Chapo Trap House - 542 - The Oopsie Report feat. Derek Davison & Daniel Bessner (7/19/21)

Episode Date: July 20, 2021

We’re joined by Chapo foreign policy desk Derek Davison and Daniel Bessner to check in with America’s various “oopsies”, “uh-ohs” and “oh butterfingers” accidentally enforcing our hegemony around the world. Derek and Danny have a new podcast, American Prestige, covering just this type of thing. If you like them on Chapo, be sure to go checkout their new show and, as always, Foreign Exchanges on substack. We’re putting the first episode of American Prestige in the Chapo feed so you can get a taste. http://patreon.com/americanprestige fx.substack.com

Okay, greetings gang. Hello friends. We're back again. It's Chapeau coming at you this Monday. I'm me, Matt and Felix, as usual. But for today's episode, we are joined once again by the Chapeau Foreign Affairs Desk. I refer to all-time returning guest champion Derek Davidson and a friend of the show, Daniel Bezner, the host of the upcoming, sorry, the upcoming podcast project, American Prestige, here to take us on a trip around the world. Derek, Daniel, hello. Hey, guys. Hello. Derek is just, you know, I mean, he's stunting. I mean, the number of challenge coins that he's racked up, guest appearances on this show, it's ridiculous. He's going

to have, he's putting, putting new- I've got to get a free sump at some point or something, right? I mean, like- And any, and any podcast affiliated sandwich shop, please turn in your challenge coin for a free tuna melt. Yeah. You can go to Mission Barbecue whenever you want and get the building seven ribs. Nice. Like I said, you know, Derek, Derek and Daniel are, you know, our foreign affairs, foreign affairs correspondent, our own personal intelligence bureau here to give us the presidential daily briefing about what is going on in the world today. Let's just dive into it today. Let's start in the nation of Iran, our old, our old nemesis, Iran. They're at it again because,

you know, they're not only trying to, trying to weasel out of this nuclear deal that, you know, they, that they so surreptitiously and underhandedly undermined and are seeking to, you know, weaken America by agreeing to the standards of the nuclear disarmament treaty that they signed with us back during Obama. Yeah. It's fucked up. They're acting like we killed their national hero or something. In another sovereign country, for no apparent reason, it was a pretty good move on the geniuses behind U.S. foreign policy. Well, you guys forget that according to Miley Cyrus, Trump would have been- General Miley Cyrus, Trump would have been criminally negligent if he hadn't killed Soleimani. Party in the

USA. He would have been sued and he would have had to go in front of Judge Judy. I would, I would like, I would so happily like trade him to Iran. Absolutely. Not even to kill. Just do whatever you want. I don't care. Trust him up like a turkey and just air drop him into the center of the city. A Trump for Ahmadinejad trade. That would be a hell of a trade. That would be kind of cool. Ahmadinejad is a fan of, I don't agree with everything he's done, obviously, but like, you know, we're, you know, perfect. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Ahmadinejad would free NBA young boy. Oh, definitely. He's like a fan of rap. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. That's true. He's become a much more open-minded guy, I

think. He would like- It's a four side of leadership. It would be a problem like he would lock up approximately 20 million other people, but young boy would be free. And I, we might very well be on that list. That's fine. I mean, like you, if you go to prison long enough, it's just like your life and he would let us like camp there. Yeah. It's like fine because it's not really a big deal unless you're a musician and you can't really make music. I was referring to what Matt was talking about. We got a head of the joint chiefs of staff. I mean, Epic milkshake duck on this guy. I mean, one day he's saying, oh, Trump's a tyrant and we were all going to resign before he did a coup. And then the

next day you find out, you know, General Meek Millie is saying that if we don't kill Sulamani, Trump could go to jail. I mean, I just, I don't know how that works. The consequences would never be the same if we don't assess Sulamani. And even, I mean, even the coup stuff was just him like imagining a scenario in his head of Trump doing something and being like, oh, if he does that, I'm going to quit and then he'll be sorry. Like, yeah, there's no, there's no substance to it. I mean, it was just him kind of inventing a thing to be mad about. Well, I love that because like all the people who like take that as an opportunity to be

afraid all the time are like, look at this, it proves that Trump would stop at nothing. And it's like, I'm pretty sure no one stopped at more things than Donald Trump. That's all he does is he stops immediately. Yeah. He's pretty much will go to no length to do anything. I mean, I know we talked about it the last time, but as far as reasons to be afraid all the time, I'm not exactly reassured that the Joint Chiefs of Staff took this opportunity to remind everyone that if you want to do a coup, you're going to need the military. So you better make sure that you stay friendly with us.

Yeah. Yeah. Get us on your side. I'm not even sure any of them would have the bravery to do it though. There's so it's professionalized people at this point. There's no gumption that would that one would need to do a real coup. Yeah. They're all just middle managers. It's a bunch of Michael Scott's. Exactly. They all have PhDs, literally. Yeah. I mean, there's no gumption and there's no, I mean, there's no charisma. Like there's no MacArthur who could come in and like, like, MacArthur, MacArthur couldn't even do it. Like that's the thing is like, yeah, these

guys are nothing like they're nothing compared to like MacArthur or Patton. Even those guys like couldn't do it. Like MacArthur was on the verge of it kind of or starting it kind of. And then Richard Russell was like, let's make him cry in front of the Senate and that ended it. You know, it's funny you bring up General MacArthur because I found out just this past weekend I found out another very interesting bit of Menaker family lore as it relates to General MacArthur. And that is that my great uncle, Frederick Engels Menaker, became friends on some sort of transatlantic of ship crossing with the sort of famous muckraking sort of

a the famous muckraking columnist Drew Pearson. And Drew Pearson was looking for a dirt on General MacArthur when he wanted to run for president. And he apparently gave my great uncle the the assignment or he just asked him to hang out with and host General MacArthur's mistress at dinner. And like, it's just sort of take her about town to get the dirt on basically everything about their relationship. And that is ultimately one of the reasons he didn't run for president is because Drew Pearson and courtesy of my great uncle had this oppo file on a guy who maybe, you know, would have done a coup. You know, had he had he had the chance.

That's so interesting because all those guys had mistresses. Eisenhower had a very famous one. I think her name was Kay. And it was kind of an open secret that that he was sleeping with her throughout most of the European campaign, I believe. We talked about that a few episodes ago about how like, yeah, Eisenhower, he tried to resign to Marshall because he was in love with his Jeep driver and he was like, get your shit together. Yeah, Marshall was like, we're in World War Two. Like, dude, you're plotting Operation Overlord. Maybe like fucking chill out. Jeff just used to be awesome. Like Petra, Petraeus is a fair suck so much compared to

that. Yeah, it's so lame compared to like your Jeep driver who's driving you all over England. It's some it was like a CIA analyst, right with Petraeus. It was someone he met like a biographer. Yeah, it was his biographer and she was stitched up because all of the like the other military hot wives of Tampa who like, you know, sort of flock around SENTCOM were jealous that, you know, she had the sort of cat bird seat of America's at the time number one general. Yeah, her name is like Paula broadband or something. Yeah, sounds like that. No, that's close. Yeah, I think that's what it is. But back to the back to the nation of Iran. Iran had an election. Who was just elected and like

how does the election of of what's the name Rossi, right? You see, Abraham, right? You see, yeah. How does that play into like the context of these stalled nuclear talks and also a prisoner exchange that was supposed to go forward? Yeah, so right, every easy who was the chief justice in Iran previously ran for president, which was so much surprising in that chief justice is actually probably a better job than Iranian president. But he's clearly being groomed for it seems like he's being groomed to succeed Ali Khamenei is supreme leader. And so he ran for president and in a pretty stark contrast to the way Iran usually manages its elections where they sort of put out guardrails for for candidates

and they exclude anybody who goes outside the guardrails. This time, the Guardian Council, which is responsible for vetting candidates really like cut anybody who could have been a challenger to Raisi. So it was much more of a staged kind of managed process. This time around, Raisi one with like 72% of the vote with fairly low turnout sub 50%, which for an Iranian presidential election is quite low. Raisi is a bad dude, really. I mean, he's implicated in back in the 1980s, he was the deputy prosecutor in Tehran and was implicated in a sweeping, you know, a mass arrest and then mass execution of a lot of political prisoners. So, you know, he's he's got a record that is not terribly good.

But the salient thing in terms of the nuclear talks is that just the transition itself, the fact that Iran is, you know, in the middle now of a presidential transition, they're going from a reasonably moderate president, at least on the subject of foreign affairs and engagement with the US to one who is going to be quite a bit more hard line. And he's sort of put the kibosh on any further negotiations on the nuclear deal until he takes office and is able to oversee it himself. So it's not it's not an end to those talks. But it is a an unfortunate pause at a time when it looked like things were progressing in a positive direction. And it's a it's a function, frankly, to some degree of the fact that the Biden

administration after, you know, coming in saying we're going to reverse what Trump did, we're going to get back into the nuclear deal spent, you know, a good two plus months kind of dicking around and saying, you know, well, Iran has to come back into compliance first and then we'll talk about and that was, you know, obviously a non starter for the Iranians. And it was just a lot of wasted time that now puts everything in the middle of this presidential transition. So Biden bullshitting of maintaining hegemony and pretending that you're going to be doing something different, which I think has been really characteristic of this administration

and makes total sense given who is appointed to these top positions, particularly Anthony Blinken. I think this is just classic Biden foreign policy. So they had a couple of months before this presidential election that like they possibly could have if they hadn't put all these like preconditions or just dicked around, possibly got the nuclear agreement reinstated. But now that there seems to this like more hard lined administration, there's like a way less of a possibility of that ever happening. I still think that the nuclear deal is going to be reinstated because, you know, it's obviously in Iran's interest to see it reinstated and get sanctions relief. I mean, they're desperate

for that. What the Biden administration was hoping for was that reinstating the nuclear deal would be a stepping stone to further diplomacy. And I don't think that's going to happen under ASEA. He seems to be interested in regional diplomacy, like with the Saudis, for example, but he has no interest in talking to the Americans, which may not be the worst thing in the world actually. Talking to the Americans doesn't work out very well for the Iranians. A regional approach might be a better way to go. In terms of the prisoner swap, this was a negotiation that was apparently going on in Geneva kind of alongside the nuclear talks. And supposedly, according to the Iranians, they had agreed with the U.S. and the UK on

kind of an exchange of prisoners. And the Biden administration, after the Iranians said we'd like to put a hold on the nuclear talks and come back to it after the transition, the Biden administration put the kibosh on the prisoner exchange. Supposedly, the UK is still gung-ho to go forward with it, but Biden is set no. We're not going to do this until there's progress on the nuclear talks. The Biden administration has denied this, and it's hard to know exactly who's talking out of their ass here. But that's become another point of contention in a situation where you would like to see fewer points of contention at this point, not more. Do we know anything about these prisoners that

were going to be exchanged theoretically? I mean, Iran has a number of dual nationals, U.S. and UK Iranian kind of dual nationals who are in prison for one reason or another. And I don't know the specifics as to who they would be releasing, but you hear there's names, Niamazi is one. There are a couple of UK citizens who could potentially be released. But I don't know specifically. On the other side, it's probably people who have been arrested for sanctions violations and that sort of thing, who the Iranians would be after. This is also happening in the context of various ongoing proxy wars in the region between America and its allies and clients, and Iran and theirs, particularly in Syria and Yemen.

There's been continuing American airstrikes on militias in Syria. Are these militias linked to Iran? They are. They get support from Iran. There's a tendency, and this is true of the Houthis in Yemen as well. There's a tendency on the part of policymakers in Washington to view these groups as kind of just down the line puppets of Iran. They do the same thing with Hezbollah in Lebanon, which is not true. I mean, they get support and some guidance, maybe some financial and material support from Iran, but they're not quite as tired at the hip as, I think, is the Washington consensus. And in terms of just the Yemen conflict and Saudi Arabia, this is just still ongoing. I mean,

I'm seeing more of a media push in America to talk about how ruthless and evil the Houthis are and all the war crimes they're doing. How does one interpret this kind of this PR effort on behalf of the Saudis and their allies? Yeah. So, I mean, the Biden administration announced, Joe Biden announced in his first foreign policy speech back in, I think, was early February that he was going to end U.S. support for offensive Saudi operations in Yemen. There's no evidence that he's changed U.S. policy in Yemen in any way. I mean, we're still maintaining Saudi aircraft. I don't see any change. I believe we're doing it through contractors now.

Yeah, right. Just the U.S. Air Force isn't doing it directly, which we'll be seeing more of. It's an U.S. contractor. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's going to be a bigger and bigger thing. I think Danny's right. And just to very quickly, I think that we're going to see in general not only use of more contractors, but this shift, particularly in the Middle East to proxy wars, like Will was saying, but also a lot more aerial surveillance and aerial strikes as the U.S. I think does do a managed kind of retreat from the region. I think what we're seeing now in Yemen is going to be

representative of a broader shift in U.S. strategy. I don't know if you think that's right, Derek, or not. I do. I think that, I mean, the next, I don't know if we can talk about the Afghanistan withdrawal, but Iraq is the next domino to go. And I think there's a lot more consternation about that withdrawal, but it kind of needs to happen politically from the Iraqi perspective. And the U.S. is going to want to find a way to keep managing Iran, containing Iran in that region. It'll have to be kind of drones and air strikes. Yeah. Kind of what like political scientists call offshore balancing in a sense where the U.S.

is still going to try to basically manipulate the entire region, but without doing kind of any boots on the ground. And I think that's going to be this shift to long term imperial management that kind of echoes what Rome did 2000 years ago-ish and is the classic move of declining empires that have lost political legitimacy. And I think this is going to be the big story of the first Biden term. Yeah. I mean, the official American policy since like sort of the mid to late 90s onwards and almost everything is like put it in a place or do it in such a way that no one thinks about it. The issue with Yemen for the on the American end wasn't, you know, that this was a mismanaged war,

that the Saudis sort of on behalf of the UAE bit off more that they could chew it was that for the first time people were actually thinking about it and actually thinking about American engagement with Saudi policy. If we can do it in such a way where it's sort of a franchise system problem solved. Exactly. Exactly. Basically the U.S. military layers in between. Right. Yeah. The U.S. military serves as kind of the minor leagues for future contractors. I think that's you're going to see that sort of structure develop kind of like a janissary core over time. The Yemen, I mean, the Yemen situation now is, you know, Biden, the Biden administration has tried to get peace talks going again. There have been a few moves in that direction, but

they're really stalled over. The Houthis have kind of insisted that they want to see an end to the blockade that the Saudis have imposed before they will engage in talks on a ceasefire. And what I think the Saudis and the administration, the Biden administration want is an exchange will lift the blockade in exchange for a ceasefire, which, you know, is gumming things up. The conflict is heated up. It's been pretty intense in Ma'arib province, which is sort of north-central Yemen. It's the last major population center in northern Yemen. The Houthis have been really engaged in trying to capture Ma'arib city and the oil fields that surround it as sort of the last piece of the puzzle before they go to the negotiating table with as much leverage as

possible. The Saudis and the Yemeni government have started a counteroffensive in another province a little further south called Baidah, which, you know, I haven't seen, and a full disclosure, I've been on vacation for a few days, so I haven't, I'm not entirely on top of things. But at last check, they were making some pretty good advances, and I'm not sure that that could kind of redefine where the situation is on the ground. Wow. A big, big letdown from Derek here. He took his eye off the Yemeni situation for two days. We launch a podcast, and Derek immediately goes on vacation. Classic move. Well, yeah, I mean, I want to, we're going to return again to the Afghanistan withdrawal

in our reading series for this week, but I just want to just like briefly just talk about, I mean, do you guys see like in, because obviously like as this becomes real and as the Taliban takes back more of the country, I'm seeing a lot of like pressure from the media on Biden himself and his surrogates that be like, well, what happens when the Taliban takes over the country? Like, will you be responsible for like all the people that die? Like, or is America responsible for the people who will die after we pull out? And Biden said candidly, no, we're not. But I mean, obviously, yes, we are, but we're responsible for like every other death that's happened up until this point. So it doesn't really seem like a Joe in for a penny in for a pound. Well, that that is

the thing like none of this works on Biden. He is unmoved by like the emotional manipulation that the press does on Afghanistan. I'm not going to answer any more question Afghanistan. Look, fourth of July, I'm concerned that you guys are asking me questions that I'll answer next week, but I'm just the Holly weekend. I'm going to celebrate it. There's great things happening. There was someone posted a excerpt from a book about Richard Holbrook, where some like shitty journalist like sits down with Biden, and he's like, you know, if we leave Afghanistan, you know, what about women's rights? And Biden goes, come on, man, I'm not sending my son over there for that. I'm not sending my son back for women's rights. Who

cares? And it's like, it's like, it is like kind of a heartless answer. But at the same time, it is like, a, like you're not going to move Americans on that. B, I mean, we've been there for 20 years. And if it's exactly the same, then we're not going to make it any better. We haven't, you know, they've been saying this from the fucking beginning. We've been 20 years of girls going to school. Who, if they graduated, they got, they got jobs. Is the place any fucking different? No. It's, I mean, it's like, you do, you do come to this grim realization where it's like, well, this is something that only they can figure out. We've been there for 20 fucking years. If we're not any closer, I don't know what the fucking tell you. But I mean, the purpose of this is like,

not to, it's not to move Americans, it's to move policymakers. And luckily this doesn't, that doesn't, that specifically doesn't move Biden. Because he's not a meritocrat. And I think that Biden just wasn't trained in the sort of imperial management that the people who essentially came after him were trained in. And then this was like the logic of the, particularly of the 1990s, when the US empire needs this new logic without the Soviet Union, it's like, we're going to save the world. And that, of course, leads into Afghanistan and it leads into Iraq. But Biden is just from a different generation. So it just doesn't, it just doesn't make sense for him. And it's just also completely, it's just literally liberal fucking imperialism from the 19th century,

the civilizing mission. It's the exact same language that the British were using, that the French were using. It is a defining characteristic of liberal imperialism, which I think historically has done so much damage to the world. It's not even a question any longer to basically make these claims. And of course, George W. Bush said that he felt bad for Afghan women or something along those lines in an interview last week. And it's just so absurd. If anyone, George W. Bush, anyone has done as much damage to women in the world more than George W. Bush, it's almost difficult to fathom. So I wonder if that sort of argument is going to begin to lose its steam. But I think that'll just be replaced with something of like America needs to dominate the world.

Yeah. No, it'll, it'll, it'll be, they'll find a new thing. This, this thing never goes away. It always like shifts to whatever the meta is. And the meta for a while, it was, you know, Samantha Power type shit. It's like, you know, like you said, for the 90s up until like now, kind of, it's Cecil Rhodes who goes to Sweet Green. Right. Exactly. After that, it will be something else. It'll be like, you know, maybe they'll pivot to the right. And it's like, don't you want to be a crusader? Don't you want to, don't you want to be based and like go to war and come back and take a wife? Well, they, I mean, they've started to do that. Yeah. Like, you know, with the, the rehabilitation of burnout neocons into the democratic sphere now, you know, the people

who kind of watched out with Trump, there is a lot of talk or there has been more talk about just kind of frankly saying we need to be in Afghanistan forever because it's the frontier of the empire and we have to put in worse. But just, I do want to say like the, the, the fucking gall of George W. Bush to say that it's, it's an oversimplification to say that, that Bush and his heart on for Iraq caused the United States to drop the ball on Afghanistan and, and, you know, shift all of its resources to this other completely fucking moronic conflict. But, but it did contribute to the fact that this 20 year conflict has gotten nowhere. You know, you had a situation where the Taliban was beaten. The United States had, had achieved its

war aims in Afghanistan, except for this lingering, you know, taking apart the leadership of al-Qaeda. And it was at that point that this fucking numb nuts said, we have to go to Iraq now, we have to go after Saddam Hussein for reasons that, you know, are, are entirely, were entirely bullshit at the time and, and remain, you know, have gotten even, you know, revealed to be even more bullshit since then. But for him to now turn around and say, well, I feel bad for Afghan women. I mean, you know, what the fuck is the guy who, who, you know, started this, this shit show to begin with. And, but it seems that embraced like the neocons are returning home to the Democratic

party. And I think Felix is right. And Derek, as you were saying, it's already begun that that's going to be the move. The move is just going to be a move towards almost a pure power political situation. And I think most Americans just aren't going to care. They're their only move. I mean, like, you know, I do see a lot of talk in like, sort of the persuasion sphere, the right center to like stated left center of like, you know, young men are adrift, young men need meaning, but they're getting wrapped up in all this shit. And I think like the solution of that will be like, no, take your birthright, like become a man by killing someone. And it is that is very interesting, because if you look at

the Saudi foreign policy, where they never really had like a formalized, you know, they never really had formalized like, illegals programs or like, intelligent cells in other countries, but more or less just took their population to scare young men were like, here, go to Chechnya, here, go to, go to Afghanistan, go here, go here, go here, spread the word. You know, you, you, you become your client states if you do this long enough. And I don't really think that will work the same way. I think we're too far gone for that. I think that, you know, if you're, you're message to young men is, you know, you're adrift to claim your birthright, whatever. They're like, I already am. I'm posting. Right. You're not going to get them to do this. You're not going to get them into this

fucking dead end. No one gives a shit. You burnt out America on this for the better, probably. The most, honestly, like your best bet is, Hey, do you want to be well trained for the coming race wars in America? Yeah. Go, go out and get, get some, get, get some kills, get some notches on your gun and then come home because everybody now, everybody who wants to fight, they, they identify their enemy as within the, the, the, the, the moment, the time when you could imagine it as some scary other is over after Iraq crapped out. Everyone now sees the enemy as internal. But that, I mean, that's the, the amazing thing is, you know, that since the mid nineties, it's the destruction of like the America, the American like public housing high rise since people thought

like it was too scary to have something like Robert Taylor homes or Cabrini green sort of in the middle of the city. And it's like, okay, what's the solution? We're going to bring them down and everything fled into these lesser populated places that used to be like good middle class neighborhoods when there were good middle class jobs. It's like, why full, like this is for a different group than like, you know, socially dislocated white men, but like for people who live in like Englewood, someone who lives in like Obok or somewhere in Jacksonville or Memphis, it's like, I'm, I live in Syria. I live in Afghanistan. Like the war is fucking here. You're going to get me to sign up to go to another war. I live in fucking homes.

That's what so many American neighborhoods are already. And I also think you're going to see that shift robot soldiers as well. So there's going to be, there's going to be a real, I think, connection between gaming and military shit. And the military itself is already starting to get this going with things like eSports teams and there's new developments in AI. It's like that old Simpsons joke, you know, robot, robot warriors will be fighting in the future. And I think we're going to start seeing that the next 10 years, maybe earlier. The wars of the future will not be fought on a battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will

be done by small robots. And as you go forth today, remember always, your duty is clear to build and maintain those robots. Just like the broader point about the Afghan withdrawal or like the seeming like this, finally, like we're leaving that country. And, you know, with it, you see the concurrent like news stories about, oh, what about our translators? What about all the people that are going to die? What about all these, what about all this footage of like the Taliban recovering like tons of American weapons and infrastructure? Oh, like, how do you feel about that? And I think, I mean, it's heartening in one way to see that basically nobody, the president included, gives a shit. But like, I

can't, you can't draw too much hope out of that because I just think like the American public overall just doesn't care about anything that happens overseas. And to the extent that it doesn't trouble them, they'll countenance any level of horror us directly engaging in it or otherwise. No, yeah, that is the way that like the people now who are trying to emotional manipulation, the thing that allowed them to do it for so long, the thing that allowed them to run this gangster state internationally so long was the fact that Americans genuinely do not like thinking about this. The thing that's preventing us to quote the Thomas challenge from getting back out there, getting back out there is, yeah, that we don't like thinking about this at all. You can't emotionally

manipulate someone who's already doesn't care. And that's, I just want to underline that that's really by design. When the American empire was being created in the 40s, the people who did it were like, we're not going to give ordinary Americans any say over imperial management. And so basically the entire national security state is by design made to remove not only ordinary people, which like we barely get anything in the system anyway, but even Congress, you know, if you think about things that should properly be the function of a state like, I don't know, researching what a state should do, that's privatized in this country to think tanks. And now that's just expanded to be privatized to the literal fighting of wars. We basically have

mercenaries like Gustavus Adolphus traipsing across Europe, we have a mercenary army effectively. And so Americans, of course, they don't give a shit because they have no fucking say about what their country does in the world. This is in terms of like the reality of the prospects of the Taliban once again, taking over control of all of Afghanistan. I mean, Derek, you mentioned earlier that I mean, like for the show, initially that Biden, like they're seeking to maybe offset that in some way by building a new military base in Central Asia, or like it would have involved some deal with Russia in order for that to be the case. I mean, like, how does that affect? Yeah, the Russia thing is something I've just seen in the last couple of days. But I mean,

the idea is sort of the deal for the US to withdraw is contingent on the Taliban meetings certain basically on unenforceable conditions, one of which is separating itself from al-Qaeda and sort of making sure that Afghanistan is known is never again used as a hideout for international terrorism. So the point, you know, what they've been talking about is kind of, how can we do some kind of a facility? How can we put some kind of a facility around Afghanistan in the vicinity, you know, preferably in a Central Asian country, one of the old Soviet republics to monitor that and if necessary to do a drone strike on like an al-Qaeda group or an Islamic State group or whatever, you know, if we see something going on and

potentially, and you know, we've seen people kind of slip, especially senior military officers kind of slip and suggest that this base could also be used to attack the Taliban if there was some kind of catastrophic event like the fall of Saigon, basically, you know, the fall of Kabul. But yeah, it's been, I mean, none of the Central Asian republics have been seemingly very amenable to this. They're all kind of trying to make peace with the idea of the Taliban taking over again and, you know, not antagonizing and causing a rift with them. They're also, all of them, you know, are still somewhat beholden to Russia in some way or at least need to take, you know, Russian concerns into account about hosting the American

military. And so there's been over the last few days, I've seen floated the idea of the U.S. kind of leasing or borrowing military facilities from Russia in Central Asia. But that would come with, I mean, that would come with a lot of conditions like intelligence sharing with the Russians, you know, their concerns about like putting U.S. drones at a Russian base and like having Russian personnel looking at these things. We can lease their military bases, but we have to allow their bots on our social media. So I don't, I mean, I don't think that's going to go anywhere. But this is still something that that's talked about in terms of kind of maintaining some kind of a presence in the region, even after the withdrawal from Afghanistan,

which just highlights the psychopathy of this whole approach. What is the United States doing in this region? What and what fucking way is our American interests connected to just being permanently dominant in basically Southwest Asia forever? I mean, this is a, it's a pathology. It makes absolutely no sense, especially given what's going on at home. And so you just see this like deep throbbing psychosis at the core of the entirety of U.S. foreign policy across parties. It's really fucking grim shit. I see where you're coming from with that. But, you know, maybe if we have more of a working relationship with these Russians, hardworking Americans who maybe own a business, who maybe are living, they have the space, they'll finally be able to buy

the sable that they want. Not referring to anyone specifically, just someone, yeah. Business owner or business owner, not like you would see him on the street and go, that's a handsome guy, but he's, it wouldn't, you wouldn't immediately pick him for a business owner. You'd be like, oh, he's a bit over six feet. He's very confident. That's the guy who, animals respect him. Everyone knows that. If he got two sables, a brother and a sister, he'd have no problems. He doesn't have wallpapers. They can't fuck that up. There you go. Yeah. And he should be able to own two sables because he loves them. The one, one other thing about Afghanistan that's sort of in kind of in concert with

what we talked about earlier in the show, the rise of more proxy conflicts and less direct US involvement. One of the lingering issues is with the withdrawal. It has been the security of Kabul airport, which either needs to, there probably needs to be some independent security for stationed there or else a lot of countries, maybe the US included are going to pack up their embassies in Kabul and get the hell out of there because they don't have any confidence that, that the Afghan government can hold on to the city. So we've been talking to Turkey about putting, again, kind of leaving a residual force at the airport just to secure the airport as a proxy basically for the United States. The Turks have said they would be willing to do that with

US support. The Taliban has said, hell, no, Turkey needs to get out along with the rest of NATO. And so that's very much up in the air. Like the Turks are supposedly going to be in negotiations with the Taliban directly to kind of hash this out if they can. But I don't know that seems like a dead end to me. It's very similar to the whole end of Vietnam thing with the decent interval strategy. I mean, I don't know, Derek, if you agree, but that's kind of what I view this like everyone kind of knows in 10 years, it's probably going to be dominated by the Taliban. But it's just the idea of like American prestige needs to be protected for a certain certain number of years ideally. I really think that's what's going on here. So they're just trying to like delay the

delay the inevitable, which is a Saigon type scenario. Kissinger same thing. Yeah, exactly. That's what I think it is. Yeah, I think you there's a there's a desire to sort of put some distance between our withdrawal and the fall of Kabul. There's also this sort of Hail Mary idea that with the US gone, the other countries in the region, Russia, Iran, India, Pakistan, you know, will all of whom for one reason or another have have some, you know, reason not to want the Taliban to take over in Afghanistan or or worse to have Afghanistan kind of fallen into perpetual civil war again. So there's this kind of Hail Mary hope that that the these other countries China also would be included in this would step in and take over some responsibility

for this themselves. And you know, I mean, that's that's a shot in the dark, I think. But it's good luck. It can't possibly be any worse than what's what the United States has done. So I will see. All right. Well, to do move on, move away from Central Asia over to this hemisphere. I mean, I want to talk about Haiti. We don't need to talk too long because it's very hard to figure out what's going exactly what's going on because it's very hard to get like reliable information. But in the now week or two weeks since the assassination of the Haitian president, Jovenel Moise by what appear to be Colombian mercenaries hired by some shady fucking doctor in Florida. I mean, well, I mean, Haiti, Haiti isn't like a political crisis right now because

it's like very I mean, like who exactly is in charge of that company. But like in the in the time that's passed since has there been any development in terms of just the very least just speculating on who is really behind this assassination and what their goal is. And also, could you talk about the prospects for perhaps a US intervention? Because I'm seeing more and more calls that the US needs to intervene in Haiti to be because of the political ongoing political crisis in terms of like who is running the country. I mean, the answer is I don't know, like that people want it to be the United States or the UN blue helmets or something like that. Right. Yeah. I mean, you know, the US and intervention in Haiti's worked out so well

every other time we've done it. Yeah, we got a long history. You know, it's it's it's always a good deal, especially for the Haitian. I think the possibility of an intervention, I think is direct intervention has shrunk a little bit, I think. First of all, Biden, you know, said that he has he's not planning to intervene in that way is not going to send the US military in. Secondly, the political crisis is starting. It looks like it may be starting to resolve itself a little bit. There was a dispute between the interim Prime Minister, Claude Joseph, who sort of assumed power after Moise was assassinated. Even though he was, you know, within days of being kind of on his way out of that job. Moise had appointed a new Prime Minister Ariel,

I guess, Henry. I don't know. My French is not good. So excuse me. But there was some I mean, there was a kind of sort of contest between these two guys, who was the legitimate Prime Minister and who could legitimately form a government. Joseph announced, I think just today, actually, that he's going to step down and make way for for Ariel, Henry. So that that part of it seems to have seems to be resolving itself. There's no longer two claimants to the the premiership. There's only one that doesn't resolve the issue of who should be the interim president. And that's really a legal constitutional question that can't be resolved, basically, because Haiti doesn't have a functioning parliament and the chief justice of their Supreme Court, who was under at least one

interpretation of the law was was next in line to be president died, I think, last month of COVID. So he's not an option. So they really, I mean, they were really in kind of an empty space here. And there's there should be an election later this year for both parliament and the president. So that that that could resolve things if it happens at this point. You know, who knows. In terms of the the assassins, these Colombians, I, you know, it's it's still very murky. You know, there's been speculation about, you know, some some element of this being an inside job or that the Colombians claiming that they were hired to actually provide security for Moïse and that there was, you know, his own kind of Haitian security was involved in the assassination or

something like that. There's a lot of kind of conspiracy theories running around. The one that I've seen that that makes the most sense to me is that Moïse was kind of, you know, sacrificed in a sense by the kind of conservative elements in Haitian politics who had kind of worn out their their patience with him in the extended kind of years long political crisis or the couple of years, at least, that he's overseeing and kind of were worried that that that he was going to lose control to, you know, some really unacceptable faction leftists or, you know, God forbid the people of Haiti. And so they they bumped him off to kind of gain some control of the situation and maybe to actually try to spark a U.S. intervention to try and get Washington to do something to step in

and put its foot down. But I, you know, that's that's all speculative as far as I know. But the U.S. did that, you know, 25 years ago, 27 years ago. So it's not totally crazy. And I just wanted to highlight that again. Yeah, we see from the Middle East to Haiti, right, the importance of these mercenaries, we see a change in sort of the structure of warfare that the United States has it has supported for the last 30 years. I mean, these guys must in some way be connected to Plan Colombia. You know, there's just no way that they're not in any meaningful way. And so we see, you know, again, the blowback that the coming home to roost of what happens when the United States supports these international mercenary groups around the world

essentially creates them. And you'll see stuff like this more and more as field armies, you know, go back. Well, I mean, just just real quick, I mean, like the once deposed president of Haiti, Jean Bertrand Aristide just returned to Haiti just yesterday from he was in Cuba for like a month for I think seeking like unspecified medical treatment. But he was greeted by hundreds at the airport. But yeah, like, I mean, he was the guy that we, you know, like shuffled out of there in the early 90s. But I mean, like, do you have I mean, is there is that complicate matters? I mean, does Aristide have a still have a popular constituency in Haiti? I mean, I, it was an interesting timing. I don't I don't know enough about Haitian politics to say how much support he has.

But it was certainly interesting timing for him to come back just now. You know, I whether the US would allow that because, you know, as you say, we've had we already took him out once. You know, that's that's another question entirely. But he could, I mean, he could be a player here, you know, certainly. And if not as an actual contender for for the presidency or the for power as somebody kind of, you know, working behind the scenes. Yeah, a lot of I've heard experts on Haiti refer to the gangsterization of the company and of the company of the country. So I think that's also an interesting way to look at it that there are these different power centers, like not like the five families fighting, right? And you could have

a charismatic leader come back and assume control of one of the various gangster groups. And that could have some potential effect. But I think, like Derek says, it's really in process right now. Well, moving on from Haiti to the the country that Aristide was seeking medical treatment in just just finally. And you know, we talked about this a lot lately, but Cuba, you know, obviously protests are ongoing protests and counter protests are ongoing in Cuba. And anytime when Cuba is in the news, particularly if there is an upswell in anti government sentiment among people on the island, it's always going to be like, you know, leading in the news because of how powerful the, you know, Florida Cuban community is in shaping American policy and just how we

think about Cuba. And that and, you know, like that that country in that part of the world, I mean, there's sort of a there was a plan sort of like a Bay of influencers, where people like like wanting the US government to give them the right to like arm themselves and to form a sort of flotilla of boats. Right, they're going to sail their yachts into Cuba, which, you know, as a plan, I'm 100% in favor of, I would really like to see that go forward. But I mean, I bring up Cuba again, just in one in one very specific sense. I mean, we've talked a lot about the protests that are going on there and the history of America and, you know, basically keeping that country and it's our crosshairs for about 70 years now. But I mean, specifically, I wanted to ask

you guys, because there is there's one specific thing I think we referenced that a little bit on the last show. But this is the the influence of the the discipline of political science on our understanding of the issues. Because I mean, there is this there is this tweet that was going around where it was like a political scientist who was using graphs to make the case that Cuba is, you know, she using using using the power of graphs, she was able to show a huge drop off in the freedom index when Batista was overthrown by Castro in 1959. So I was just wondering, like, just just like, I mean, the discipline of political, the political science in general, I mean, like, I mean, it was so hilarious, and it was such a perfect encapsulation of it to be like, well, if you look at this

graph here, you'll see that the antebellum South was actually a freer country than Haiti under a communist rule. But like, it just, I mean, this is this is a hokum, right? I mean, no one who studied it, but these these numbers are like hot or not for geopolitics. Basically, it's like, you your democracy is a two. But my democracy is a 10. It's hot as shit. It's a smoke show. It's a 10 out of 10 smoke show. You know, it's hot. The hottest democracy gone. And you like, assign these numbers based on arbitrary characteristics of what you think a democracy should look like, which is basically what is the United States or, you know, whatever model, Western model you have of what democracy is supposed to be, you subjectively then, you know, kind of group these

things and give it a number and then put it on a graph. So you somehow kind of transmogrify it into an objective statistic, right? And then you can start to compare things and, you know, and treat it like it's a fact instead of just a, you know, a fucking arbitrary opinion. Yeah. And as someone who unfortunately is devoted their life to studying the history of political science in some sense, it's really a discipline that arose during and after World War II, totally in concert with the American Empire. And I think it's really important to recognize that things like area studies were funded by the US government, partially to create a cadre of experts able to manage the American imperial apparatus. And so you get the creation of a literal discipline in the United States' most

elite universities that is specifically designed to foster American empire and American hegemony. And things like the Freedom Index and things that are promoted by places like Freedom House, I just think are epistemologically, that is, in terms of the knowledge that they represent, are really ridiculous. They're trying to quantify and they're trying to model a social reality that is ultimately unmodelable. That search for perfect knowledge, which is so characteristic of the post World War II American state and American society and American universities, I think it's just fundamentally misguided. You're not going to be able to abstract social reality into numbers in a way that will either give you accurate predictions or an understanding of

what's going on in the ground. Because the ultimate normative, the normative thing that all these things are being measured against is the United States. And it's not only the United States, it's a particular class of American elites and what they understand the United States to be. So in some sense, I just think from a fundamental perspective, the project is totally misguided and it gets even more misguided when you try to quantify things like freedom or happiness. It's just total bullshit. It's just total bullshit, in my opinion. But just in terms of the Freedom Index thing, right? Because it's just like, well, by the standards of the US Constitution, I mean, you could point to Cuba and say like,

Cubans have less political rights or freedoms in terms of like joining political parties or having a free press than America, or let's say some of our allies in the Western Hemisphere like Colombia or Honduras or whatever. But like, in obscuring a social reality, it's like, sort of like, well, which country would you rather live in as like an average person? And what is freedom? What is more freeing in your life? Like the right to join whatever political party you want or the right to not be killed by a death squad? Well, the idea that democracy can only be multi-party voting is absurd anyway. I mean, and that's why Cuba really is such a good litmus test for just how much you've,

if you consider yourself a leftist, how much you've really thought about what it would mean to transcend capitalism. Is it the idea? Well, no, it would basically be just the same. And you'd have all these different parties as voting. Well, no, no, you would absolutely not because these things only exist in the context of capitalism. And one of the things that's happened in the US, particularly among people who like discuss what freedom means is that since the 30s, freedom has been explicitly defined as political freedom as opposed to economic freedom or social freedom or cultural freedom. And that really is part and parcel of the project, I think, to remove ordinary people from any form of decision making in the

United States. When you defy freedom as essentially the right to vote, that's actually a very weak understanding of democracy. And everyone remembers the two fingers of Iraq and the voting in 2006. I mean, was that freedom? It's completely ridiculous. And so you have this normative perspective that is never talked about when people quantify these ridiculous metrics. I mean, that's why everybody is now hyper conspiracy theory oriented is because we're told every day that you were free and that we get to vote and that that vote is validating our choices. And yet everything that happens is against our will. What we don't want makes our lives worse. How is that to be explained? And there is no effort to square that. And so,

of course, people are going to figure, well, there have to be people behind the scenes. It's like, yeah, they are. They are doing things behind the scenes. And one of the ways they're doing that is by promoting an idea of freedom that involves this ritualized participation in democracy that does not touch any of the actual meaningful questions of economic freedom and the destiny, literally, of the fucking people. Like, what's going to happen to the industrial base? What's going to happen to the culture in every way? Those decisions are not made at the ballot box, but we're supposed to allow the vote to stand in for a validation of it, even though there is no mechanism to enforce our will.

I think that's right. And one of the other things that bugs me about these things, like the freedom index, is they're done in a vacuum. I mean, they're done without any context of the particular country's experience. And they're presented, you know, if you're rated unfree or whatever, partly unfree or whatever the ratings are, it's all characterized as sort of a failure of that country or a defect of that country. We don't talk about the 62-year embargo that the United States has levied on Cuba and what kind of impact that has on the politics of a country. We don't talk about sanctions on Iran and what kind of impact those have on the politics of a country that engender or create these situations that we then define as a lack of

freedom or contribute to that. They're just empty measures. I mean, I want to share this idea about what in an American context we consider, like what's a free country versus a tyrannical authoritarian one? And a good example, because you can see it, is our protests against the ruling regime violently and brutally suppressed by the police and military forces that run that country. And in Cuba, I mean, there's been a lot of protests against the government and for the government. I'm sure, I mean, it's hard to tell, but I have not seen any of what I would consider credible media reports from credible journalists, American or in the Spanish-speaking world, that would suggest that these protests in Cuba are

being ruthlessly and violently suppressed by the Cuban state. I'm sure it's not all kid gloves. I don't want to make it seem like it's all just everything's fine and nice down there. But let's contrast that with just the events of not even a couple weeks ago in Colombia, where there had been a massive, massive protest movement in that country, mostly led by young people against their rather right-wing government, of which we know from the Colombian journalists, and because, oh, wow, they have a nominally free press in that country, we're able to know about things like this, that was suppressed by the Colombian police and military in a number of ghastly and unspeakable ways, including rape, torture, and murder of, you know, we don't eat,

like, possibly hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians. And I mean, like, and again, Colombia, but like, corresponding with that, with this horrible, horrible violent crackdown on peaceful protests in Colombia, we didn't see the sort of like the outpouring of people of Colombian Americans saying, like, oh, my country, it yearns for freedom, please, America, intervene. Yeah, well, I think what you're getting at is really important, because what you're pointing to is that there's this element of liberalism that really fixates on the idea of a free press. And I think, you know, whether a capitalist press can ever be truly free is really important, but I think it's based on the idea that a type of rational exchange is the key to political

development. And so it's so foundational to how people understand politics, they don't even appreciate that that's what they're doing. They're like Jurgen Habermas claiming that, you know, if information is free, then political progress will happen. And I just think that's historically and empirically untrue, but it's hard to, it's like a religious belief, it's hard to persuade people that that's not actually how things work. And so then they fixate on it, and they lose sight of what I would say is more important things like what you're referring to, which is brutal crackdowns on actual protesters, the violence of the state, a conservative state that does so much to disenfranchise its people. I don't even know if you, I don't even know that

you need to go to Colombia for this. I mean, just look at, I would be fascinated to do a poll and find out how many people in the United States who have been tweeting support for the protesters in Cuba think that it should be legal to run over Black Lives Matter protesters because you're late for your latte at Starbucks or you're, you know, you're blocking your your path to the Dunkin' Donuts or whatever. It's a huge disconnect. That's a very good point, Derek, because like, oh, just over this last weekend, I mean, we all saw that video of an LAPD officer firing at point blank range a beanbag shotgun shell directly into the chest of a woman standing directly in front of her unarmed with her hands in the air saying, don't shoot over some insane anti trans QAnon

protest at a fucking Korean spa in LA. And by the way, the woman who got shot was there to counter protest these fucking like fucking QAnon degenerates who were out there trying to check people's fucking genitals or just do whatever it is they do. But like, yeah, the cops just shot that woman in broad daylight in front of everyone's every TV camera. We all saw it. It hasn't been censored in our free press. But yeah, they just fucking they just shot her directly in the chest with a less than lethal beanbag round from a shotgun. And again, like, I mean, so for Jen Sackie to come out there and then urge the Cuban government to, you know, use restraint and not to violently suppress protests in their country is pretty fucking rich. Yeah, I mean, you can go around

other protests that have happened, you know, relatively recently in Latin America, you can look at the protests in Chile, you know, a few months ago, or the, you know, calls to change the Constitution. And the number of people who were blinded by cops firing rubber bullets at their heads in that protest movement were was ridiculous. You can look at all the people who were killed after the right wing junta took power in Bolivia, you know, without hearing, you know, a solitary word from Washington about the need for control or, you know, kind of, you know, preserve and protecting the right to protest or exercising any restraint. It's, I mean, yeah, it's sort of obvious what direction this rhetoric flows. It's only one direction. I mean, yeah, I mean, we know we know

pointing out the hypocrisy of the US state is a fool's errand. But, you know, I mean, it's, it's right there in front of everyone. It is juicy and unmistakable to miss. I mean, you're like, yeah, it's staring you right in the face, but particularly after Trump, right? I mean, like these are the people who spent four years disclaiming against Trump, too. I think that's what makes it like not just, you know, that's why it's worth pointing out because it was just all hypocritical bullshit the entire time. And I think that's worth understanding and highlighting. All right. Well, okay, wrapping up our show for today, I have a reading series that I think is the perfect companion piece, everything we've talked about today. It comes courtesy of David Brooks

writing in the op-ed section of the New York Times headline, The American Identity Crisis. You boys ready? I'm always ready for a little David. Yeah, absolutely. David Brooks begins. For most of the past century, human dignity had a friend, the United States of America. It's off to a good start. There is no greater friend of human dignity than the United States of America over the past century. We are a deeply flawed and error-prone nation like any other, but America helped defeat fascism and communism and helps set the context for European peace, Asian prosperity, and the spread of democracy. We just were error-prone. We do oopsies, you know, oopsie, 500,000 Iraqis are dead, oopsie, you know, Venezuela's in shambles, oops, oops, oops.

Yeah, that's my bad. That is one of the most frustrating framings of American power, that it's anything bad that happens is oversight. It's a poor mistake. It's more insulting than just admitting that we did it on purpose. And 100 years ago, the U.S. was occupying Haiti and the Philippines just to point out to, you know, like literally 100 years ago. Then came Iraq and Afghanistan, the two big oopsies of the 21st century. So then came Iraq and Afghanistan, and America lost faith in itself and its global role. Like a pitcher who's been shelled and no longer has confidence in his own stuff. I mean, God, it's just, we got to develop a new pitch. You know, we got to work on our changeup. We've lost some of that gas. Get back in the bullpen. How can we get out on that

mountain? A pitcher who maybe said some uncomfortable but true things about New York when he took the seventh train. Okay, Brooks continues, on the left, many now reject the idea that America can be or is a global champion of democracy. And they find phrases like the indispensable nation or the last best hope on earth, ridiculous. On the right, the wall building caucus has given up on the idea that the rest of the world is even worth engaging. I mean, it used to be David Brooks could wear his Ask Me About the Indispensable Nation t-shirt around Washington DC without gales of laughter from him around. But that's become more difficult as of late. Many people around the world have always

resisted America's self-appointed role as democracy's champion. Most of the population of the world have resisted America's self-appointed role as the indispensable nation. The Afghans are the latest to witness this reality. The American bungles in Afghanistan have been well documented. We've spent trillions of dollars and lost thousands of our people. No mention of the Afghan people. But the two decades strategy of taking the fight to the terrorists in Afghanistan and elsewhere has meant that global terrorism is no longer seen as a major concern in daily life. I mean, is that really the reason that people no longer really care about global terrorism as a concern in their daily life? I mean, the fact that it never really was a major concern in daily life should probably answer into this. Over the past few years, a small force of American troops has helped prevent some of the worst people on earth from taking over a nation of more than 38 million with relatively few American casualties. Okay. I mean, how about other people casualties? Do we care about those? David knows his audience. You have to admit. Well, I just like he says that we prevented some of the worst people on earth from taking over the country of Afghanistan. It's like, David, are you talking about your friends at the American Enterprise Institute and the Burdys Foundation? In 1999, no Afghan girls attended secondary school. Within four years, 6% were enrolled, and as of 2017, the figure has climbed to nearly 40%. But America disillusioned with itself is now withdrawing. I mean, this is the thing. Are we withdrawing because we're just so disillusioned with ourself or as we've been drawing because we've been defeated? We've been defeated. Yeah, we've lost. I mean, this thing like this psychoanalysis of the American public, which Danny, as you pointed out, has from the get-go been completely cut off from having any say whatsoever in whether we go to war, stay in war, how we intervene in other countries.

It's just, oh, like Brooks has to psychoanalyze us now because we're all just so alienated and disillusioned and we've lost our faith. It's like, no, we lost. We lost that war. We have no ability to project force or impose conditions on Afghanistan because we've been routed and we have to leave because we just can't do it anymore. This reminds me of an article that you write about an athlete who's maybe been at their sport for too long, and it's like, oh, they need to fall in love with the game again. We just got caught out there. Well, it's also like his implicit program is genuinely psychotic. It's hundreds of years of military occupation. Like him and Max Boot, I think they, well, Boot definitely has made a reference to like the so-called Indian wars. And that's essentially what Brooks is advocating, like a permanent frontier, you know, genocidal, exterminatory campaign to create Afghanistan and the image of the United States. And it's wild that that sort of thing could still be in the mainstream. It's just so racist, so brutal. It's really bizarre. But again, I mean, because we've outsourced so much of this and because it's, you know, there's no longer a draft. There's no longer even a sense that the military at large is involved here as opposed to a small group within it. We're outsourcing even further to drones and, you know, robots basically over human beings because of that. And we don't even, I mean, we don't even raise taxes to cover the cost of these things anymore. The person who reads David Brooks, the kind of person who eagerly picks up the New York Times is like, I want to, what did David have to say today? They feel none of this. They feel no impact from a perpetual occupation of Afghanistan. There's nothing that touches them from that. And so he can say stuff like this. I mean, he can talk about, well, we should just keep doing this forever. It hasn't mustered your hair so far. So why, you know, why should you care? Let's keep doing it. Jumping ahead, Brooks writes, history didn't stop just because America lost confidence in itself. As President Biden correctly notes, the world finds itself enmeshed in a vast contest between democracy and different forms of autocracy. This is not just a struggle between political systems.

It's an economic, cultural, intellectual and political context, all at once, a struggle between the forces of progressive modernity and reaction. I mean, is he talking about the rest of the world or just America itself? Because I mean, like, that's a pretty accurate description of our domestic political climate. But I mean, I'm not sure David Brooks is entirely on the side of the angels in that conflict. Over the past decades, America and its allies have betrayed our values and compromise with tyrants innumerable times. But at their core, the liberal powers radiate a set of vital ideals, not just democracy and capitalism, but also feminism, multiculturalism, human rights, egalitarianism, LGBTQ rights and the dream of racial justice. These things are all intertwined in a progressive package that puts individual dignity at the center. That is a hell of a to be sure paragraph. What? Yeah. To be sure, we've murdered and annihilated so many countries. No, no, they compromised with tyrants. It's like, oh, we'd like you to be better. But geez, you're just holding all the cards. We're just you're only close soul hegemon. We're just going to have to meet halfway here rather than the word dictating the terms of what we want in these places to the degree we can. It's another unfortunate oopsie. Oops, you've, you know, took a bone saw to a reporter and the consulate and this double oops. Right. Ask your dignity dealer about the progressive package. Oh, yeah, it's interesting that he's trying to like frame it as progressive, which I think points to sort of this rehabilitation of neocons and the Democratic Party. That is, I think, unique. That's not the language they would have used 20 years ago.

So that's that sort of shows that shift. Well, yeah, in that paragraph, he says, look, oh, no, it's not just liberal democracy and capitalism. It's all these bonuses that go along with it, like feminism, multiculturalism, egalitarianism and LGBTQ rights, which are the now the new justification for our ongoing cold and hot wars over the world. But I mean, this is doubly odd coming from David Brooks, because I mean, like, when did he decide that he was for gay and lesbian and trans rights? Well, I mean, when his when his audience shifted to, you know, MSNBC viewers as opposed to Fox News. I mean, but like David Brooks, particularly specifically during the Bush administration on the W. Bush administration, wed himself entirely to a political project that explicitly sought to abrogate the rights of gay and lesbian people in this country. Yeah, you can't imagine. I mean, you couldn't possibly imagine him justifying this conflict, you know, 15 years ago on the basis of what he writes in this paragraph. I mean, his audience would the audience that he had at that time would would read this and go, you know, what, what the hell are you talking about, dude? I don't want any of those things like I don't agree with any of that. Yes, I think it's trying to get back into like sort of the elite urban meritocratic educated sphere. Like that that is where the need I mean, it's a return home.

That's where they started in their early 70s. They're scooped Jackson Democrats effectively. So they're returning back. I wouldn't be surprised if they start doing pro labor positions soon as well, like Jackson did initially. The 21st century has taught us anything. It's that a lot of people foreign and domestic don't like that package and feel existentially threatened by it. China's leaders are not just autocrats. They think they're leading a civilization state and are willing to slaughter ethnic minorities. Vladimir Putin is not just a thug. He's a cultural reactionary. The Taliban champion a vision champion a fantasy version of the Middle Ages. These people are not leading 20th century liberation movements against colonialism and American hegemony. They are leading a 21st century culture conflict against women's rights, gay rights, minority rights, individual dignity, the whole progressive package. Vladimir Putin needs to stop sagging his pants. He's got to invest. He's got to buy into this dignity package that he's talking about. Vladimir Putin is walking around wearing huge UNC powder blue basketball shorts.

David Brooks aligning himself with pro nationalist decolonization movements is fucking ridiculous. That is absurd. He says, you know, this is a culture war and not a traditional great power rivalry because the threat to each nation is more internal than external. The greatest threat to America is that domestic autocrats inspired by a global authoritarian movement will again take over the US government. The greatest threat to China is that internal liberals inspired by global liberal ideas will threaten the regime. Each civilization is thus trying to attract believers to its own vision. It matters tremendously how we show up in the world. We're never going back to the Bush doctrine, but we're probably not going to do well in the battle for hearts and minds if we see ourselves abandoning our allies in places like Afghanistan. We're probably not going to do well if our own behavior begins to represent the real politic of autocrats. We probably won't do well if we can't look at ourselves in the mirror without a twinge of shame.

David, how have you been looking at yourself at all these past 20, 30 years? Are there any mirrors in your house? I mean, it should have been Shiva at his fucking place for his entire career. I don't know how he passes by a fucking storefront window without catching a glimpse of himself and wanting to end it. I think he looks at himself in the mirror like Patrick Bateman did. I guess what befuddles me the most is the behavior of the American left. But get why Donald Trump and other American authoritarians would be ambivalent about America's role in the world. They were always suspicious of the progressive package that America helped promote. But every day I see progressives defending women's rights, LGBTQ rights, and racial justice at home,

and yet championing a foreign policy that seeds power to the Taliban, Hamas, and other reactionary forces abroad. If we're going to fight Trumpian authoritarianism at home, we have to fight the more venomous brands of authoritarianism that thrive around the world. That means staying on the field. I gotta give credit to him because he is like Alexander Dugan is being the fucking, I think you should leave guy right now. Like, oh my God, they admit it. Like he is saying that the neoliberal death empire is inextricably linked to ideas of cultural pluralism and racial and sexual egalitarianism. And that those two things are inextricably linked and it's a package deal. If you want gay rights and trans rights, then you need drones and you need the IMF controlling your economy. That is a, you cannot detach those. You cannot unbundle them like it's a cable package. Yeah, and I think this is not a pitch to the people that would actually have to fill out the personnel, the military of the infantry. Like that'll be something else. This is to the people who will, you know, be their bosses, will be civilian, civilian officers at the CIA, people who like, you know, program the shitty AI for drones, shit like that.

But like, you know, they'll come up with something else for infantry because they're not going to get you to like put your body on the line with like, you know, we need to get past students to watch Schitt's Creek. No, I mean, they don't need to get anything for them. Economic coercion will do it for them. Yeah. But for people who you need to have a certain degree of expertise to do these jobs within the machinery, within the bureaucracy, you need to, it's just like with that, the woke CIA recruitment film. Exactly. These people have to have gone to college and the people who go to college have by virtue of the fact that they're on that track already have metabolized certain values. And this project is, Brooks is just part of the broader project of creating a rationalization for these people as they pursue these careers that allow them to sleep at night. I mean, it's so historic. I mean, to talk about the United States championing women's rights around the world. I mean, has he heard of the Helms Amendment?

Has he heard of the global gag rule? Has he heard of any of the things the United States has consistently done for decades to damage women's health care and women's rights all over the world? It's just sort of amazing to see this kind of mythical presentation of U.S. foreign policy as the conduit for these progressive ideals. Has he heard of it, David? He supported it until about 15 minutes ago. Exactly. I mean, I guess just like the theme for today's episode is the neocons are all going back to their roots in the Democratic Party and it seems to be a perfect fit. It's not communism anymore and it certainly isn't terrorism anymore because no one gives a shit, but now the new excuse is the progressive dignity package that we have to engage in a global war in perpetuity forever. Because the Democratic Party is now fully the party of the international bourgeois and the Republican Party is the party of the small national bourgeois who don't want to fucking have an empire. They think they can do domestic capitalism. They can't. They're idiots, but they think that and they have completely control. They have complete institutional control at this point of the Republican Party.

All right. Well, I think that does it for David Brooks and this week's show. But before we go, Derek and Danny, would you tell the folks about American prestige, how to listen and what to expect? Yeah, Danny, you want to take this one? You want to start? Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah, I'll take this one. So American Precision is just the new foreign policy podcast by the two hottest foreign policy analysts working today. That's Derek and myself. You could find it on anywhere you could get your podcast. And what we're really going to try to do is connect a lot of these issues that seem disconnected from what people go through in their lives to what's actually happening in the United States and present the global structure for what it is, which is a world order led and dominated. And I would say perverted by a U.S. hegemony in the U.S. empire. So we plan to release episodes roughly every Friday and we'd really appreciate any support that you could give us to build a sort of independent news source and commentary source about what's going on in the world and how many countries the U.S. is bombing this week. Yeah, it's really, you know, I think we want to marry, you know, some context for the things that are happening in the world to the sort of bigger picture things that we talk about in terms of U.S. foreign policy and the impact that the United States has on these things.

And so it's going to be a mix of kind of international stories and, you know, things that are more analytical in terms of America's role in the world and all the friends we've made along the way. And, you know, people can check us out. As Danny said, wherever you get your podcasts, there's a website, americanprestigepod.com that people can check out. And, you know, I'll put in a plug for the newsletter too for foreign exchanges, fx.substack.com where I'm doing some of this stuff as well. So yeah, check those out, please. I think maybe you missed me. I think you should have called the show The Oopsy Report. That would have been good. Catalogging all the oopsies of U.S. Empire. Well, links to both the foreign exchanges and the new show will be in the episode description. But gentlemen, it was always a pleasure to talk World Affairs with you guys. Derek Davidson and Daniel Bezner, thanks so much. Thanks a lot.

Thanks, guys. Until next time, boys. Bye-bye.