The Ricochet Podcast - The Military Option

Episode Date: September 4, 2013

Direct link to MP3 file This week on the podcast, we parse the Syrian question with experts on both the Middle East and the political perspective. The Hoover Institution’s Fouad Ajami explains why we should take action, and National Review’s political correspondent, Robert Costa, examines the the political implications and how the Republican vote will play out. Finally, the topic that the hosts... Source

Activate program. Let me just reiterate to my wife how sorry I am that I did these things and how sorry I am to the people that got these messages. We are moving forward. This is nonsense. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Yeah, it was pretty good fun. Okay, we better start this thing.

Hey, it's the Ricochet Podcast, number 180, back from behind the paywall. With Peter Robinson, Rob Long, and myself, James Lilacs. Our guests today are Fauda Jami and Bob Costa. A lot going on, and they have a lot to say about it. So, let's have a podcast. There you go again. One of the most irritating things about modern commercials on AM radio is that they roll the tape and pretend like they've caught the guy who's about to sell you a weight loss thing talking before the commercial started. It's totally fake, and we wouldn't do that here. Thank you. now and tell you that this right now is the start of 180th podcast from ricochet it's yours and it's

brought to you by who well of course audible.com leading provider of spoken audio information and entertainment and you can listen to audiobooks whenever wherever you want audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet for a free audiobook and a 30-day trial and a lot of you are hearing this i believe for the first time because there's been a change. That creaking, dragging sound you hear has been the moving of this podcast from behind the great high paywall. And here's Rob Long to tell you why. Wow, that was fast. Okay, yes, I will let you know a whole bunch of reasons. But obviously Ricochet 2.0 is coming out in a few weeks.

And we want to welcome back all of our listeners who didn't join when we moved the podcast behind the paywall. We discovered that there are about 4,000, 5,000 of you that just didn't really want to pay. So we did that for a year. We tried that. We got some members, but we decided to open this up for now for at at least the foreseeable future, to do two things. One, to help everyone know, all the listeners of all of our podcasts know that Ricochet 2.0 is coming up. And two, to remind you once again that if you're listening to this podcast and you like it and you like the other podcasts that we produce, now is a very good time to join Ricochet.com. Ricochet.com is the fastest, funniest, most civil, most interesting conversation on the web between and among our members and our contributors. It is a place to interact with some very, very fine minds, not only in member roles but also on the contributor roles. to reach out to other fellow like-minded center-right conservative type people who do not, are not

thrilled with the way the country is going and to hope to maybe build a couple of networks and change that, all of us together. Well, thank you, Rob. And if people don't sign up, we'll put this behind a paywall so deep that nobody will ever hear it again. So there. Except, of course, for the participants, which are not only Rob, but Peter Robinson in California. Peter, we heard a complaint from a Ricochet listener last week

in the comments, or rather doing our last podcast together. He doesn't care about our opening chit-chat. Get to the meat. All right. Syria, attack or not? That's why we had the opening chit-chat. Guys, the answer is. Guys, we're doing a podcast,

and periodically I will throw to you. I will proceed generally with your name. No, no, no. Let's leave this one underhand again. Peter Robinson, take it away. We've all been on vacation. I'm worse than on vacation. The opening chitchat is actually essential

to me this morning to get my mind unglued. I've been up since the middle of the night. We took child number three to the airport very early in the morning. And it's even earlier than you think because he stayed out until midnight with his buddies. Of course. And we took him to the airport to drop him at college. So I am running on about three hours of sleep and I'm an emotional wreck because even though it's really, really time for him to go on to college, at the same time, you say goodbye, last hug, kiss for the mom, turns

and walks down that security line and suddenly, 18 years, just walks away from you. Oh, believe me. I've got that coming up to me and what I'm going to do, I think it's best for everybody if I walk my daughter actually up into the plane and then turn around and then just get in the engine myself. And the fan blades will take care of it because I'm done. Wait, so Peter, how many are gone now and how many are left? This is the other thing. It's the tipping point for us. Today, child number three went to college. So we now have more than half of the kids out of the home. We only have two left here at home.

And the emotions you're feeling right now, you interpret as sadness? Absolutely no sense. It makes absolutely no sense. By the way, my wife and I are the only ones. His brother now gets the room entirely to himself. He's thrilled. The child who left is thrilled. The little sister, she said, Nico, I'm going to miss you, gave him a big hug. But she seemed to go to bed pretty happily, contentedly. But my wife and I are wrecks. OK.

The answer is we shouldn't invade Syria, but Congress should still vote to give the president the right to do so. That's why I'm an emotional wreck, and the answer's actually a little complicated. Rob, how do you think Peter's third son going to college impacts our decision to go to war with Syria? I just want to make everybody happy here.

I only note that Peter was singing a different tune when the son number two went off to college um actually he wasn't i i speaking of the seriously i i uh this morning i was sort of reading over here's the problem with syria for me it is um i i agree with peter but it drives me crazy because there's nobody – there's nobody right now who irritates me more reasons and the international community reasons and the chemical weapons reasons and all sorts of things. But we are being led into this by the most feckless, self-centered teenager, spoiled teenager. But who is the teenager in the Archie comics?

Reggie Van Pelt? Yes. So he needs a feck injection. Agreed. Here's some quotes I heard today. He's a feckotomy. Oh yeah, no, feck injection. Talking about the red line that would demand

some sort of military response. This happened this morning. These are quotes. This is this morning. These are quotes. This is not something I just made up. I didn't pluck it out of thin air. I didn't set a red line. The world set a red line. My credibility is not on the line.

The international community's credibility is on the line. And American Congress's credibility is on the line. I didn't do it. Not me. It's them. I mean, it's just something so hideously unpresidential. I've been childish about that. And yet I still think we probably should do it.

But I just wish we had anybody leading us. Almost anybody. President Hillary Clinton at this point would be a godsend. I agree. This is what I love. Keep in mind, I'm somebody who opposed the war in Iraq. And I'm not interested in repeating mistakes about basing decisions on faulty intelligence. When did he say all this?

He gave it – This morning. Oh. This morning. He said it this morning with the Swedish prime minister. The question is whether or not we can debate this issue without having it be about President Obama. I think we have to. I mean, it's like going back in history and finding that everybody dithered about World War II because they were too mad at FDR for one reason or the other.

The issue is whether or not we should strike – The answer to that question – this is why it's complicated because the answer to that question is no. We should not strike Syria. However, it is very important for the rest of the world and for this country that even when he gives his word rashly and foolishly and we have every reason to suppose that he will prosecute it ineptly, the president of the United States must be enabled to keep his word. So Congress should vote yes.

I can't see any way out of that box. And it is as maddening as Rob says. Yeah. I mean the important thing is to support the president meaning? Yeah, exactly. And yet it is the important thing. Well, I mean you could also make – you could make humanitarian arguments. You could make international security arguments.

You could but they're not very good. 1,500 people were killed in the gas attack. That's a horrible, horrible thing. 100,000 people were killed before the gas attack. Why do we respond when it gets to 100? It's just – it doesn't make – it doesn't make – anyway. I mean sure you – OK. Sorry.

I'm just babbling because I'm so frustrated. But I don't think there – but the humanitarian argument, the strategic argument, none of these arguments holds water for what he intends to do, which seems to be a kind of very brief sort of pinprick attack. It also seems to me entirely – almost impossible to achieve because what they're really trying to do is the one thing that everyone said you kind of can't do. You cannot really make a targeted strike on something designed to punish people for something and not affect the larger picture. Surely we've learned that from Egypt and surely we've learned that from Libya. No one is in charge in Libya. Exactly. No one is in charge in Libya. And we – this would be almost exactly the same thing.

I guess – look. What do I know except what I've learned from reading the newspapers about Syria? But here's – it breaks down. There's – Syria is a country without a clear ethnic or tribal majority. As I understand it, in Libya, there were basically two tribes. So it's 50-50. Syria is much more fractured than that. And the main opposition to Assad is the crazy people, the jihadists, the Islamists. That's the most powerful group within the opposition.

The opposition includes some secularists. The argument is that had we moved a year ago or a year and a half ago, we would have been able to encourage the secularists that that was before the jihadists and the crazy people took over the opposition nevertheless it's not very clear asad is a bad guy but you're exactly right if we harm him too much the people who are likely to benefit are the enemies of the united states or or or the very best we can say the most accurate thing we can say is we have zero idea what will happen. Zero idea. And we have zero idea who our friends are. And so

in that context, we're gonna punish a guy for, militarily, for something that is awful, of course, and needs to be punished, I suppose, but without any idea what the consequences are going to be. That seems to me to be a mistake.

A very bad mistake. Well, in moments, we'll hear about all this from somebody who actually knows the region in great detail, Fuad. That's right. That's true. We are very lucky to have Fuad Ajami on the podcast today to make everything we just said sound childishly unintelligent. At least we know what we're going to hit him with. Exactly right. Exactly right. James? Where's our James?

Yes, indeed I am here. Yeah, you're right, because all I know is what I read in the comment sections. You're reading something and you are sent off to YouTube to find somebody's rant about how we're all being manipulated again by Anonymous and the Zionists and the Trilateral Commission and the lizard people who live underground, and then the YouTube comments get into a debate about religion. I don't know what we did before we had places like that to hash out the issues of the day. Of course, we had editorial cartoons and newspapers where you would have some, you know, the word Syria written on a very vile-looking brute

so we would know exactly who to hate that context, and the cartoon would settle it all for us. But no, you're right. It's nuanced. Or is it? I mean, do we have to go down this long road here where we're discussing how many subtleties of the situation we just aren't really grasping? When perhaps the basic point of this whole exercise is, is that if you use chemical weapons to kill people, you get a tomahawk up your keister. That is a distinct difference between the usual internecine civil wars that occur absolutely everywhere. If you're trying to say you can't use these things, you ought not to use these things, you dastardly use them or very bad things will happen to you. I think that's a legitimate point to make. But again, what do I know? That's why we have Fawad Ajami on here.

And of course, you know him as a senior fellow at the Stanford's Hoover Institution, the author most recently of The Syrian Rebellion. We welcome him back to the podcast today. Sir. Thank you. Fawad. Fawad, Peter Robinson here. Hey, Peter.

How are you? I'm fine. I'm fine. Two questions which I think are distinct, although they'll sound very tightly related. Question number one, should we do to Syria what President Obama seems to be planning to do to Syria, which is some kind of very limited strike? Question number two, if you were in Congress, would you vote to permit the president to do that to Syria, regardless of whether you considered it correct in and of itself? Fuad? Allah forbid, as they say, I definitely would vote to give the president the authority to

do what he tells us he wants to do in Syria, even though the intentions are vague, the record of the man himself, our commander-in-chief, is not the best, but it's too late. I think we now have to do, I'm reminded of the movie Saving Private Ryan. We now have to... The sequel will be Saving President Obama. Basically, it's credibility on the line and thus the credibility of our country. He is our commander-in-chief.

There are many of us who are not convinced that he has prosecuted that role intelligently or forcefully, but it's too late. We cannot let the world watch the debacle of American retreat. We're not Britain. We can't do what the House of Commons did to David Cameron. So yes, I would vote for this authorization. All right.

And so if you were in Congress, we know what you would do. If you were in the White House advising the president, what would you say? Well, alas, I think there are no good options for President Obama right now. Because the truth is all the good options were around in 2012. Let's go back and look at what the president did or didn't do in that crucial year when the Syrian rebellion raged and much of Syria was in fact devastated and destroyed by Bashar al-Assad, by his air force, by his killers, by his vigilante squads.

Four of the president's top advisors, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint's top advisors, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Director of Central Intelligence, all recommended arming the Syrian rebellion. He overrode them. Now, we know presidents have advisors and they're not bound by their advice, but it's typical of Barack Obama. The personal arrogance, the belief he knew better, when four of his top professionals believed that the best way out of this crisis was arming the Syrian rebellion.

This way, we wouldn't have to do it ourselves. So when we come to this moment in September 2013, well, we must pull the trigger in Syria. It's the product of all the things Obama did not do in 2012. He would not establish a no-fly zone on the Turkish and Jordanian borders that would have been encouraging and enabling Syrian soldiers to defect. So there was a lot we could have done to undermine the regime of Bashar al-Assad and to support this rebellion. But the truth is, particularly under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, we ran out the clock on the Syrians. We did not come to the rescue.

And fast forward from the time of Hillary Clinton to this moment, last June, again, there was a commitment made to arm the Syrian rebellion, to provide lethal weapons to the Syrians, and we did not do it. So now we understand that a kind of pledge has been made to Senator McCain and Senator Lindsey Graham that we will change the rules of the game. We will encourage the Syrians. We will train them. We will provide them with weapons. But many members of the House and the Senate, and rightly so, don't trust that the president will follow through on that. Fouad, Peter here one more time. I want Rob and James to join us in a moment. But going back even to 2012, when the options were much better than they are today, why would it have been in America's interest to become involved in Syria? What – as I understand it – by the way, correct me on just the basics of this if I get this wrong because what I know about Syria, I know from reading the newspapers

and they're not always right. But it's a country of considerable ethnic and religious divisions. The rebels against Assad, that's a complicated coalition in and of itself. I just heard Dexter Filkins, the New for The New Yorker, who flies back and forth from the Middle East a great deal, say, again, this is about the present rather than 2012. But at present, he said by far the most important opposition to Assad is Islamist at this point. But even when the options were better than they are today, why should we have cared to the extent of participating? I'm a big fan of Dexter Filkins. He reviewed my book, The Syrian Rebellion, for the New

York Times favorably, so therefore I'm favorable toward him. That's what it takes for an author. Yes, and I was on Anderson Cooper last night with him. I have a great affection for him, and you're right. He is a man who knows the Middle East, the streets of the Middle East, the wars of the Middle East. But here's what I think about Syria and why the stakes in Syria, in a way, compel America's attention. I mean, you're right when you say Syria is a country of great diversity. It's actually attributed, if you will, to the majority of the Syrian population who are Muslim Sunni Arabs, that as they ruled Syria, there were all kinds of minorities.

They were tolerated. They were respected. They had a place in the country's matrix and the country's fabric. So it is a divided country. The fault lines are very interesting. There is a Sunni majority of something like 75% of the population, and they are the ones who are mostly in rebellion. There is a Kurdish community, and the Kurds are about 10% of the population. There is a Christian population, again, 10%. The one community that's really, if you will,

that this really is the crux of the problem are the Alawites. There is racism within racism. There is racism within Shiaism. And they are mountain people. They come from the northwest of Syria. They are people who were unbelievably poor. They were discriminated against. They were outside the bounds of Islam. And Orthodox

Sunni Muslims had all kinds of aversions and allergies to them. But what the Alawis did is they went into the armed forces. They began doing so under the French, and they continued that pattern after independence, after World War II. And from the army, from the army, they began this kind of hegemony over Syria. Why does Syria matter? Look, it's an old country. It's on the Mediterranean. You know, it's not somewhere in the depth of Africa. I mean, it is what happens in Syria.

It's very important. The borders of Syria are very important. Look at Lebanon right next door. Look at Israel right next door. Look at the key country of Iraq, again, to the east. Look at Lebanon right next door. Look at Israel right next door. Look at the key country of Iraq again to the east. Look at Turkey. So when you look at Syria, what happens in Syria does not stay in Syria. All right.

One more question before Rob comes in. I'm sorry because – Rob, I'm apologizing to you, not to Fuad. I know. Don't worry. I'm apologizing to you, not to Fuad. I know. So Edward Luttwak wrote a piece in the New York Times. I think this may have been last week at some point. Yes, I saw it. You saw it, in which he said – he agreed with what you said, Fuad in that he said the only option that makes any strategic sense for the United States right now is to hope for and do what we can to engineer a bloody stalemate. Let both sides just keep fighting with each other.

Or is that what President Obama has in mind by degrading Assad's air force just to weaken him a little bit? Perhaps this is why he's saying he's not interested in regime change. What do you make of Lutfak's assertion that what is in America's strategic interest is a stalemate in Syria? And how do you think the president is taking that into account in drawing up his military plans, if at all? Well, to be honest with you, when I read that piece, I was literally appalled by its logic, by its morality. And if I were to do that kind of writing and that kind of thinking and that kind of teaching, I'd give it up and go into hedge funds or even smuggled diamonds in West Africa, which many of my relatives were into. I think this was, in a way, this argument that we should feed the chaos, if you will,

that we should engineer or try to engineer a stalemate so they can kill each other. You know, that is just completely the morality of that and the logic of that completely escapes me. Again and again, this is a very strategic country in a very strategic part of the world and we can't simply stand and stay on the sidelines and watch the destruction of a country. We're not India. We're not China. We're not even England anymore.

We do have a tradition of rescue. We have a tradition of American responsibility and for any respectable columnist or any respectable thinker to sit there and say, well, we should just make sure that we even – like if – I remember the piece that if the rebellion is winning, we should help Bashar. Right. If Bashar is winning, we should help the rebellion. I mean that is just – the cynicism of this bothers the mind. Rob, come in now. Hey, Fuad. It's Rob Long in Los Angeles. How are you? Hi, Rob. How are you? In the – what they used to say – I have a patch, a small little arm patch on my mantelpiece of the Assad family that a friend of mine picked up in Damascus.

They call it there the father, son, and the holy ghost because Bashar Assad, who now is the despot in Syria, it was not really supposed to be the next in line. He was an optician, right? I mean, he was sort of a... And it was Basel Assad who was the next in line who was killed in a car crash. Mysterious car crash, some people say. And that was years ago.

How long have people who've been watching and noticing Syria, how long have they been waiting for this? It seems like this, these events in Syria were inevitable. A weak leader, the weak son after the strong father, the wrong son taking over in terms of state security from their perspective. This seems like act three of a story that we could have predicted in the first scene. Am I wrong? Well, no, no, you're absolutely right. I mean,

though on Bashar and Bashar inheriting his father's kingdom, his father's tyranny, that he bequeathed him a whole country, if you will. Now, if you think the godfather and think of Basil Asad, the son who was a military man, who was a good-looking man, who was being groomed and prepared for succession, think of him as Sonny Corleone. And think of Bashar as Michael. And Michael inherits the family business, the family extortion racket,

and he actually is very good at it. In fact, I think Bashar may be even more... He may be more merciless than his own father because he has so much to prove. He had his older brother Basil, who had all the brilliance. He had his younger brother Maher, who is all the brilliance. He had his younger brother, Maher, who is a killer. And there is this optometrist who just simply is being summoned and called upon to inherit the country. I tell you one thing, that if you will doom Syria to this rebellion,

though I think the word doomed is not perfect, I think the Syrian people needed to rise in rebellion. Whether they needed to pay the price, we don't really know. They didn't have to. Imagine if there was a President McCain. They wouldn't have had to pay that heavy a price. I think the Arab Spring doomed the Assad tyranny. I think once the Syrians sat there and watched their people in Tunisia,

and then, of of course it came to the big theater Egypt and then it hit Libya and they watch the the death and the the demise of that terrible tyrant Muhammad Qaddafi and they looked at Bahrain and they looked at Yemen I think the Syrian people said why are we alone fated to this terrible tyranny of this terrible family? Last question. James Lytle is here in Minneapolis. You mentioned, of course, the Godfather parallel, the difference being that if Michael Corleone dies and loses control,

there's not going to be a massacre of Italians in New Jersey like there would be of all the whites in Syria. But if there's nothing the United States can do directly on the ground, is there a point to be made that Assad, having crossed a line, whether or not the president laid it out in the first place, using chemical weapons is still crossing a line in this day and age,

that there is a point to be made in the international community to all that if you do this, you pay a price. And not a price necessarily of materiel. You lose a plane or an airfield. But you lose a price in terms of your own prestige and power and comfort. Hit the presidential palace with a tomahawk, not some military base. Can you see the sense of taking this directly to Assad himself

and making him pay for doing something that's still regarded as outside the bounds of civilized behavior? Well, we're on the same wavelength. I actually wrote a piece for Bloomberg View where I've been doing some columns and some essays recently. And what I wrote was, I think the title tells you the story. I said, destroy Assad's regime or hold your fire. I think you're absolutely right. There's no point

in hitting quote-unquote Syria. There's no point in causing more suffering for the Syrian people. There is a point in a targeted campaign that would aim at Bashar al-Assad. There's also neighborhoods, by the way, in Damascus where the barons of the regime, where the senior officers and the senior intelligence people, the people who do the killing, the people who of the regime, were the senior officers and the senior intelligence people, the people who do the killing, the people who do the torture, and the people who rule, who happen to be, alas, we have to be admitted, they happen to be mostly Alawis. The regime does have some Sunni functionaries, by the way. They're not all Alawis.

But there are neighborhoods in Damascus where the regime is concentrated, and those are the neighborhoods we need to hit. We don't need collateral damage of simple people. We need to do this campaign that would destroy Bashar al-Assad and the cabal around him. Because if we have some limited pinpricks, and then after the strikes are over, Bashar al-Assad comes out of the wreckage and stands before a crater and says, ah, people of Syria, look,

I survived this, then our effort would have been in vain. We need to do this campaign the serious way. We need to commit ourselves to it or we need to simply stay home. Well, we'll be keen to be seeing what you say in the future in the next few weeks as this unfolds. Thank you very much again for joining us on the podcast.

Thank you. My pleasure. Thank you, Fouad. Bye. I'm not sure if... I think it's an ophthalmologist that he was trained as. Not an optometrist. Not an ophthalmologist, which is one of those people who can diagnose the various things wrong with your eyes.

I was looking at a picture of Assad the other day and actually realizing that there's something wrong with his eyes, that one of them is sort of going off in a different direction. And it's impossible to look at him without thinking, your eyes are not exactly all lined up the way they ought to be, mister. So if you watch him on television, it's very, very disconcerting. But I suppose if you listen to him, if you just hear what he's having to say, you're not put off by the fact that one eye is staring off into the corner somewhere, which is why if you're keen to know a little bit more about the man, Charlie Rose actually did a whole bunch of interviews with leaders in the Middle East and in 2010 sat down with Bashar al-Assad.

And you can get that interview for free at audible.com. It's there right now waiting for you to come and claim it for free as part of your 30-day trial. Ricochetpodcast.com slash audible. Did I say that right? No, I think it's audiblepodcast.com slash ricochet. Whatever the link is embedded in this very piece and you will find it. Go there and you can sign up not only to get something like Charlie Rose talking to Assad, but any modern novel, any old classic novel, and they'll all be brought to all of

your electronic devices with WhisperSync, which syncs them all to wherever you happen to be. It's a great thing. We thank them for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast, and this is the point usually where Rob and Peter have to say, oh, man, criminy Joseph. I was supposed to have a pick and I don't. Oh, I have a pick. What are you talking about? I'm way ahead.

I have a pick. It's not set in Syria. I usually try to like get something that's like somewhat topical because I actually feel like that's – it's much easier to listen to an audio book, an audible book on the way to work and make a topical than it is to pick a book and find it and order it and get it and do that. But it is a book I read a bunch of years ago, which I loved because I love the author's Robert Stone. He's a great American kind of adventure novelist but psychological novelist, wrote a lot of stuff set in the 60s and stuff. And he wrote a book called Damascus Gate a bunch of years ago, probably 15, 20 years ago. But like every Robert Stone novel, it kind of lays out the situation – it's set in Jerusalem. But it lays out the different sects and belief groups that permeate the area. And it was a really good – not only a great story and a lot is going on, but a great primer to that part of the area. And it was a really good, not only a great story,

and a lot's going on, but a great primer to that part of the world. It does sound good. You know, you mentioned all the belief groups and whatnot, and as I was saying before Fawood came on, we were talking about all the intricacies of the culture that you have to understand to understand the area, and the fact that it's a manufactured country,

Syria, is why all those countries, the Brits just drew a bunch of boundaries, and that's why people aren't getting along. Isn't that sort of an excuse? Okay, I'm sorry that you're not ethnically and religiously pure. Boohoo. Can you all get along without stabbing each other every 30 years in a spasm of society destroying violence? It's just a question.

We managed to do it kind of well up in North Dakota. Peter, what's your pick? No, my pick, I'm going to be totally honest. I do not have a pick because the time that I would have spent listening to a book in the car went this past week to buying a car. I come to think of – there's no reason. Oh, wow. It's obvious that I'm an emotional wreck. I sent one son to college and we finally replaced the 22-year-old Ford Taurus that the kids have been using for years and years now to drive back and forth to high school.

And we bought a – by the way, if you haven't been in the car market in I guess what, eight years is the last time I bought a car. It is amazing the stuff that's available. But we bought a little Ford Fusion. Terrific car. Fun to drive. Wonderful for the kids. Base model. But even the base model has such complicated electronic.

You plug in your iPod. This way, do this. There's an online tutorial. It's just – so I'll be back to Audible books once I figure out how to listen to them again. When you say the amazing things that they come with, like what for example? Oh, all the electronic is. First of all, it's a small, relatively by the standards of these days, inexpensive car. The ride is wonderful.

It feels tightly constructed. The tin cannyness that I remember from little Fords when I was my kid's age is all gone. And the sound and the – so, OK. So part of it is it's just a beautifully constructed car at least by the contrast of the cars that I remember when I was their age for sure. But also the electronics. You push a button. Everything comes with Sirius satellite radio. You get six months of that free and it takes half an hour to figure out how to find Frank Sinatra and then another half an hour to find Frank Sinatra again because my kids immediately

obliterate the preset for Frank Sinatra and on and on it goes. My kids now know how to listen to their iPods but I still don't know how to listen to mine. That's what I mean. Well, you'll find a jack into which you can plug your iPod and all the music will stream gloriously from your speakers. No, I know where the jack is. You have to do all kinds of settings

to sync it. Yes, well, what you want to do you want to hit your AUX button. We'll get it to you. Yes, yes. James, you're going to just, it's not going to work. You're right. It's not it to you. Yes, yes. James, you're going to – I'm just – it's not going to work. You're right. What am I saying here? It's not going to work. Well, you mentioned the – yes, I know.

We should go back to politics. Al-Qaeda is dead. Or anything. Detroit is alive. I'm trying to save you from the frustration of trying to explain to Peter how to use – how to do a radio preset. But there is a point to this, and that is when the Ford Taurus first came out, and he said it's 22 years old, so I'm not sure if that's... The Ford Taurus

was a car that they released with these sensuous ads. I think Bette Midler singing Do You Want to Dance or something like that as the camera lovingly panned across. The thing that was different about the Taurus was it had curves. For the first time in a long time, a car actually had curves.

And I remember looking at that thing, thinking that it's like L. McPherson. And you look back on it, and it still is a pretty damned boxy car. But we were so hungry for anything that approached a certain amount of sensualness in industrial design and car design that we just fell madly in love with the fact that there was a slight curve on the Taurus and it remade the auto industry. I'll bet. I think everybody went back to the drawing board and said, yeah, people, all right, people want curves, give them curves. What I can't understand is why a lot of the cars that you look today, Peter, I'm sure you found this out. There's a certain sameness of modern style to car design that I find really uninspiring. People always react with a certain emotions to the cars of the 30s, the really sleek Italian numbers of the 30s and the 40s, and also the great optimistic

American New Frontier tail fin googie style of the 50s. Why can't they give us some of that again? Would it kill them to give us a car with tail fins? I mean would it really kill them to give us something with great headlights and big chrome bumpers and something that says old American swagger? Those things would just fly out of the dealership. Rob, excuse me, but out of sheer even-handedness, I think that after a couple of jokes on my inability to operate the iPod, you really have to point out that James Lilacs may be singular in America for wanting tail fins and pink chrome bumpers. I don't think he is. I don't think he is at all. What? There is something about that style. Why, if Ford Motor Company built a 68 Mustang today, that it wouldn't sell better than the – although the new Mustang is pretty good, but it wouldn't sell better than the new Mustang.

People like what they like. Do you think that government regulation has something to do with it, that there's so many safety regulations now that they have – they're much more tightly constrained than they used to be? That is definitely what car manufacturers say. That is definitely the argument. No, I don't – it could be true. I don't really know. But that is definitely what car manufacturers say about – and large consumer product manufacturers say about almost everything they do is that the specs now for – the safety specs now for the kinds of – for the materials they can use and the safety features they have to have really drive a huge part of the design process.

Right. You can't have tail fins because if you're in an accident and if your seatbelt fails and if your airbag fails and if your glass doesn't shatter correctly, you could be launched through that and impale yourself on somebody else's tail fin. So we can't possibly have that. So we can't have cars that are fun. We have cars that are practical. Little tiny go-buggies that take us from here to there without a single moment of that American revving experience, which I

still miss, and for God's sakes, the cars that I had growing up were 1970s boxes of no particular glory, except for the Pacer. Ah, the Pacer with its wonderful Ethel Merman-sized wheelbase and its acres of glass and its actually Jetson-esque sort of profile. I loved that car. I really did. But that's another podcast. Actually, somebody said in the comments,

stop talking about these things that aren't politics. So if you're going to talk politics, why not have one of the best reporters out there? He's Robert Costa. Bob, as we know him, he's a Washington-based political reporter for National Review. Smart guy and really good either on page or on the stump, and it's a pleasure to have him here. He covers the White House, the Congress, and campaigns. You can follow him on Twitter, by the way, at RobertCostaNRO, National Review Online.

Friend of Ricochet and friend of the show. Welcome, Bob. Hey, great to join you. So how's Congress going to vote? I think it's going to be very split on both sides. I'm on Capitol Hill right now. I've been checking in with a lot of the anti-Hawks, especially on the Republican side. And it seems like Rand Paul is working behind the scenes to try to come up with a coalition that's going to put Boehner in a corner, especially in the House. You see

people like Rand Paul working now to talk to people like Tim Hulskamp in the House, Justin Amash, Tom Massey, to try to really push back against Boehner's support for the White House's plan. And so you're going to the House pretty quickly there. Is the Senate more or less settled? Do we know where the votes – how the votes line up in the Senate? I think right now the Senate is actually probably the more interesting story. I mean that's a good point, Peter, because no one really knows right now where people are going to stand. I spoke to Paul Ryan's team yesterday, and Ryan, just like a lot of these senators too, where they are generally supportive of intervention. You saw Mark Rubio at the Kerry hearing yesterday sound generally supportive, but no one's really ready to signal as of yet. I think a lot of whipping has to still happen behind the scenes. So Leader McConnell has a primary challenge back home in Kentucky in Rand Paul's state, where as best I can tell, Rand Paul's approval ratings

are very high. The leader has a primary challenge from a Tea Party candidate. He also has a fairly interesting and possibly formidable Democratic challenger. Do we know yet how the minority leader intends to vote? He's the one to watch, Peter, because you're so right. He has so much pressure from different sides. I think McConnell, generally speaking, from what I can tell, is more towards the Boehner cantriposition, but I'm not so sure that means necessarily he's going to vote the Boehner cantriposition and vote for intervention. Because McConnell, if anything, the political operator,

he's a conservative. I think he's a sharp politician, but he's also a survivor. And if he really feels his state in a primary sense is trending away from the intervention wing of the party, he could easily, I think, vote against the war and just chalk it up to saying that the president doesn't have a great plan. Right. Now, Rob Long and James Lyons want to get in. I have one more question, if I may, to indulge myself, Bob, with having you on. It struck me – I could be wrong. Fill me in. Let me know what you think here. Boehner and Cantor, the number one and number two Republican in the House, were pretty quick in supporting the president.

Cantor was, as far as I can recall, within a couple of hours of the president's announcing that he would go to Congress, Cantor was saying, I intend to stand with the president. Now, they hem, they haw, they say they're reluctant. Their argument is that you have to support the president of the United States, whatever you think of him, when it comes to foreign policy. I grant the argument. In fact, I think it's persuasive myself. But it looks to me as though they're not speaking for their members. The membership is very divided. Are these guys taking a personal risk by getting out in that direction so quickly and so

hard and so sort of irretrievably when their membership is much more divided as best I can tell? It's a great point. And I think the calculation for Boehner and Cantor is this. The way they are framing the Syria vote behind the scenes is as a conscience vote, and so that means they're not whipping it. Boehner's urging the White House to whip. That means Boehner's totally hands off because Boehner's headache this fall is going to be the fiscal issues, the debt limit, etc., sequester, and those fiscal issues could really divide the conference, and Boehner is very worried about his power with the fiscal debate. But with Syria, he already knows the tensions and cleavagesor, Adam Kinzinger, who's a hawk for military – member of the military from Illinois. But beyond that, I mean the real block right now is leaning no in that house, and it's undecided. So Boehner and Cantor, I think – yeah. Has Kevin McCarthy declared the number three Republican? No, he has not declared.

He remains undecided. McCarthy is one of the more interesting members right now in the House because he's always considered a cantor ally. He was part of that Young Guns clique that emerged in 2010. But on foreign policy, he comes out of a – not a Rand Paul school, but he's much more hesitant. He was elected to Congress during the Iraq War. He's just not part of the Bush era in many ways. He doesn't come out of that. He wasn't informed by it. And so I think he leans much more towards the skepticism in the House, our side.

Rob? Yeah. Hey, Bob, I got a question. So how much working the phones is being done right now by the Obama administration? I mean how much of lobbying are they doing? I mean it seems like this falls into their lap, just to be incredibly cynical at the moment. It seems like this could be a win, a big win for them. They get Boehner and McConnell to stretch and reach and make deals and push and

carry the water and maybe burn a lot of relationships or affect a lot of relationships that are then they later can exploit when it comes down to the money stuff. I mean, the Obama White House right now. So I was talking to a Senate Republican leadership staffer this morning, and he had a good insight. He said the White House actually right now is not whipping any Republican. They actually have no time or made no effort to really whip Republicans because right now the White House is very nervous about the Senate vote. And the people who are with the White House right now who are helping to whip the Democrats behind the scenes,

you've got Harry Reid in the Senate, you've got Dianne Feinstein helping out, Barbara Boxer, Bill Nelson from Florida, and especially Carl Levin from Michigan. This is kind of an informal White House team that's whipping Democratic senators because when you look at the Senate whip count right now on the Democratic side, you have the leadership with the White House. There are so many undecided. I mean, where is someone like an Amy Klobuchar who's thinking about running for president and come out in Minnesota? Where does a Jack Reed from Rhode Island who's very involved in military issues? He's undecided. And if these type of Democrats aren't going to beat the White House, the White House has a big problem, and then they won't be able to blame the House Republicans if this thing fizzles.

What about Manchin of West Virginia? Manchin of West Virginia, I believe he's leaning no right now. He's read his state is very democratic on economic issues, but he's much more leaning no. I mean his most public statement was yesterday, and he seemed to be not a hard no but very much going to probably end up in that direction. So, Bob, what – we've got the editorial page of the New York Times as a supportive of Obama just as you'd expect. Although I have to say their editorial yesterday, if I believe it, as I recall, I'm confused about what day of the week it is because I see these things on the internet and in any event, I think it was yesterday's, wanted the Obama administration

to make its case more compellingly and more tightly. Still, they're supportive. Editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, supportive. You have to stand behind the president of the United States even if you have doubts about whether he should have committed the country he has, we have to stand with him. That's the Boehner position. That's the Cantor position.

And yet – and it would be easy, you'd think, particularly for Republicans to sign up to that position. I have my qualms, but we only have one president at a time. That's an argument that has resonated throughout American history at least since the – well, I guess throughout the Cold War certainly. And yet the members are not happy. use it, the elites, the sophisticated intellectuals, the people who write the editorials and the leadership are going in one direction and the ordinary Americans just say, I don't care what your arguments are. This doesn't smell right.

No, that's right. I mean, it's very unsurprising to see elements left opposed to military intervention, but it's really the Tea Party element of the Republican Party. When you have someone like the Heritage Action Group, which is part of the Heritage Foundation, lining up against intervention, and you have so many Tea Party leaders coming out against intervention. It's really – I think you're right. It's the – I mean I don't know if you want to call it the elite. You want to call it the leadership, but it's the leadership types in both parties versus the grassroots on both sides. That's the divide. It's not a partisan divide.

I failed to mention one elitist editorial, and that, of course, was in National Review. Well, we like to think we're of the people, Peter, here at National Review. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But National Review also took the same line. No, that's true. And I think the question I have now as a reporter is how much pressure and influence do these Tea Party groups really have on the Republicans who are undecided? I mean can the Republican now, in the way you couldn't during the Iraq and Afghanistan situations, get away with voting against war? Could you really make that case now and vote against it and not suffer at all in a primary situation. Do we know yet where talk radio is? I mean, when you watch Fox, you watch the different way. Rand Paul was the lead guest

on Hannity yesterday. O'Reilly seems disappointed with how a lot of Republicans are handling this. I think it's quite divided. I think talk radio and right are as much divided right now as the congressional GOP. Got it. So do we have a date on the vote yet? Senate goes first? It'll be next week. Right now, we're still officially in recess.

Now we're not kind of because of hearings, but the House and Senate are officially all back next week. This will be immediately considered. And you want to call it? I think it passes the Senate. Harry Reid is very good at maybe working quietly with McConnell to get the vote there, even if McConnell votes against it. I don't think McConnell is really a Rand Paul-sense opposed to this. It's more of a political vote for him. In the House, I think Boehner doesn't really care. I think Boehner is going to make the case for intervention, but if Boehner is making this a conscience vote, it could easily flop in the House, and Boehner is fine with that. Boehner would rather let his conference vote how they want than try to really manhandle them and push them in a certain direction. But I'm sorry, I keep saying I'm done, but I'm not done.

I'm sorry. Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Barrasso, the new the new the young guns in the Senate, were they? Craig, I was actually just working on that before I got in this this Skype thing. And my assumption,, was that Cruz, Lee, and Paul were kind of working together as a trio. But then speaking to advisors to Cruz and Lee, I got the impression that that's kind of true, but both of those senators, Lee and Cruz, don't want to be immediately associated with the Paul wing. They're going to try to craft their own positions. They are likely going to be opposed to intervention, but they don't want to seem isolationist or libertarian. They're going to try to couch it in terms of the administration fumbling, etc. And I think that was interesting that they're not – they like Paul. They're friendly with Paul, but they don't want to have Paul be their leader and speak for them. So I think they're going to be against it though. Got it. Hey, Rob?

Yeah, Bob, it's Rob Long in LA. How are you? Good, Rob. So where is the argument in the House for voting no? Is it – I mean let's just be honest. Is it mostly principled? Is it about the issue? Is it about the fights they're going to have in the future? The senators can always flatter themselves whether they're correct or incorrect to be sort of the higher purpose, sort of they have a higher calling. They're more sophisticated. They make the bigger calls.

But every two years, this grubby congressman, they got to run again. And so where is the argument there? Is it kind of where I am where – I mean I'm not proud of it, but part of me just – it just sticks in my craw that I now have to agree with Barack Obama and John McCain? back from the August recess and from just anecdotal evidence talking to a few members, constituents are very much opposed, at least in Republican districts, towards intervention, which I was surprised to hear, but that's what members are telling me. And so when they're not really feeling the pressure from their districts and the leadership is not pressuring them to go in a certain way, it just kind of led to this festering opposition. And they also keep pointing to people like Rumsfeld and Bolton who indicated their opposition on Tuesday. And so those factors are kind of leading to – there's no impetus right now for a lot of these R's, even if they're generally bush hawks or coming out of that wing, to really get behind this and rally to it.

That's right. I mean you have – you really have to decide. You agree with McCain, Obama, Kerry, Pelosi, right? That's who's out in front of us. Well, not just Pelosi but her five-year-old grandson. Yeah, that's right. That just doesn't seem like it's on its way to consensus. I'll put it that way. I think a good way to think about this Syria vote in the House is when you look back at the July vote on Justin Amash's amendment to prohibit the National Security Agency from collecting data on Americans. That really split in different ways. You had the more libertarian Republicans aligning with the Democratic Progressive Caucus to vote for the Amash Amendment and Democrats voted for that amendment. I think that kind of group is going to come together now in a similar way to vote against the Syria resolution. Yes. Well, there's no way that that could possibly come back to bite them or the country or any future Republican president in the future. So go on, guys. But here's the here's the deal, Bob. Is there nobody in D.C. in the Hill right now saying, all right, look, it's the president.

We've got to do this. Unfortunately, he's boxed us into this, but we've got to get up behind him. But while we're at it, let's get something, too. In other words, actual, you know, partisan, self-interested politics at work in Washington. I know it's a stunning idea for the Republicans to conceive of that, but might there be some people saying, hey, let's get some cuts put back in. You can have your little war, Mr. President, but we want more defense spending. And it'd be hard for him to argue against that, the president, wouldn't it? No, it's true. But what's interesting is that Boehner has to be the leader there, and Boehner is not trying to cut a deal. Boehner is just wiping his hands of any kind of deal by making it a conscience vote, and I think by doing that, Boehner takes pressure off of himself, but he's also eliminating any chance for kind of a broker deal. This is not going to be some kind of grand bargain situation. This is just going to be a conscience vote in in the house and it's more important i think for the president right now as i mentioned to be getting the votes in the senate uh and so james i think politically that's a strong argument i just

don't see anyone making it because no one really wants to touch this no one really wants to see how they can push this in a certain way they want to almost get it over with even the president of course seems to want to do that. Go on, Peter. Okay. Bob, Peter here. This is my last question. Honest.

Honest it is this time. James just made a point. He made it sarcastically, but I want to pick up on it and have you address it. And he said, well, of course, you know, that'll never – if it flops in the House as you suggested, oh, well, that will never come back to haunt Republicans. Well, of course, Republicans are running a big – how big a risk are they running? That will – if it flops in the house as you suggested, oh, well, that will never come back to haunt republicans. Well, of course republicans are running a big – how big a risk are they running? Suppose it flops in the house. Have republicans damaged themselves? I think so.

I mean the party will have definitely changed over the last decade. I mean it's unimaginable you would think 10 years ago if someone was using chemical weapons in Syria that Republicans would not be outraged in having a resolution to do some kind of targeted military action. And I really just think it speaks to the different direction of the party. I mean when you have someone like Kevin McCarthy undecided, number three in the House, when you have Boehner and Cantor supportive broadly but not fighting for it. The party just doesn't – the hawks – who is the leader right now in the Republican Party on foreign policy? I was thinking about this yesterday. Maybe you guys have a name. I mean you have John Bolton perhaps, but he's an outsider. He's a friend of National Review and us, but he's an outsider, not in the power right now. Peter King perhaps, but he's not really a national force on foreign policy. Tom Cotton, maybe, but he's young. He's running for Senate. He's only 34. There's no real muscle right now in the GOP to push for something like this. I mean, Boehner and Cantor just don't have

the weight within their own house. And so I'm just not sure who's going to be there to help the president. There's no commanding foreign policy intelligence. There's no Henry Kissinger. There's no one who plays the role Kissinger played. I would say that Rand Paul has the most compelling, the most interesting, the most attractive to the press to cover voice in foreign policy right now. And you're right. It's not a voice that we would have expected to emerge 10 years ago. I mean, the only one maybe besides Paul, the counter to Paul is McCain. And McCain and Graham are definitely out there urging for the president to do more. These targeted strikes that are announced way ahead of time are foolhardy. And you see McCain

trying to work with the president, went to the White House this week, huddled with the president over the weekend, trying to come up with some kind of more is better strategy for Syria. But McCain, it's really the Paul wing that I see kind of the undercurrent right now here in Congress, not McCain. McCain has a lot of weight with the press, but not so much with his own members. Well, you know, when all this is said and done, Bob, I believe that the media will take a look back over the last 10 years or so and say, you know, when all this is said and done, Bob, I believe that the media will take a look back over the last 10 years or so and say, you know, we really were complicit in creating an atmosphere of such derision for the Bush efforts around the world and the Bush doctrine. We really did such a good job of discrediting that by raising up Cindy Sheehan and giving all this lavish, wonderful, sympathetic coverage to the anti-war press. We were so good at turning the country against what we were doing overseas that we created the general mood of war weariness that now has led to this. Because this is – and the media at that point will say, well, you know, we really do share an awful lot of responsibility for the rise of isolationism, the country turning inwards.

And at that point I think the media will have a great moment of self-awareness and self-criticism. I don't know. James, how can you blame the media, James? It will be the Republicans' fault again because history always begins today, if not yesterday, and possibly tomorrow noon. So it will be the Republicans' fault for blunting the great humanitarian urge of the president to draw a line and say that chemical weapons are outside the pale sky society. James, isn't it the Republicans' fault? It's always the Republicans' fault. I disagree with you.

It's not the media's fault. I mean the Republicans are not being articulate on this. They're not being forceful, not taking risks politically to stand up for this. I don't think the media is – I think the media is right if they're saying there's a huge Republican divide and the Republicans are sheepish when dealing with Syria. I don't see – I'm going big and meta and saying that the general East Coast media culture in general has been partially responsible for turning the country into something that is – I mean, yes, events on the ground and events in Iraq had an awful lot to do with it. But there's something about the national mood now which was carefully cultivated by 10 years of what we got from our betters on the coasts. Not you, Rob, of course.

No, of course not. No one's better. Of wisdom. But, Bob, do you think any of that is true? I have some cynical conservative friends who believe that in about six weeks this is going to be the Republican war in Syria. Is that a possibility? Not the way things are trending. I mean this is something the president wanted.

I think the president is trying to share blame slash credit for this war by going to Congress. I mean one of the – the story that really hasn't gotten enough play by The New York Times and others is the president's indecision on this. I mean can you imagine if Bush said he was going to signal that he was going to do strikes on his own and then had a change of heart and decided to go to Congress and be cast as guilt, a sign of weakness? And that just has been so underplayed, the president's change and shift. Yeah, underplayed. Why is that exactly? Why is it being underplayed? I don't know. It's one of the most dramatic things I've heard in a long time. The president is about to go to war and takes a walk around the Rose Garden and changes his mind and decides to go to Congress. And even now, if Congress votes against the war,

he's not clear or Kerry wasn't clear yesterday whether that's binding or not. I mean, it's just, what a mess over at the White House. And it's great drama to me as a writer and reporter, but no one seems to really be covering it on the left. Well, it's injurious to the image of their precious object of love and admiration. That's why, for heaven's sakes.

Yeah, well, Leon Weaseltier had a piece in The New Republic where he said, and he's right, that this is the beginning of America not caring about this stuff, that world weariness means that essentially, go ahead, gas 100,000 more. We don't care.

We don't care. Hey, Bob, just one last thing. John Pedorts has got a column today, today or yesterday in the New York Post, and he suggests that the whole reason that Obama changed his mind and decided to go for authorization isn't because he thought about the politics of it or the policy of it or what's right or wrong or constitutionality or anything or even his legacy. It's because he genuinely doesn't know what to do, that this is not a sign of a president who's got a mission and has made a decision and has analyzed the pros and the cons and the potential blowback. He just doesn't have any idea what to do, and this is a way to delay it. Is that – do you buy that? Oh, I definitely buy that. I mean even reading the Times and some of the liberal accounts of the president's decision, you get this distinct impression that the president regrets using the term red line. The administration wasn't even clear about how they're going to follow through if that red line was crossed, and I think that's right. I think this president has very little management ability he

has limited relationships with congress i don't think he was ready to build any kind of coalition you see the the disaster in britain he what cameron he didn't give cameron much time to build uh a groundswell for the idea for the idea of military action to build a any anything really with european allies so yeah i think he likes using the term red line. He likes sounding tough in speeches, but in terms of following through on foreign policy, it just hasn't been there. I mean look at the – just the pictures, the Pete Sousa, the White House photographer. You saw McCain and Graham meeting with the president the other day, and there was Susan Rice as the only other person in the room taking notes. I mean Susan Rice is your top advisor. Good luck.

Hey, Bob. Doggone it. I keep saying I'll let you go and then I keep – have you interviewed Don Rumsfeld or Josh Bolton? Not recently. No, but I've interviewed them several times before. OK. So what on earth – I mean we've said this two or three times. It suddenly struck me.

Wait a minute. We're talking about Republican officeholders. Kevin McCarthy's not from the Bush era. He wasn't formed during the fire. Don Rumsfeld

led us into Iraq. Josh Bolton was part of the team. And they're saying, don't go into Syria. It's not just that we've got some sort of new brand of Republicans rising up here. People have changed their minds or changed their fundamental stances, no?

No, I think that's right, Peter. I think that's definitely true. I mean, it's surprising John Bolton, Donald Rumsfeld have skepticism. Partly, I think it's because they think, it comes back to our previous point, that the administration's incompetent, and they'd rather not see an incompetent administration try to do a foolish, ill-planned foreign policy maneuver in Syria. But I think there is some broader movement right now in the GOP away from being involved in any kind of foreign policy crisis, even if it involves chemical weapons. I think no one approves of chemical weapons, but you're definitely seeing the party not in its natural way move towards intervention should someone cross this kind of red line.

Well, it's not like saying that if you don't intervene in Rwanda, you're approving of machetes. But if you don't do something to Syria after clear violations like this, then you are approving of it, and you're just saying to people in the future, go ahead. I keep making that point, and the point that I was to earlier in the in the show and made my national review column this this last issue is no you don't want to send a bunch of expensive tomahawks and blow up a bunch of stuff that russia will give them again um i make it personal every single time one of these guys does one of these things blow up their house kaboom everything all their nice furniture uh their staff their their wife, whatever. I don't care.

Just blow it up. Take it right to them. I've never understood why a couple of well-placed tomahawks into Iranian leadership homes now and then wouldn't make a point much better than some economic sanctions. But Robert, I hope you – That's McCain's point. Regime change is the only answer here, not targeted strikes on places where Assad already has moved the weapons likely. But Robert, I hope you – then into that vacuum. And McCain is telling us that if a guy is shouting out, Akbar, it may be that he's actually a moderate. It's like Christian saying, thank God. And there's lots of people that we can plug in there and that would be fine and well and good if we could. But I'm not even saying regime change. I'm just saying some personal pain. That's the, I mean, yes, these guys fear being

dragged out by their heels and strung up and spat upon, of course, but it's not like there's nothing in between leaving them there and taking them out. In the middle is personal pain and making it very unwise for them to do something like this. I mean, we can't go around the world and stop every civil war and every massacre

once it gets over 100,000. We can't. But we can do things to say that there are certain norms on this planet that we're going to enforce. And there's nobody else who's going to enforce them, is there? Is that what we're really having a debate about, is whether or not the United States of America is just abandoning its role of saying that there are norms that we,

in concert with France, are going to enforce? So let's see what the president does. If the president really believes in this and doesn't want it to just kind of float away in Congress, if he really pushes the GOP on this, I think you're right, James. This could be a moment of – a real moment of decision for the GOP about his future policy stance on foreign policy. Does it interview it or not? Is it going to – are they going to give the hawk mantle to President Obama? I mean that's almost unimaginable in a sense, but it could happen. Rob, we've got to let you go. We thank you very much.

We will see Bob Costa in the National Review and National Review online. And if you're a wise person, you'll sign up for a cruise and listen to him in person. He's a smart guy as you've just seen. Talk to you later, Bob. Thanks, Bob. Thanks, guys. So yeah, so we'll see. So if it comes down to backing John McCain and nobody –

God almighty. to backing John McCain and nobody. I know. It's six o'clock. God almighty. But here's the thing, is that we have to discuss and decide what to do here without considering whether or not it helps the president and whether or not it burns his image. Unfortunately, that's irrelevant.

And whether or not you find yourself with John McCain and have to grit your teeth, that's irrelevant. And whether or not you find yourself with John McCain and have to grit your teeth, that's irrelevant too. Or is that completely ridiculous? Rob, you were saying at the very beginning of the show that you hate to do it because how much does that color

how you feel about this issue? Well, unfortunately, it colors it a lot. I wish it didn't. I mean, I'm undecided about it, so it must color it some way. In general, I'm not sure these surgical strikes or whatever John Kerry say that we're not going to war in the classic sense. It's not war classic. It's war zero. It's new war. It's new war. But we aren't, and I think that we flatter ourselves as sort of contemporary technocrat Americans, but especially this administration flatters itself that these things are doable sort of without any kind of greasy, dirty fingerprints. This is the drone administration.

And that's how they think about exercising power and that's how they think about from their perspective of defending America's interests. And I'm just not sure they thought it through. It just seems to me that this is a little bit like Libya. Libya was slightly

different. There was a bigger coalition, a giant NATO coalition, paid for, by the way, by our friends in Qatar. And I'm not sure this is the same thing. Yeah, I James and here's what I'm trying

to think through. There's sort of two different models on which the United States should take action abroad. One is because the defense of this country requires it. Or you could argue that the interests of this country, including economic interests, require it. If somebody were threatening to shut down the Straits of Hormuz and choke off the Western economy

because they were going to eliminate the flow of oil, you could say that's an American interest. That's model one. Model two, which seems to be the James and Fuad model, is that we have a moral duty to enforce certain international norms, including the norm that you don't use chemical weapons. Now, I have to say that just makes me very queasy personally. But at the same time, I think the world of Fuad, I think the world of James, I feel almost as though I'm deficient because I keep – as we've been talking throughout this podcast, I've been turning over and over in my mind, what am I missing here? They used –, they killed a hundred thousand people.

And then because the last 1500 were by way of chemical weapons, we're supposed to go to war. I don't, when Bush evade invaded Iraq, because he thought Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. His argument was that they could end up in the hands of terrorists and be used against us. I don't hear anybody making that argument against Sarin, which is very complicated and apparently very tricky to use.

It would be much harder for terrorists to take Sarin and use it against us. So those – that sort of underlying – and this I think – this is to me – of course it's maddening to have to listen to John McCain, to find yourself supporting – I know. But what's especially maddening is the administration has yet, in my opinion at least, to argue why this is in American interest, why the defense of this republic requires an intervention in Syria. Anyway. Right, right. That's the one thing you can say because there's absolutely no way to have this conversation as much as i'm sure we everyone a lot of people on both sides would

like to have it um without referring to not only the arguments the bush administration made but the response of those arguments uh from the left and and from the right so it's hard to have this conversation because we just i mean we just finished having this conversation um but i have to say this for the bush administration they went out and made arguments and they went out and made deep arguments and big arguments and they didn't they didn't shy from making the big case uh you may have agreed with them or disagree with them it didn't that's irrelevant they actually they were out there uh they didn't spring it on anybody and they didn't sort of push it and change his mind after a little walk through the Rose Garden. No, no. They had a strategy. They followed it and they were unapologetic about it and they showed resolve.

And the resolve they showed was at least – I would say 30 percent of their persuasion was, well, these guys are really serious. And these just – Obama and people just seemed fundamentally not serious about this. It's because the underlying concept, the underlying premise, the philosophy of the Bush administration hadn't yet been tried and shown not to work as well as they wanted. In other words, they were giving something that had not yet been implemented, whereas the Obama administration has seen its entire premise be implemented and fail. If they knew that there was somebody who wasn't Bush, who wasn't a cowboy, who wasn't a warmonger but stood before them and talked of the contributions of Muslim civilization to algebra, then it would be different. Well, it didn't work out that way and it didn't work out in any other country. That's – I think that, James, there – again, the other thing I've been turning over in my mind is why is the country, why is the public so against this? Why are ordinary members of the house going home over the weekend and getting an earful from their people that just don't get involved? And you know what? The American people or the ordinary folks who just sense that this is a crazy thing to do have a point.

Iraq did not turn into a glittering democracy. The Kurds up in the north of Iraq have sort of made their own country. They did all right. But it's not a glittering democracy. The Kurds up in the north of Iraq have sort of made their own country. They did all right. But it's not a glittering democracy. Look at all we went through. And now Iraq is under the thumb to a large extent of the Iranians to the extent that they're permitting overflights to let the Iranians supply Assad. Afghanistan is a mess after a decade of our efforts. It's a mess.

Libya, we led from behind. Obama had his way. Does anybody doubt that the Islamists have the upper hand in Libya? And then look what happened. We didn't get involved in Egypt. We sort of backed the democratic movement. We were happy about the Arab Spring. And the Arab Spring turned into an Arab winter within a year.

And so you just say to yourself, wait a minute. Does anybody know what he's doing in Syria? What, what, what leads anyone to, to expect that we could get it right? Right.

Right. There, there's fatigue from caring. I mean, at this point, the general American opinion of the whole part of the world is screw them.

You know, it, and it, you can understand how that might look absurd to some people saying, okay, you came in,

you invaded a couple of countries. You invaded them, mind you. You broke a lot of stuff and killed a lot of people. And then after 10 years, you didn't completely reshape and reform the character and spirit of the people. And based on that, you're walking away and saying, to hell with them forever. Well, you know, that's exactly how it worked out. I'm sorry to say it, but that's how it worked out. And most people now have no interest whatsoever in fixing any of that, which is why – and again, let me finish before you go on, Rob.

This is not about fixing. I don't believe that we should intervene in the sense that we intervene in Iraq or that we should go to war in the sense that we went to war with Iraq during the Clinton era. I'm just talking about punishment. And it comes down to there has to be some remnant spirit on the right where we're interested in punishment in order to keep people realizing that they ought not do things to us. After 9-11, we went to Afghanistan. We didn't go to Afghanistan to fix the country. That came later. We went there to punish the people who helped that event happen, right?

That was punishment. That's the stick in the nose that gets people's attention and I think serves us well better than speeches and airy beliefs about how we can remake the nation. Rob, you're going to say something. Well, I'm just going to reiterate what you said, but just amend it because I think Peter was talking a little bit about a different kind of fatigue. But this administration came in saying, we hit the reset button on Russia. That will be good. It turned out to be terrible. Putin is more powerful than ever and more indifferent to American interests than ever.

We'll strike a new tone with the Islamic world. We tried that in Cairo and various other places. It did not work. This administration doesn't seem to be learning from its mistakes, and now it's going to make another big one. And I think ultimately that is my hesitation. There doesn't seem to be any learning curve from this guy and certainly any acknowledgment that his strategies have failed or need changing. Instead, there's sort of a full steam ahead. And that's why there's this no confidence vote. It's not no confidence in the ability of the American military to pinpoint strikes. It's not even no confidence in the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

the, the, the, the, or even the necessity of punishing a dictator who used chemical weapons. I think it's more about the lack of confidence in this president to execute competently a plan and stick to it and to optimize it and optimize his strategy as inevitably certain things fail.

To me, I would not hire this guy to run a business because he doesn't seem like he's going to make it better when the inevitable happens, which is that stuff doesn't work. He runs his administration like a 1960s television show. There doesn't have to be any continuity between the episodes. We've got to wrap it up here, guys. Oh, shoot. Well, no, I was just eating some sunflower seeds here, and I spilled all the seeds on

the ground. I spilled all my seed on the ground. Is that a sin? Oh, yes. We should at least acknowledge that we are not... I mean, we're not going to touch that. I will have to say this. If you are listening to this podcast and you are a member of rickshay.com, we thank you very much, and we are happy to touch that. If you are – I will have to say this. If you are listening to this podcast and you are a member of Ricochet.com, we thank you very much and we are happy to have you. We are happy to talk.

We love our conversations. There's one on the member feed right now about the thorny issue of masturbation. That's the kind of stuff we get into here at Ricochet. If you are listening to this and you are not a member of Ricochet and you enjoyed it and you enjoy our other podcast, please. It is important. It is very important to us that you go to Ricochet.com and sign up. Join the conversation. Follow the conversation.

There are so many member posts. Some of the best ones start with, I've been a member for six months. This is my first post. And those are the ones I instantly gravitate to in the member feed because they're the. Show the world and America and American politics what center right, civility, and exchange is all about. And be part of the first wave that wins back the country. That's right. And if it is a thorny issue, try taking off your gardening gloves. We thank everybody for listening.

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Peter Robinson. Pleasure as always. We'll talk to you guys next week. Next week. Anytime you rise, I'm here. I'm crazy for your big fan. You make me wanna laugh.

You make me wanna cry. When I'm still here And I feel a Hold your heart behind Ooh, ooh, ooh Think, think I wanna take you out And show you around the world

Think, think it'll be okay If I could only wake you from your slumber curve Pink thing, what would straight folks say That man isn't fit to enter heaven That man's a sinner, ever burning in disgrace Pink thing, spit in my face I'd love you for it. Anytime you come on.

Fall into madness for your big thing. You make me want to live. You make me want to die. When I stroke your head, I feel a hundred hearts behind. Big things. I feel a hundred hearts behind Ooh, ooh, ooh, big time I wanna take you around I'll show you to the girls Big thing they're all new time If you could only see the way the kingdom swirls

Big thing it's a whole new fight That man is ait to be a father. That man is a sinner. Boy, they catch me down to die. Pink thing, spit in my eye. I'd love you for it. Yes, I'd love you for it Here's Dean.

Talking about this hush money, the hunt, talking about blackmail, and all of that, I would say that you endorsed or ratified it. But let's leave that on one side for a minute. I didn't endorse or ratify it. Why didn't you stop it? Because at that point, I had nothing to...

no knowledge of the fact that it was going to be paid.