Pod Save the World - Henry Kissinger’s Complicated Legacy

Episode Date: December 6, 2023

Tommy and Ben discuss the latest news from Gaza, including Israeli forces moving into southern Gaza, the Biden administration’s shift from a “hug Bibi” strategy to publicly criticizing Israel, and the ongoing skirmishes between the US military and Iranian proxy forces. They also talk about the latest controversies and accomplishments at the COP28 climate summit, how the UAE is fueling the civil war in Sudan, a US ambassador turned Cuban spy and the complicated, but mostly terrible, legacy of Henry Kissinger. Then Tommy interviews Vermont Senator Peter Welch about why he’s calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and what’s going on with Biden’s supplemental funding bill for Israel and Ukraine. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to Posit of the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, did you hear that four of the gold bars found at Bob Menendez's house have been directly linked to the guy accused of bribing him? It's a weird coincidence, right? This is like one of the most open and shut cases in the history of true crime. We should do a crooked podcast, like a true, crooked true crime podcast on the Bob Menendez bus. But it's just two and a half minutes and we're like, here's the deal. A businessman named Fred Davy. Apparently this guy was, there was an armed robbery. This guy, Fred Davies, this businessman who allegedly was doing these corrupt deals with Menendez and bribing him. Davies got the gold bars stolen from him. He had to register their serial numbers with the cops to get them back, which means there's a very clear chain of custody of these gold bars from this businessman, Fred Davies, to Bob Menendez's, like closet or whatever they were.

And he's still in the Senate, right? He's still in the Senate, farm relations. committee still getting briefings you know did you see john fetterman trolling him with the george santos cameo yeah it was good it was uh well done well done sir you're on the road you're in the uk now but you i think yeah i'm telling you though i was in bradislava uh this morning and that is some place you need to check out as a very tell me more i you posted an instagram with a caption that made me think you were leaving to become a travel blogger because you seem very charmed by the place I, so I can't sleep on the first nights of these Europe trips.

And so I woke up at four in the morning and I went out at 5.30 and just like roam the streets of Bratislava for like two and a half hours. And I decided, I'm making an announcement today that I decided to become a travel writer. I was like, I'd just like to travel to charming places and write about them. But instead I just posted a bunch of pictures on Instagram. But it was very nice. And then I spoke at a very good conference on democracy in Bratislava. So hats off to some of our Obama Foundation leaders who put that on. So it was good.

That's awesome. I'm very jealous. You're going to be on Pod Save the UK in person. Tomorrow, I think. Tomorrow morning I will be in studio with Nish and Coco for Pod Save the UK. I cannot wait to talk a little British politics. I'm sure a little world-o content with them. So everybody should check out Pod Save the UK.

I'm really looking forward to it. They're fun. They're funny. I love that show. Yeah, they're funnier than us. I mean, you're funny. I'm a straight man, so I'll do that like that. Listen, wouldn't neither of us hold a candle to either of them.

But we got a great show today. We're going to cover the latest news from Gaza, a former top State Department official who was arrested for spying for Cuba. This is not Bob Bennett. This is another story. The latest messy headlines and accomplishments at the COP28 Climate Summit, the Civil War in Sudan, and the life in times of all of our mentor, Henry Kissinger.

And then after we record, Ben, I'm going to talk with Vermont Senator Peter Welch about why he called for a ceasefire in Gaza, the odds that Biden's supplemental funding bill for Israel and Ukraine passes, and maybe Tommy Tuberville, whatever we got time for, but I'm excited about that. Yeah, no, people should read, he put out a very long statement on the ceasefire too. He's very thoughtful guy, Peter Welch, so don't sleep on that guy. He's got a lot to say. I believe he's a holy cross grad, like our own John Favra. Ah, I didn't know that. Okay. Well, he's got that for him too.

I was Wiki in him earlier today. Okay, let's start with the latest news from Gaza. So, unfortunately, since we last talked, the fighting between Israel and Hamas has resumed, resumed on Friday. Both sides blamed each other for the failure to extend the weak-long ceasefire. But it does seem clear that Hamas was unwilling or unable to release all of the Israeli women that they're currently holding hostage. A lot of people are understandably quite concerned about how those women are being treated in captivity. There have been some truly horrifying reports lately about sexual violence by Hamas against Israeli women on October 7th. including rape, including mutilation, just the worst things you could imagine, a number of activists laid out, the overwhelming evidence of those atrocities at the United Nations on Monday. Israeli forces have now moved into southern Gaza. They started fighting in Kahn, Yines, Southern Gaza's largest city. The head of Israel's Southern military command said, quote, we are in the most intense day since the beginning of the ground operation in terms of terrorists killed, the number of firefighters and the use of firepower from the land and air. So things have not calmed down at all after the ceasefire. Sounds like the opposite is true. After being told to evacuate, you know, from north to south Gaza, hundreds of thousands of

civilians are now being told to evacuate again to go further south, maybe down to Rafah, which is right along the border with Egypt and is already filled with thousands of displaced people in temporary shelters. In Ben, in terms of like sort of signals about when the fighting in Gaza might end, Netanyahu reportedly believes that killing Hamas leader, Yaya Sinwar, might be enough to prove to the Israeli public that Israel had won the war, but that's just sort of one fragmentary report. Longer term, the Wall Street Journal reported that Israel's intelligence services are preparing to kill Hamas leaders all around the world when the war winds down, including in Lebanon,

Turkey, Qatar. So something, you know, you and I talked about and predicted, but sort of stark to see it in print. There was also a pretty shocking Times report that Israeli intelligence had attained the actual battle plan for the October 7th attack more than a year before it happened, that it was widely circulated among Israel's military and intelligence leaders, but was basically dismissed. This young, sounds like a younger, more junior female analyst was really trying to sound the alarm and was shut down by her senior commanders. So, you know, Ben, meanwhile, the U.S. messaging on Gaza seems to have evolved.

Here are two clips that kind of tell that story. The first is Vice President Kamala Harris, and the second is the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin. The United States is unequivocal. International humanitarian law must be respected. Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering and the images and videos coming from Gaza are devastating. You see, in this kind of a fight, the center of gravity is the civilian population. And if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat. So I have repeatedly made clear to Israel's leaders that protecting Palestinian civilians in Gaza

is both a moral responsibility and a strategic imperative. So two very good points there, Ben. But I mean, do you think that more critical messaging out of these two means that the U.S. has abandoned the like Hug Bibi strategy where we can't criticize Israel in public? I mean, it certainly feels that way, Tommy. Like, first of all, I do just want to footstop like the, if you didn't read the accounts of the UN meeting on the sexual violence, if you needed a reminder of just the horrific nature of Hamas and what they did on October 7th. Yeah. I'm glad that that was highlighted at that forum. I do think, though, that the issue that has been clear in the last few days is, you know, the read out of the pause was both the fact that

I think the administration wanted to extend that pause as long so it could to get as many hostages out diplomatically. But I also think they were hoping that if Israel resumed its military operation, that they would take on board a lot of this messaging that has come from the administration that you need to change the nature of this military operation. It can't be as indiscriminate. There can't be as many civilian casualties. It has to be more targeted.

And I think what we've seen in the last few days is the Israeli government is not taking that on board. And they're resuming bombardments of... civilians, frankly, and they're not moving to a more targeted way. And look, the Hug BB, there's been something kind of awkward about this, Tommy, for a couple weeks, because the administration's been touting that they have this Hug BB strategy while increasingly saying on background and sometimes on the record that they don't like what Israel's doing. So I'm not sure, you know, I think they've already moved beyond it, even if they haven't like

formally announced it. But I think it's the right approach. And look, I think what Lloyd Austin said was incredibly important, right? Because he said that this could be a strategic defeat for Israel. Right, right. And that's a very powerful point. And I think the thing that people should remember about Lloyd Austin is that he was the CENTCOM commander, basically the commander of the United States forces in the Middle East, during a lot of urban warfare, during efforts to go after ISIS, for instance,

that were really tough fights in tough environments, but were stressed. stretched out over longer periods of time and did not have the same dynamics that we're seeing at play in Gaza. And so, you know, to hear that kind of warning from him, I think indicates just how concerned the administration is that international public opinion is just not going to tolerate this degree of civilian death that they're not getting through to the Israelis because we know that Lloyd Austin was consulting with the IDF and with the Israeli security forces and leadership about how to think about this military operation. So for him to come out and say that publicly is an indication to me that he doesn't believe that they're taking on board that advice.

And this is happening at a time when the U.S. is prepared to try to pass a pretty massive aid package to support this military operation. And so it certainly feels like there's a greater willingness to criticize. We haven't seen that from President Biden yet, but we're certainly seeing it from other parts of the administration. And where it used to be kind of on background, There used to be people saying, you know, senior administration official says we're saying in private that they need to do more to prevent civilian deaths. Now you're starting to hear it publicly. And look, there's big questions that remain like there's a public dispute, a public difference about how Gaza should be governed going forward, whether the Palestinians are in charge, whether there's a multinational Arab force, which is the kind of ideas that the U.S. is supporting or whether Israel is this kind of open-ended de facto occupation. So there are already public. areas of daylight between the United States and Israel in this thing. So we're kind of already passed a hug-b-B-B-B strategy, but we're not kind of fully in a place where the U.S. is saying we don't agree with what is taking place. But I think that Lloyd Austin warning,

you know, speaks volumes. Yeah, I want to ask Senator Welch about the U.S. aid packaged to Israel and whether it might get conditioned. But you're right. I mean, what we're talking about now is sort of like tactical disputes about how to avoid civilian casualties. Those negotiations and disputes are easy when compared to these long-term questions about who's going to run Gaza. I mean, the U.S. very clearly is planning for the Palestinian authority to take on that role, something that Bibi Netanyahu is shut down really hard in public. So God knows how this will go going forward. Yeah, and I think the elephant in the room here is Denyahu, right?

And you brought up the warning, the intelligence report, which was kind of crazy. I thought that would be a bigger story in some ways, Tommy, because it was kind of analogous to it coming out that the U.S. before 9-11 had a blueprint for al-Qaeda hijacking four airplanes from ex-airports and flying him into these targets. I mean, it had the whole thing laid out. And again, we don't know whether Netanyahu says he wasn't briefed on it. But either way, he's the prime minister. He was on top of a system in which at the same time that he was distracted by his judicial. coup and he was focused on the West Bank, these warnings were getting ignored. And his approval rating is like lower than it's ever been. And so you have this hugely unpopular prime minister who has a track record of ignoring the United States, who's lost the confidence of his people and most of the people around the world, frankly, making these huge decisions about the future of this military operation, the future of Gaza. And that, to me, is a pretty unstable place to be. And to me, the point is that there really needs to be, I think, a new Israeli leadership as soon as possible, because if the idea is that we're going to wait until this is over, well, it may not be over for months, if not years, based on the messaging coming out of Netanyahu. So I do think that there's a real issue to be dealt with here. And look, I mean, let's just pause on a moment of what's happening in southern Gaza, because you had a bunch of people, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people told to evacuate to the south.

now they're being told to evacuate the south. They have nowhere to go because they can't leave Gaza. They've never quite – yeah. Look at this grid system that Israel created that they put online. You're supposed to go to certain specific sectors. Like, if you can't get online, if you can't power up your phone, if you – like, none of this seems workable. Yeah, and I can't think of a similar situation where you had two million plus people kind of trapped in a condensed geographic area with no capacity to leave and just being told to move around while bombs are falling. I mean, it's a pretty dark set of circumstances.

Yeah, it really is. Another couple of important pieces of the U.S. policy debates here, Ben. So Politico reported that after Hamas releases all the hostages, the U.S. is considering whether or not to demand that Qatar shut down Hamas's political office in the country. Last week, we went pretty deep on the sort of unique and controversial role that Qatar plays in diplomacy with Hamas and other bad actors like the Taliban. But shutting down that office, certainly raises. This is the question of who the U.S. or Israel would talk to if there were to be another crisis.

And then the other really important update is that the U.S. military continues to directly engage in fighting with these Iranian-linked proxy forces. In particular, the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Over the weekend, a U.S. Navy warship shot down three drones fired by the Houthis. Mostly they were fired at commercial vessels, but there's some reporting suggests that one of the drones might have been targeting a U.S. Navy vessel itself. It's not entirely clear. But the Houthis say they're firing these. ballistic missiles or drones to prevent Israeli ships from trafficking in the Red Sea until there's a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. Iran is almost certainly supporting these attacks.

And by the way, those attacks were absolutely not just aimed at Israeli vessels. They're screwing up all kinds of commerce and putting people at risk. The U.S. is reportedly considering setting up some sort of like naval task force to counter that threat. It could be similar to the anti-piracy effort we've seen over the past few years around Somalia. But these proxy attacks are also happening in Iraq and Syria. So, you know, Ben, you're seeing more and more calls from Republicans, but also kind of like Twitter warriors on social media, calling for the U.S. to take stronger military action against the Houthis or against Iran directly. And like all of it is a reminder that we are basically one failed missile defense system away from a U.S. Navy destroyer getting hit,

a lot of people being killed, a lot of service members being killed, and all hell breaking loose. And it just like it feels very, very fraught. And I do not think people realize how close to the edge of an all-out war with Iran we are. Yeah, because you've got, you know, you've had attacks in Syria. You've had attacks in Iraq. You've had attacks now on these vessels coming out of Yemen. You've had the U.S. hit IRGC, Iranian Revolutionary Guard targets in Syria already. So these questions of regional escalation are already happening, you know, just because it's not like an all-out war between the U.S. and Iran.

doesn't mean that there's not been a pretty significant escalation since October 7th. And so long as this war goes on in Gaza, I think those risks just continue to multiply. Look, I think it makes sense to have a task force that can create better protection and security for vessels that are transiting that area and to make sure that the U.S. has everything it needs to defend its own vessels. But these ideas that the U.S. just start bombing these targets in Yemen and other places, it's a slippery slope. We go to war with the Houthis in Yemen, already a war-torn country, already been devastated by a mistake by the U.S. and supporting the Saudi-led intervention there,

and that began the Obama administration, and we have to own that. But for the U.S. to just start bombing countries in the Middle East, this whole thing could get worse. And I think that's the danger of this war going on. There's obviously the principal danger to civilians. right now in Gaza more than anywhere else. But this thing, you know, this fire could catch in other places. Absolutely. Last thing you just wanted to mention is Axios reported that last week, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law, former shadow secretary of state, hosted a meeting in New York City between the prime minister of Qatar and a bunch of like billionaire business dudes. A source in the room said that the prime minister answered questions about the hostage negotiations

and Qatar's relationship with Hamas. This was first. frame to Axios is a meeting between Jewish businessmen and the PM, I don't know, some sort of attempt to bridge gaps. But remember, you know, this Qatari company state-backed one, I assume, cut Jared Kushner a $200 million check for a little investment fund. So clearly Jared was using the war in Gaza to show off his access, do a little client management, do a little client development. So good stuff. Never, never let a crisis go to ways, Jared. No, and, you know, long history with Qatar investing in, you know, 666, 5th Avenue or whatever the building was that Jared had a real estate investment in. And look, you know, one of the things I've noticed here, Tommy, I mean, just quick detour into American politics is that, you know, I'm traveling across Europe.

Everybody here is reading the same polls that we are, but they're more inclined to think that Trump is going to win. And I'm getting a little concerned about how that plays out in the Middle East, you know, because. if the Saudis and the Emirates and even the Israeli government begins to think that Trump is a likely next president. I don't know how that shapes their actions, but I have a sense that's probably not going to shape their actions in a good way. You know? Yeah. And so that's another thing to watch here, too. So this whole situation is getting more complicated.

I do think, you know, like the Hamas office issue is the question is you want to have some capacity. I totally understand the impulse behind it, but at the same time, as we talked about last week, we negotiated these hostage releases through Qatar. And so long as there is such a thing as Hamas, which I think no matter what happens in this military operation, there's likely going to continue to be some need to have a line of communication. And I think just cutting that off could create more problems. I mean, they'll go someplace else, too. I mean, they'll go to Turkey.

And so I don't know that you can totally shut this down. But yeah, a lot of moving parts of this thing, and most of them are not moving in the right direction. Yeah, I did see also that Vladimir Putin is visiting Saudi Arabia and the UAE later this week on Wednesday. We're recording on Tuesday. I guess he wants to talk about Gaza, global oil production, Ukraine, but he also just hosted Reisi, President Reisy of Iran and Moscow. So, yeah, a lot of folks there that conspire to make our politics more complicated, Ben. So we mentioned Bob Menendez at the top, but here's a little more spy news for you guys. On Monday, the Department of Justice charged the former U.S. ambassador,

to Bolivia with secretly working for Cuba. This complaint says was filed in Miami. It says that 73-year-old Manuel Rocha had been secretly working for Cuba since 1981. And even though he's retired, he had met with his handlers as recently as 2017. This guy served in a number of diplomatic posts during his career, the State Department. He was in the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, and at the U.S. Intersection in Havana, Cuba for a spell. He also handled Cuba policy at the National Security Council for a year.

between July of 94 through July of 95. So in those roles, obviously, you have access to a ton of sensitive and classified information about U.S. policy towards Cuba. After retiring from the State Department, he worked as an advisor to U.S. Southern Command, which obviously has Cuba as part of it at some point pretty recently. So I think last year maybe the FBI got a tip about Rocha. So they had an undercover FBI agent posing as a Cuban intelligence officer, send him like a cold WhatsApp message that said, quote,

Good afternoon, Ambassador. My name is Miguel. I have a message for you from your friends in Havana. It is in regards to a sensitive matter. Are you available? Somehow, this worked. Rocha agreed to Miguel. And in that meeting, he talked in great detail about all the work he'd done for Cuba over the past few decades. At later meetings, he referred to the U.S. as, quote, the enemy. He got pissed off when he was asked whether he was still committed to the cause. So Rocha is not the first U.S. sort of senior U.S. government employee charge of spying for Cuba. In 2001, the FBI arrested a woman named Anna Montez, who had spent decades working as a top Cuba analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency while also spying for Cuba. Her motivation seems to have been purely ideological. It's not clear what Rocha's motivation was yet, but his rhetoric seems to suggest that he had some ideological motivation as well. Attorney General Merrick Garland called this, quote, of the highest reaching and longest standing infiltrations of the U.S. government by a foreign agent. Wow. Ben, so to steal a cliche from our old boss, Cuban intelligence really punching above their weight there, huh? Pretty impressive. Well, look, I mean, there's a long history of Cuban

intelligence being quite active in the United States. You know, when I was negotiating with the Cuban government directly, you know, we were certainly made aware that they were quite aggressive in some of their tactics. They certainly tried every way they could, I think, to entrap people, let's just say, in different ways, including when, certainly when they were in Cuba. But yeah, like, I mean, it just speaks to the fact that, you know, this is an entrepreneurial intelligence service that pretty aggressively tries to penetrate, you know, the U.S. government, but also, you know, there's a history of them trying to penetrate, you know, other U.S. institutions in Miami and academics. The other thing that I remember, too, Tommy, is that they would

try to penetrate the kind of democracy community, right? The people that, you know, received even U.S. government funding to promote democracy. So, you know, the thing about the Cuban intelligence service is, they punch above their weight in part because the U.S. is like an overwhelming focus of theirs, you know. They're not, they're, you know, they do stuff in other places. They certainly do stuff across Latin America. But unlike us, you know, they're not looking that much at, you China and Russia and all these other places. And so there's been this kind of battle for decades. But this is a pretty significant get for them if this guy was an ambassador in all these

places. And if he was at the White House at the National Security Council, like the guy had access to everything, you know. Yeah. I'm sure it didn't help the U.S. interests here that we were so thirsty and concerned about Cuba for so long and so eager to fuck with their politics in every way possible that they could throw some double agent at whatever like idiotic working.

group the Dulles brothers had set up in Miami to try to take down Castro and very easily, you know, get us to get ourselves in trouble. Yeah, you know, there's a kind of absurdity about the tit for tat, but, you know, because like, let's bear in mind and you can go back and read the church committee. I mean, the CIA's track record in Cuba is really, really aggressive, you know. And so there's a bit of a sense, I think, from the Cubans that, you know, we're, you know, we're still locked in this kind of tit for tat with you guys. But, I will say this, Tommy, like, I often wonder, like, who has better encryption, WhatsApp or signal, you know, if I'm, like, talking to someone and, you know, you don't want it to be shared with multiple of the governments that we criticize on this podcast. It's a different issue if someone's like, hello, my name is Miguel, like, I am your handler. Like, hello, comrade. Like, some number you've never heard from before. And it's just like, hey, could you come, please lay out for me, the degree to which you've been a double agent? I mean, it's up there with Menendez.

in terms of just the brazeness of what these guys are doing. It makes you wonder, by the way, both of these things, because Menendez is basically spying for Egypt, right? Are there more of these? You know, like it makes you a little nervous that maybe the penetration of the U.S. government's a little more wide-reaching than we think. Because, you know, these are the ones we're catching. It suggests that there may be from multiple governments, other people up to no good. Yeah, no, my takeaway was, wow, these guys had high-level access to senior State Department employees for four. 40 years. That's amazing. But also, this guy appears to be a moron if he was caught with like a cold call,

like, what's that message? That's not great. It tells you, makes you wonder what a really smart, savvy, opsec conscious agent could use to us. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Real quick, before we go to the break, the holidays are coming up fast. There is still time to snag the perfect gifts for everyone you love and the people you only tolerate. Go to the crooked store. There are winter essentials. They're best-selling t-shirts. There are now cozy sweatshirts. If you go to crooked.com slash store to shop, make sure to order by December 13th to get your stuff in time for the holidays. Again, that's crooked.com slash store. Lots of great stuff in there and lots of good deals. Also, if you were starting to get nauseous watching the

2024 Republican primary, I'm with you. The good news is we've got something that will help. If you join the Votesave America community, we'll get you all the tools you need to take action in this presidential cycle from volunteer opportunities to making sure you are registered to vote. Watching the news is terrible. Doing something about it gives you agency. It'll make you feel a lot better. Go to Votesaveamerica.com and find out how you can get involved. Go today. Ben, so let's turn to the COP 28 UN Climate Summit in Dubai because it continues to not go so great. Last week we talked about reports that the UAE was using the COP meeting. they're hosting the COP meeting the United Arab Emirates is to line up more oil and gas deals.

That's obviously not great if you're trying to deal with climate change. Then on Sunday, the Guardian reported that the president of COP 28, Sultan Al Jaber, who runs the UAE state oil company, said that there is no science indicating that a phase out of fossil fuels, it's what's going to achieve the world's goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, and that doing so would, quote, take the world back into caves. Here's a clip of Al Jaberer going off on this. I'm not in any way signing up to any discussion that is alarmist. I am here factual and I respect the science.

And there is no science out there or no scenario out there that says that the face out of fossil fuel is what's going to achieve 1.5. I read that your company is investing in a lot more fossil fuel in the future. Yes, ma'am, you're reading your own media, which is biased and wrong. I am telling you, I am the man in charge and it is wrong. Help me, show me a roadmap for a phase out of force of view that will allow, that will allow for social, for sustainable socio-economic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves. No.

Show me. Yeah. I think we can. We have eight. We have eight. Women are the part of that. Give me the solution. You talk about having women be involved.

We in this small country have included women. more than any other country in the world. I don't think Mary will be able to help solve the climate problem by pointing fingers or contributing to the polarization and the divide that is already happening in the world. What we need here is solutions. Show me the solutions. So, Ben, this wasn't some surptitious recording. This was a live online event hosted by Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland

and UN Special Envoy for Climate Change. The Guardian obtained the audio. sir, by the way, if you're asking for solutions, you're supposed to be running the event where you find them. But former vice president Al Gore told the New York Times that Jabara leading the cop was the quote, the most brazen conflict of interest in the history of climate negotiations. He was not happy about this audio coming out. Also at the summit, the U.S. announced a plan to cut methane emissions by nearly 80 percent by 2038. That is quite important because methane can trap 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, but it only lingers in the atmosphere for about a decade. So if we can drastically cut methane now, it will pay big dividends in the relatively near future.

Vice President Kamala Harris announced another $3 billion commitment from the U.S. to climate change. A bunch of countries pledged to triple renewable energy production by 2030. I don't know, then given all these terrible headlines, given all the cynicism going in, given that I think there was four times as many, you know, fossil fuel reps at COP 28 as there were anybody else. What do you think the report card is so far on COP 28? You know, let's just say like we're not like passing with flying colors here, but is anybody surprised? I mean, from the very beginning when they announced that they're going to do this thing in the YoE and it's going to be chaired by the guy who runs a fossil fuel company there, I mean, it's a bit

like having the, you know, summit on pandemic preparedness in like a wet market in Wuhan, China in 2020 or something. You know, it's just like, like, of course fossil fuels are a problem. My hope is that, look, I mean, welcome any progress that comes out of this, funding for renewables, funding for the loss and damages fund, as we've talked about. This methane piece is important. But I do think that there's been this drift that we've talked about towards basically this kind of co-opting of cop by the fossil fuel industry where suddenly you've got like more lobbyists from fossil fuel companies than the delegations of most governments.

I hope that there's a way for the next one to really turn that around. You know, like, this is becoming, look, it's becoming a joke. It's becoming, like, totally cynical. It's why people don't trust these processes. Sure, I understand there has to be some degree of dialogue with these companies, but let's be clear here. Like, you can't deal with climate change if you don't phase out fossil fuels full stop. I mean, and that's obvious.

I don't think you need to be like a climate scientist to understand that. You know, like, it's pretty basic. know, and we can talk about how long that's going to take. We talk about the timeline for transition, and this guy obviously has like multiple interests, and one of which is to sustain the profit that is being generated in the enormous revenue. I mean, look, part of the awkward point is that the reason why the Emeraldies are so cash rich right now and the reason why, you know, people like Mary Robbins are going down there at panel discussions is because they're making money off of fossil fuels, right? And so I think there really has to be a way to say, like, time out here.

we're going to take a look at who's attending this conference. We're going to try to make sure that the balance just back towards government negotiators, activists, NGOs, businesses that are sincerely trying to hit certain targets. I think there needs to be like an accountability measure for the private sector as well as governments. You know, like they review what governments are doing. Sometimes private sector shows up and they make commitments and then nobody really knows if they're falling through on that. Never, yeah. I just think they need to look at the architecture of these summits to make sure that this kind of thing doesn't keep happening because it's hard to look at this and not think that like this whole process is like the UN is losing control of it. Yeah, it breeds cynicism. Speaking of not taking things seriously enough, Favre just sent around a tweet to crooked slack that includes a screen capture from the five. Like I think the most watched show on Fox News. Here's the Chiron. It's a photo of John Kerry, and it says greenhouse gas, question mark.

John Kerry accused of breaking wind at climate speech. So that's how Fox is covering COP28. Makes a thing. Speaking of methane capture. Put that one in a time capsule for something. Wonderful. Wonderful. Yeah, no, your kids will be proud of you, everyone who worked on that show.

Yeah. Okay. Switching gears here. So, Ben, actually, this is UAE-related. So we've talked about how there's been a civil war raging in Sudan for about seven months now. Sudan's armed forces are fighting against a paramilitary force in Sudan called the RSF. The two generals who lead these two forces were allies, but they had a falling out that spiraled into this all-out war. They basically came together to overturn civilian governments, and then once that happened, they split apart.

No surprise there. So the fighting for this civil war started in the capital city of Khartoum. It quickly spread throughout the country, including into the Darfur region, where I'm sure a lot of listeners, remember there was a genocide about 20 years ago. The militia groups that conducted that previous genocide were called the Janjaweed. And the Janja weed over time evolved into the RSF, this paramilitary group. The UN says that the fighting is killed up to 9,000 people, displaced over 6 million people and left 25 million people. So that's more than half the country's population in need of humanitarian aid. So it is as dire as dire gets.

70 to 80 percent of hospitals and conflict areas are not operational anymore. And the UN is expressing widespread concern about sexual violence committed by the RRSA. against women across Sudan, systemic rape. Last week, the UN Security Council voted to pull its staff out of Sudan. So you're seeing the international community leaving the stage, or at least setting a timetable to leave the stage, rather than getting more engaged, and other diplomatic effort to broker a PCL have failed.

But one of the key drivers of this conflict have been weapons shipments to the RSF by the UAE. There's lots of reporting about this. The UAE denies it, but they basically set up this base in Eastern Chad. claim they're using it to funnel in humanitarian relief, but it's clear that they've been setting in weapons. The RSF also has ties with the Wagner group. And so, Ben, you know, I know that the world was very busy trying to get everyone to focus on climate change at COP 28 in Dubai. But have you seen any evidence that the U.S. or other countries are putting pressure on the UAE

to stop sending in these weapons shipments to Sudan? Because boy, does that seem like it would be an easy way to slow down the violence. I haven't. And, you know, there's just a ton of reporting on this. This is not like rumors. This is stuff that, like, has been pretty well established. And look, it's just a horrifying situation in Sudan and, you know, genocidal violence in Darfur again and no horizon for some kind of political settlement. These two warlords essentially locked in this death battle. How can you affect that? The first way is to try to turn off the spigot of the weapons that are are getting in there from wherever they're coming from. And clearly with the RSF, that includes the

UAE. So, like, I'm not suggesting that would make the Civil War end, but it would certainly potentially slow things down and start to try to create some different incentives for these guys, because the more they have, like, an open spigot of weapons, the more the incentive is to just kind of keep ratcheting up the violence. Then I think there's regional implications, too, Tommy, like Chad, which border Sudan, is the, you know, there's a risk of, we could have another coup there, So it's right in the coup belt there. It'd be the last domino to fall to Sudan. And suddenly you've just got like a whole string of countries that have been taken over by coups.

You've got the Wagner group like, you know, involved to some extent in these places. And Russia involved to some extent. So, you know, you need some effort to try to begin to get this back in a political process, to try to get, you know, ceasefires, at least in some areas like we saw in the fighting in Ethiopia. If you can at least stop the fighting in some places, you can get humanitarian aid in there again. and some diplomatic process. And there's been a curious kind of washing of the hands on this thing, like the African Union, which is the main organization that's supposed to settle these types of issues or address these

types of issues in Africa, is kind of taking this position now of like, these are internal affairs. We don't meddle in internal affairs. This is a humanitarian catastrophe. And it's also one that could continue to destabilize the region. And so, yes, to circle back to where we began, the obvious place to start is going to countries like the U.E and saying time to stop arming people that are committing atrocities. Yeah, it's like I think people sometimes wonder why are folks like us activists in the U.S. so hard on Israel and the conduct of the war in Gaza.

And it's in part because we think they'll listen and because the U.S. has leverage. I would argue that this is another such instance. Like I know that the U.A.E's ambassador to the U.S. throws great parties at Cafe Milano all the time, but this is not the first conflict that the U.A.E. has been fucking around in in Africa. They armed a warlord named Hiftar at Libya. They provided drones to Ethiopia that were used in their civil war where hundreds of thousands of people were killed. We got about 5,000 U.S. troops stationed at the UAE. And remember, the Trump administration agreed to sell all kinds of advanced weapons to the UAE as part of the Abraham Accords.

So stuff we're giving them could be feeding these conflicts all over the globe. And it's just like time to rethink this. It's time for a little more public pressure. And I hope a little more behind the scenes pressure from the from the from the biden folks or at least maybe we'll get readouts of what's happening yeah no you could add yemen to that list too obviously because they were part of the saudi uh invasion there um and and what's part of what's kind of curious to me about it tommy too is it's it's unnecessary like the ua has tons of money they're doing pretty well like they're this kind of regional hub for finance why do they have to do this you know like they they have the side of you know that's invested you know they want to invest in AI and they want to invest in and science and

They've got a space program. They've got all this influence. Like, it seems unnecessary. I mean, sure, maybe they get marginal interests advanced. Maybe they're getting natural resources. Maybe they're getting access to things. But, like, I think they'll be okay by stopping this. And I do think you're right.

The U.S. can be, you know, a voice on this stuff. I mean, the concern is always said, well, then they'll get closer to the Russians. Well, they play that game anyway. As you said, like Putin's going out of the region anyway. Like, the U.S. is still the main security guarantor for the U.E. the U.S. is still going to be important to them. I think we can have harder conversations about some of these things. And I think the U.E will be fine if they turn off some of this stuff.

Yeah, there's some reports that maybe they're getting access to like gold mines or something. But yeah, again, I mean, this is- There's enough money. They've got there. You're doing fine, guys. It's, yeah. Gold coming out of the ground in the form of look of gas. So, Ben, you mentioned the coup belt that got me thinking of Henry Kissinger, who died last week at the age of 100. So a little bio in Kissinger. Then I'd love to get your thoughts because you wrote a great piece for

the New York Times that everyone should read. So Kistinger was born in Germany. His family barely escaped the Nazis in 1938. So I read one of the many recent pieces about him then since he passed away. And I didn't realize that I think his family got out like three months before Kristel knocked. And then nearly all the Jews in the town he grew up and were killed, went from like 2000 to 40 people by the end. He served in the U.S. Army to World War II, later worked as a faculty member at Harvard University. And then Kistinger becomes Richard Nixon's National Security Advisor in 1969. He was appointed Secretary of State in 1973. He kept both titles at once for a period of time, which is just insane if you know much work goes into both those jobs. And then after Nixon resigns

and disgraced after Watergate, Kissinger keeps working for Gerald Ford. And, you know, he becomes this sort of like iconic figure who is the front page of the tabloids, the front page of the political section, the international section. He was like, you know, omnipresent in U.S. culture for decades. So on sort of the positive side of the ledger, Kissinger is often credited with easing tensions with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, in particular arms control agreements, the salt arms control treaty. He was leading secret talks to normalize relations with China, and he conducted a bunch of shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East after the Yom Kippur War, and he negotiated the end to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

But there's some very big caveats there. So, again, the Kissinger somehow got the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for getting the U.S. out of Vietnam, but he also helped extend the war for five years by feeding information to Nixon's campaign that they used to sabotage LBJ's peace talks right before the 1968 election. Oh, and by the way, that 1973 peace deal quickly collapsed if you were a Vietnamese person. Kisinger gets lots of credit for negotiating arms control agreements, but he was also an early proponent of the use of tactical nuclear weapons and the feasibility of limited nuclear war. So he was kind of solving a problem he helped create there. And then finally, like, Kisinger helped broker Nixon's opening with

China and led, you know, that first secret trip to China. But he did it through the president, of Pakistan. In exchange, the U.S. actively supported Pakistan's genocidal war in what is now called Bangladesh, which killed hundreds of thousands of people and pushed 10 million people into India as refugees. So, Ben, I will pause there because I know you have lots of thoughts on this man. But, you know, the more and more I consume about him and his, like, these obits and his legacy, it seems to me like the best way to summarize him is a brilliant guy who seemed to only care about himself, his access to power, preserving that access to power. It's sort of hard to find a real ideology or a moral compass or, frankly, like any concern about people or the lives

that he impacted. So I don't know, over to you because I know you in particular were writing about Cambodia and what he did to Vietnam. Yeah, I wrote this piece of the Times that people can check out. And the basic thesis of it, right, is Kistinger more than anybody else represents this aspect of American national security policy that makes us hypocrites, that shows the gap between the story we tell about ourselves in the world, as standing up for these values, and then the ways in which we act in this completely self-interested way that is often totally divorced from many set of values. And in that way, he was kind of the perfect avatar of the American national security state that has grown since World War II. And if you look at that ledger, Tommy, I think

there's some important things to note, like the Vietnam War that he extended, he expanded it. He was the principal architect of expending that into Laos and Cambodia, dropping more bombs on Laos than any country than Germany and Japan during World War II, right? Personally picking targets from his office in the West Wing. Yeah, and a secret war that we didn't even declare publicly. And destabilizing Cambodia in ways that led to decades of violence and suffering there as well. And what we got for that was no better. The terms, I mean, we lost the war.

And so it's not like that achieved anything. It was like he was trying to send this message about credibility. The credibility, like, we're going to show you that, you know, if we're going to lose a war, we're going to make it really hard on the people that beat us, essentially, was kind of the mentality that it seemed to be guiding him. That if you look at the support for the genocidal violence that you mentioned in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, support for similar genocidal violence in Indonesia, support for a military coup in Chile, he's thought of as a strategist of the Cold War.

but none of those things contributed to the victory in the Cold War. It's not like, well, because we supported the Indonesian government just like crushing people in East Timor that somehow that's why we won the Cold War. Like there's these rationalizations that people use for why we have to do, even Chile, right? If Salvador Allende, a socialist, had stayed in charge of Chile, it's, would the Soviet Union have won the Cold War? You know, we talk ourselves into these things. And look, the U.S. does complicated and sometimes bad shit. around the world a lot. I think Kissinger is just a different scale. If you look at the violence in

Southeast Asia, the violence in these other places. Now, to his credit, as you said, his diplomacy with the Soviet Union, with China, that did contribute to the end of the Cold War. Certainly the opening to China did. And slowing down the arms race to the Soviet Union certainly was a positive thing. The China thing's a little complicated, though, because look, what happened to China, right? It became more autocratic, more authoritarian. Now they're our biggest geopolitical adversary. So look, brilliant guy and, you know, like he's looking at different pieces and he's, but the outcomes matter here and the outcomes matter for people. And when he, when he is fed it and embraced by the American establishment, the way he has been for decades, including after he passed away,

the message the rest of the world takes away from that is that like Americans don't care about us. Americans don't see our lives as of equal value because they don't seem to have a problem with what this guy was doing in these places. And that's, you know, know, like the point I made in the article was like credibility isn't like showing how much will like hurt someone who does something we don't like. Credibility is are we who we say we are. And so look, I'm, you know, I was a little hard on the guy, but like, I mean, he was pretty hard on a lot of people around the world. I recognize that he was, you know, a brilliant guy who had consequential achievements like the opening in China. That's part of the legacy too.

And I think I support the idea that we should be engaged with diplomacy with adversaries as Kissinger was, but is it worth all the rest of it? And the last thing I say, Tommy, is that, like, he was constantly kind of held up as this Oracle and this brilliant guy. Look, I don't know if you heard him talk in recent years, like, he didn't say anything that interesting. And all this one about AI. I'm like, come on. This kind of banal statement, the world is very complicated right now, and we therefore like, I actually challenged people. Like, some of the stuff he wrote, he wrote some historical

books about diplomacy that are kind of interesting, but, like, he kind of became famous. for being famous. And it was kind of like he was powerful because people thought he was powerful. And he had access to people. So he'd fly to China and meet with Xi Jinping. And so then therefore, people wanted to meet with him and hear anything he said because he seemed like he had this kind of smell of power around him. And I think the way, some of this isn't even his fault. The way in which he was embraced by the American establishment says a lot more about the American establishment than it does about Henry Kissinger at the end of the day. Because all he was doing is like running the same play for the last 50 years.

Totally. Yeah, I know he would go meet with Xi Jinping, come back to the U.S., type up a 16-page single-space report, send it to anyone who would listen and be like, oh, my God, what an important thing. Look, a few things. He was not an elected leader. He had no popular mandate. Like, he was Nixon's buddy in his darkest, drunkest final years. And he would, like, take his calls and wiretap his colleagues to see we'd find who was leaking and rat fuck the guy around the corner. You know, I mean, like, this was not an honorable period of service. But people admired that about him. People, that's what I'm saying. People are like, wow, like that guy really knew how to run the machinery of the bureaucracy. I know, I know. But like his ability to play the game in towering self-regard is probably like the most

notable thing. I mean, David Sanger wrote his New York Times obituary. David Sanger is a reporter we've known for a very long time. Sanger wrote how Kistinger had a series of conversations with him over the course of seven years about this obituary. And Sanger was working off a previous draft written by another journalist who died in 2010, right? And by the way, Kissinger, as David writes in his obit, wrote 3,800 pages worth of memoirs. Again, this guy wasn't the president of the United States. He worked for a couple of them. For two terms, for eight years.

I was in the U.S. government as long as Henry Kissinger was, you know? I mean... Yeah, and you didn't do as many coups. Yeah, no, no, not, you know, it's a, and my memoir didn't clock in it that long, but it's probably too long. Yeah, I'm not a dance on people's graves guy. I do think the points you made in your piece and the point we're trying to make here on the show is that, like, just being in power or having power isn't honorable or admirable. It's what you do with it. And just using it, yeah, people admire it.

And I'd say that because some people are like, oh, you shouldn't have done that. Like, first of all, I tried to kind of give a balance view. but also like the guy lived 100 years, and he was burnishing his legacy for the last several decades. Yeah, he's just fine. And so the idea that none of us can say anything critical for a while, well, that's when the legacy is established. And I think a lot of people around the world want to hear that Americans understand that this

is a complicated guy who did a lot of bad stuff as well as achieving some stuff. And so I think it's a mistake to say, like, we just have to celebrate somebody like this. No, like the people in Laos didn't get that opportunity. You know, like the kids in Laos didn't even get an opportunity to grow up, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And so it's just so weird that someone who saw such evil growing up in Nazi Germany barely escaped, like the horrors of the Holocaust, would then just have so little regard for human beings around the globe. It's just, I don't know.

You would hope that it would lead to the opposite reaction. But I guess, you know, he was a guy. I think the famous philosophers he quoted is, you know, choosing order over justice. justice and maybe in thinking that was some sort of virtuous thing, but I don't know, I would disagree. Yeah, and it's a piece of foreign policy. That's a piece of foreign policy. But if you drain all the values out of it, like what's left, you know? Yeah. Yeah. That's the point. That's the point. Okay, we are going to take a quick break and we come back. You'll hear my interview with Senator Peter Welch about why he called for a ceasefire in Gaza and the efforts to pass the Ukraine funding bill

and much more. So stick around for that. I am extremely excited. Welcome to the show today, Vermont Senator Peter Welch. He has called for indefinite ceasefire in Gaza. He also co-signed a letter recently to President Biden with Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Senator Merkley laying out concerns about Israeli conflict in Gaza. Senator, thank you so much for joining the show. Thank you. So I just want to start with your call for an indefinite ceasefire. Why did you think now was the right time to make that call? And can you sketch out what that looks like in practice? because there's been a lot of confusion about what a humanitarian pause is or a temporary ceasefire versus what you're calling for. I can, but if you just didn't, just give me a moment.

I just, we have to all of us acknowledge what incredibly horrendous thing happened to the Israelis with the incredibly violent attack by Hamas. So it was brutal. It was gleeful in some cases and horrendous. And I saw the video that the IDF, the Israeli Depends Force compiled. It was from GoPro video of Hamas, where in some cases they were reporting on site, the abominations that they were doing with pride. And today I met with some families from Israel whose loved ones are being held hostage. So all of us who are, like me, have called for a ceasefire, I think it's really, really important to acknowledge the horrendous, catastrophic consequence to the Israeli families and understand where they're coming from.

And Israel has a right to defend itself clearly, but the question is how they do it really, really matters. And the Netanyahu War Plan has relied on extent. sense of use of air power. In some cases, 2,000 pound bombs that were paid for and provided by the United States that were dropped on refugee camps. And what I've seen in terms of the war plan is that there's a use of bombing in one of the most densely populated sectors of the world, you know, where by definition, whatever your target may be, if you have a Hamas person on the fourth floor of an apartment building, and you drop a bomb in that building and take it all down, there's going to be a huge number of civilian casualties.

And that's just not right. There's a right to defend yourself and respond, but there's a right that civilians have not to become the collateral damage in a war. And what I came to the conclusion was when I called for the ceasefire was that the Netanyahu war plan is going to continue with bombing as the central. element. And by definition, once you're dropping 2,000 pound bombs or you're bombing in populated areas, which is essentially what Gaza is, you're going to have a catastrophic loss of civilian life. And in addition to this, you've had a million and a half, 1.7 million people literally displaced from their homes. They were told to get out of Gaza City in the north of Gaza. They're now in the south of Gaza. Many of them were told to go to this town of Connudis before the campaign. It was about

150,000 people. It's close to 500,000 people now. And that city is getting bombed. So people who were told to go south did so, leaving behind everything that they had and are now under bombardment and being told to go elsewhere. So the humanitarian catastrophe is just immense. We just just haven't seen this. It's 15,000 Palestinian civilians killed. Most of those women and children, but also the 1.5 million people, 1.7 million people were displaced. And now from the UN, there's a real concern that there's going to be more loss of life from disease, possibly starvation. And as long as the bombing is going on, it's going to be very difficult, if not impossible to get humanitarian aid in to keep body and soul together for the Palestinians.

The reason why I called for it when I did is I, number one, saw what was happening as we all did with the civilian loss of life. I called for it when there was the first glimmer of hope in this horrendous situation, and that was the humanitarian pause. And in that humanitarian pause, if there was success on hostage negotiations and the release of many hostages, for the first time aid workers were able to get humanitarian aid in and start setting up some structures. And what I saw was, look, we just can't stop this pause. We've got to have a ceasefire so that, number one, Palestinians, innocent Palestinians who have nowhere to go are not going to be under continual bombardment.

Number two, we can set up humanitarian relief so that it can be deliberate in a consistent and reliable way. And number three, you know, the negotiations, ultimately this is going to have to be a political resolution. And the more negotiations, particularly with the active engagement of Arab partners, like Egypt and Qatar, that played such a constructive role in the hostage negotiations, see what happens. It can't be worse than the bond. me. Yeah. Yeah, no, look, I'm no military expert or expert on ordinance, but I, too, was struck by some the reporting I read early that the Israelis were primarily dropping 500-pound, 1,000-pound, and in some cases, 2,000-pound dumb bombs without any GPS coordinates on these densely populated areas. That is absolutely a recipe for massive civilian casualties. And as Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin,

warned, if you're not protecting civilians, it can lead to strategic failure long-term in Gaza. You also wrote in that statement about the ceasefire, quote, The President has asked Congress to provide more than $14 billion for Israel to pursue its war plans against Hamas. The manner in which any such aid is provided must be debated. I will push for policies that ensure taxpayer dollars are only used in ways that comply with international humanitarian law. Can you elaborate a bit on what that means and how you might want to ensure the taxpayer dollars are only used in accordance with international law? Well, international law requires respect for civilians and that the warring parties take every precaution to minimize the loss of civilian life.

And what we have in Gaza is a horrendous organization, Hamas, which is a legitimate target. But we have over 2 million Palestinians who are being oppressed, in fact, by Hamas, being used as human shields. So this creates a dilemma for Israel. But even as there is an acknowledged dilemma that I recognize, there's an obligation to avoid as much as possible to loss of civilian life. And the way I would just give an example, you can't drop a 2,000-pound bomb in a refugee camp, even if you have a Hamas target right there without inevitably causing the loss of life of a lot of very innocent Palestinian women, children, and adults who are not part of the mosque. So my view here is that bombing as a strategy in the war is it can only lead to unacceptable

loss of civilian life. Again, it's like being a Manhattan. You know, you might have a target that's a legitimate target on the 44th floor of the Empire State Building. But if people on every other floor are innocent civilians, do you blow up the building? And, you know, in Gaza is so densely populated, it creates that, it creates that dilemma. So my view is that we should be doing all we can to help Israel with the Iron Dome that has saved countless lives. I think we should be doing all we can on humanitarian relief.

But I don't support the bombing campaign. So as an example of what I prefer to not do is be providing more 2,000 bombs to the Netanyahu of work. work plan. Yeah. Your, your colleague in the Senate in Vermont, Bernie Sanders, has also called on Israel to agree to allow displaced Gazans to return home, an agreement for Israel to agree to not occupy Gaza, a settlement freeze, and end of settler violence in the West Bank, and a commitment to peace talks with the goal of a two-state solution. So it sounds like Bernie wants to use this U.S. assistance as leverage to tackle the underlying political disputes, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and try to get back into talks around a two-state solution.

Do you think that's the right way to use U.S. leverage? Is that something you would support as well? It's official U.S. policy with Republican presidents and Democratic presidents that were for a two-state solution. Now, the reality is, and I think Bernie's advocacy here gets to this, we've paid lip service to it. We say we're for a two-state solution. Netanyahu nods and then totally disregards. So, you know, the Netanyahu government has in its policy, its written policy, basically that they want to annex the West Bank. So it's bizarre to me that one administration after another says we're for two

states, Netanyahu just nods and smiles and says what he wants to say. And then we act as though we heard what we wanted to hear, when in fact, written into their platform is a one-state solution, which means the annexation of the West Bank. So this moment here, if I have any hope at all, it is a realization that it's not just that one, we have to be serious. We mean two-state, because that's the only way that we're going to have Palestinians and Israelis living side by side and where we maintain what is really core to Jewish identity in Israel, and that is Israel as a democratic and Jewish state. Second, we now have a situation where we've got the active engagement of Arab states

who have to play a major role because they are the ones that can provide some assurance to Palestinians that their rights will be respected, but also with Israel that they'll respect Israel's right to be the democratic Jewish state. Let me give a little step back just a second. When you think about where was Israel in October 6th, in respect to its Arab neighbors, it was never stronger. Keep in mind in the 73 war, all the Arab states, as nation states, had as a goal, the elimination of Israel. Now Israel has normalized relations with so many of its neighbors and was on the precipice of having a normalized relationship with Saudi Arabia. So internationally, in among the Arab states, there was real recognition of

Israel's right to exist. Israel as a democratic and Jewish state and respect for Israel's accomplishments. Where Israel was having a problem was on the West Bank, and that was, in my view, was significantly aggravated by the permission the Netanyahu government to violent settlers and aggressive settlers to really try to displace innocent Palestinians living in their own land. And, of course, a Netanyahu government that, in effect, had a policy towards Hamas to accept them as a way of dividing the Palestinians, the Hamas leadership versus the Palestinian Authority leadership. And, of course, there's no question that the Netanyahu government was completely asleep at the

switch when it came to the basic function and responsibility that a government has, and that is to protect its borders from incursion by what is a potential threat, totally asleep with the switch. So we have a situation here where the good news is Arab states are engaged. Arab states recognize Israel. Arab states don't want conflict in the East, but we have a bad situation with the Netanyahu government that has done everything it can to impede, if not unravel, the possibility of a two-state solution. So my hope is that we don't know how this is going to end or when it's going to end, but it's going to end ultimately if it's going to be successful

with Arab states playing a major role to help give Israel confidence and Palestinians assurance that their aspirations for an independent, separate, peaceful state that does recognize Israel can coexist. You know, what you said at the beginning there about the U.S. paying lip service to the two-state solution and the kind of wink nod, but going about, you know, business as usual from BBN Yahoo is refreshing to hear, completely accurate, backed up by public statements. But I feel like doesn't often get said as bluntly in Washington. I mean, when my old boss, Barack Obama would criticize what he perceived as sort of a lack of commitment from the Nanyahu government to the

peace talks. We got hammered in the press. You know, Biden has pursued this Hug Bibi strategy of not wanting to criticize the Israeli government publicly. Do you think that approach has been the right approach? And do you worry about the way this seems to have split the Democratic Party recently? Well, no, I am, I am worried. I mean, what I'm worried about more than anything is the continuation of loss of innocent Palestinian life. I mean, I was in Gaza a number of years ago. I've been Israel and the West Bank several times, but that is tough living for families. And, you know, the Palestinians have like the highest education rate, the lowest illiteracy rate, in the highest unemployment rate in the world.

I think that's close to, I think that's right. So there's really good people with a lot of future if they have some opportunity. But I think what has happened over the course of years is that Israel was a state besieged, the 73 war, their war for independence. And they had the active hostility of Arab states that as nations, states were committed to unraveling Israel, killing Jews, and destroying the Israeli state. That's terrible. And the U.S. was its staunch ally. Israel has now a very successful state, very strong, strongest military in the region, and has one acceptance long overdue from those Arab state

neighbors. But has this internal problem where the right wing has become ascendant in Israeli politics, its agenda is the incorporation of the Palestinian territories, as they would call it, or Judean Samaria, the West Bank in Gaza, into Israel proper. And that super right wing with people like Ben Gavir are explicitly racist towards Palestinians. And that's the government that's in control. And I think where you see a split is a lot of people in my generation, we're so horrified. by the Holocaust. And we saw Israel as this incredible refuge and safe, safe space for Jews who've been so persecuted, culminating in the horrendous Holocaust. And then you have a lot of younger people who've seen Israel as a strong state, as a confidence state, strong military, strong economy,

but have identified with the suffering of Palestinians most explicitly in the recent bombing in Gaza, where people have been driven from their homes and have no home to return to. So that is a split. And I think the goal that all of us should have is to be supporting the peacemakers on both sides. There's a lot of Israelis who have been strong advocates for a two-state solution. And there's been a lot of Palestinians who argued that they have the responsibility to build their own society up, but that has to include recognition of the legitimate rights of the Israeli people. So I think we should be looking at this from the perspective of who are the peacemakers and Democrats on both sides.

And the idea that we're in this war where there's this use of very significant amount of bombing, I mean, more bombs have been dropped in a couple of months than all of the time we were in Afghanistan. in a very, very small area. This humanitarian catastrophe, I think, is really bad news, obviously for the people in Gaza, the Palestinians, but I think for the prospects long term of maintaining support for Israel and the U.S. So I think it's time to reassess. Yeah, I agree.

I know President Biden is pushing to pass $106 billion supplemental funding bill for Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan, some border priorities, other defense funding. For a while, it seemed like there was a deal coming together that married that spending with reforms to immigration to the asylum process. Those talks maybe seem to have fallen apart in the last few days.

I've been reading quotes from Senator Chris Murphy, your colleague on the Democratic side that make me feel that way. Mitt Romney had some tough words today about the Democratic position to those talks. I'm wondering how hopeful you are that this Ukraine Israel funding gets passed? And what changes to immigration policy you think Democrats should be willing to accept? Well, number one, I think we'll get there because we have to get there. But we're making a hard thing harder. You know, the Ukraine aid has a lot of support in the Senate. There's some

erosion and significant erosion of support in the Republican side on the House. That's existential, because if they run out of money, they run out of the capacity to defend themselves, and we're literally scraping the bottom of the piggy bank right now. That's really essential. Number two, the Israeli aid has a lot of support. There's some of us who think we really have to have a debate about bombs. We have to have some debate about what conditions, not just a blank check, but by and large, the money that goes to the Iron Dome that protects,

Israeli citizens from incoming rocket attacks by Hamas and humanitarian aid strong support. The border is an important issue. And I'll be candid. I think Democrats have been a little bit asleep at the switch here because the situation at the border right now is so different than it was 10 or 15 years ago. There's a huge numbers of people and it's not the places that it was 10 and 15 years ago from the triangle countries in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. It's like China.

People fly into Ecuador and then coming up the Darien Gap. And two or three million people, that's a real issue. And I think Democrats have to come to the table, and it has to include looking at some policy changes. And we would, of course, hope to include getting status for the dreamers, and we would want to get higher numbers of people who can come here, legally through the process. The difficulty I see that we're creating is that this question of border, which I think is extremely important, shouldn't be tied, in my view, to the existential

challenge that Ukraine has. So while we have a legitimate debate about the border, and it's coming up late and it's getting connected and tied to something so profoundly important for the well-being of Ukraine and our NATO alliance. My preference is that we wouldn't connect them. The Republicans see it otherwise. And then there's the negotiation that's going on now where people like Senator Murphy, I think, are acknowledging the need that Democrats have

to make some significant changes in our approach. Status quo won't work. But you're having, in the lurking in the background, a lot of the Trump effect, where the Republicans are only going to accept what is okay with Trump, and that's crackpot, quite frankly. Yeah, yeah. Final question for you. You have the pleasure of working with Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville.

For the past 10 months, he has been holding up all military promotions because he doesn't like President Biden's policy on abortion in DOD. We are talking about holds on 450 U.S. service. members that impacts their lives, their family's lives, they're trying to figure out where they get to live, where they enroll their kids in school. Their lives are being held hostage by this clown. But much like Auburn did against Alabama a couple weeks back, it seems like Tommy Toborville has fumbled a punt right at the end here. He has agreed to narrow his hole to just 10 promotions at the four-star rank to prevent Senator Schumer from moving on a vote to get around him basically and break this log jam. It doesn't sound like Tupperville got any other concessions. My question for you is,

do you ever feel like the Senate's a little too congenial? And maybe dumb stunts like this shouldn't be allowed to linger for so long. No, I really do. You know, and I was talking to some of my colleagues, and my Republican colleagues were upset about this. And by the way, I just voted along with the rest of the Senate on block to move all except 10 of those nominations. And it was very painful for the families and terrible and unjustified. But the argument I had with some of my colleagues is I say, look, you know, there are these prerogatives in the Senate like a hold. But in order for them to be justified, they can only be preserved if any senator who has that prerogative exercises it with restraint. And when it gets abused, as it did in the Tuberville situation, if we're willing to

tolerate an abuse of that whole provision, we not only look like we care more about our prerogatives in national defense, we're acting in a way that indicates we care more about our prerogatives in national defense. So my view is, no, if senators are going to abuse a prerogative that we have, that in under situations with limited application may serve a point in a valid purpose, if we start abusing that, we can't be, we shouldn't have that prerogative that is abused by our colleagues. So we've got to take a look in the mirror here and not allow this to happen. Amen to that. Well, I'm very glad you guys took this vote and broke that logjam for all those families and for our entire, all the folks serving in the U.S. military.

Senator Welch, thank you so much for doing the show and for your thoughtful work on all these issues. I really do appreciate it. Thank you. That's it for POTSave the World. However, I'm going to stick around and answer some subscriber questions for all you subscribers out there to hear those Q&As, we do them twice a month to get episodes of Pod Save the World for free to get all kinds of great subscription content.

Go to crooked.com slash friends and learn more about our subscription program. Thanks to go to Senator Welch. Ben, thanks again for doing a road game for us. Good to see you in the UK. Good to see you live in the flesh next week. All right, buddy. Talk soon. See it.

Pod Save the World is a Crooked Media production. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, Ben Rhodes and Reed-Churland. Our producer is Alona Minkowski. An associate producer is Ashley Mizuo. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Audio support by Kyle Seaglin and Charlotte Landis. Our studio technician is David Tolls. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn and Phoebe Bradford, who upload our episodes and videos to YouTube.com slash Pod Save the World.