Will Cain Country - Debating The Israeli Response With Ben Domenech & Dave Smith

Episode Date: October 12, 2023

As echo chambers guide the conversations around the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel this past weekend, Will has, what hopes to be the first of many, open and nuanced debates on his podcast. After a back and forth on X, formerly known as Twitter, between FOX News Contributor and Host of The Ben Domenech Podcast, Ben Domenech, and Comedian and Host of The Part of The Problem Podcast, Dave Smith, they agreed to move the conversation to a long-form podcast format in what shaped up to be an informative, entertaining, and thought-provoking conversation. Ben and Dave discuss their respective positions on how Israel and the world should respond. Tell Will what you thought about this podcast by emailing [e-mail] Follow Will on Twitter: @WillCain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Debating Israel's response with Dave Smith and Ben Dominic. It's the Wilcane podcast on Fox News podcast. What's up? And welcome to a special edition of the Wilcane podcast, a Thursday edition of the Wilcane podcast. Earlier this week, I saw a tweet from Dave Smith. Dave Smith is the host of the Part of the Problem podcast. He has been a regular guest on the Joe Rogan podcast.

He's also a co-host of the podcast, Legion of Skanks. Dave Smith has a 30-minute special up on YouTube that you can check out, along with all of his podcast, most notably part of the problem. And he tweeted the following. DeSantis has bent over backwards to not take a position on Ukraine for the last year, but it takes him less than 24 hours to be all in on Israel's war. Screw this guy. In response to that tweet, I saw Ben Dominic, who publishes the Transom Newsletter, is editor-at-large at The Spectator, and a Fox News contributor hosts the Ben-Dominich podcast, say,

Wow, Dave, that's a take. To that, Dave Smith responded, happy to discuss any time. So we invited both Dave Smith and Ben Dominic to come here to the Will Kane podcast to have a conversation about the appropriate response to the terrorist attacks in southern Israel by Israel. I find that today there's far too much screaming and negativity at one another on Twitter. It is the public sphere, but it isn't really the way people behave in real life. So I want to begin to have more open debates right here on the Will Cain podcast. And these two men were kind enough and honorable enough to say, yes, let's have that conversation. We go into the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

We talk about America's role on the world stage. And I don't know that this debate will help resolve the question, but I hope that it will help enlighten every single one of us. At a minimum, I think it's very healthy. So again, check out the part of the problem podcast by Dave Smith. Check out the Ben Dominich podcast and the Transom newsletter by Ben Dominich. And I hope you enjoy this debate on the appropriate response from Israel. I'm Janice Dean. Join me every Sunday as I focus on stories of hope and people who are truly rays of sunshine in their community and across the world.

Listen and follow now at Fox News Podcast.com. This is Jimmy Phala, inviting you to join me for Fox Across America, where we'll discuss every single one of the Democrats' dumb ideas. Just kidding. It's only a three-hour show. Listen live at noon Eastern or get the podcast at Fox Across America.com. So first, Dave Smith, Ben Dominic, I'd love to start with how appreciative I am of both of you gentlemen deciding and agreeing to do this. I think that here in America we are living in a world where we are,

constantly inundated with one-sidism and propaganda, and the idea of an exchange of ideas is so rare, and I just appreciate you guys doing this here with me today. I think it's not only going to be entertaining. I think it's incredibly important. So I texted both of you guys. I reached out to both of you guys. I said, let's start with a very simple proposition, and we'll go as wide and broad as we possibly can in your two disagreement. But let us start with this. What should be the appropriate response by Israel? Ben, I'll put that to you. What do you expect? What do you think is right in a response from Israel? Well, I think, unfortunately, given the level of damage, the level of violence that was precipitated against the people of Israel in a surprise attack that was designed to

eradicate as many Jews as possible, I think that the only response that we can expect from Israel is one that is going to essentially destroy the entire leadership of Hamas and their capability to do this type of action again. And in this case, I think that that's going to involve, you know, incredible loss of life within Gaza. But it's also going to be something that I think is designed on making sure that nothing like this ever happens again. And, you know, unfortunately, that involves death. It involves the dirty and bloody work of military action. I think they're justified in that. And I think that, you know, to the degree that, you know, this is not part of your question,

but the degree that the U.S. is involved, I think we should support them in their efforts to the degree that they need any of the support. I think that we're already doing that to a certain extent and give them the resources, the intelligence resources, particularly that they may need in order to exact the kind of punishment on the leaders in Gaza and those who plan this attack and anybody really who is in a position of military authority there. all right dave what's the appropriate response from israel well i would i would start by saying that i agree with ben of what the likely response is uh is going to be from israel and of course

we're already living through this response right now i mean i think uh all water food and medical supplies has been cut off to uh to gaza including one million uh children who live there so i think that from from my perspective and this is why i am happy that you're hosting us and having this conversation. I think in moments like this, what you want is cooler heads to prevail, which is easier said than done because, of course, this attack was so horrific. And of course, we can think back to 9-11 when cooler heads did not prevail in America. And in fact, we were all told, now is not the time to question how there was this monumental failure in leadership. So I would like to see a response where as few innocent civilians die as possible. I would like to see.

see Netanyahu drummed out of public life and live alone in shame for the rest of his days far away from power for pursuing a strategy of funding and supporting Hamas for years, which is there was an article in the Times of Israel today talking about how this Netanyahu plan has completely blown up in his face now. And not only that he propped up Hamas for years as a specific strategy in order to divide the Palestinian authority and assure that Palestine would never get international recognition because nobody's going to make Hamas an official state ever. So, and then also failing to defend his people. So it's a horrific failure on many levels. I'd like to know a lot more about what actually happened here. I think this was one of the

problems immediately following 9-11 as well, is that there was no effort to actually figure out how there was such a monumental failure. Who exactly is involved in this? You know, 15 years later, we learned that actually high-level members of the Saudi government were somewhat involved in 9-11, and that hasn't stopped us from funding them and propping them up ever since. So how exactly did the most militarized, the most prepared country in the world have hours of no response time to this horrific terrorist atrocity? I'd like to find out some more about that. And I would just hate for the response to be, which I think it is going to be, something that just continues this cycle. And I believe is putting Israel at greater risk than they've ever been, at least

in my lifetime. Can I speak to a couple of things you just said there, Dave? So first off, I think we're agreed on the intelligence aspect of this. Obviously, this failure is something that needs to be investigated and can't be ignored. Just as with 9-11, the intelligence services did their best to pretend like they did not fail, to pretend that there was no way they could known what was going to happen and to basically just kick the can down the road until the point where everyone who was involved was retired out of work and, you know, working and consulting for people for millions of dollars, you know, as opposed to in any kind of state where they could actually have some consequences for their failure. You know, that's something that's

very important, you know, and it's not just a failure of Israel, I would say. It's a failure of European intelligence. It's a failure of American intelligence. And I think that part of that Ayan Herssey Ali had a great piece the other day at Unheard, where she talked about the distraction of the West, that the West hasn't been paying enough attention to this. And that includes, obviously, the political upheaval that we've seen happen in Israel over the past year. But I think it also extends the political upheaval in Britain and in America and elsewhere. So that's one thing where we agree on. The difference, I think, is this. When you talk about propping up Hamas, you can put that at the feet of Netanyahu as you did.

But the simple fact is that, you know, Hamas is the choice of the people there and has been that choice since 2006, 2007. And it really, you know, has been a terrible situation for the people in Gaza. For the two million people who are there, you know, it's been something that has kept them in a state, frankly, of not just overpopulation, but, you know, in capacity when it comes to actually being a prosperous region. And that's also in the interest of those who have. hate Israel in the region. They do not give their money to it. They're entirely dependent on Israel

for all of the different resources that you just talked about. And I think, you know, to a certain extent, if you have to think about this as sort of neighbors. If your neighbor, someone who you have, you know, had this contentious relationship with, you know, comes over while you are having a party in your backyard and kills your children and rapes the women there and, you know, shoots rockets from their house at you, you're going to have to destroy their house. And if there are other innocent people who are inside, that's going to be a problem, a moral problem, an ethical problem, but you're not going to hesitate because you cannot abide a neighbor that would engage in such behavior. Go ahead, Dave. Well, listen, I'm a, I'm Jewish, and my grandfather was a

Holocaust survivor, and my mother lived in a kibbutz in Israel for many years. So believe me, I'm, I'm well versed in the Israeli perspective on all of this. The issue is that it always, as I think you just kind of demonstrated, relies on telling half of the story and framing things in ways where there's these strategic kind of framing issues. So like the question is always, does Israel have a right to defend itself? What should the Israeli response to this be? The question is never asked, does Palestine have a right to defend themselves? What should the Palestinian response be to the wildly disproportionate number of innocent Palestinian civilians who have been killed. That question kind of never comes up. So your analogy where there's just these two neighbors

and for some reason, I guess they're possessed by evil, one of the neighbors keeps on being a jerk to the other neighbor is, let's just say, incomplete at best. And what actually is happening would be more like you won a war against your neighbor in 1967 and decided that you have the right to occupy your neighbor forever. And now in these desperate, in the most desperate circumstances, yes, Hamas did narrowly win one election while you were helping them win that election, you know. And then now a million children who didn't vote in this election at all, this is an election of almost 20 years ago, and there's just a million kids there. And all of their rights are supposed to be completely suspended. We are supposed to say that because, you know, like just just saying,

this argument that they won an election, therefore their civilians are fair game, is just saying the identical argument that Osama bin Laden made. And I think it was wrong when he made it. And I think it's wrong when other people make it. That somehow civilians are responsible for everything their government does that's bad because there were elections. Well, of course, that's not. Hold on just one moment, Ben.

I want to pause because we're going to spiral, and I don't mean that in a negative context. We're going to spiral into history. and I want to do that here today, but I don't want to leave behind the points that have been made regarding our current debate and our current context. And Dave, you point out, we always ask the question from the Israeli perspective, half the story, what should be the response from Israel? But I think that's the appropriate question today, because it is in response to, I think, a universally condemned terrorist attack over the weekend. Now, you intellectually, Dave, want to pursue how we arrived at that moment. I think not only is that fair, but I want

to make sure that happens here today. But I want to also complete the thoughts on the current political environment. Ben, Dave brings up what he hopes will come back to the military response. What he hopes will be a political response to this moment and the accountability for Netanyahu. And I see two sides to that, two issues we need to have a conversation about. And that is Netanyahu's embrace of Hamas over the last several years. But also, what looks to me, it's almost too easy to explain away what happened as a failure. We're talking about the most militarized border in the planet, the most sophisticated intelligence agencies in the world,

not just Israel, but as you pointed out, Ben, Europe and the United States. It is really hard for me to believe or understand or just wholeheartedly accept that this was simply a failure. I believe the attack went on for six hours before there was even a response from the Israelis. And that's just highly suspicious, Ben, and I'm not going down a conspiratorial. rabbit hole, but if Dave is right, that is a place we need to begin with accountability. Like, how do you explain that? I'm not sure failure does it justice.

Well, I'm not sure failure does it justice either, but one thing that I think we should keep in mind is, you know, we've lived through in these past several decades, some of the biggest intelligence failures that we've seen in terms of, you know, not just allowing attacks to happen, but also I would say, you know, I suspect at the end of the day when we look into this, there will have been awareness of the planning and the entertainment of the ideas of this type of attack. But we've also seen, frankly, intelligence experts dismiss that ever happening. You know, the idea that, you know, something, well, they're talking about this, but they're never actually going to do it because of the consequences that would be involved.

That's something that we see time and again. And I think that that's something that we need to keep in mind is a very real possibility here. But just to the political, aspects of this. You know, I think that there is, you know, unfortunately, a reality that we have to face here that the people who have wanted to have an appeasement policy toward Iran over the last, you know, two decades plus have essentially been the people who've been in charge. Even under the George W. Bush administration, you know, they made a real choice to, you know, look the other way when it came to Iran and all of their different. different activities. Obviously, you know, that was the policy for eight years under the Obama

administration. The same people are in charge under the Biden administration today. They've looked the other way at the same time that, you know, Iran has been, you know, the greatest funder of terror around the world. And that is unfortunately, I think, something that we have to grapple with, you know, on the American side politically. And, you know, frankly, the only exception to this is the four years under Donald Trump in which their attitude was that they would regularly, him in Iran and kill their military leadership. And we actually had a pretty quiet four years during that period. And so I think that the actual attitude that we should have as Americans toward this is more about, you know, what did we do on our part to elect leaders and to support

a foreign policy blob that has essentially been in charge of our policy toward Iran for most of the past 25 years. Hey, Dave, I don't want to take for granted. I'm going to let you jump in on anything you'd like, Dave, but I also would like to push you in this direction. I don't want to take for granted. I don't want to take for granted that the audience knows as much as either of you two gentlemen. This is an incredibly confusing story for your average viewer and your average listener because of its cycle of violence that has gone on for 75 years longer, just from a nation-state political perspective for 75 years. But you pointed out Netanyahu's embrace of Hamas, Dave, is the other

point of accountability for Net and Yahoo. And I'd love for you to kind of put more flesh on those bones. I mean, Netanyahu, Ben is right. I mean, Hamas was a democratically elected governing body of Gaza once. And then, and then embraced by Netanyahu in either a failed attempt or a straw man attempt to create a Palestinian state. Yeah, well, what Benjamin Netanyahu said to his own Lakut party, like he doesn't talk this way when he's talking to the international community, he says he believes in a two-state solution and all of this, but what he told them was that the reason he was supporting Hamas was because this would undermine any viable pathway

toward a two-state solution. So Hamas first rose up out of the Muslim Brotherhood. They were kind of like the Palestinian version of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and eventually kind of became their own thing, probably substantially more radical than even the Muslim Brotherhood. And certainly every bit as violent, I mean, they've been pretty damn violent in the past, but this was the biggest attack they've ever landed. But the plan was to divide the Palestinians in the West Bank from the Palestinians in Gaza and also to put them in a situation where they would never get international legitimacy.

I do want to just talk about what Ben just brought up in terms of this kind of placating of Iran. I wish it had been the case that all the Americans did during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama years was look the other way. In fact, what happened was that George W. Bush fought a war in Iraq that in effect was on Iran's behalf, taking out their arrival in the region and handing the country over to the Shiites. This is also why Obama then started funding a stupid war in Syria to try to kind of reverse the fact that all of these countries were now allied and Shiite. dominated. And, you know, I don't know. I know that it gets said a lot that around is the world leading sponsor in terrorism. I'm, I, I've never actually seen concrete, like, proof of this. And I would really, I would be interested to, to actually measure the amount of U.S. dollars that have gone, like our tax dollars that have gone to supporting terrorism and the

amount of Saudi dollars that have gone to supporting terrorism. I'm not even arguing that maybe Iran is still number one, but I think it's a much more competitive game than we give it credit for. But so it's not just that we, um, we, I would just, I would just say, you know, we're going to, we would have to get into an argument about the definition of terrorism at that point. And I think that that would get really off the rails. Well, I think, I think Al-Qaeda in, in Iraq and ISIS and Syria would qualify. I think you would probably acknowledge that. Like, does giving bagram back, you know, sort of to them, does that account is like a gift in terms of funding terror because... No, but I mean Operation Tambor, Sycamore, where we sent billions of

dollars in weapons into Syria that all ended up, whether directly or not, all ended up in the hands of ISIS. ISIS was driving Toyota trucks around, and it wasn't because a round gave them to him. You know what I mean? So, and in terms of Saudi Arabia is by far the biggest exporter of Wahhabism around the globe. These are our close partners over there who we have no problem doing business with. And of course, Donald Trump did just ratcheted that up and did even more business with the Saudis. Both Obama and Donald Trump supported their Saudis in the brutal war in Yemen that lasted for eight years is just finally getting a little bit better now. So it's not as if like that my only point is that it's not as if we can say America has taken like a passive role in the Middle

East over the last 20 years. I simply think that there's a difference between having having mismanagement that ends up with weapon systems and vehicles and other things, material end up in the hands of people who Americans, if they were ever asked, would not want to supply them that type of material. I mean, you know, think about, you know, Donald Trump raging against leaving behind, you know, even one screw, one bolt, you know, in Afghanistan that could be used by those who are the enemies of America. You know, that kind of thing is not what Americans want.

It's not the policies that they favor. And I think that that's more an indictment of our military and of our intelligence services, which, you know, certainly stand to be indicted. But just in terms of, you know, returning to the questions related to Israel, I think, Dave, the problem that you face at this moment is that the American people have for a while now been, you know, whatever you would like to call it, war weary in the wake of, you know, feeling like they tried to, go in a different path under Obama and they didn't get out of him the policies that they wanted toward the international side of things, that they didn't really want to go down the kind

of droning path versus torture. They didn't think that that was the situation that they were having to adjudicate. And then they went into, they tried something very different with Donald Trump and now that they've returned to kind of the mean, returned to the foreign policy blob. I think that one of the things that's very true in this moment, is that whenever you see this type of activity, this type of attack, this type of brutal murder of people in Israel, it completely ends any of this kind of populist sort of dancing with quote unquote restraint or what its critics, its neocon critics would call isolationism or anything like that. I mean, what you saw Josh Holly and people like that putting out over the past week is, you know, essentially not we need to spend. less money on Ukraine, and it's more, we're going to spend all that money on Israel now instead.

And so I think that the problem that you face is that the American people are just not attitudinally in the mindset of, you know, we shouldn't be backing what they view as our ally and what they view properly as our most important ally in the region in Israel when they undergo something like this. Hold on, but Ben, I think there's a- those things back into the world. I think your point on the hypocrisy of the American right or the new right in this moment is very well taken and it's an accurate observation been. But on the other hand, I still think there are some very principled people out there that ask what I think is the most

important question in any one of these moments. How does whatever we choose to do serve America first? And I don't mean that as a trite political, you know, slogan. It's to me, and maybe I'm tribal and my tribe is America. But to me, that's the first question. And, you know, that's a question that personally, I feel, Ben, was never sufficiently answered, has not been sufficiently answered when it comes to Ukraine. I'm not an isolationist, Ben. I need you to answer that question with clarity. And I don't think you can hide behind, and I'm not saying you're doing this, Ben, but I think this is a rhetorical trick that is done all too often, but hide behind, you know, accusations of anti-Semitism or whatever it may be, to ask that very same question when it

comes to Israel. How does our path serve America first? Well, I think that I, first off, I would say America is, you know, our interest in the world should be one of global stability in which America is in charge. That's my own perspective. I don't like the idea of a situation where another world power is in charge. The fact that China, for instance, is engaged in the type of behavior that that it is in, you know, I'm very much opposed to the idea that having China in charge of global trade is something that would be good for America or good for the West. And so from, that's just a very, I mean, it's a very basic kind of frame of things, but, you know, that's the thing that I think ought to be our priority. When it comes to our alliances around the world, I think

that we need to be a reliable partner. And particularly when it comes to a nation that has gone through its unique history as Israel has, in which they have, you know, so many, foes that surround them and that, you know, are bent on either their eradication or their undoing. You know, it's not very complicated, I think, when it comes to our attitude towards Hamas, when you have, you know, the kind of statements that come out of, of their leadership over the past many years, you know, whether it's regarding, you know, their support of, you know, the freedom fighters of Osama bin Laden and the like, you know, I think it's a pretty clear cut thing. But, you know, when it comes to, you know, the overall American attitude toward the world, I just, you know, think that it's very important that America be able to control its own destiny, you know, have the kind of global trade, the safe global trade that has made us as prosperous as we have, and then be a reliable ally when it comes to the attitude we have towards our allies when they are attacked. Dave, I want to push you on something really quickly. So when I listen to Ben talk, and I hear you guys have this debate about Iran versus the U.S. is funding of terror. And I appreciate Ben's response. It depends on your definitely. of terror, or that's an important debate to have about your definition of terror. But I actually get your practical response as well, Dave, about, look, if you can look

in any two sides of a war, there's a good chance American dollars are funding both sides of that war. But one thing I noticed with you, Dave, is I feel like in some of your approach to this, and I say this humbly, Dave, and I want your honest response is that you don't seem to distinguish between intentionality and accident. You know, like Ben's goal of having the United States kind of in charge of the world, I think lacks a certain level of humility. That's my honest belief, Ben.

I mean, can you actually control the world? But on the other hand, you know, whether or not it's, you know, civilian deaths in Gaza versus the rape and killing of children in southern Israel or the accidental, incompetent funding of terror on various sides of a war versus the intentional Iranian-funded terror across the world, I think that I feel like in this analysis, often, Dave, you're not distinguishing between somebody intentionally inflicting acts of evil and those through their own lack of humility and incompetence stumble into acts of evil? Well, I mean, it's not, I do think there are areas where we can distinguish that.

It's just that in effect, they end up causing the same result, no matter what your intention is. And also, when we're presuming intentions about people, we're really kind of just playing a guessing game of trying to get inside of their head. I mean, listen, the idea that every one of these wars that we've fought, let's say, over the last 20 years, and so you could count obviously Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, we're now funding the proxy war in Ukraine. I mean, there are think tanks who are funded by weapons companies who come up with policy papers on why we need to fight these wars.

Now, am I supposed to just presume that this is, all just an innocent mistake. And of course, all of these people really want, you know, like Lockheed Martin just really believes in funding a think tank that says we need to buy another $200 billion worth of weapons from Lockheed Martin. I don't know. I'm looking at actions here and saying this is the result of these actions. So by the way, I don't think there are cases where you're probably right, where there is, there should be a separation of things that were, you know, horrific things that happen due to incompetence versus maliciously rooting for those things to happen. But I don't know that's always so clear.

What about the current situation? And maybe in this situation, we don't even, we don't chalk it up to incompetence. Ben started out today saying it's really sad, but it's the byproduct of war. Civilian deaths will happen in Gaza. I think everyone has lamented and acknowledged that reality. But it won't be the, it won't be the target of the Israeli military. They won't, in fact, they will probably do everything they, can to limit that practical outcome. Whereas it's not a moral equivalency to compare that. I don't

think you've done this, Dave. But I mean, it's in no way comparable to what Hamas just did in Southern Israel. Well, the thing that you get whenever you talk about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that, and I think these are, the Israeli side of this, and as I said, I've grown up immersed in it, they have been unbelievably successful at repeating things often enough that everybody else kind of repeats them and framing the conversation in a way where like a that that term that you just used, which I don't think you said I wasn't doing, but the moral equivalency thing gets thrown out all the time. If you just mention, you know, there's this term both siderism and moral equivalency, where if you even just mention any of the crimes that Israel's committed,

they're like, oh, now you're doing moral equivalency. So you see the framing of this is we have to talk about this conflict, but we can only talk about one side of the conflict. If we talk about not the other side at all. Well, hold on. Let me just finish this point. Then I'll be here. But listen, I hear this said a lot that Israel would never target civilians and they do everything they can to not target civilians. This simply is not true. And I would ask anyone who's listening to this who wants to ask, go Google mow the grass, go listen to the Israeli military in their own words, what their strategy is here. You can look at Max Blumenthal, who's done a lot of firsthand reporting on this. There have absolutely been numerous instances where Israel has targeted civilians. And I'm sorry, but cutting off the food, water, and medical supplies to one million children is targeting civilians. You understand that as you're bombing this place, children are going to be injured and now can't be treated. This is, it's a horrific targeting of civilians. So again, I'm not saying it's the same thing as what Hamas just did. What Hamas just did was so much more primitive and brutal and barbaric.

But Israel is doing something here too and to a much larger number of people. And I don't think it's fair to describe that as doing everything they can to make sure that innocent civilians are not hurt. Well, first off, let me just put my little flag out there. I do not want to debate the authority of Max Blumenthal, but I would have to take issue with his reporting. But that aside, the both-sizes thing, I think, let's look at it in a different kind. context than Israel, just so that we can have some determinant here of where it goes too far. When you had that first meeting between China and the Biden administration in Alaska, and you saw the Chinese authorities come into the room, their diplomats, and start sounding no

different than the progressive left, then BLM, then, you know, pick your group in terms of their assault on American moral authority, in saying, saying, you know, you say that we are a prison state, you're a prison state. You know, you say that, you know, that you are, you know, that we are, you know, abusive toward our people. You are abusive towards your people. You know, this kind of using the argument that because, you know, America, you know, has, you know, its own approach internally, that that equates to the real, really, the genocide of Uighur Muslims and everything else that China is engaged in internally. It's, it's just something that's, It's just not something that you can take with any seriousness. And, you know, frankly, it's the one aspect of these repeated arguments that we have within the foreign policy space that I find to be so objectionable. And it, you know, returns me again to the old Daniel Patrick Moynihan quote, you know, addressing the U.N., you know, am I ashamed to speak for a less than perfect democracy?

No, find me it's equal, you know. And have we done terrible things he followed that up with? Yes, people read about them in the newspapers. And it's the sort of thing that I think it's the difference between, it's this moral equivalency game that I just don't think is ever going to land with the American people. And I think it shouldn't because it's wrong. Well, yeah. I mean, look, it's obviously ridiculous for the CCP to be like, you know, criticizing us about our,

you know, domestic. They brought up kids in cages. Like, you know, that sort of thing, you know? Sure. So, like, yeah. Like, yes, progressives make a lot of dumb points and the CCP should not be trusted on. But this is what nations always do. I mean, Joseph Stalin himself used to bring up segregation all the time.

And he would talk about, you know, like, look how horrible these Americans are to their black people in the South. And really, they're the oppressive state. Now, all of us here could recognize, okay, that's pretty ridiculous for Joseph Stalin to think that he could. But at the same time. The Gulag Archipelago. Yes. Yes. But at the same time, at least in many instances, we could also recognize that, like, hey, you know what?

segregation was wrong and we were just handing him a talking point. And so, yes, like these other brutal authoritarian regimes, of course, are the biggest hypocrites in the world for criticizing us for that. But that doesn't mean that, like, why would we want to hand them these talking points? And the truth is that, look, Americans, mainly because we got so gung ho after 9-11 that there were no cooler heads prevailed and because there are very corrupt influences within the military industrial complex. We fought wars all over the Middle East where millions of people have died as a result of this. And we don't have anything to show for all of that, except for 30,000 of our bravest young men putting bullets in their heads. So, like, for the love of God, man, can we

calm down and actually think this through before we commit to another war? Which you had political leaders in America, the day the attack happens in Israel. It's not just enough to say, like, this is horrible. My condolence is we stand with Israel. But it's like, we will fund you till the end. We are with you. We're going to level Palestine. Like, can we stop and think? And to Will's point, the question that American political leaders should be asking is what is in the interest of America, the people who elected them? And no, without as much as even explaining what that interest is, they're already gung ho about this. So yes, China's hypocrites, progressives have a weird worldview where they get a lot of

things wrong. But that doesn't mean that American foreign policy hasn't been a disaster over the last 20 years. And we should think about that. I'm not saying that. In fact, I think I've said, I think I've just laid out why I think that the work of the foreign policy blob in D.C. has been so terrible and has not served America's interest. But, but just to get back to that point, talk to me about the difference between the critique that is leveled, you know, that I've heard from Ron Paul, that I've heard from so many people over the years. And what I hear. from the progressive left, because it sounds very similar a lot of the time. Yeah, but this is like a non-argument.

Like, just because the progressives gets a lot of things wrong doesn't mean they might not be right about one or two things. Look, the progressive left was warning you conservatives after the progressive, let me just finish this point. Just to use a different example, when Bernie Sanders says that health care costs too much, I agree. And then his answer to it is the worst possible answer. Yeah.

Yes. No, okay, so I agree with you on that Bernie, I completely agree with both of those things. But look, it was progressives and leftists who were the ones who were ringing the alarm about the Patriot Act and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the war in Iraq. And let me tell you something, conservatives, it doesn't, it would suit you to, you know, take a scoop a humble pie and go now that right-wingers are the targets of the Department of Homeland Security. Maybe they had a point. Maybe they were right about that. I'm not disagreeing with you, but I do have to point out that the Democratic Party and the Republican Party and the Republic. party were 100% in lockstep and the American people were behind, not just the Iraq war,

but the creation of all of these. But that's always the case. Today's point, to the day's held on really quick. I'm not claiming, I wasn't revising history. I'm just telling you what happened. Really quick. Really quick. You're right. Let's bring this back in tight. To Dave's point, Ben, that is, that is a scary moment where both the right and the left agree and the American populace jumps on in that fervor of a moment after 9-11. and signs up for a Patriot Act that is ultimately weaponized against the right. And here's what I would push back on you a little bit with Ben. You know, you say that you can acknowledge the failures of the foreign policy establishment in the United States,

but it doesn't seem to inspire much humility about the next action. It always seems to be this sort of this therapy session of, yeah, we were wrong about our ability to predict the outcomes of destabilizing Iraq. but it doesn't seem to provide much humility about what we're willing to do in Ukraine or in this case, I don't know, the greater Middle East. But I think a big part of that will is the fact that we still have the same people in charge. We have the same people in the same jobs or in even higher levels of authority than they were the last time around. And until we actually have, you know, administrative change that leads, look, foreign policy overwhelming. I'm actually curious in you because you in this conversation admit some humility when looking in the rear of you. mirror, but I don't hear a lot when looking in through the windshield.

Okay. So one of the things that I think is very important is, you know, obviously the difference that we have here when it comes to support for Ukraine, for instance, is that, you know, from my perspective, the, the consequences of putting American boots on the ground raises everything in terms of the level to which you have to have confidence in what you're doing. Funding Ukraine in this war is funding, you know, I think. an incomplete ally in a lot of different ways, you know, and frankly, I'm, my own attitude is that we ought to be funding them to the degree that we can focus on ending this war as soon as

possible, decrease the loss of life, come to a conclusion as quickly as possible, but also come to a conclusion that, you know, frankly, does not allow an adversary in Russia to get whatever they want. And I think that, unfortunately, you know, this, this war is a messy one that has gone on far too long, that the Biden administration has kind of played this meandering game when it came to giving Ukraine what they needed in order to end it. And, you know, we, the F-16s aren't going to even be on, you know, in the field of play for another six months at this rate, you know, and we've got to teach the pilots English first. So it's one of the things that I think, you know, goes back to the idea of, you know, a lot of the times the foreign policy establishment

that we have, you know, in this country, you know, operates through a, domestic lens that doesn't necessarily put them in a position that can actually reach the conclusion of these types of conflicts as quickly as we would like. You know, in terms of the people who are in charge right now, though, again, I have to get back to that, we have the same group of people. I mean, you know, when Bob Gates, you know, Secretary of Defense went out there and said, you know, that Joe Biden has been wrong, has been on the wrong side of virtually every foreign policy issue during his entire career.

He wasn't wrong. And I think that, unfortunately, we've put these same people back in those positions. you know, Victoria Newland and everybody else, you know, who's part of that blob establishment continues to operate. And, you know, really, again, the only exception that we had to that was the Trump years because you actually had some outsiders get in there who could do something different. And frankly, I don't think you can make that point without acknowledging Dave's point of the constant presence of the military industrial complex. And it's, and I also, I also think that's not going to go away anytime soon. I think that's an intractable problem.

Well, that's a problem. Dave, I want to press you on something now. You know, your point about sort of, you make almost a biblical point of like, don't look at the speck in your neighbor's eye until you address the log in your own. But I want to talk about the practical effect of that. Like you pointing out are moral failings here in the United States or as a proxy Israel. And we can keep, I don't, it's kind of weird in this conversation how we quickly switched talking about the United States, which I wanted to anyway. But it's almost like we use them as one in the same in this debate. and I don't consider them one and the same in this debate. But your point, Dave, I wonder, are you making the argument that there are no good guys and bad guys?

Like, are all civilizations equal in your mind? Or is pointing out the failings of one, what's the point? Is it an argument that we should be more perfect? Yeah, I think everyone agrees. We should strive for more perfection, but we're not going to achieve it. And we can't be paralyzed by our own imperfections in and looking at other civilizations that have not arrived that similar level of morality. And so, I mean, I feel like your point is well taken on so many of these, like, nobody can argue Israel is perfect. Nobody can argue United States is perfect. But what do we

do with that in the end? Do we sit here and go, there's no good guys and bad guys? Well, I would say that typically speaking, no, there aren't usually good guys and bad guys. I think that's kind of like, you know, that's like an eight-year-old playing with his action figures type of mentality about the world. That doesn't mean that's a simplistic rhetorical term that I'm using, but what it does ultimately is acknowledge, not every culture and civilization is of equal progress. Yes. Well, that's true. So that's obviously true, right? There are better guys and worse guys. And so, yes, there are differences between different societies. And then within that spectrum, there are some societies that are very horrible to their own people,

but don't really do anything to anybody else. And then there are some that are fairly decent to their own people, but do really horrible things to other countries. So, like North Korea, for example, is brutally horrible. They basically are a giant slave nation to their own people, but they don't really start too many foreign conflicts. They're a very, like, internally focused nation. So I think our presence in South Korea has a little something to do with that. Okay, fine, fair enough. But regardless, yes, there's a lot of different variables to it there, but that is the reality of the situation. Otherwise, that would all be North Korea. Well, let me say this. So my perspective, and I think this is where fundamentally me and Ben disagree, and in a sense, I guess I'm more of a conservative than him in this sense, is that I don't think America's job is to run the world. I don't think we're supposed to be an empire. I believe we are supposed to be what our founders envisioned us as, which is a limited constitutional republic, a city on a hill. And that our job is to try to keep our people as free as possible and our government as limited as possible.

I don't believe, I think the entire process, the entire experiment in trying to run the world is one that's doomed to fail. And I think there's a lot of examples of that of almost every time we've tried it. So I think that my focus is always on what we could, so my focus is always on what we could do better. Now, if you want to look around the world at horrible things that are happening, it's the majority of the world. I mean, just brutality is the norm. Civilization is the exception. And so it is also kind of convenient how there are these certain pockets that we really care

about and then other areas where it just doesn't get discussed at all. And we just kind of conveniently ignore all of that. And I'll say so many people who you see on TV in the political class, in the media class, they are the greatest humanitarian ever when it comes to what Russia is doing to Ukraine or what Hamas is doing to Israel. But when it was us and Saudi Arabia doing far worse than that to Yemen, I didn't hear a peep out of any of these people. They very conveniently chose to not care about that. Yemen was the number one humanitarian crisis in the world for nearly a decade. Hundreds of thousands of children died of malnutrition because of the Saudi-led war there that we were backing. And yet that doesn't seem to come up. So my point is not that there

aren't better guys and worse guys or that we don't all do things wrong. But I think that America ought to focus on making ourselves a more perfect union. And that should be our highest priority. I'm going to get you in here, Ben, but I just want to say that's only exacerbated in my mind, Dave, by an even more egregious example of caring about these far away causes. You're humanitarian far from home. And at home, we allow whatever we want to point to. I had a personal connection to seeing what happened in Maui, and I was very passionate about the federal and government response to that versus what I feel like is the overwhelming, like, yes, whatever you need, Ukraine, or the fentanyl deaths or the southern border. And I don't think Ben disagrees with any of that as well.

So, I mean, I really appreciate the point that you make. And, Ben, I know you want to jump in. Go ahead, Ben. So first off, I don't think that those are two different things necessarily. Part of being a more perfect union, I think, requires us to take interest at things that are, frankly, beyond our borders. You know, the border issue itself on our southern border, you know, requires. requires us to care about the activity of the cartels that effectively run the entire region that is a stone thorough away. So I don't think that that's something that's necessarily in conflict.

But just to return to the point that you sort of turn this into an argument that sounds more Wilsonian than what I actually was a saying and what I actually believe, which is that America should be in charge. That doesn't mean we need to run the world or be in control of every corner. But it does mean that, you know, I have a Hamiltonian perspective on this, that global trade. is something that has made us an incredibly prosperous nation, the envy of the world, and that's something that we need to defend and be in charge of, and that it would be not in America's interest, not in America first interest, to have a nation like China be in charge of it, which is what they want to do. And frankly, their expansionist policies are designed to allow them to do that.

One other thing that I think is very important here, though, is to respect that the American people are not where you are or where I am. You know, you are giving a kind of Jeffersonian, you know, argument, you know, or however you would like to describe it that's more internally focused. And I think the American people tend to be more Jacksonian, you know, in the Walter Russell Mead frame of things where they really don't pay attention to foreign policy until someone gets hit or until they get punched in the face in some aspect. And then their immediate reaction is to turn around and be George W. Bush with the bullhorn, you know, on the wreckage and say, we're going to, you know, make sure that everyone hears us, we're going to go out and we're going to kill as many people as we need to in order to send that message. And so I think that that's something that we should have a little bit of humility about

in terms of the natural tendency of the American people. I don't want us to be Wilsonians. I don't want us to be trying to remake the cultures of people around the world. You know, the fact is that, you know, on some level, I do believe that most humans want to be free, but there are a lot of people who have other priorities other than being free. Some people, you know, are just, you know, not, it's in the, in the hierarchy of their needs, that's not something that they put, you know, at the most prominent place. And what I see right now is a Western world that is increasingly, you know, hemmed in in so many different ways. And it's not just, you know, in what's happening in the South China Sea or what's happening in Ukraine or what we see happening in the Middle East.

It's also, you know, frankly, in Africa where we have, you know, pleasant sounding terms like the coup belt, you know, and. and we see the kind of situation where China's building bases and Russian mercenaries are operating like warlords in all these different places. I'm not asking us to go to war in all of those places in order to affect some end. But I am saying that there are things that need to be done, whether diplomatically through soft power or through, you know, the kind of targeted support, providing air cover for our allies and other things that I think is necessary in order to push back against what we're seeing as a very negative trend. line in terms of activity toward the west you know i love all those framings i love hamiltonian versus jeffersonian versus jacksonian framing of this and i think that sounds really reasonable at first i thought you were saying i was being wilsonian and i was like we're going to fist fight if that's oh no god no no that would that would be that was okay i got it i got it i called him with so wilsonian one of us did

but i like his here's here's the and dave i want to give you some room in space before we have to leave today because i know that one of the things you wanted to go into was sort of the deep historical background of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I don't know, you know, how it informs either Israel's response today or how we view what happened over the weekend, but I know that that context or history is important to you, Dave. Yeah, well, I do just real quickly, and then I'll address that. But just to my response to kind of to what Ben was saying there, and I think this is along the point that you were making, will is that, look, the reality of the situation is that resources are finite. And so it is a question

of what we do with these resources, whether we send them to Ukraine or whether they're left here in our own society. And governments can only, governments have three ways of raising funds. They tax the population. They borrow the money or they print the money. That's it. That's how government gets its money. All of those are essentially taxing the people. Because when you print the money, you devalue the currency. When you borrow the money, you're just promising that future generations are going to pay it in taxes. It's basically that's how government should want the gold standard. They tax from the citizen rate. And while we have all of these problems going on here, look, the last three plus years in America have been three of the roughest years in modern American

history. And while this is all happening, while every major city in our country is falling to pieces, we're concerned with making sure that we fund every far away part of the world while we're 30 plus trillion dollars in debt. And I would also suggest that this, the fear, there's always these kind of like counterfactuals that, but that come up like, oh, if we don't support the war in Ukraine, then Vladimir Putin takes over Poland or something like that. Or if we don't, if we're not the empire, however you put it, if we're not in charge of the whole world, then China's in charge of the whole world. But the truth is that we are still a far richer country than China and we're going bankrupt trying to run the world.

see no evidence that China's going to be able to do it. China, by the way, also has lots of hostile neighbors right around them in their own region. So my point is just that this, we are destroying ourselves right now. And I think deep inside the soul of the American people, people know this. This country is in real trouble right now. And we've got to have some type of radical shift here. And I agree with Ben a lot when he talks about where the American people are at. Yeah, the American people were behind George W. Bush after 9-11. He had the highest approval ratings, I believe in the history of approval ratings. But look at what a disaster that was. So I see it as the role is for cooler heads to try to prevail and try as best they can

to persuade the American people, that we need to stop doing this. We are so overextended as a government right now. We're verging on collapse. Our currency is being destroyed. Our country is totally bankrupt. And the average American has to, if they had an emergency of $1,000 has to go their credit card for it. We're in serious trouble as a country and we're worried about how we're going to help everybody else in the world. It's like this is madness. And look, in terms of the history of Israel... Before you go into the history, I'm going to allow you to do that, but I don't want to let Ben respond. I just want to... The one pushback that I would give to you just briefly, and I think, you know, we're wrapping up here, we're getting to the end, but I could

go, we could have a whole other separate conversation about this. I would return to the idea that that was a lot of what people were saying in the 1970s. It's what they were saying about the context of our conflict with the Soviet Union, that we couldn't be, you know, funding the kind of weapons buildup or anything like that related to the Cold War, that we had to accept the inevitability of their persistence. And that was something that Ronald Reagan and H.W. Bush rejected. That type of Kissingerian approach was something that they rejected within the context of the right. And they were called extremists at the time.

and that's the whole reason that the Berlin Wall came down within the next decade. And that, I think, is something that we have to consider within our own current context. I'm not saying that things aren't terrible domestically in so many different ways, particularly, as you mentioned, within our cities. But I think that those are, that's a situation where we have to address it and we have to be able to do the other things, too. We have to support our allies around the world where they need it. And I think that we have to, you know, invest and support our communities here at home where they need it to. Agreed.

I would just say that with all the larger. context. Okay, but just very quickly, I'm sorry because this is just interest me so much, but one of the lessons of the Soviet Union also is like, why did they collapse? And they collapsed because they had an economy that was completely run by their central government, and they got into a stupid war in Afghanistan that completely drained all of their resources. So maybe as we sit here right now with the largest government in the history of the world, and we've coming off of 20 years of stupid wars that have totally bankrupted us, maybe there's a lesson in there for us about what we should do, which would be to return home

and be as free market capitalist as we possibly can. I love every aspect of this debate. And I just, for the record, because of our limited time for the audience, Ben put a lid on our conversation at one hour. He has to go get his daughter. And so I'm afraid that Dave will filibuster himself out of his point, his opportunity to make his larger historical point. Okay.

I take total responsibility for filibustering myself out of this. But yes, I don't want to leave Ben's daughter sitting there. Like, is my dad arguing about the Cold War right now and not out picking me up? So I will just say, she's three years old. I haven't taught her about the Cold War yet. She's right. My daughter's about to be five, and I'll tell you, four, four is about when you want to start, in my experience. That's when they really start to get it.

No, listen, I would just say that, because we don't really have time to get too deep into it at this point. But look, the truth is that in the entire history of Israel and Palestine, going back to 19, the late 1940s, there have been. atrocities committed by both sides. And that might trigger somebody to say you're doing both side orisms or whatever. But that is the truth. And this is why this situation has been so violent and unsustainable up to this point. But right now what we have is calls for, from the head of the Israeli military for a knock bar too, we have calls to flatten Gaza. The rhetoric, obviously people like to talk about the rhetoric of Hamas, which is totally. unacceptable and over the top and evil. But the rhetoric coming out of Israel right now is also

really horrible. And if we don't want to continue to see events like this on into the future, there has to at some point be an ability. And I think it's going to require new leadership on both sides. There has to be an ability to try to rise above this and come to an actual solution where peace can be pursued. And that is what I think all Americans should be rooting for. And to any extent that Americans get involved, and this is why I feel like with Ukraine, with Israel, to any extent if America gets involved, it should be pushing diplomacy, negotiations, and pushing peace, not saying we will endlessly fund one side of this war. So that's what I'll end with. You know, I'll just say this, Ben, I want to get your response, but where we started this conversation,

you know, maybe, maybe Dave just changed the outcome a bit there with that last answer, but you guys weren't far apart. I mean, I think that we have some deep divide. on the way or the role of America in the world. But both of you basically started this conversation with the idea that there is an appropriate response from Israel, military response, setting aside the political debate we had about Netanyahu. But there is an appropriate military response by Israel in Gaza. And the response you both wish and hope will be as limited as possible, and that's very, that carries a lot of weight, as limited as possible, death of civilians in Gaza. Look, I mean, civilian death is unfortunately just going to happen here.

It's going to happen because of this is a place where lots of people live. And the humanitarian side of this is not something that we should deny or ignore. But the consequences for Gaza of this invasive action that resulted in the deaths of an enormous number of Israeli civilians is going to have a response and it's going to be very deadly, very bloody. and we have an ally in Israel that I believe that we should back. And there will be a time, I hope, where there can be a degree of peace achieved. But the simple fact is that, you know, I mean, it's a, it's a meme. But if Israel stopped fighting, they would be exterminated. And that's something that we need to understand about this entire situation.

If they just laid down their arms and, you know, became this kind of, you know, fanciful thing that I think a lot of the progressives, I'm not saying that Dave wants this. but a lot of the progressive left kind of frames this as then they would be exterminated. I don't think that we should pretend otherwise or have any misgivings about saying that. I believe that we will back Israel. I believe the American people are going to stand with Israel during this moment and how this concludes. I hope it concludes with the least amount of civilian death possible, but it is inevitably going to happen. Yeah, I agree with, I think we all agree on that.

It's a matter of possibility, Dave. I mean, Hamas buried in a civilian population, urban population, underground bunkers, human shields. I mean, it's going to be horrific, and I don't even know how Israel threads that needle in a way that doesn't spiral into increased violence. Well, it doesn't seem, at least from their initial response, that they're doing much attempting to thread that needle. But yes, it's a very difficult situation. I think Ben is absolutely right when he says that Hamas just sentenced their own people. to just an excruciating amount of violence and that their actions have all but guaranteed just enormous death of innocent Palestinians.

That being said, I would hope that Israel would keep in mind, and I'd hope America would learn the lesson, that, you know, the entire point of terrorism is to provoke a reaction. That is the point that Osama bin Laden never thought that taking down the Twin Towers was going to bankrupt America, but he thought that that. the response to him taking down the Twin Towers could bankrupt America. And this is what the CIA helped train him to do to the Soviet Union. And this is what he was attempting to do to us. And of course, we fell right into the trap with two 20-year catastrophe wars. And I think what Israel, I hope that Israel would understand the true risk to them right now. I mean, when they talk about

leveling Gaza and, you know, an area that has a million children in it, I know it hasn't, I know other Arab countries haven't invaded Israel since 1967, but this also hasn't happened. And if they really do take it to that level, they might be putting their own existence in jeopardy. This is the point of terrorists, right? This is the point. Hamas doesn't care that innocent civilians are going to die in Gaza. In fact, they're attempting to provoke that reaction. They're attempting to provoke this overreaction so then they can rally other people to their cause. And it would be whove America and Israel to think about that. Last word,

you've been. I just, I appreciate the fact that we've had this conversation. I do think that, you know, the simple truth is that when it comes to a lot of the foreign policy debates that we have in America, they are non-existent. The foreign policy blob that runs Washington, like I've said, you know, throughout this conversation, you know, and has run it effectively for the past more than two decades, really, is really a huge problem. And the think tank hand in glove, you know, weapons manufacturer-backed kind of white papers that Dave talks about are also a huge problem.

But that doesn't mean that America doesn't have an important role to play when it comes to not just, you know, global stability. But I think making sure that we have the kind of support not just for our allies when they need it, but for, you know, frankly, the West as a whole, which as I said before is increasingly. encircled by a number of threats that have been woefully ignored, as we've been distracted by, I think, a lot of conflicts that, frankly, we should not have participated in. So, look, there's some areas we're going to agree, but I just think that America's role is not going to be able to just come back home, focus internally in the way that I think that Dave would like. And I think that that's because those threats still exist. All right. I don't know what we resolved.

hope that we have enlightened and I can't tell you how much I respect both of you for doing this and how much I appreciate you doing it on this show. I hope you don't go fight on Twitter because I think this is a better world than what we see on Twitter, what we just saw here for the past hour. But you'll do what you do. Maybe you will, maybe you won't. But this right here, whether or not it's enlightening or it resolves any of our issues, I actually think it's incredibly healthy and I appreciate you guys for it. Thank you all. Thank you both. Listen to the all new Brett Bear podcast featuring Common Ground, in-depth talks with lawmakers from opposite sides of the aisle, along with all your Brett Bear favorites, like his

all-star panel, and much more. Available now at foxnewspodcasts.com, or wherever you get your podcasts. There you go. I hope you enjoyed that debate between Dave Smith and Ben Dominic. I'd love to hear your feedback. I'd love to hear your response. Where you agreed, where you disagreed, who you thought won, at Wilcane Podcast at Fox.com. Again, you can check out Dave at the part of the program.

problem podcast as well as his 30-minute specials on YouTube. And you can check out the Transom newsletter, a substack, as well as The Spectator and the Ben Dominic for more from Ben Dominic. I hope you enjoyed this edition, the special edition of the Will Came podcast, and I will see you again next time. Listen to ad free with a Fox News podcast plus subscription on Apple Podcast and Amazon Prime members. You can listen to this show ad free on the music out. This is Jason Chaffetz from the Jason in the House podcast. Join me every Monday to dive deeper into the latest political headlines and chat with

remarkable guests. Listen and follow now at Fox Newspodcast.com. Or wherever you download podcasts.