 This is Mises Weekends with your host, Jeff Deist. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Mises Weekends. As you can see, our guest is someone who's joined us before Dan de McAdams and the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. Today's actually a show we had not planned. It's Friday the 13th. We had a different show in the can, but because of events this week with Donald Trump tweeting about a potential attack on Syria, we felt we had to address the elephant in the room. For those who hadn't seen it, the Mises Institute put out a statement on Thursday at our website this week from the editors against war in Syria. It's actually got some great quotes from various economists, including Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard about the depravity of war. You think generally we do our show about economics. And Daniel, in a certain sense, war is almost outside of economics because we're no longer dealing with people in voluntary ways. We're dealing with them via force. So in that sense, war is an extension of politics. And it's outside of economics. But that doesn't mean people don't make money off of it. So talk about Trump's change of heart. It feels like he's been captured just a week ago. He was talking about getting out of Syria. Now we're looking at John Bolton at NSA, Mike Pompeo at State, and bombs away. What do you think's happened? Yeah, I think that probably was his instinct. And that's certainly what he promised on the campaign trail that we shouldn't be staying in these places forever. If you look back at his tweets from 2013 and on, you see all these, Ron Paul was right. We shouldn't have bothered in Afghanistan. We got to get out of Syria. Only an idiot would attack Syria. So he has a paper trail of tweets. And I think his instincts led him to say that. When he was speaking before that audience in Ohio, which is a good audience for that kind of thing. Hey, our troops belong at home. We should bring them back home. A lot of cheers. But then the neocons did have a freak out. They went nuts. Apparently, he got a nasty phone call from Netanyahu saying, what the hell are you doing? You can't do this. And so lo and behold, less than a week later, there is this amazing chemical attack in Douma that has forced him to do a complete 180. I'm sure that's entirely coincidental. But as you say, a couple of days ago, he woke up and tweeted in a way that shocked the world because it really told the Russians, bombs are coming your way, essentially. And I think he's had to try to walk it back over the past 24 hours. But the marker was really laid down with that tweet. Give us a little bit of the history and background here. As you well know, US Fed was after Assad's father. They've been after Assad even prior to the so-called 2011 uprising in the Arab Spring. Why does the West and Israel, why do they hate Assad, and what's driving their monomaniacal desire to get rid of him? Well, there is a pattern of US intervention in Syria. As a matter of fact, the US was involved in regime change there decades ago. I think it was even before the 53 Iran regime change. So the US has been involved in it. There was this 2006 cable that was leaked by WikiLeaks, that was written by one of the staff members at the embassy in Damascus, who outlined in very great detail what it would take to overthrow the government of Assad. And really, they followed that pattern. They talked about radicalizing Islamists and all these sorts of things. And that's pretty much the pattern they followed. So there is, for some reason, US foreign policy has been to overthrow secular authoritarian figures in the Arab world. We saw it with Saddam Hussein. We saw it with Muammar Gaddafi. And the results have been universally pretty bad. So here we go again, trying to do the same thing in Syria to overthrow a Syrian government that's led by a minority in Al-Awwait. But the army itself is actually majority Sunni, which most people don't realize. But basically, here we go again. The neocons were not successful under Obama. He was able to resist, although he certainly, the idea that there was inaction is not correct. Because what he did was basically an Eisenhower under Dulles. He basically said, OK, CIA, have at it, man. Do whatever you need to do to overthrow this guy, but I don't want to invade. So we've been very active. And unfortunately, as Donald Trump is increasingly neoconized, i.e. his cabinet, et cetera, I think he's gone back to that direction. Certainly, that's what it seems like from here. But I just want to clarify, you're disputing this right-wing notion that Obama dropped the ball with Syria and that he should have been more active in dealing with Assad during his eight years. It's the same canard that they used with Iraq. Everything would have been peachy-keen there if that liberal Muslim Obama had not pulled us out. Well, no, everything would have been a lot better there if that idiot Bush had never gone in. They never looked to the antecedent if the antecedent suggests that non-interventionism would be the right cure. But no, Obama was very active. And in fact, there was an absurd point, and Dr. Paul and I did a show on it, where CIA-backed troops were fighting Pentagon-backed troops inside Syria. So it almost became sort of a comedy of errors, except it wasn't funny because so many people have died in essentially what's a proxy war to overthrow the Syrian government. Well, as you know, we're still hearing that George Bush Sr. should have killed Saddam Hussein in 1991 or 92, and we'd all be fine today. I just want to talk about this disconnect between Washington and the US population. I think with social media, with traditional media, and just with the passage of time, I don't think there's any constituency out there in the country, or at least not much of one, for an actual boots on the ground war in Syria. I think the American people have learned at least some dim lessons from Libya and Iraq and blowing things up. How do you explain why unpopular wars continue to have a constituency in Washington? And I don't just mean in the standard sense of the military-industrial complex, but how does support for these wars endure when they're unpopular at home? Well, I think, you know, there's a lot of psychological manipulation going on. You know, we've seen it over and over, the pattern continues. You remember in the run-up to the first Iraq war, where you had secretly the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington appearing before Tom Lentos in the House for the Ferris Committee talking about babies being thrown from incubators. All a total pack of lies, but it plays on emotions. I think the poor propagandists understand this, that you turn a basic human instinct, which is empathy, our feeling of empathy for humanity, you turn that into something that actually destroys humanity. You turn the empathy that we would have for what appears to be babies being harmed, children being hurt or killed, and you turn that into a sort of a murderous instinct demanding that we go kill someone to make up for it. And I think that's a psychological manipulation that mobilizes the population to go from being their natural instinct, which is to oppose war, to say, well, normally I'm opposed, but when I see those pictures of those kids, I say, we gotta have bombs away. Do you think this latest gas attack, supposed gas attack a few days ago, do you think the story is a lie? I think it's, certainly there's no evidence that it's truth. I think we have seen false flags that have been committed by these so-called white helmets. Remember the white helmets are the only source of documentary evidence that this attack took place. Who are the white helmets? Well, they were created by a British intelligence officer, James de Morriere, and they've been funded by the United States USAID and the UK foreign office to the tune of about $100 million. So these are not just a spontaneous group of people that run in, Russian helping people. They have their cameras ready. They make propaganda videos and this is the sole source of information on what happened there. Why would they do this? Because they have been very active with the rebels. They've been involved with the rebels from the beginning. They're pro-rebel, they're pro-regime change. And the thing is, Jeff, I don't know what happened there but I don't feel so bad that I don't know because just yesterday James Mattis was before Congress and he said, I don't know what happened either. We're just, we're trying to figure out what happened. I believe that he did it, but we don't have the evidence. So nobody really knows except the perpetrators at this point, what happened. That's when you go into motives. Military commanders talk about second and third order effects. Let's say the United States and other Western governments start launching a bunch of serious missiles into Syria and really do destabilize or even take out Assad. What follows? What happens next? We've seen this time and time again, we break the egg and then we end up in a country for 15, 20, 30, 50 years in Korea. Well, I think before that happens and let me just say before that, but I think what I'm about to say has been bolstered by the meeting last night in the White House, the president's cabinet met. But where the secretary of defense, Jim Mattis, told the rest of them, we don't know what's going to happen. We don't know how to stop this escalation. He also said it to Congress. So to answer your question, I would say before we get to the point where they are destabilized, to the point where Assad goes, I believe very strongly there will be a Russian retaliation and I believe that James Mattis, the secretary of defense, very strongly believes that there will be a Russian military retaliation. The US military has been on this hotline to watch Russian counterparts. So they do have information. And I think that Mattis has concluded that the Russians will respond while they sink a couple of ships. Well, something happened to the 2000 troops that are illegally in Northeastern Syria. I don't know what happens, but the threat of nuclear war I think would come first before anything, any talk about Assad going. But in terms of whether he was destabilized and overthrown, there simply is no one to replace him that's not a radical Islamist at this point. So we're replaying the scenario, Libya, Iraq over and over again. Well, you and I were both working for Dr. Paul in Washington in the early 2000s, 01, 04 when the Afghanistan-Iraq Wars began. But what feels different here is of course the Russians have a much more direct role. I just wonder, given how sort of fat and happy Americans are, do you think our country is really mentally psychologically prepared for a Cuban missile crisis-style tension? I mean, Brinksmanship with Russia? We're awfully soft in this country. And I'm not sure people really understand what it means to poke a nuclear power. Yeah, I think it came to, I think President Trump's tweet focused a lot of Americans on this possibility. And I think the Russians who tend to not block when it comes to these things, they're not bombastic. They're actually rather doer when it comes to talking about these things. I think the fact that they were explicit, you know, the Russian ambassador to Lebanon told Al-Manour television that Russia will not only target the missiles that are incoming, but target their launchers, which would of course be the USS Donald Cook, among other things. So I think Americans focus now and realize that this is a serious thing. Everything that I've seen points to the fact that the White House switchboard has been absolutely jammed. So there's a suggestion, I've read it elsewhere, that he's hearing a lot from people and that doesn't necessarily change his view, but they're hearing a lot from people that do not want this war. Well, what's so frightening to me, Daniel, is that the mainstream media and even his enemies, his progressive enemies, and even his traditional GOP enemies pat him on the back and tell him he's acting presidential when he surrounds himself with people like Bolton and threatens war with Russia of all places. I guess the last question I have for you is, do you think we're any better organizer prepared than we were 15 years ago when the United States invaded Iraq? Is there any way for people to work together and try to avoid or at least minimize this war in using social media, using awareness in ways we didn't have in 2003 when we invaded Iraq? I think so, and we mentioned this on a recent Liberty report, and I think Nassim Nicholas Taleb talks about Twitter being an old-fashioned community, a billboard, a postboard where people get together and talk as a sort of a community. And I think that is the case, to a degree, for better or for worse, because I think social media is manipulated by outside interests. However, it is easier to mobilize. You remember how it was back in 2002 when we really didn't have this kind of ability to talk back, ability to send messages. We had to sit there listening to Judith Miller write lie after lie day after day with no way for it. So I think we are able to mobilize, but I also think that the bad guys are able to manipulate social media and turn it into tools of psychological operations as well. Well, ladies and gentlemen, that's all the time we've got. You need to be following Ron Paul Institute at RonPaulInstitute.org, follow them on Twitter, follow Daniel McAdams on Twitter, and you will know everything you need to know about what's going on. You'll get a lot of inside information you won't get, obviously, from our mainstream media. We hope that this thing doesn't blow up in our faces, that it doesn't escalate, and that somehow Trump's better angels can sit on his shoulders this weekend. But it remains to be seen. Daniel, thanks so much for your time on short notice. Ladies and gentlemen, have a great weekend. Subscribe to Mises Weekends via iTunes U, Stitcher, and SoundCloud, or listen on Mises.org and YouTube.