line much better where they didn't like the Nazi or they didn't like the Soviets I mean, they had just been in a war with the Soviet Union in the 20s and They obviously didn't like the Nazis either because they'd already been butchered in huge numbers And so they walked that line much better refusing to really take sides trying to balance the two sides against the other Whereas the Ukrainians who joined the SS as you say they were just happy to slaughter Poles And anti-Semitism was huge in Western Ukraine As well as I know it in a recent article, right the this is just some of the complexity that we're just told to forget the 1941 pogroms that occurred in Lvov at the time with Mostly enthusiastic Ukrainian participation at the egging on of the Nazis and that was just part of life in Western Ukraine and it wasn't astute by the native population at all and it was and as I was looking at some of The photos from the pogroms by the way, there's one of a Ukrainian man just kicking a Jewish man Like an elderly Jewish man is like down on his hands and knees and this this guy's just Giving him a kick in the gut and I'm thinking you know what that could have been Ludwig von Mises if he'd hung around there another generation and So to just now try and pretend that that doesn't exist and that therefore there's an automatic good guy in this conflict Whoever was against the Russians was the good guys Even if you join the Nazis really bizarre framing, but it's part of this you American need To identify the good guys and the bad guys in every conflict But in reality in tons of conflicts and even in wars that you might agree with There's always theaters within that conflict where there are no good guys and both sides are bad guys World War one was just a bunch of bad guys Killing each other as you noted the Greek War of Independence was a lot of bandits versus the Turks who weren't good guys either There was no one to root for and there's the same way in Western Ukraine as well But we're told you have to pick a side and you have to you have to support one side or the other But that's untrue the American tradition until the 20th century was to not pick a side and that's the more reasonable position And of course would be the is the reasonable position right now for new conflicts that we're facing both in Eastern Europe and in the Levant Yeah, and I think it's it's helpful to think it just in terms of like People people say oh, you know, it's such a tough decision, you know, you weren't in this situation that these people were And that's completely true, but that's sort of the point You know Monroe doctrine, we're over here in the Western Hemisphere We don't have you know, there's not a blood feud between wash between America in Canada or America in Mexico or really anyone over here In a way, you know, I'm usually not in favor of Thomas Paine's whole thing about oh, oh We have the power within ourselves to begin the world anew. I think that's crazy talk But in a way, it's true here in the Western Hemisphere. There's not these blood feuds going back for centuries and it if people want to Have an interest in world affairs and try and parse through things or if your family is from One of these areas it's understandable that people have Some level of interest, but I think when it comes to American policy, we need to take a step back and say You know, that's the old world Those are those old world problems. It sucks to be in israeli right now and it sucks to live in Gaza right now It's a horrible situation. What happened over the weekend was Sickney I couldn't even believe it was going on. I mean and It gives It proves just how ridiculous the idea that history has ended is I mean This was like a literal barbarian raid, which was the norm for most of human history I mean even Not very long ago. I mean like one or two million people were killed in the Congo in the 90s. I mean, it's This is how the world has been for most of human history, but We don't have to get involved in these horrible situations We can you know If we are so inclined Believe one side is better than the other We can send aid or if you want go and fight Go and do that. I mean lots of americans have done that throughout history But when it comes to logging for the united states Foreign policy to become involved in these situations. It's sort of nutty and I think here it'd be good to read some Very superb quotes from George Washington in his farewell address sort of the last third is about foreign policy And uh, we'll post it in the links so everyone can read the whole thing but uh He goes on basically criticizing the idea of favoring one state over another Um, and he says that The nation which indulges towards another Towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection Either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest Antipathy antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury To lay hold of a slight cause of umbrage and to be haughty and intractable when accidental or trifling Occasions of dispute occur you can look at all the rhetoric towards iran right now Iran is on the other side of the planet What they do has no effect on american security Uh, I mean people could make the argument in the past oil has to keep flowing out of the uh, golf Well, america is now basically energy independent. I mean and before the war in ukraine actually our largest Uh importer aside from canada and mexico was russia. So Uh, we don't really get oil from the middle east Another quote so likewise a passionate attachment to one nation for another produces a variety of evils Sympathy for a favorite nation facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases Where no real common interest exists and infusing into one the amenities of the other Betrays the former into a participation in corals and wars the latter Without adequate inducement or justification Um bum bum bum Uh, then uh Yes, here's I don't want to just read the whole thing but here's one final uh, well, it's it's really good Right, this is really it's yeah, I mean so many great points. Um one which was super fitting for ukraine. Um Because it's explicitly about europe europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none Or a very remote relation Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns Hence therefore it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the order In the ordinary vicitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or amenities Our and this I think is the you know The the core line here which everyone needs to go and read at least this last third of his talk, but Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course If we remain one people under an efficient government The period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance When we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality We may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected When belligerent nations under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us will not lightly hazard to giving us provocation When we may choose peace or war as our interest guided by justice shall counsel Why forgo the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why by interweaving our destiny with that any part of europe and tangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of european ambition Rival ship interest humor or caprice And he also says that uh, we should have tons of commercial integration with everyone, but no political integration Uh, and I think that's the root of it. We have our own situation here America is so blessed. It's beyond crazy. What a good situation we are here in the u.s Like look at poland. I think is a great example. They're just hundreds of years of wars mass killings being invaded by all their neighbors I mean that's why I mean It's understandable why the galesians want their own state Because, you know, they were just, you know The zone where all the wars happened which led to mass killing and whatnot We don't have to deal with that here and I would just Caution people before they go nuts about, you know, the ukraine or the situation in israel right now to just take a step back and recognize How blessed we are how fortunate we are that we don't have these horrible geopolitical situations to deal with And I see it. I mean it people get annoyed at the israel lobby, which I understand I just went on a whole rant about all this foreign influence, but There's also obviously a palestinian lobby And I I mean, I see some libertarians making what I think are sort of sort of a bad move in terms of Picking one side or the other or just saying f everyone I mean, I have literally seen tweets like that f israel f palestine F I ran and I say I would caution that I think George Washington's position is much more wise and better for your soul on an individual level Which is just peace and friendship with all These aren't our fights All sorts of horrible things have happened in history And here in the new world we have a chance to sort of side step around that and I think would be very wise to do that I think part of the problem Occurs because what you get are people who live very much in the now and so looking at these horrific images right of the hamas invasion and the music Festival I mean just the kidnappings the murders The desecration Horrible right But for a lot of people this is the this seems new to them This seems unprecedented This they can't imagine what could possibly have made made anybody think that this is Uh The right way to respond to something that came before now. I'm not saying I think that War crimes of this variety are permissible. I don't think they're permissible from our side either Even though the us does perpetrate this sort of thing Um in and has done so in a variety of wars In the 20th century right up to and including uh, iraq and afghanistan but to To think that oh, okay. Well this This horrible massacre is so unusual in its badness That clearly now it requires americans to get involved Shows a certain naivete And just a lack of a total lack of Familiarity with what the reality is in most of these places and we're not talking We're not saying you got to go back to ancient history to come up with similar sorts of things This is what the the people who come down when libertarians are others a right hardcore leftist come down squarely in favor of the palestinian side Which I don't do This is the stuff they point out is the sorts of massacres that have taken place The shootings The the stolen land From palestinians who have been a victim in many cases for a long long time and So now That's what that's what fuels This this latest massacre and it goes back and forth and I wrote a column Yesterday opposing Any us involvement in this war, but I didn't pick a side There isn't a good guy to pick here and I guarantee you that what's going to happen to The palestinians as a result of this invasion is going to be mass death Uh destruction of infrastructure entire neighborhoods in gaza And they're not going to hold back of anything. It just gives more excuses to the state of israel to just absolutely decimate Uh the palestinian population And you can argue that to a certain extent Uh this was brought upon the women and children there by the leadership in gaza But you can see how complex that is and how insane it would be for the united states To get involved in that and I'm Yeah, I'm I'm like thankful that I am not israeli because I don't have to deal with this. I mean I it's horrible. I have no idea what israel should do to Fix this solution to to respond to this I I understand People are like we need to just glass gaza. I think that's not the right decision, but I understand why people React that way and I understand why there are palestinian people who are you know willing to go out and just Execute old grandmas That's horrible. That's wrong and you could also go from the angle of its It's worse than a crime. It's a mistake Going back to your point of I've been trying to parse. I mean, I've mostly tried to avoid the israel palestinian conflict because it seems unsolvable and depressing uh, but uh I've been trying to figure out what the purpose of hamas's actions here were like on some level I'm like were they the the dog that caught the bumper of the car They were chasing and that they succeeded beyond what they were hoping to and now they're like, oh, we're really You know screwed here uh But it's it's as you said this is Horrible like the response is going to be very bad for the inhabitants of gaza and potentially elsewhere I mean if the war spreads but just to harp on the point This is a hugely complicated issue And of course there's no excuse for just going on like a literal viking raid a modern-day viking raid of just literally raping villageing killing uh But we don't have to be involved in parsing out this conflict that seems like it's not going to be solved I mean history these conflicts are usually not solved The their solution quote unquote is one side being wiped out And we generally don't do that anymore in these modern times. So instead we have conflicts that just uh continue on intermeably forever which I suppose is better than just mass ethnic cleansing Although we just saw ethnic cleansing take place in Nagorno-Karabakh But It the world's off a bad place it this gets to the the horrible idea After the end of the cold war that history has ended Democracy is that is now the norm all peace shall reign I think this is crazy talk. I think ultimately the world we live in is still a world of real Politique it is still the world of the mellion dialogue where the the Strong do what they will and the weak do what they must and this is not an endorsement of this is some sort of moral principle it is a recognition of the reality of human existence And we need to take a step back and say wow here in America. We don't really have that too much You know Lots of bad things happen to native americans but We don't have A blood feuds going on For thousands of years. I mean We we can avoid all that we should really seriously appreciate that and reflect on that when advocating for a course of action Well in fact the The Hamas-Israeli conflict makes me Just kind of cringe a little bit thinking about how much some of it mirrors 19th century america in terms of You had some tribes Some not all who would they would be backed into a corner by the american regime Placed on what was effectively a reservation. They would break out of the reservation Massacre a few nearby villages returned to the reservation And then the u.s. Government would send a detachment or the local state would send a militia to basically go and slaughter As many tribal members as they could so the back and the fourth the the The sort of killing of women and children on both sides It's not even alien to the american experience. It's just as you say The the natives were reduced to such small numbers That they were rendered politically impotent And so that problem was quote unquote solved Whereas that's not the situation in israel right now With the palestinians and so It's it's it's a little disingenuous of americans to get a little too high and mighty about it Because we we already went through all of that and I don't think I don't think we can endorse the american solution to that problem either So that's just an ongoing issue and uh, so just another reason to just stay mute Uh If you're not if you don't have a reason to be directly involved And I might know that if you get on a plane and you go over there and you want to fight finance it yourself Join up with a foreign military and live out your convictions. I'm not going to actually badmouth you for that I I kind of would admire you Um, but to call for americans to pay for it and americans who have no stake in it to get involved Well, uh, you know mind your own business and this also goes back to our Monroe doctrine episode where we sort of went on a tangential rant about immigration and just this idea. Um I mean one of the to me shocking things that has come out is all the Pro palestinian protests all around the west some of which where people are shouting horrific things And I think it just sort of demonstrates other people have pointed this out. Uh, I forget his name are in radio host On the blaze has like pointed out like 10 times that you know the The bill we're trying to be sold by people promoting basically open borders and I am pro immigration I think our immigration system. It's horrible. It's a disaster but people really seem to Forget basic economics that there's trade-offs to everything in life and Just saying there's no downside to having All these immigrants with huge ethnic blood feuds come to the united states. I think is Ridiculous, it's silly and it's you know, I think Burying your head in the sand and ignoring the basic economics that you teach as a living And as you pointed out In contrast, you know, western hemisphere all these latino immigrants They don't usually bring these blood feuds with them. They're they're not, you know, uh, I'm not aware of any You know, mexican lobby trying to Have the u.s. Invade mexico to oust the government or to I don't know fight against mexico's historic enemy Which I guess would be us. I don't know who else Uh, but I guess the french also, but um It's uh, I think this is just something that should be considered. I'm not I mean there are people who are like This is proof. We need to close the borders. I don't think that's the solution at all But I think we just need to be more realistic that you know the rest of the world has thousands of years of blood feuds and just ethnic hatred That does not easily go away And it especially doesn't go away when it's sort of like government policy to like preserve Them. I mean here in pittsburgh. I mean I can talk to my grandparents and hear about, you know it was scandalous when you know a catholic would marry a protestant and all that I mean, but because of sort of pro integration policies now no one cares um, and I think we just need to Also factor that in when Making policy. Yeah, that that exists to an extent in the united states, but it's it's clearly not on the same level And there's a certain charm to the fact that americans don't bother to remember history At all So in eastern europe where it's like baked into your education that you remember the time the neighboring country invaded your village in the year 191 and murdered a bunch of your ancestors and you're still mad about it Americans right americans don't even remember that they stole half of mexico um, and the mexico And the mexicans don't seem to care that much either really in spite of all that talk about mexican immigrants coming here and founding and Rejoining mexico zero interest in that among 95 percent of probably 99 percent of mexican immigrants So yeah, it's a totally different situation with new world immigrants And yeah, if you're going to talk about how immigration fuels these sorts of ethnic Interest groups you need to look a little bit. I think a little more detail at okay Which immigrants are we talking about which parts of the world? And it wouldn't even be an issue if the people in government would just get a clue and stop Getting the us involved in these sort of conflicts in general and and on the point of history Like one of my sort of side hobby interests that I pursue for fun is indo european studies And this is actually a huge issue in the ukraine war I mean people literally going back to like 3000 bc Arguing about you know, ukrainians are the real indo europeans a proto- indo europeans You know the russians are not real white people I mean, it's very common to encounter people saying the russians are basically asianic mutts who are You know, uh, not pure bread. Um, I mean this is we're talking 5000 years ago here Listen, I mean, it's also a huge deal in india Indo-european origins. I mean like people will be killed for basically stating with all of the genetic evidence points to that indo europeans invaded india The indo europeans did not come from india I mean we can avoid all that Everyone here is from somewhere else So we don't have to become involved in these horrible intractable Problems that have not been solved in centuries. I think we should probably just let it go at that The I mean the the I haven't even checked the news today on what's going on in israel, but I'm sure it's thoroughly depressing Uh, whatever it is Uh, and so we'll I don't know. Hopefully it'll die down by next month and maybe we won't have to talk about it then In our next episode, but but we'll look we'll see uh, and uh, but this just adds another war for us to talk about We got we got israel. We got ukraine. We got the china taiwan situation And I mean we haven't even done an episode on africa Um and contrary to what people seem to think There there are plenty of massacres and horrible things going on there Even though we're only told about such things when they occur in the mediterranean or in eastern europe And uh, so just for any illustration of horrible things going on just check nigeria And uh, you can be reminded at the uh, the horribleness of the human condition overall Uh in all regions of the globe and just how lucky we are here in North america. So with that, uh, thank you for listening to war economy and state Thank you to my co-host zackery and we'll be back next month with another one. So we'll see you next time That was a depressing episode