Tangle - The deaths of U.S. troops in Jordan.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

Starting point is 00:00:19 Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Breaking news happens anywhere, anytime. Police have warned the protesters repeatedly, get back. CBC News brings the story to you as it happens. Hundreds of wildfires are burning. Be the first to know what's going on and what that means for you and for Canadians. This situation has changed very quickly.

Starting point is 00:00:44 Helping make sense of the world when it matters most. Stay in the know. CBC News. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to

Starting point is 00:01:05 your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, the place where we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul. It is February 1st. Happy February.

Starting point is 00:02:06 We're on a Thursday right now. Tomorrow is a Friday. Those of you who've been around for a bit know Fridays are special at Tangle. There are members-only Friday newsletters. And tomorrow, I'm doing something I'm very excited about. It's been very hard. I've been working on it for a while. I am publishing a long piece on my solutions to the border. One of the things that frustrates me about journalism is that it often lacks proposed solutions. So one of the things I try and do is to be a little more solutions-oriented in our podcasts and in our writing. And that's what tomorrow is about. I'm going to share a proposal for how to fix the U.S.- Mexico border. This is not a hypothetical, what would I do if I could wave a magic wand utopian fantasy. Instead, it's actually my proposal for this moment, with this Congress, this White House,

Starting point is 00:03:00 and a deal that both sides could realistically come to. The piece is going to go out to our 14,000 plus Tangle members at noon Eastern tomorrow. We've been talking a lot on the podcast about getting some of these sort of Friday additions into podcast form. You guys have probably noticed we've been doing some different stuff with the podcast, bringing on guests for the daily. Ari and I co-hosting a sort of weekly roundup, doing some Friday additions. This week's a little crazy. Ari is in transit. He's traveling for a Frisbee tournament. He's coaching the University of Vermont's Ultimate Frisbee Team. I am having to travel to New York tomorrow. Have been totally slammed this week with a bunch of stuff related to Tangle,

Starting point is 00:03:47 including getting this piece done. So I don't know that we're going to be able to get this into a podcast form for tomorrow. I will try and do that as soon as possible. And at the very least in next week's roundup, at some point Ari and I will talk about this piece. But if you want to get the written piece, you can go subscribe, readtangle.com forward slash membership, and you'll get it in

Starting point is 00:04:10 your inbox and you can read it. If you are somebody who is podcast only with Tangle, I hope we get it to you soon. All right, with that out of the way, let's jump in with some quick hits. jump in with some quick hits. First up, senators from both parties partially criticized tech CEOs from Meta, TikTok, Snap, and Discord during a hearing about the threats the platforms pose to young people. Number two, Secretary of State Antony Blinken asked the State Department to present policy options for the recognition of a Palestinian state after the war in Gaza. Number three, longtime Democratic advisor John Podesta is going to take over as U.S. Special Climate Envoy, replacing John Kerry. Number four, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reportedly backed down from a push to dismiss his top general after the general refused Zelensky's request to voluntarily resign

Starting point is 00:05:06 and potential successors refused the job. Number five, the House passed a $78 billion bipartisan tax package on a 357 to 70 vote that would restore a number of business tax benefits and temporarily expand the child tax credit. Also, a quick note about a quick hit that we had last week. We've reported on the crash of a Russian military transport plane. According to Russia, the crash killed 74 people, including 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war who were en route to a prisoner exchange. Russia accused Ukraine of shooting the plane down, but Ukraine both disputed the claim and could not confirm the crash killed any Ukrainian prisoners of war. The deaths of 65 prisoners of war from the crash

Starting point is 00:05:50 remains unconfirmed, and now Ukraine is calling it Russian propaganda. We currently don't have any evidence that there could have been that many people on board the aircraft. Russian propaganda's claim that the IL-76 aircraft was transporting 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war for a prisoner swap continues to raise a lot of questions, Ukraine's military intelligence chief said. NBC News has a story about the disputed drone packed with explosives struck a shelter where troops were sleeping. Now, this attack targeted a U.S. military base in Syria that's been run by special operation forces as part of their anti-Islamic state fight for years. President Biden, as you just heard, says the United States, quote, shall respond following a deadly drone attack on American troops. He blames an Iran-backed militia for the overnight

Starting point is 00:07:05 strike. It happened at a remote base in Jordan near the Iraq-Syria borders, underscoring the spreading violence in the Middle East. At least three American service members were killed. More than 30 others were wounded, some of them seriously. On Sunday, U.S. Central Command confirmed that three U.S. Army soldiers were killed and more than 30 service members were injured in an overnight drone attack on a small outpost in Jordan. It was the first time U.S. troops have been killed by enemy fire in the Middle East since the beginning of the war in Gaza. The attack happened at Tower 22, a secretive base in northeastern Jordan that sits near the borders

Starting point is 00:07:45 with Syria and Iraq. Officials said the drone was able to enter the base without being shot down because it followed a U.S. drone that had been on a reconnaissance mission into the base and was unclear whether the drone was hostile. On Wednesday, U.S. officials attributed the attack to the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iran-backed militias that functions in the region. After the U.S. said it viewed Tehran as responsible, Iran promised to decisively respond to any attack on the Islamic resistance. Biden has been signaling that retaliatory strikes were coming since Sunday, but no such strikes have yet been carried out. Meanwhile, Kataib Hezbollah, an Iraqi militia group, said it is suspending operations against the American occupation forces to prevent embarrassment to the Iraqi government.

Starting point is 00:08:30 John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman, dismissed that promise, saying the group can't be taken at face value and that they were not the only group attacking U.S. forces. He also promised that when the U.S. response comes, the first thing you see won't be the last thing, adding it won't be a one-off. The United States has already struck back at militias in Syria and Iraq several times in the last few months, and has been striking military outposts and infrastructure belonging to the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Today, we're going to explore some arguments from the left and right about what the U.S. should do, and then my take. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break.

Starting point is 00:09:23 First up, let's start with what the left is saying. The left is conflicted on the best response to the attack, with many concerned about the prospect of starting a regional war in the Middle East. Some say Biden should send a forceful message directly to Iran that attacks on U.S. troops won't be tolerated. Others advocate for a more restrained response and suggest a better solution would be to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq and Syria. In the Washington Post, David Ignatius said a slow-motion crisis has arrived. For months, this crisis has been coming toward Biden in slow motion. Iranian link groups declared open season on U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria and now Jordan after the start of the Israel-Gaza war, Ignatius wrote. Job number one for the Biden team is attribution. It must

Starting point is 00:10:02 identify precisely which Iranian proxy launched the deadly drone and determine whether it did so on orders from Tehran. Striking Iran directly would risk a much wider war. Going to war also requires solid evidence, especially after the Iraq fiasco. Iran's foreign ministry says that claims of Iranian direction are baseless accusations. But let's be honest, whether or not Iran is ordering the strikes, it is supplying the weapons, training, and political support for these groups, Ignatius said. Iran's death-to-America obsession has been steaming since the 1979 revolution, so it won't end overnight. But Biden can take steps to deter the current indirect warfare.

Starting point is 00:10:41 In his special intelligence newsletter, Malcolm Nance argued that it's time to punish Iran. The time for caution and tiptoeing around Iran and its proxies in the region should be over. It was a solid move by Biden to carry out airstrikes in Yemen to open the shipping channels by eliminating drone and ballistic missile storage and launch sites. But carrying out these strikes in such a way that you prioritize killing no one is worthless as a message to the Shia Muslim world. Additionally, striking back at the individuals who fired the drones but not the state sponsor that supplies them by the hundreds is equally useless. Iran cares deeply about U.S. politics. They support anything or anyone that damages the concept of democracy in America as a whole or in part. As an Islamic dictatorship with its several proxy

Starting point is 00:11:25 groups, they can exercise power politics day in and day out without fear of significant action from the White House. Now that U.S. soldiers have died and blood is drawn, a dramatic message should be sent to Iran. In Responsible Statecraft, Paul R. Piller wrote, Bring U.S. troops home from Iraq and Syria now. The attacks underscore how much these residual U.S. deployments have entailed costs and risks far out of proportion to any positive gains they can achieve. They have been sitting duck targets within easy reach of militias and other elements wishing to make a violent anti-U.S. statement. Even without deaths, U.S. service members have paid a price, such as in the form of traumatic brain injuries from missile attacks, Piller said. The now-familiar tit-for-tat sequence in which

Starting point is 00:12:09 American airstrikes against militias in Iraq or Syria alternate with more militia attacks on the U.S. installations illustrates a perverse form of mission creep. This weekend's attack just across the border in Jordan is likely to become part of the same risk-laden sequence, Pillar wrote. The better course would be to interpret the attacks as one more demonstration of how the troop presence in Syria and Iraq represents a needless vulnerability that ought to be ended sooner rather than later. All right, that is it for the leftist saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. The right is also divided on the best course of action, but many say Biden must give a show of strength. Some suggest that strikes inside Iran would reassert U.S. control in the region.

Starting point is 00:13:00 Others warn a direct attack could result in unforeseen consequences. In the New York Post, Mark Montgomery discussed how to hold Iran accountable for killing U.S. troops. The campaign we will see later this week should, at a minimum, include sustained strikes on every Iranian proxy target we can locate in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, to include missile and drone launch equipment, ammunition dumps, logistic sites, and radars, Montgomery said. It must also include sustained strikes on hundreds of Islamic Revolutionary Guard corpse forces in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Finally, Washington should sink any IRGC warships supplying targeting information to the Houthis in Yemen.

Starting point is 00:13:40 Then comes the hard decision. Will the Biden administration attack Iran itself, hitting IRGC command and control facilities, logistics sites, and missile and drone factories? I suspect this will be a bridge too far for an administration that has long harbored a desire for rapprochement with Tehran, Montgomery said. This crisis was completely predictable. The administration let Tehran make the rules. To get back control, the next U.S. steps need to be persistent and painful for Iran, the IRGC, and its proxies. In the Daily Signal, Ben Shapiro wrote, weakness breeds aggression. After the attack, the Biden administration immediately leapt into action by issuing a strongly worded statement while simultaneously proclaiming that it wanted

Starting point is 00:14:22 to avoid escalation, which, of course, is precisely the wrong thing to do when faced with aggression from a smaller hostile adversary, Shapiro said. The right thing to do? Punch it in the mouth hard enough to deter further aggression. Iran acted knowing that the Biden administration is cowardly in its approach to foreign affairs, that it's willing to slow walk aid to American allies under pressure, but unwilling to countenance the credible threats of military force by which deterrence is established. And now the Biden administration continues to vacillate, Shapiro wrote. In an election year in which the president deeply fears a further conflict with Iran, Iran isn't the party being deterred. America is at the cost of American lives. on and what that means for you and for Canadians. This situation has changed very quickly.

Starting point is 00:15:27 Helping make sense of the world when it matters most. Stay in the know. CBC News. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. In MSNBC, Daniel R. DePetris argued that the U.S. should not attack Iran.

Starting point is 00:16:07 Underlying all of this chest-thumping is the assumption that U.S. military action would be so painful that Iranian leaders would respond the way we would like them to, by standing down and ordering their proxies in the Middle East to cease further attacks against U.S. troops and installations in the region. Unfortunately, this is a low probability scenario. Iran's reaction might confound our expectations. Embarrassed and angered after being struck by American bombs, Iran could up the ante and attack U.S. troops and bases, DiPietro said. The U.S. doesn't have a monopoly on choosing when and where to attack. If Iran were attacked, then it too would most likely take time to explore its options before responding, and that response might not be immediate. It also might not be what American

Starting point is 00:16:49 leaders anticipate, DePichers added. Biden can't avoid a response to the killing of three American soldiers, but those advising him to go after Iran directly shouldn't assume they know how Iran will react, nor should they assume that the consequences of an Iranian response can be predicted or managed. All right, that is it for what the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So, I gotta be honest, I really can't believe this is where we are. A few months ago, there were questions about how Israel would respond to Hamas's attack. Would there be a ground invasion in Gaza? How long would the Arab bombardment last? What would be considered proportional? Roughly four months later, and we are talking about whether the United States is

Starting point is 00:17:44 going to bomb Iran. Already, our forces are striking groups in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, and now U.S. troops are dead after an attack in Jordan. The thing that seems obvious to me is that the larger regional war is already here. If U.S. senators calling for bombing Iran isn't proof enough, just look at what has already happened. Strikes against U.S. forces have now occurred in Syria, Iraq, and Jordan. U.S. forces have now struck militia groups in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. The Red Sea shipping channel remains unsecure. Israel is still waging its war in Gaza, and Hamas is still firing on Israel from Gaza. Hezbollah is still firing on Israel from Lebanon, and Israel is striking back in Lebanon. It is worth clarifying that even though this latest attack was on a base in Jordan, the group responsible appears to be the Islamic resistance in Iraq. I know a lot of people won't

Starting point is 00:18:33 differentiate between a country like Iraq and every other place in the Middle East, but the situation there is or was actually pretty stable. Iraq is not Syria or Afghanistan. The contours of all these nations and our relationships with them are different. A small contingent of U.S. forces in Iraq are helping provide a great deal of stability, and the Iraqi government and U.S. forces are capable of playing nice. In fact, some Iraqi officials want U.S. forces to stay, in part because they can help prevent an ISIS resurgence, though the United States is also there to help limit Iran's political and military strength in the region. And we saw what can happen after a troop withdrawal. In Afghanistan in 2021, the country immediately fell to the Taliban when U.S. forces left. But everything that has happened in Gaza, and that continues to happen across the

Starting point is 00:19:20 region, is now threatening that stability. Iran-backed militia groups in Iraq and Syria have now launched drones and rockets at U.S. troops more than 120 times since October 7th. The U.S. has already responded with a drone strike in Baghdad earlier this month that killed an Iran- backed Iraqi militia member. That strike was itself a response to one of those attacks on U.S. forces, but predictably, it did not go over very well among Iraqis, many of whom are now calling on the Iraqi government to push U.S. forces out. People don't typically like it when foreign countries fire bombs into their cities and towns. Again, all of this is destabilizing. Any promises from Biden to retaliate raises the question of where and on whom that retaliation

Starting point is 00:20:01 is going to come. U.S. doves might prefer it happen in Iraq instead of Iran on some of these Iran-backed militia forces, but that would still have major consequences. A serious retaliation in Iraq would be another destabilizing event, one that could end with U.S. forces being asked to leave. And, of course, any attack on Iranian soil would be a major escalation that is almost certain to prompt a much larger, much more destabilizing, and much deadlier war. That U.S. senators like Lindsey Graham and John Cornyn are openly calling for strikes on Tehran is lunacy. I don't know what Biden should do in response. My primary concern is avoiding an all-out war with Iran, and my secondary concern is avoiding a situation where U.S. forces are quickly pushed out of Iraq, which, again, would be destructive for the region and a

Starting point is 00:20:49 huge boon to the Islamic State. All the options on the table from people who write and talk about this stuff seem to start from the presumption that we must respond in some particular way, but those are the same people who got us to exactly where we sit now. It's hard to believe following their advice is going to help turn the temperature now. It's hard to believe following their advice is going to help turn the temperature down. Of course, the reality is this attack caused American deaths and happened in Jordan, a key U.S. ally. It's hard to imagine us doing nothing, and it's easy to see how sitting on our hands would only embolden the militias in the region. Whatever Biden does next, he needs to do it with the full support of his counterparts in Iraq and Jordan. Plenty of people are rightfully worried about a wider war with Iran or the regional

Starting point is 00:21:30 situation continuing to deteriorate. But there is danger, too, in any U.S. response that sets back our relationships with friends in the region, the ones we desperately need on our side if there's any hope of keeping the peace. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one's from Susan in Bethesda, Maryland. Susan said, when a candidate drops out, where does the money that was donated to their campaign go? This is a very good question. We've answered one, I think, similar to it in the past. And unlike the questions I usually get, it actually has a mostly straightforward answer. The candidate gets to keep it. Of course, there's a bit more to it than that, but that is honestly 90% of the answer. The other 10% are the strings that

Starting point is 00:22:25 you'd probably expect to be attached to that money. First and foremost, any money donated to a candidate's campaign has to be used for campaigning. So when Ron DeSantis dropped out of the race recently, he couldn't legally take the money people donated to him and then use it to go buy a mega yacht. His campaign or political action committee has to first pay off all the debts and bills that accrued for things like office space and staff salaries. Then, whatever it has left over, DeSantis can use for his next campaign. That could either be another gubernatorial run in Florida, a presidential run in 2028, or support for a completely different person's campaign. It's actually pretty common for a politician who raised more than the race demanded to take what they had left and fold it into a quote-unquote leadership pack,

Starting point is 00:23:09 essentially a piggyback for future campaigns and not necessarily their own. That's exactly what Pete Buttigieg did after his 2020 run and what Jeb Bush did before his run in 2016. Accumulating capital that comes from a deep presidential run gives a politician a lot of options for their personal future, as well as major influence in deciding who benefits from their favor. This was a topic of conversation for me recently, actually, when Bill O'Reilly invited me back onto his show to discuss whether Nikki Haley would be staying in the race until Super Tuesday. When I gave my pitch for why I think she'll probably stick around, at least

Starting point is 00:23:45 until South Carolina, the big money donations and corporate backers only comprise part of the answer. The other part was what O'Reilly offered up himself. Book deals, speaking gigs, and a heightened public profile. All things a candidate gets to profit from directly. In some cases, a decent campaign can raise the clout of businesses associated with that candidate and thus raise their value, and therefore the candidate's net worth. Just ask Vivek Ramaswamy, who is now $100 million richer than when he started his campaign. Now, there are costs to staying with doomed campaigns too long, even if the money keeps rolling in. To arrive at this point, if you end up getting demolished by your opponent in the ballot

Starting point is 00:24:25 box, all that money you raise only buys you a big loser tag, souring your donors on investing in you in the future. Not to mention the stress, personal turmoil, and massive costs you have to pay for it before you ever turn a buck. But at the end of the day, if a politician does gain money from a campaign, they get to keep it. And that incentive is a major factor in why politicians choose the races they enter. All right, that is it for your questions and answers, which brings us to our Under the Radar section. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis quietly won two major legal victories just weeks after announcing the end to his presidential campaign. First, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit that was brought by Disney in which DeSantis was

Starting point is 00:25:10 accused of a targeted campaign against the company after revoking its special tax status in Florida. Then, just hours later, a judge dismissed two lawsuits brought by pro-Palestinian student groups that were attempting to stop DeSantis from kicking them off campus in the wake of their activism around the Israel-Gaza conflict. The judge threw the lawsuits out mostly because university officials had not yet enforced DeSantis' efforts. The New York Times has the story on the Disney lawsuit, and The Hill has the story on the Palestinian students' lawsuit. Both are linked in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The number of attacks on American military installations in the Middle East since October 18th is 166. That includes 67 in Iraq, 98 in Syria, and one in Jordan. The estimated number of Iranian-backed militia

Starting point is 00:26:06 fighters currently operating in Iraq is 50,000 to 80,000. The approximate number of U.S. troops in Iraq is 2,500. The approximate number of U.S. troops in Syria is 900. The percentage of Americans who say they are very or somewhat concerned that the United States will be drawn into a military conflict in the Middle East is 84%, according to a November poll from Quinnipiac University. The percentage of Americans who said they supported President Trump's decision not to pursue military action against Iran after Tehran launched a missile strike targeting two air bases in Iraq was 71% in 2020. The percentage of Americans who approved President Trump's decision to kill Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in 2020 was 53%. All right, and last but not least, our Have a

Starting point is 00:26:55 Nice Day story. Two friends from high school are planning on taking a trip together over their first summer breaks from college, and in doing so, trying to take steps towards bridging a national divide. Lucas Colpino and Ezekiel Wells are starting a YouTube video series to document their journey as they travel across the country and speak with people of all backgrounds to find some sacred common ground. With the conflicts going on in the world right now, we are both bringing up a lot of debate and events at our campuses, Colpino said. It is really easy to talk at each other instead of talk to each other and to try and understand

Starting point is 00:27:29 the other side better. The Wednesday Journal of Oak Park and River Forest has their story, and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As I mentioned at the top, if you want to get the newsletter version of my solutions to the border piece tomorrow, you need to go to retangle.com forward slash membership and become a member. You can do that by subscribing for a year for $60

Starting point is 00:28:00 or for a month for $6. And if you want to roll the dice and see if we can get to it on the pod, you can do that too. I am hoping to do that, but it's not going to happen anytime in the next couple of days because things are totally crazy over here. So we'll see you guys on Monday. Have a good one. Peace. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. If you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, Thanks for watching! and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada,

Starting point is 00:29:32 which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca.

Tangle - The deaths of U.S. troops in Jordan.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.