The Team House - The War in Ukraine Enters a New Phase
Episode Date: May 26, 2025This conversation explored current geopolitical hotspots, from Russia's sustained aggression in Ukraine and its impact on US military readiness, to the intricate Iranian nuclear negotiations and the h...umanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza. It also reflected on the lessons learned from the Iraq war, particularly regarding military strategy and the unforeseen consequences of nation-building efforts.Support the show on Patreon:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseNew merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.comFind Mick Mulroy here: Fogbow ⬇️https://fogbow.com/Lobo Institute ⬇️https://www.loboinstitute.org/Twitter ⬇️https://x.com/mickmulroy?s=21&t=-Ze3F_Ix2vlJ18KFvORTCALinkedIn ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-patrick-mulroy-31198b52/Bluesky ⬇️https://bsky.app/profile/mickmulroy.bsky.socialMick’s publications ⬇️https://www.loboinstitute.org/publications/publications-of-michael-mick-patrick-mulroy/Find Andy Milburn here: Twitter ⬇️https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8LinkedIn ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023Substack ⬇️https://amilburn.substack.com/Andy’s book ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-OperationsBluesky ⬇️https://bsky.app/profile/andy-milburn.bsky.socialFind Jason Lyons here: LinkedIn ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-lyons-666873316?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_appBluesky ⬇️https://bsky.app/profile/bgsilverback73.bsky.social00:00: Introduction & Russia's Attack on Ukraine.01:00: Russia's Aggression and US Response.30:15: US Weapons Production & Global Alliances.34:25: Iranian Nuclear Talks & Regional Issues.43:55: Gaza Conflict & Humanitarian Crisis.53:40: Lessons from Iraq & Counterinsurgency.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Everybody, welcome to another episode of Eyes on Geopolitics.
I'm here with the full crew, Andy Milburn, Mick Mulroy, Jason Lyons, and myself,
Dmitry Kuntakos.
A lot happening per usual.
Never not, never not something happening.
I want to kick off today with, well, happy Memorial Day to everybody out there.
First and foremost.
And, yeah, back to the news.
Russia yesterday launched a pretty massive.
one of the biggest attacks of the war on Kiev and other places across Ukraine,
a ton of Shahid drones, ton of ballistic missiles.
It looked pretty bad from like what I saw on Twitter and stuff like that.
It doesn't really seem, as we've talked about multiple times,
that Russia really wants to make a deal for a ceasefire or a lasting piece of any sort.
I mean, let's kick it off there.
Andy, you go first.
You tell me what you're tracking and what you're thinking about that.
Yeah, so friends of mine in Kiev say that from the perspective being on the ground,
it was one of the worst air raids.
It's an old-fashioned term.
The worst series of strikes in Kiev since the war started.
Certainly signaling that Russia has no intention really of doing anything by continuing what they're doing,
targeting civilian areas. And, you know, again, this is not, this isn't propaganda. That's exactly
what they are doing. I think, you know, there's nothing particularly shocking here. What is shocking
is United States's lack of response. You know what I mean? We simply refuse to call Putin on
doing what he's doing, which is escalating the wall. Yeah. So this, of course, happened at a time when
they were doing this, I think it was the largest prisoner exchange they've done. It's like the 64th time
they've done prisoner exchanges.
So although it's a good thing, of course, to get your prisoners back from Ukraine's perspective,
I don't think it indicates that they're getting anywhere closer to, you know, some kind of ceasefire.
I think it's in their interest.
So they do it.
They also ask for all these buffer zones, which are obviously self-serving as well.
It's time for the United States, I believe, to first pass the sanctioning Russia Act.
that's the act that's being sponsored by Lindsay Graham and Senator Blumenthal.
So Senator Graham and Senator Blumenthal.
It apparently has 80 senators already signed onto it,
which in this day and time is almost unheard of as far as bipartisan support.
What it would do, any country that purchases Russian oil and gas would then immediately have a 500% tariff put on their goods
coming into the United States. So even if this trade war were to go away,
basically a 500 percent tariff basically is an embargo. You might as just call it an embargo.
That would have consequences to India, for example, China, who all not only purchase Russian
energy, but keep the Russian war machine going. So, and there's apparently a parallel bill
in the House of Representatives.
all good things if they push it and I and these are veto proof so not that they
would that I know of but if they they can't the White House can't even veto it it'll
it'll pass and it'll be signed into law actually the way tariffs should be done is
congressional so that that could happen right now other areas that I think people are going to
start focusing on is I only seen a few outlets talk about it, but if they're correct,
it looks like there's going to be a substantial Russian push into Kharkiv. It's around 50,000
troops massing on the border to include some of their more elite forces. It's Kharkiv,
and Andy can tell you even more details about the significance, but it's the second largest city. This
be something that should trigger all the things that we've been talking about to happen,
which includes substantial increase in security assistance, assistance from Europe, the United
States, the releasing of trotches of funds of Russian frozen assets, the sectioning of Russia
Act should be passed, and we should start preparing for an even further involvement of NATO
countries into the conflict. But that's something I think everybody's going to start looking at
because at least from the reporting appears to be somewhat imminent.
Yeah, the fighting in Dombas has intensified.
And, you know, I haven't had first-hand experience there for a period of time.
But just hearing that term that it intensified, has intensified there,
conjures up some unimaginable images, let me put it that way.
I mean, from the beginning of the war, at least from mid-2020.
it looked like scenes from the First World War and the towns there have been absolutely,
even back then, absolutely annihilated.
And now the threat of drones, I mean the use of drones in both sides has become so ubiquitous
that there's a personal aspect to these bombardments with drones actually seeking out people,
locking onto them and killing them.
Just a, I don't think many people can just imagine.
what the environment there is like.
And people here, you know, as we approach Memorial Day,
and we get the usual tranche of retirees
who want to post pictures of themselves in uniform
on social media and, you know, the ubiquitous of the term,
use of the term here at Combat Veteran.
I don't think really anyone can understand
what modern warfare looks like as it's been waged in Ukraine.
And not just on the front line,
but against some of the major cities there.
But there are, you know, mentioned Kharkiv.
The thing about it, though, is that although the Ukrainians are certainly having manpower problems,
they are more than holding their own on the front line.
And, you know, we've talked here about the offset,
the disproportionate number of casualties been inflicted on both sides.
The Russians are taking way more.
casualties. Yes, they can afford to, but on the other hand, there has to, there's going to be,
there's going to be at some point, I think, a point of pain beyond which, you know, the Russian
population just says no mass. I've said that before, that it's, it's hard to tell when that's
going to happen, and it's, but sooner or later, it is likely to happen. After what happened in
Afghanistan with far fewer casualties, only 15,000 dead. I say only 15,000 in Afghanistan.
And I think numbers vary in this war, but as high as 100,000 Russian soldiers dead, they're losing
1,000 every day. And now whether you look at the Ministry of Defense, British Ministry of
Defense figures, which are probably the most reliable, or other figures that go even higher,
You know, that's upwards to a thousand killed every day.
That's just unimaginable, isn't it?
I mean, sorry, 100 casualties, 100,000 casualties every day.
It's almost unimaginable.
And the Ukrainians have some advantages.
They're using fiber optic drones now, which means a couple of things.
They're impossible to jam using EW.
By fiber optic means they are literally, drones literally attached to the controller by a fiber optic cable.
It's like a fishing line.
And so you've got the fact that they can't be jammed, which is one of the biggest problems on the front.
The Russians are very good with EW.
But the other thing is you're getting crystal clear imagery on these things.
And the Ukrainians are churning these out, you know, the rate of hundreds to a thousand every day.
And so it's, again, kind of the face of warfare.
I'm always bouncing around between whether the character on the nature.
warfare has changed and, you know, people who teach at war colleges get very offended if you use
the wrong term, but certainly the face of war has changed hugely.
And it is changing generally in the Ukrainians' favor.
So this feeling that Ukraine is on the ropes and will give in soon, I think is mistaken.
On the other hand, on the other hand, the problem is that it's hard to envision right now.
either side making a major a major breakthrough I did the Russians just don't have enough
they don't have enough gas in the tank I think to to seize the rest of Donbas I mean
they've been trying to capture Pock Rost now for I mean for about a year and a shit
whole of a town that it is I just say that because there's one particular viewer who gets
outraged when I say that because he lives there we used to live there that it's a
we all hope Pock Rostk does not fall but it is a shithole of it
town. But I mean, my point is the Russians are not, they are in places making very, very slow
incremental moves on the front line, but at great, great cost. And it's certainly not, you know,
a done deal to say that they're going to own all of Dombas. So, and if, I guess what I'm
heading on this is the U.S., the U.S. really can put its thumb on the scale. And I, you know, you
know, on either side and make a big difference in this conflict.
If we went all in, all in on absolutely enforcing sanctions on Russia,
on flooding the battlefield with long-range precision strike weapons, for instance,
then I think we could raise the pain level again, Russia.
And who knows?
I mean, the war is already considered Putin's war.
He's already facing considerable opposition.
This is an interesting point.
When he talks about freezing the front lines,
or when the U.S. talks about freezing the front lines as they are now,
which is Russia holding two-thirds of Dombas,
surprisingly, there is considerable opposition to that within the Russian army.
And the reason is because they have seen these horrendous casualties
over the course of three years, and they're saying,
we've lost all of this just to take two-thirds of Dombas,
you know, not even a fifth of the country of Ukraine.
Come on, you must be kidding.
So the point is that Putin's going to be holding on by his fingernails
if he agrees, even, you know, as far as being able to betray the war as a victory to his own people,
even if the frontlights were frozen the way they are.
If the war continues and the Russian casualties ramp up as they certainly will,
if the U.S. throws its way behind Ukraine,
then I think you're going to see that he's on the ropes
and agreeing to far more agreeable terms.
But right now, my point is, right now we, the US,
are playing to him, and he is sidestepping any talk of a ceasefire.
And so, again, it gets back to the fact
the only thing he understands, sadly, is pain.
And we can certainly bring that to him,
but we seem reluctant to do so.
So on mixed point about prisoner exchanges, very interestingly, we've seen this throughout the war between the Ukrainians and the Russians.
There is a tremendous amount of hatred and bitterness because it is in a sense a civil war.
And when you talk about ethnically, culturally, Russians and Ukrainians, of course, have been closely affiliated to say the least throughout the centuries.
and many Ukrainians have relatives in Russia, vice versa.
But there is also, at the same time, I've seen at brigade level,
battalion level, an element of humanity.
And, you know, just one quick anecdote from my own experience.
And we, in a place called Solidor,
we're in the Mozart group, we're trying to get through to evacuate
civilians and take out some Ukrainian military casualties and we were contacted by the commander
Ukrainian brigade commander who said don't even try we are we you know we're cut off and and the
the intensity of the fire is such that I don't think anything's going to get through
certainly we weren't going to in soft skin vehicles with the very next day we got a call and
we're told hey the road is clear just drive in all right you can come in and evacuate civilians
And the first thing we noticed was the silence.
You never hear things as quiet at that in Dombas.
At least you haven't in the last three years.
And what had happened is overnight,
I don't know who initiated,
but the Russian or the Ukrainian brigade commander had called their other on a cell phone
and said, you know, hey, Ivan, Gregor, Igor, let's do this, all right?
You've got a bunch of casualties that you need to be evacuated.
You can't get them out.
But you've also got a ton of our prisoners.
Why don't we do this?
You turn our prisoners over and we'll let you evacuate your casualties,
and that's what the Russians and Ukrainians agreed to.
And there was a 24-hour ceasefire, not only that, but the two brigade commanders met.
And everyone was forbidden from taking photographs to this
because it wasn't something that was, I think, I don't know,
but it wasn't something that was advertised up either side's chain of command.
So these events have been taking place at tactical level.
it's unusual to see them take place higher
but it doesn't necessarily auger
the imminence of a longer term ceasefire
I mean Andy's crushing it yeah
yeah so I guess I'm going to go back to you Andy
you mentioned the proverbial thumb on the scale
on the Russian side of it
how much do you think that us
putting our thumb more firmly on the scale
as in calling them out and making good on any repercussions that we, you know, of the few that we've
presented to them, would that make a difference? Because it seems like right now our lack of
any kind of consistency is emboldening them. So do you think that us enacting those things,
calling them out, you know, as in the president calling out Putin, could have a huge effect?
or, you know, or not?
You know, it's a great question.
I can't answer it.
I can't say whether it will have an effect,
but I'll tell you what won't have an effect,
what we're doing now,
which is just ignoring what Putin's doing.
Again, I mean, I think recent history has shown
that Putin reacts to fear.
He, you know, I'll go back to the example,
or he reacts to pain being inflicted on the right.
Russian military and possible repercussions towards him. If you go back to 2015 and when there was a lot of
sabre rattling between Russia and Turkey over the front line at Syria and the Russians were flying
planes of Turkish lines and Erdogan said, hey, if you do that again, we're going to shoot your
planes down. And sure enough, the Turks did, well, the Russians didn't escalate to go to war. They'd
learned that lesson and they backed off. Same thing when the U.S. killed a bunch of Russian contractors.
When was that, 2017 or 2018 in the middle Euphrates Valley? The same thing. I mean, the Russians
didn't threaten us with war. They backed off and they pulled back their alliance.
Again, we don't seem to be learned from this. We went through this whole period of
Escalitis, the way we were just terrified that he was going to do something.
But history has shown that he doesn't.
He reacts to things being done against him that inflict pain.
Oh, and, you know, the other example you could use,
I know Progoshin came to a sticky end in the end,
but remember when, I almost said the Mozart group,
remember when the Wagner group was rebelling and advancing on Moscow.
I mean, Putin went,
quiet, right? And there was very little done. And in fact, the army looked as though it was collaborating
with progosian. Now, I think that must have terrified Putin. And yes, he got revenge, but he didn't,
he didn't reach out and try and crush. I don't know if he was even able to do that. He didn't
try and crush the rebellion while it was happening.
There's a famous quote from Lenin, I'll paraphrase, when probing with bayonets, if you find mush, push, if you find steel, withdraw, right?
So we need to be more of a front that promotes the idea of steel, right?
Because right now, until he sees consequences, he doesn't care about compliments or any of that stuff.
He's not going to be talked into doing something that he doesn't think is in his interest at all.
He doesn't care what the world thinks about him.
So he has to see the consequences on the battlefield.
And he has to see that his, I think it's already a strategic failure, clearly.
But if he doesn't see it's going to be a strategic disaster, he's not going to react.
So we have to support them every way we can.
or if he does somehow pull this off, he's not going to stop there, right?
He's already, he is found a mush, push.
So that's something we need to change when it comes to his perspective on this.
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Thank you.
So it's really, you know, it's just I know I keep returning.
to the tactical, but I find it fascinating, the tactics that are evolving in Dombas now.
You know, when I was out there, the Russians were starting to use quad bikes and motorcycles
to probe Ukrainian lines. Well, now, in the fighting around Constantinivka, I'm going to get
criticized the way I pronounce that, Constantinivka, which is a, it's a town, South, South
southwest of Barmwood, which and northeast of my favorite place, Pockroovsk.
So it's kind of like midway between the two towns.
I'm very familiar with the place.
But the Russians apparently launched an attack this last week using with about an estimated,
who knows, about a company-sized attack entirely on motorcycles,
just riding at the Ukrainian lines.
And the Ukrainians mowed them down and drove them back, but it's not easy.
You know, it's no longer these attacks and lumbering armate vehicles with infantry fighting
vehicles or EPCs covered by a few tanks because with drones and ATGMs, the Ukrainians were
having an easy task of just carving them up.
But when you have like 100 motorcycles riding at you, you know, on your flanks and everywhere,
there's a chance that a good bunch of them are going to be able to outflank you.
You know, it's a very interesting change in tactics.
And even if you, it doesn't matter.
I mean, you just aren't going to have enough drones to be able to stop them all.
So, you know, what's evolved here is rather than combining a bunch of guys
in an infantry finding vehicle or an APC where they can be incinerated with one shot,
the Russians have learned to spread them across smaller platforms faster moving.
And it's kind of the same lesson that, for instance, the U.S. Marine Corps has been learning in 29 palms
and their peer-on-peer exercises called the Magdorf warfighting exercises.
Not so much in the attack, although they should have learned these lessons in the attack,
but the Marine Corps just didn't have that many motorcycles.
But they've learned it as far as in logistics resupply
that it's no longer, it's suicidal now to try and resupply forces
using the traditional way that we used to in Iraq and Afghanistan
with these big convoys.
And the best way to do it is on razors or quad bikes
with little petty packets of logistics resupply.
So how does the fiber optic drone,
Does it actually drag the fiber optic with it?
How does it keep from?
Yeah, that's a really good question.
I'm not sure.
And the other thing is,
and the Ukrainians have been using this method for about a year.
The other thing I'm not sure how this works is,
now what I do know is that there's a fail safe,
so the fiber optic cable gets separated.
The drone can still operate using other means,
so you can still pick up using, you know, the ground control system.
So the fiber optic cable just enables it to fly.
It's primary means of connection with the ground control station.
But I don't know how they avoid snagging,
and I don't know what the range is on these things.
And those are, you know, those are good questions.
Maybe somebody knows it's listening.
Yeah, I'm sure there are.
You know, we've got a very highly educated audience.
I understand it's kind of like the
I don't even know if they use them anymore
the tow anti-tank missile
where it's wire guided
and it's if that's the case
then it's probably got to be at least
somewhat line of sight
because I know with the toes
you know you had to
had to have line of sight
of the target so
I don't know
you know when we talk about
when we talk about putting
again it gets
gets back to the fact that
only the Ukrainians and Russia
can enforce a ceasefire.
When we talk about just the environment there,
and we talk about the fact that these guys,
both Russians and Ukrainians,
have been fighting in this environment now for three years,
and you've got soldiers who have fought and survived that long
in this kind of environment.
We just, no Western Army has soldiers
that equal, that level of experience.
I mean, these are very, very experienced,
combat experienced, hardened soldiers. And if they are determined to keep on fighting,
no peacekeeping army that we or any European nation fields can prevent them from doing so.
And I'm thinking when I talk about this, I'm thinking about the Russians, of course,
but the point is that the Russians really have to be frightened into wanting this peace.
It's not going to be a peace enforced by any security force.
in that area.
I mean, I guess it's just how much can you make Putin squirming?
Yeah.
Like what?
I know, like, they have the $325 billion sitting there.
We've been talking about it almost every week.
I don't know why they haven't started using that to start giving, paying for arms to Ukraine.
Let them know that we're serious.
Like, the EU, I mean, the EU compared to the United States, obviously, clearly over the
last few months is way more serious about this.
It's their backyard, obviously.
Um, we touched, I don't know if we touched on this since, but they had Putin and Trump had a phone call that lasted two hours.
People were making a big deal of it.
And when it was over, nothing really came of it.
It was kind of more stalling on Putin's side and stuff like that, you know, an agreement to have an agreement about a made possible talk about a ceasefire agreement.
It's like just, it's just nonsense.
It's just like spinning, you know, going around in circles and going nowhere.
Meanwhile, people are in the wood chipper.
Like literally people are just getting killed every day.
Both Russian and Ukrainians, right?
Like, I don't know.
There's no reason why we wouldn't.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we've put tariffs.
And the EU too.
He just announced 50% tariffs.
But the country that decided to invade a democratic country
had taken upon himself to destroy the international rules based order out the window.
and we won't and we're hesitant on.
Yeah.
So I hope,
I hope Lindsey Graham
and in Blumenthal
get this thing going.
Let's,
let's vote on it.
80 senators want to see it happen.
Let's go.
It's interesting.
I just got a message,
pop up and signal.
Okay, range,
fiber optic,
short range, 15 to 20 kilometers.
And they do,
and they get tangled in trees.
They can get tangled entry.
the cable can get tangled in trees, and the other downside is it glints and sunlight.
Who was that?
The fiber optic cable that's connected to the drones.
It glances?
Yeah, like in the...
It makes sense.
Sunlight glinting off of it will allow you to track back to where the original.
But still...
So, but the other thing, at 10,000.
So I said hundreds of thousands every...
So one factory in Kiev producing 600 of these drones a month, expected to be 10,000 by the end of the summer, 10,000 a month from one factory.
I mean, the scale of production is incredible.
You know, that's what I mean about the U.S.
Defense, industrial defense complex being so slow moving that it just cannot keep pace with the, it cannot keep up with the pace.
of modern warfare, right?
I mean, shit, how many
how many MQ nights
we had shot down over Yemen?
Yeah.
20? Yeah.
At 30 million bucks
apart, right?
I mean, it's, and yet we still haven't
learned, I know we talk about it and
there, but we still haven't learned to mass
produce expendable,
but fairly sophisticated drones.
We're not learning as fast
as we should from this wall.
It's interesting, I mean, how slow the
industrial defense industrial base really is here it's like we need to get procurement first there needs to be a test
that needs to do this they need like there's so many hoops to jump through and i understand we're not at war
so like the we don't think that we need it fast but yeah i remember i heard something in 2018 that we
were running low in hellfire missiles because of what was going on in afghanistan i don't know if that's
true or if you guys have any insight into that but that was like supposedly the word on the street in
2018 when we stepped up the drone program in Afghanistan to bring the Taliban to the table that our
hellfire stock was very low.
I remember that.
Yeah, we, I mean, I can't leave it.
Like a peace, uh, peace base weapons and munitions manufacturing capability.
I don't know.
It'd be, it'd be something I'm sure the Pentagon has looked at is, uh, to Andy's point,
uh, could we go on a wartime footing and actually keep up with?
the munitions and weapons systems that we would need to be successful.
I don't know.
That's the case.
Well, the war in Ukraine took the United States by surprise as far as expenditure of artillery rounds.
Artillery, one-five-fives is like the big.
Yeah.
We just couldn't even if it, the U.S. could not keep pace at all.
And I forget the numbers, but even Ukraine, Ukraine was firing about one-sixth,
the at any given time
one six to one tenth
the number of rounds
that Russia is firing and the US
couldn't even keep pace with
with resupplying Ukraine
in one five five rounds
what's the hold up
just Koreans providing them
why can't why couldn't
they keep it up I know they've built another factory
I think at Texas as well as
the CPA but
why can't the US when they see
a problem
step up there. I mean, we don't have manufacturing much anymore here. In peacetime, it just didn't,
I mean, I'm speculating here, but I'm guessing part of it is in peacetime, there wasn't the
financial incentive to set up these factories to do that because it doesn't provide enough pork,
right? I mean, you take something like the F-35. I know it's infamous that, you know, the F-35
is built across the entire country. I mean, it's almost like one component built in every state,
But there's a lot of money in that because you keep manufacturing, you keep manufacturing.
Well, 1-5-5 rounds, when you're not having a war that's using them up,
you're going to build a factory to build 155 rounds,
but at some point you're going to reach a point where the palm of defense just goes,
no mask we don't need anymore, right?
Whereas if you have an aircraft or something,
you're always going to have to keep building those parts
because you have maintenance issues, you have replacement,
and a fleet of aircraft is going to be projected to be, you know, in operation for at least 30 years.
So there's a future to it.
I mean, I'm guessing that's partly it.
There has been discussions with, you know, part of it, I think, is, you know,
if you talk about making an iPhone here where in China, did they pay people $500 a month to make iPhones, for example, here?
Obviously, nobody's going to be working for that.
there was discussions on putting some of our key munitions manufacturing capabilities in countries that are allied with the United States whose cost would go way down, right?
Because to try to make those here, they're going to be almost, you know, it's too costly, costly.
If we had like Indonesia or Philippines or someplace like that where not only it's the cost go way down because the cost of the cost of,
make them go way down, but they're also forward, right? So then you don't have to, you have to worry
about getting them from Texas to, you know, if we fight China over, you know, Taiwan or something like
that. So that's another thing I know the United States has been looking at, and it would be a
beneficial to the country that's we partnered with, obviously, they'd get more jobs, making these,
and we'd get them forward deployed and at less cost, because that's one of the problems with North
Korea, for example, is a totalitarian state. They can simply tell people,
they're making one-five-fives for the rest of their lives.
That's their job, period, and they're going to pay them enough to survive.
It's hard to keep up with that in the current way we do business.
Other news, I think the Danes have just transferred or are going to transfer the final 16 F-16s over the Ukrainian Air Force in the next couple days, I think.
Good for now.
Yeah, this is, I mean, one cool thing is look at the way, I mean, Germany,
Germany's been leading the charge, has been forefront in providing Ukraine with high-end shit
to include air defense systems and offensive weapons now, which is a first.
And so, again, and we talked about this before, that there's been positive aspects of this.
The Baltic nations have all stepped up to the plate.
Poland is spending 4% or more of GDP on its defense and has modernized, upgraded,
its entire military is now kind of a leading nation within NATO.
And then, of course, we talked about Finland and Sweden, who have joined NATO.
Despite or perhaps because of partly U.S. apparent lack of resolve in reinforcing or backing the security of Europe,
a lot of European nations are indeed stepping out to play.
And NATO is more alive than it has been in a while.
Yeah, yeah, moving on to fifth round of Iranian nuclear talks have concluded they were a few days back, right?
A couple days ago, it was a couple hours, I think two or three hours the meeting went for.
No one ran out, upset, and started yapping and leaking to the media.
So I guess it's a good thing that they're still talking.
At the same time, that mixes in a little bit.
CNN reported last week that Israel is preparing an attack on Iranian nuclear.
sites if these nuclear talks go nowhere and break down that they're ready to hit them as soon as
possible. Yeah, I mean, are there new sticking points? It's just like, are they talking around the
same issue over and over again after the like the five talks? Like, what happens when these talks go on?
I feel like you can get to the issue relatively quickly and it seems to like just be a lot of
beaten around the, you know, edges. It does look like the main issue, and this was stated by the Iranian
foreign minister on his way to Rome to have these pretty clearly. He said if if the agreement is
Iran doesn't get a nuclear weapon, we have an agreement. If the agreement is, or the offer is
that Iran can enrich uranium, we will not have an agreement. So if we believe that's the case,
that's the sticking point. So and to your point, nobody ran out, but actually special envoy
Whitkoff left early saying he had to catch a plane, but you know, as immediately pointed out,
by people as he owns the plane that he flies around on.
So he probably should have came up with a better excuse than that.
Miss my flight, yeah.
He has a prostate issue.
Yeah, well, you know, that happens to guys to turn ages.
But I do think obviously it would be better for us to get to a diplomatic resolution to this
because the military option, which I do think we've talked about this several times,
should be an option.
But it's not a complete.
fixing of the situation. It might just push it down the road several months. So we should all want that to
happen. Obviously, Iran should want their economy is doing horribly. Inflation is way up. The regime is
super unpopular. They should want to see these sanctions, which could increase because there's
potential for snapback sanctions under the original 2015 JCPOA to happen because Europe is now talking about
that. That would increase the sanctions on Iran and make it even more, I think, beneficial to them
to reach an agreement. So the question is, will they, or I guess one of the potential answers is,
will they go with something like the UAE did, which is a regional consortium of enriched uranium
that's imported into the country, in this case Iran? They can use it for civilian nuclear power,
but they don't have the capacity to do it themselves.
But there is an uninterrupted agreed upon supply of this.
I think that's what the U.S. is going to ask for.
Whether the Iranians will agree with it, I don't know.
If they don't, I don't think Israel is bluffing.
I think they are always going to be ready to take the strike, even if they do it unilaterally.
They have the capacity, you know, as we've seen with their strikes in Houda and Yemen,
to get there, the question then becomes, do they have the munitions necessary to actually
destroy or significantly degrade all these facilities at Fordow and Natanz and Ishton,
and I can't remember the last one. But there's several. So if they did that, it would end probably
the discussions that are ongoing. But there's going to be a time when the U.S. and Israel are going to
determine whether, you know, they're on the 10th, 12th, 14th meeting, and it's not going anywhere.
And they're still stuck, as your point, it's still stuck on the same issues, whether it's just
Iran trying to drag this out and then make, they make their own determination on the strikes.
If there is strikes, whether it's bilateral with the U.S. and Israel or Israel by itself,
the consequences, of course, are what Iran does in retaliation, and that could be substantial.
really not only disrupt what's going on in the region, but it could disrupt international energy
markets considerably. Yeah, I mean, you got to make a deal. I mean, because I kind of understand
Iran's point of view, honestly, if they want to continue to be able to enrich it because they made
a deal 10 years ago and three, four years in, that deal was gone. Right. So you're correct. Members are
still part of it. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I understand.
understand why they would want to continue to enrich. I mean, also at the same time, you know,
what happens, even if we join Israel and bomb them and we set their program back three to six months,
we're not going to be, probably not going to be able to stop them from getting a bomb eventually.
And that won't that harden their efforts in doing so? If I'm them, I would.
Yeah. I mean, they're looking at the difference between, you know,
MoMar, Gaddafi, and Kim Jong-moon, right?
So one is getting love letters from the President of the United States.
The other one was killed in a ditch, right?
So what I mean and what I'm referring to is nuclear weapons are regime security.
So, and they, and I've been on with, you know, Iranian officials on foreign media,
they say clearly, like, if we get bombed, then it's going to be a hundred percent effort
to try to get to a nuclear weapon.
So, I mean, that's a threat.
So I wouldn't say that that means we don't do a strike.
But we've got to be prepared for the mining of the Straits of Hormuz,
the attacking of U.S. military facilities, oil facilities in Saudi Arabia,
the racing toward a nuclear weapon, potentially Russian helps them.
Russia helps them with that or North Korea.
Then we have a nuclear arm pissed off Iran.
So, I mean, there's no easy answers on this.
But, you know, you hear some senators like, well, just blow them up.
up. It's like, yeah, well. We were trying to do that with the Houthis for almost two months,
and it didn't do a great job. Yeah, it should be an option, but if you think it's the magic
bullet, it's, it's not. It's, all of these things are merely, I mean, look at everything that's
been tried. Stuxnet, the attacks on Iranian scientists. If bombing, if, you know, we're keeping this
open source, if bombing would have worked, then it probably would have taken, I mean, if there was,
if people were convinced people, you know, U.S. Israeli convinced that bombing could be a one-off
thing and it was set up back 15 years. Yeah. Then I think it would have been done. You know,
I mean, you get, you get experts within the U.S., who I know to be experts saying publicly,
the most we can do is set them back a period of time. And,
So, yes, I mean, I agree with Mick 100%.
And, you know, frankly, I would be more worried about Iran being a responsible actor, a regional responsible actor.
And I'm more, and so perhaps shaping sanctions and shaping the way that these negotiations are taking place to prevent, remove incentives and impose disincentives for Iran backing regional proxies that are causing disruption.
throughout the region, that is, that to me would be a priority.
Because we may or may not be able to stop them.
That's the sad fact.
We may or may not be able to stop them generating a nuclear weapon.
I'm not saying, I'm not saying that's okay.
I'm just saying that's reality.
There are any talks maybe maybe maybe even backchannel talks about the proxy stuff
or that's not even on the table with these nuclear talks?
I don't know, but I mean, Obama is normally the route and they're involved
these negotiations, right?
Even the ones in Rome is normally the back channel route for the United States.
But to Andy's point, I mean, I mean, we're going to talk about Gaza after this.
It all come back to the doorstep of Iraq, right?
They're causing all the ends.
They provided Hamas with 90% of their military capability.
I don't think they would have done this without direct coordination.
I don't care what the intel says with Iran, at least their knowledge,
And either way, if you're providing the terrorist organization, you know, all its military capacity, you're responsible for their actions.
It's pretty simple to me.
And then, of course, Hezbole chimed in.
And then the Houthis.
So this is, this is the regional instability in the Middle East is the result of Iraq.
And I think we should be crystal clear about that.
So that's going to have to be addressed, even if we do get to an agreement, which I hope we do, of course, on the nuclear front.
Yeah.
Moving on to Gaza.
A couple days ago on Heretz, a former Israeli prime minister,
I'm going to fuck up his name.
Give me one second.
Jude Olmert, I hope I did that, right?
He was a prime minister from 2006 to 2009.
He was an op-ed in Heretz.
Harz is a relatively critical, I would say,
publication against the Netanyahu government.
He said in his op-ed, essentially,
that the IDF in Israel is potentially waging war of annihilation,
premeditatively adopting a policy of starvation, massacring civilians, and he declared it a genocide.
He said the word genocide in his op-ed, and for a former Israeli prime minister to do this,
whether he's liberal or whatever, I mean, we had a liberal member of parliament from the, you know,
from the Knesset, and, you know, they still are hardcore in terms of security and security of Israel and all that.
So for him to come out, I feel like that's pretty scathing of an op-ed about what's going on in Gaza.
And I happen to agree with him.
So I don't know.
I mean, I have no question here.
Just I wanted to throw your thoughts, everybody.
Whoever you could pick straw.
Yeah, pick straws, figure out who goes first.
So right now we're looking at what they're calling Operation Gideon's chariots, right?
So it's a substantial increase.
I think everybody was hoping they'd get to a ceasefire,
largely because Hamas wouldn't accept the offers
that were proposed by the United States and Israel.
And it looks like an all-out effort to completely occupy Gaza
by the Israeli defense forces.
I think they're about 70% there.
77 is what, at least they're saying.
And they're basically blowing up rubble.
I mean, I think it was only like 5% to 10% of dwellings
that were still standing before this offensive.
And there's an effort, I think, to push a lot of the population into the south.
The humanitarian conditions are extraordinarily dire.
My group for people that know we do humanitarian stuff all over the world, we're not involved in it at all.
But the conditions are to the point where almost the entire population is in what's called IPC phase four, which is acute shortages of food.
about 500,000 are in IPC phase 5, which is catastrophic levels of food insecurity with 66,000 kids on the verge of starvation children, infants, if nothing is done.
So there's two parts to this. There's multiple parts of this. This needs to come to a stop that's clearly with the United States and Europe once.
Hamas needs to let go of all the hostages,
and there needs to be a path that not only brings in humanitarian aid at scale,
because the food stores are about out completely.
So the bakeries are shutting down.
There's nothing to even make the food, excuse me, the water is now 95% of the ability to clean water,
because there's no fuel coming in is gone.
So everybody's drinking contaminated water,
which is exacerbating the crisis itself.
And there's, of course, very little hospitals still standing.
So that needs to change immediately.
And I think the U.S. is going to push for that and should.
But there also needs to be a plan.
International Community News has a plan to secure Gaza
that takes into account Israel's national security concerns,
which are substantial, right? We all saw what happened October 7th. There has to be an interim
between where we are now with the IDF, which I don't think wants to permanently occupy Gaza,
if you ask any of them, especially the reservists that are being called up for the fourth time,
and also has security for the people that live there. And that's going to be a trained, I think,
Palestinian force, but they're far from doing it. So there needs to be an effort, I think,
on that front in addition to demanding the increase in humanitarian aid, because this needs to come
to an end with something that is consistent with Israeli security concerns as well. So there's a lot
of tweets and a lot of talk. There needs to be a lot more substance coming out of these meetings,
like they just had one in Baghdad where everybody condemned the war. That's fine, but there needs to
be a plan. And then, of course, the reconstruction of Gaza, which is going to take tens of billions of
and it's going to take the international community to come together.
And Israel should probably pull out the checkbook as well, I feel like, because they decimated it.
I think that's only fair.
I mean, I'm not saying pay for the whole thing, but be part of the conversation at least.
And give me that account number, you know, the ACH send it over.
I don't know.
I mean, I know I'm going to be honest.
I am not a fan of what the fuck Israel is doing whatsoever.
It's insane.
I know you want to be secure and stuff like that, but the fact is they dropped the ball on October 7th.
And it was horrific what went down.
Absolutely horrific.
Like, you know, citizens don't deserve to die at a music festival.
They're like hippies and cabootses.
They do not deserve to fucking get slaughtered the way they did.
But the reaction by Israel is a complete, in my opinion, a complete and utter overreaction.
And starving kids, sorry, guy.
I cannot fuck with that whatsoever.
They're kids.
What do they do?
They were just born in a place.
They couldn't, they didn't control it.
You ask me, it's frankly, it's fucking disgusting.
Even the aid plan that's going on right now,
where it's like essentially like they're just like doing what they,
just enough what they need to do so they can have plausible deniability to not be called war criminals,
which is what they are.
Bebe Nanjahou's great cabinet and his war cabinet.
Sorry.
The leadership in Israel is a fucking disaster and it's a nightmare.
And it's a bummer.
It's a real bummer because they do deserve to be secure.
Israel definitely deserves to be secure.
And they do have one of the best militaries,
one of the best intelligence services.
They dropped the ball on October 7th.
And they could have done what they're very good at,
which is like strategic.
You saw the pagers.
You saw what they did with Nazrallah.
They can really cut the head off the beast relatively easy.
What they did in Iran with Hamas leadership
during the funeral and stuff like that.
They are extremely capable.
and it's just I feel like they've overreacted by 10x.
That's my opinion.
And I think people should get fed.
Yeah, I agree that it's just gone too far.
I think right now at this point,
anybody who is okay with what's going on as a hardcore apologist
or they're just being willfully ignorant,
I again wholeheartedly agree that Israel should be secure.
I just don't agree with the point.
that they are at with what they're calling securing their borders.
I just can't agree with it.
But yeah, I agree.
Yeah, it's tough.
You know, I mean, in a perfect world, there would be a two-state solution and it would be fixed and stuff like that.
But I can't even see that happening for like another generation.
Yeah, we're far away from that now.
Yeah.
Fortunately.
I just try to imagine, I try to tell my friends, like, imagine somebody, there's 2.7 million people in Brooklyn, right?
And let's say the rest of the four burros wanted to come and rolled up and were doing what Israel's doing.
You're going to pick up on AK and fight.
You know, you see your mom, your dad, your sister, your brother either being starved or being killed.
At some point, you either, you know, you get going or you don't.
Like, I just don't, I mean, it's really hard.
Like, I just try and ask people to put themselves in other people's positions and see where they're coming from.
and have and tell you ask yourself how you would react right like imagine somebody
invaded the united states you know we're fucking shoot you know we all have guns i don't i don't
have a gun i mean i do have a gun but you know we're gonna
you do my d you do and it's license too so yeah i kind of have a gun but
anyway so you know you're going to defend your where you live your your homeland and
stuff like that so
Look at the United States, right, we got attacked on 9-11 and we invaded two countries and took them over.
And one of them didn't have anything to do in 9-11.
Correct.
Yeah.
So that's, I think, I guess the moral of the story is don't attack another country.
Yeah.
Women and children.
Yeah.
I mean, at the same time, like the U.S., we could have done better in terms of the GWAT and stuff like that.
Of course.
We could have been more strategic out of it and stuff like, you know.
I mean, the idea of nation building is a fantasy land, unless we have 150 years.
The interesting part is, like, Israel and Gaza are right next to each other.
So if counterinsurgency was ever going to have a chance to work because you'll be there for generations,
you would think it would work there.
Instead of sending some kids from Brooklyn or Nebraska or Alabama over to Iraq and stuff like that and try and be there.
We're going to be there for 24 months.
They'll have their own elections and there'll be a great country.
The IDF doesn't train for counterinsurgency.
They don't have a counterinsurgency manual.
They have a couple of articles written about counterinsurgency,
but they don't train to it.
It's not part of their doctrine.
And that's, you know, but that's, that is a symptom.
It's not the cause.
I think the symptom is, if you want to look at the cause,
you have to go way back to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.
and he was probably the last glimmer of hope for a two-state solution.
And no one can accuse him of being an Israeli trader.
He was a patriot, had risked his life many times,
and was considered actually to be more on the right wing
until he started to negotiate with the PLO,
which led to his assassination.
But what you've seen then since then is a steady shift to the right within Israeli politics,
the rise of Netanyahu and the rise of those who support Netanyahu and their dominance within,
you know, kind of the Israeli political environment.
And then, of course, the events of 7 October solidified that and arguably put an end to hopes for two-state solution
because even those on the left in Israel couldn't imagine living side by side with a possible repetition of that threat.
What is sad, and I think Mix is that as part of this, and mixed figures really tell the story.
I mean, 60,000 kids facing starvation, that should never happen, regardless of what the cause was or what the intent is.
60,000 kids starving, civilian population is not in accordance with the law of conflict.
That is, period, black and white.
Okay, how do we get here?
Well, as I've said, I think within Israel that you've seen that shift to the right.
But, you know, having visited Israel about half a dozen times since 7 October,
there's something else that I find disturbing in discussions about Palestinians.
It's a very dispassionate discussion.
It's almost as though they're not referred to as human beings,
but as a problem to be solved.
And I think a lot of Israelis, even very Israelis who would consider themselves compassionate humanitarian people,
refer to Palestinians in those terms.
And once you start disassociating your enemy from, or disassociating, yes, your enemy,
because all of Palestinians, all of Gaza are lumped in as their enemy.
You've heard this talk about that there are two million supporters of Hamas within Gaza.
You hear that time.
And again, we've heard it from one of our.
guests on this show. They just cannot differentiate between the civilian population and Hamas.
Now, undoubtedly, Hamas had widespread support within Gaza, but as we all know, in former military,
you've got a, there's a difference between widespread support and actually being a fighter,
and you cannot punish the civilian population. You cannot ethically punish the civilian population for what the
You know, the minority, and they are a minority, are doing, a armed insurgents.
So, Olmerts speaking out, I see as positive, but you also see that he is very quickly.
He's already sidelined, and he's going to be attacked vehemently as being a traitor.
There is a very low level of tolerance within Israel for dissent against what is happening in Gaza.
and in the international community, there is no major actor who is really speaking out and doing anything.
And I think that is, yeah, certainly of concern for anyone who cares about humankind.
Yeah, I mean, we saw it here in America too, right?
Like when after 9-11, then we went to Iraq.
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I get it.
It's being part of the invading force in Iraq.
Yes, a huge mistake.
Of course, of course.
But you know what?
There was never a case where we surrounded a place and starved the population.
All right.
I mean, you know, having gone through the Battle of Fallujah,
we made every effort to bring the civilian population out at risk to ourselves.
We invested the city, all right?
And we before, I mean, we signaled that we were going to invade Fallujah
when we did in November.
We were signaling, we were on television saying,
hey, we're going to come in and invade.
If you are a civilian, leave, right?
And we gave them free passage,
and we dropped leaflets,
and we broadcast to them.
We made every effort to bring them out.
And when we went in,
we were under strict, believe it or not,
strict rules of engagement.
We weren't allowed to use,
we couldn't just blast away at buildings
unless we were taking fire.
At least those were the ROE.
under it might have been the battalion I was attached to.
And that's why we went in and cleared all those fucking buildings, right?
We didn't flatten them.
We didn't even have drones to spend in.
But that's why you got dudes kicking open doors in the 21st century,
going down dark hallways and fighting toe-to-to-toe with a mooch,
partly out of concern for civilian casualties.
So, yeah, I mean, we made a lot of mistakes.
And I saw a lot of dead civilians in Iraq who didn't need to die.
But we also, overall, we, U.S. military, did our best prevent that from happening.
Yeah.
Yeah, I was just talking about the U.S. populace in terms of, like, support for the Iraq war at that time, right?
Like, it was in the 60s.
It was like, in terms of political, that's like you can't get better than that, really.
But remember, we thought, I mean, we genuinely thought it were liberating the Iraqi people.
people from a tyrant.
And, you know, that wasn't, that narrative was not far off the truth.
You know, I mean, I was one of the first, so, first U.S. soldiers into Baghdad in April
of two that we were greeted by cheering crowds.
They, they were so happy.
Now, the reason why that turned into insurgency, there's a number of reasons, and some
of them are complex, some of them are pretty fucking simple, like disbanding the Iraqi army
and, but, but there was, you know, yes, the connections with 9-11, the connections with
weapons of mass destruction were notoriously wrong.
But at the end of the day, many Iraqis at the time did think of us as liberators.
Let's not forget that.
Ask you guys.
They did.
Because I was in the group that came down from the north, right?
So we were supposed to have a whole division with us, but it's just not being CIA guys mostly in 10th group, 10 special forces group, and I had a lot of Peshmerga.
So I agree with.
And you're supposed to have an American division with you?
Yeah, the Turks wouldn't let them through.
They did jump in.
The fourth.
Yeah, the fourth infantry division was supposed to come in and the Turks wouldn't let them through.
Another story.
But to Andy's point, we were.
And I think we did liberate a country from a tyrant.
I mean, Saddam was a butcher, a tyrant.
He tried to kill the Kurds up in the north with these chemical weapons.
And he was just a horrible person.
So I think we could be proud of that.
But I don't think it had the nexus to 9-11 that we claimed it did,
nor an ant already addressed the chemical weapons.
I do think we've learned our lesson there.
And I don't think it'll happen again.
I hope.
I think there'll be a lot of people that look back on, you know,
whether it's nation building, excuse me, as you said, D,
as not being a way forward for the United States ever again.
And being stuck in these endless conflicts that go on for decades,
I think that's going to be another,
there's going to be another view of that by the American population.
But I would like to add something else to, you know,
and it's not just because we're coming up for Memorial Day
and I'm feeling all sappy about having,
served in uniform. And I've seen, trust me, I've seen the worst, I've seen the worst of our
behavior in places, you know, to include Mogadishu, in Iraq, Afghanistan, as I've said, I've seen
civilians killed who shouldn't have died, he didn't need to die. But again, overall, down to the
individual and soldier and marine, I saw a great deal more humanity in their dealings with the local
populists and we, you know, with a few exceptions, we treated them like human beings. And, you know,
a lot of cases working as an advisor with the Iraqi and Afghan armies and special forces and police,
I saw very strong relationships formed between them and their American advisors. You know,
even at a time when distrust was being, when we were taking some blue and blue casualties
from said Afghan soldiers.
So, I mean, I've seen,
I saw more to be proud of in the U.S. military
than I did to be ashamed of,
yes, I'm ashamed of U.S. foreign policy, of course.
I mean, it was, I'm ashamed is probably the wrong word.
Disappointed is probably the wrong word.
Disgusted, perhaps.
But, yes, certainly.
But as far as the behavior of,
Americans in uniform. I mean, overall, I'm just very, you know, I've been proud,
I've been proud to be part of that organization. Even if we pursued a cause that was doomed
from the start, the way it was carried out was not. And the way it was carried out was, yes,
tactically and strategically flawed, but from a point of view of how we behaved on the ground,
I don't think we have anything to be ashamed of.
Agreed. America can be proud of their men and women and the armed forces and how they
had performed over the last
well hundreds of years but certainly
the last 20
except fighting the British that was a mistake
we got you
I got a question
so you guys were in theater when it all
went down so when
what's the guy's name Bremer
comes with the boots
comes out and does like the
press conference to say that they're disbanding
the Iraqi army and then the bath
party. You guys are on the ground. What's your reaction to that internally? Everybody knew it was a bad
idea. Everybody knew was a bad idea. It wasn't even debated, at least from the CIA and the people I was with.
And I was a junior guy, so I wasn't involved in these discussions. But, I mean, essentially,
if you wanted to do anything in Iraq, you had to be part of the Bathurst Party. If you wanted to be
an elementary school teacher, you had to be part of the Bathurst Party. So by basically alienating them from society,
you cut everybody out that had any skill at all.
So that was terrible.
And then, of course, if you fire everybody that knows how to fight,
you're going to fuel the insurgency, right?
They don't have a job.
They're not getting paid.
And they have an AK.
And they have an AK, and they're not to use it.
Because it was a modern army, right?
It wasn't, it wasn't malicious.
These are modern armies.
And we created our own insurgency,
or at least contributed to it substantially.
So, I mean, there's a lot that goes into the decisions.
we made that didn't work out for us in Iraq,
but those are two of the big ones that certainly fueled
what was to come.
Wow, I mean, that's great.
I think we should have sent them more emails
just asking them to name five things
that they had done for coalition forces
and only fired them if they could not say.
But, you know, yeah, the cool thing is
that were commanders willing to disobey orders
and for and, you know, as, so I mean, I agree, yeah, we made unemployed overnight literally tens of thousands, actually a couple hundred thousand armed, trained soldiers, many of whom had seen their friends killed by Americans, you know, at a time when we didn't necessarily need to do that.
And so when I say commanders dissipated orders subsequently by recruiting a number of these guys,
it was in small groups, you know, like the Iraqi intervention brigade.
But there's no doubt about it that on the side of the mooch were a number of these guys who had been made unemployed.
And I know that personally because when I came back as an advisor and I was with an Iraqi for the Iraqi intervention brigade,
a lot of guys who form a Saddam Republican Guard or special forces.
they would call their buddies on the other side in the Muge to have discussions.
You know, and so we, at the time, we were trying to, the Mouge was a term that just kind of rose because we didn't know what to call the enemy.
So we called them, do you remember, anti-Iraqi forces or something, some ridiculous term?
But they were nationalists.
They weren't pro-Sahdom.
They weren't pro-Al Qaeda.
they were nationalists who had been emasculated basically by having their weapons and their jobs taken from them by an invader and they wanted to fight back.
And we created that nationalism against ourselves.
Yeah, I mean, that sounds like the antithesis of a counterinsurgency, but I'm not an expert whatsoever, right?
Was that when David Petrae started writing his thesis?
Yeah, well, the cool thing is we created the insurgency, so then we had to come up with counterinsurgency.
so I mean we we could have written the doctrine on how to create an insurgency too
and so you had both sides of the fence Americans we can go anyway and make anything
out of nothing whole cloth I mean I got nothing else this was a great sidebar though
it's super interesting I want to tell everybody happy Memorial Day and I remember everybody
who's you know been lost um Andy Milbrose
and currently in the mailburn I apologize his book when the tempest gathers the link is in the
description you can hear all about his his experiences it's an incredible book check it out
mcmolroy lobo fogbo doing great stuff trying to get humanitarianed across the
across the world his publications as well all down the description if you want to see him
what he writes on twitter or blue sky or lincoln link in the description jason lines
links are in the description.
Best thing you can do to help support the show,
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And, yeah, I don't have any links, so don't try and find me.
Yeah, I've got to go and find a photo of myself
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Thanks, guys. This is great. Thanks, Janice.
Thanks, guys. Thanks, fellas. Everyone. Have a good weekend.
Hey, guys, it's Jack. I just want to talk to you for a moment about how you can support the show.
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