 Ilan, a lot of the left, certainly a lot of libertarians, and they argue that we've got this story wrong, that the real cause of all this, if you read Bin Laden, is not our appeasement and our weakness and their ideological commitment. The real cause is our presence in the Middle East. They still bring up, the Iranian revolution is justified because we killed the Prime Minister, or the CIA helped oppose, not even kill, the Prime Minister of Iran in 1954, I think, something around there. And then the fact that the troops in Saudi Arabia, remember Bin Laden makes a big deal out of American troops in the Holy Land, infidels in the Holy Land. How do you respond to those claims? I think we're going to see it again today in a lot of the commentary on this. This was all our fault. It's our foreign policy. I mean, one of the reasons I and all of us really opposed Ron Paul so vehemently when he ran for president was because this was his attitude. It was all America's fault, not America's fault in the sense that we appeased them, but America's fault in the sense that we bought it upon ourselves. So what's the answer? It's a gross misunderstanding and misconception of what happened. And I think it's motivated. I think it's people who push this line and who are responsible for knowing the facts. I think there's an aim here of not seeking the truth, but affirming a certain agenda or a certain perspective. So let's take some of these and unpack them. So I think the biggest one is Osama Bin Laden talks about a number of things, including American troops in Saudi Arabia defiling the Holy Land. And he talks about the harm that's being done to Palestinians, our other Muslim brothers in the region. Go read what he says. And I've read it. I think it's really interesting. And I think if you read that and what you take away is American foreign policy is the problem, then you are really not giving due attention to what he, the premises of his argument. So the premises of his argument are we know that Islam has to rule. It's the truth. And part of what he's about is bringing the truth to full flourishing and full realization where he can. That's the point of being in the path of Allah. The objection to American troops is that they're in the Holy Land, in the land of the two holy places, Saudi Arabia. And they're infidels. They don't belong there. How dare you violate what should be holy Islam? And what is his objection to Israel? It's that it is a non-Muslim power governing a holy place that belongs to Islam, the dome of the rock. And what is his objection to the, what's his view of the Palestinian issue? Is there some outcome of that that would satisfy him? Yes. The outcome in which the Muslims dominate and kill all the Jews and push them into the ocean. So, yeah, there's no policy here where you could tweak it and come up with some, yeah, if we just make these adjustments, he'd be happy because the outcome that he's starting from that he wants to reach is Islam must dominate. Anything that deviates from that is apparent. It has to be overruled. It's the same sort of thing with why does, why do the Islamists subject to the Egyptian rule in Egypt? It's not, I don't think it's primarily because America has allied with Egypt. I think that's a knock against Egypt, but it's because Egypt is an infidel or not infidel, impious regime. It's not sufficiently religious. So, I think any, there is really no way to understand bin Laden or just Islamists more generally. Like if you think about what we talked about with the Salman Rushdie, which we should come back to in a second. The whole way of understanding the world from their premises is this is our goal. Islam is the truth. You must swallow it and we're going to put a knife to your throat until you do. And if you don't do that, there's something wrong with you and we'll come back after you. And when you see the concrete issues like Palestine or American foreign policy, it's not that they got the wrong policy. It's that there is no policy we could follow in the Middle East that would satisfy them except rolling over and dying and leaving. And I think that's the essential to take that. Now, I don't want to get into, people who are interested in the Iran 1953 coup and I don't think it's really, I mean, go read about it. Read reputable historians and there's some interesting new work being done on that that's been published in the last five years. And I recommend reading that because it is nothing like as simple a story as you think it is. The American role as I read it is they were really incompetent and trivial elements of it and incompetence says they didn't have a clue what they were going to do with this. And if but that's that's just the history part of it, which people who are making this argument have a responsibility to really understand before they make a claim about it. But then to think about if you if this actually were true, would it justify what would justify creating a totalitarian regime in Iran? Like you're upset about this removal of what became an authoritarian leader, but it doesn't I mean, there's no way in which the response to that is yes, we're going to subjugate everyone into Islam. That is not and then the same thing with the way that Iran policy has followed since revolution in 1979, which is to go outside its borders and bring its revolution to everywhere that it can. And that that's not a rational response to that kind of incident, even if the incident were accurately describing, I don't think it was. I want to say one thing about the Rushdie and we should talk more about the later events as well. But you were making the point on car about how ideologies unreal to the pragmatist mindset or ideas and abstractions are unreal. And I want to connect the Rushdie incident with the sale of arms. I think it's called arms for contra. It's a very complicated deal under the Reagan administration. But essentially it was, we're selling arms to bad people in South America, Latin America, in order to get some kind of convoluted scheme to release American hostages in Lebanon. That's I remember. And there's this whole kind of maze of things that happened here. And there's other things we're trying to do with American hostages in Lebanon too. This is under Reagan, the patron saint of Republicans as he's now he's been canonized, like this is the ideal for Republicans. And it's this is, I know he said good things about in opposition to the Soviet Union. I get that. And I when I read his speeches, I think, yeah, this this is a good that he said that. But I think it's important to get that it wasn't like Reagan's foreign policy was outstandingly good. And we should all go back to that. And I think what his policy actually reflects is some of this mentality of, well, what's the problem with dealing with Iran? If we can get our people for you? What's the problem with dealing with these bad people in Latin America? That you mean their ideas matter? What's wrong with you? What? How does that even come into the picture? And I think that when you get into George H W Bush was even more on this premise like George W H Bush is a sort of intellectually vacuous compared to Reagan, who I don't think was very intellectual to begin with. And when you get the rusty thing is it's not only that how could how could we even care about free speech is this abstract thing? It's the the the worst. So the one element of it that I think is under appreciated is that it's coming from Iran. It's ideologically motivated attack on a free speech. This is just a bunch of people upset about a book is people upset because of its impact on their religious ideology. And they're willing to kill people over that, that that reality has no that doesn't register. And I think the consequences of it not being taken seriously, not being understood, ripple through the coming decades. And I think it's it's a a significant part of the story for understanding 9 11. And then what happened after 9 because it's not like it's the last incident where free speech was threatened. What we need today, what I called a new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think, meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, women or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist. All right, before we go on reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now. 30 likes. That should be at least 100. I think at least 100 of you actually like the show. Maybe they're like 60 of the Matthews out there who hate it. But but at least the people who like it, you know, I want to see, I want to see a thumbs up. There you go. Start liking it. I want to see that go to 100. All it takes is a click of a click of a thing, whether you're looking at this. And you know, the likes matter. 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