Dave Smith: Israel, Hamas, Ukraine, Russia, Conspiracies & Antisemitism | Lex Fridman Podcast #464

All the people who sold the war in Iraq, they lied us into war after a war. They've bankrupted the country, damn near destroyed the dollar, and like no one loses their job. No one even gets in trouble over any of this. If you make everybody monsters and they're not human beings, well, you can't do diplomacy with monsters. You can't make a deal. You can't negotiate with monsters, but you can with humans. Maybe there are times where you're not. You shouldn't negotiate or you can't negotiate with humans, but it's better if you can. and and we could use a lot more of that thinking. Donald Trump has put a lot of political capital chips into the middle of the table that I can end this war, you know, and he's going to look very, very bad if he can't. So, he's very highly incentivized to get this thing done as quick as possible. You're fighting in a way that produces more of the thing that you're fighting. And so, the first step is to stop doing that. like your your cure is making the patient more sick. So, stop doing that and then let's see if maybe we could heal. Where are the tapes? Why is everyone talking about the flight logs and the files? Where are the tapes? This guy was clearly taping people to blackmail them. Like, why does anything need to be redacted for national security? Like, I'm sorry. You're telling me there's a pedophile ring and we can't tell you everything about it for national security? Why would that be related to national security? The following is a conversation with Dave Smith, an outspoken and at times controversial anti-war libertarian, comedian, and podcast host. This is the Lex Freedman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Dave Smith. You are a longtime libertarian, uh perhaps an anarco capitalist. We can talk about that. Can you uh explain the different variants, flavors of uh libertarianism and where you stand among those variants? Yeah, so there's almost like anything like with left-wing schools of thought or right-wing schools of thought, there's many different camps and different thinkers and so within the kind of broader theme of libertarianism, there was a lot of influence from uh people like Rand, Milton Freriedman, Thomas Soul. Those were, I think, some of the more mainstream figures. And then there's kind of like the Ron Paul brand of libertarianism, which is kind of distinct from that other camp where they're much more of an emphasis on foreign policy. All of them kind of fall into the um radical minarchist points of view. And then there's Rothbartian anarcho capitalist. Then there's also like uh David Freriedman who's an anarcho capitalist but from a completely different perspective than Murray Rothbart. I would probably be most I'm most closely like with the Rothbart school which very similar to Ron Paul um but even maybe a little bit further in that you know the very little bit of government that Ron Paul might support. You've been a big fan of Ron Paul. Can you explain what you admire about him? A big fan is an understatement. I think Ron Paul is like the greatest living American hero. Um, I I I revere him on the level of of the founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson or George Washington. Number one, I mean, all of the major issues that he w he was correct in his understanding of them, his diagnosis of what caused these problems and his solutions. And in hindsight, there's just like a million different examples of where almost everybody today would agree, even though his ideas were very controversial at the time, be like, "Oh my god, if we had just listened to Ron Paul about that, we'd be so much better off." But I think there's something almost deeper than that about why so why Ron Paul inspires so much love from so many people is okay. So number one, the guy he was a champion of these views for decades when there was no payoff for it at all where he was just kind of alone in the woods being you know they used to call him Dr. No, because well, he was a medical doctor and then he was he would be the lone no vote in Congress like all the time like on on the bills that the entire Congress bipartisan agreement everything is and there's one vote against it, you know, um and that he would be that guy. He clearly kept doing what he was doing simply because he believed it was right, not because there was any benefit for him. In fact, he dealt with a lot of headaches for the views that he had. And then he was just a genuine person of integrity. you know, he's the only uh congressman who I've ever heard this about and and like DC insiders, people on the hill will say this. He was the only congressman of my lifetime who the lobbyists simply stopped visiting. He was the only one who they just stopped going to his office cuz they were just like, there's just no getting through to this guy. He was just not playing politics like that. And he was, you know, you imagine what it must have been like from like the lobbyist perspective when they first tried to go there, you know, and they'd be like, "All right, listen. we really need you to, you know, vote yes on this or that. And he was like, the Constitution doesn't authorize us to do that. And they're like, what? Like, who who in this town even talks like that, you know? And so there was just he's also just I've I've met him uh many times at this point. And he is just genuinely he's like one of those guys who's just from like an older, better generation. Just he's the sweetest guy, but he's like uh but he's not a pushover. like he was a tough guy in in his day and he was an athlete and he was in the Air Force and is married to the same woman for I think over 60 years at this point has like a big beautiful family. He was a country doctor. He was a baby doctor who delivered thousands of babies. like he's just it is he's like this kind of classic American figure and um you know I just think uh you know at the risk of of falling into like hero worship or something like that. I do think he's a I think he's a genuinely great man and I think great men are to be revered. Yeah, as you said there's integrity there. Can you speak to the ideas that Ron Paul represents? Like he says some of the things he's been right about. Maybe can you speak about the economics, the Fed and maybe war and being anti-military intervention? Well, I think it comes it all came from kind of the same central thesis which is that the highest political value ought to be liberty. Um and and that you know the government by its very nature is an instrument of force and tyranny and that therefore the more government you have the less liberty you have. Um, I think he also was he was way ahead of his time in in like really calling out the corruption in DC. And I think that's one of the things that's kind of that's that it's a common through line between the Federal Reserve and um government spending and of course this crazy war industry that our country has. Um there so there there's a a lot of components to that, but essentially Ron Paul was talking about draining the swamp way before it was like this dominant mass message. And I think Ron Paul in many ways laid down he laid the groundwork in his 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns for not not saying that he leads to Donald Trump, but he laid the groundwork for Donald Trump to be able to get up at the South Carolina Republican primary debate and look at Jeb Bush and say, "Your brother lied us into war." And you know what I mean? And and and to have the Republicans agree with him. you know, the same these were a lot of the same people who had voted for George W. Bush twice and supported the war and even mocked their liberal, you know, fellow countrymen for not being on board with it. And and a lot of that was the work that Ron Paul did and people waking up to um the how how messed up all these wars were. And I think that at least from there there were a couple major things for me, okay, at the time. So I was like a I was a young man when I first found Ron Paul. I was I was in uh 2007 was when I first saw him and then started obsessively reading all of his books. And so I I was young. I'm I'm born in ' 83. So what that mean? 23 24 uh when I first met him. So I was a young guy. And at least for me at the time, there were like kind of two categories in my, you know, naive mind where, okay, there were like the liberals who supported big government at home but were skeptical about, you know, big government abroad or skeptical about wars. And then there were the conservatives who said that they supported small government, limited government at home, but were always on the side of whatever the next war is. And at least for me, and I think for a lot of people of my generation, Ron Paul was the first guy who came along and said like, "No, I'm for limited government here and abroad." And it was kind of like a portal where you could like access a different perspective on the world. And then once you saw that, you were like, "Wait, that's actually what makes sense. It makes it it doesn't make sense to like what are what is it exactly that like um all the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush and and even like Milton Friedman and guys like that and Thomas Soul and the it's like you want a constitutionally limited world empire like that's what you guys stand for cuz that doesn't that doesn't fit together at all. And so why is it that we took we we were taking this as a given. And then of course the more you you look into it you realize that like okay there those two things do make sense together. And then also that kind of like in the initial wave of like the original progressives you know look people like Woodra Wilson or FDR these were people who were pushing big government at home and big government abroad and that actually made much more sense as a cohesive worldview. And to oppose that would be the Ron Paul worldview. And then the other thing for me and this was actually this was my introduction to Ron Paul. And this too to me was like kind of a portal in a way. It was it was a way at least in my naive not fully functioned brain or fully developed brain at 24 years old or whatever. Um it was a way for me to kind of get like like I tapped into something that was outside the empire. And I had um I had heard a lot, you know, I was already against George W. Bush and I didn't like the war. I could I I had already figured out, you know, I think this I think this war in Iraq is bullshit and I think that we were lied into it. And so I kind of got that. And then there were there were liberals and and left-wingers who I knew. I grew up in New York City, so I was very familiar with the left-wing perspective and who were critical of of George W. Bush and and for fighting the war and and you know signing the Patriot Act into law and things like that. But I had never really heard anybody break it down the way Ron Paul did when he was when he basically was like look there's a reason why these terrorists hate us and it's not what they're telling you. They don't hate us for our freedom. It's not as if I remember the way Pat Buchanan put it which I always loved was he goes he said Dick Cheney makes it sound like Osama bin Laden stumbled on like in the deserts of Afghanistan he stumbled onto a copy of our bill of rights somewhere and he was like oh my god they're free to look at this speedy trial are you kidding me like this is like what is going on here they can own guns and their women can wear miniskirts and that and that just made people so angry that they were ready to you know like suicide bomb themselves are like that makes no sense at all. And then Ron Paul was just like, "No, look, here's the thing. If we think we can just go around the world killing people, propping up dictatorships, putting our military bases in the the Muslims holy land and not engender hatred from that, then we do that at our own peril." And I thought that was it was such an interesting kind of you know it had always been I I'm an 80s and 90s kid and to me it was always kind of a given that like America's number one we're the force for good in the world and we're and it was like an interesting introduction to the idea that there are people outside of that who are dominated by that who don't care for it very much and like that that's what 911 was actually about and for me you I was living in New York City I was 18 I think when 9/11 happened and that was like the moment of my childhood. It was a huge thing to live through. I mean, we were attacked. This seemed like something that could only happen in a history book. That didn't happen to America in the '9s. 2001 was basically the '9s. Um and uh and it was just like, oh, finally it clicked. It was like, that makes sense. is the first time I had ever heard like an explanation and an understanding of this whole thing that we're involved in now from 9/11 to the terror wars that actually just made perfect sense. Yeah. We should also say that there's some degree of truth that the battle is not just militaristic, it's also cultural. And then many of those parts of the world don't want other people's values forced onto them. Right? But the way that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and every right-wing host in America and Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly and like everybody. What they were saying is that they hate that we're free. Whereas it was much closer to saying like they don't like us imposing on them. Even like all the hardcore neocons, Brett Stevens, the New York Times, he wrote this piece on the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, so uh 2023 to cheerlead the war in Iraq. And he goes through the whole piece and there's not one mention of the million people who died in the war. You know, he literally just goes the piece is just measure life under Saddam Hussein verse life under the Shiite parliamentary system that they have now. Which one's better? And I he's arguing this one's better. Therefore, it was worth it. But there's like no mention. It's like, okay, but what about the 20 plus million people who were displaced? What about the million people who were killed? What about all the millions of people who were injured? What about the tens of thousands of our soldiers who have blown their brains out in the aftermath of the thing? Like it's like so so many times this true in with government policy in general. People talk about like the end result that they want, but you're like, "Yeah, but what about the process by which you get there and how much hatred, you know, could you I mean, like I you know, it's it's not that hard for me to like put myself in in other people's shoes." And like I have two little kids and a wife and if anybody were to ever try to argue to me that they have to be the eggs that get broken to make some bigger omelette. Like it's it's okay. Like you know we're ultimately going to impose something on your society that's better than what you have right there. It sure does suck that your wife and kids got to be the one who get taken out. I mean I'm as I'm just saying this to myself and this is not real. This is just a thought experiment I'm making up. I'm already pretty close to being a terrorist. Like my next thought is kind of like, well, okay. Well, I hope you're gonna like it when you watch your family die in front of you, you know? Now, I'm not hopefully even if that happened to me. I wouldn't go kill that guy's family. Like, maybe I just go after him or something. But I could understand and I think most people have kids could understand go going to a level of like the the most evil dark place you could imagine if something ever anyone ever threatened or or actually did something to your kids. Yeah. We have to remember the thing that's difficult to measure that you just mentioned which is the hate that's created by every bomb that's dropped. It was uh General Mcristel who you know was the general running af the war in Afghanistan. He wasn't like he wasn't Ron Paul, you know what I mean? Like he was a a sir, yes sir, how do we fight and win this war general? And he's the one who coined the term insurgent math that 10 minus 2 equals 20. you know, it's like the more you the more you keep I was just reading I was rereading about this the other day um because of the uh you know Trump's been bombing uh the Houthies in Yemen and you know it was like when when we first I think it was in in at least in 2009 is when Obama really stepped up the drone campaign with the then secret drone bombing campaign and the Yemen was one of the major theaters and even back then when it really was just a it was a war on terrorism. Like the main targets were always al Qaeda and the Arabian Peninsula and their presence in Yemen. Even then, like so before the Saudis invaded, so like from 2009 through 2015, AQAP just kept growing. It was doing all these targeted bombing campaigns. They call them targeted. 96% of the people are innocent who get killed, but they call them targeted drone bombings. And they and and al-Qaeda and the Arabian Peninsula just kept getting bigger and bigger because, you know, it's like Yeah. Every time you go in there, it's like, okay, you took out one target and then you took out three little girls and, you know, a few and every one of those little girls had brothers and uncles and fathers and, you know, and and all of them just signed up to join the fight now cuz, you know, and I Ron Paul was the first one who really made this click for me. But it's in a way, and I'm not like I'm not a leftist. I'm not an egalitarian. I'm not a cultural relativist. I'm not saying that all cultures are the same or that we all look at the world the same way. There's enormous differences between all of us. And I personally think some are better than others, but there are things that unite all of us. And in a weird way, it's I I remember one time I was arguing with a Democrat guy on a SE cup show. I used to be a contributor on on her show. And we were arguing and it was after it was after a terrorist attack here in New York, a fairly minor one. It was like a guy like I think he hit someone with his car and then jumped out with a gun and then the cops lit him up and killed him. Um, this is like back in 2017 I think. And he he claimed to be ISIS inspired. I don't I don't remember if there was like a direct connection or not, but they were at the time they were like, "Doesn't this mean we got to step up the war in Iraq or in Syria where ISIS's stronghold is?" And I remember the guy saying to me, he goes, "Uh, you know, I went off on how these wars have been disastrous." and he goes, "Yeah, yeah, but Dave, what you're saying here is we're supposed to do nothing. Like, this just happened and now we're supposed to do nothing." And so, like, even though this guy had a suit and tie on and we're in a cable news studio and we're in a first world country, we're in the United States of America and we're having that the basic thing that he's saying is like, what do you say? You're saying we're not going to go kill some motherfuckers, you know? Like, I mean, he's he was just putting it as like do something, but what's something? something is dropping bombs on human beings, you know, when like, yeah, some innocent people are going to die, but okay, that but it's the same thing. It's the same after 911 where like we got to go fucking invade some countries right now. That's the same impulse. It's like they killed some of our people. You think we're not going to show them who the real killers are? You think there's a chance that you could come here and and that is like the most human instinct ever? It's like some other tribe just came in here and killed some people in our tribe. So, what do you want to do about that? Well, I don't know. It's not going to take me too long to figure out. We're gonna go kill a bunch of people in their tribe. And I do think that like that is I think that's the major motivating factor for both sides of the Israel Palestine conflict. I think that's the major motivator for both sides of the war on terror conflict. And it's like that's it's in a way when you look at it like that there's something even though it's so dark and tragic, there's something almost beautiful about it where you're like, "Oh, we're all caught in this same cycle." Yeah. Deeply human. the the warring between tribes, but you know, especially in the recent years, but more and more through human history, there's almost like a third party, which is this military-industrial complex, which is making money from the two tribes. So, if you just have two tribes, one I've been reading a lot about Jangghaskhan. If uh this is why Jenghaskhan banned this, it was very common in uh in Mongolia before Djangghaskhan to steal people's wives like you're my wife now, right? And he he realized that that creates a lot of conflict. Yeah, it sure does. That seems natural and human that kind of conflict. But when whenever you a third party rolls in and starts making money on the whole thing and then driving that forward then the escalation of the conflict comes with this whole machine that makes deescalation really difficult. Yeah. The military-industrial complex in America. It's so big and it's so sophisticated and it's so so it's not just that there's you know um you know there's this there's the intelligence agencies, there's the weapons manufacturers, then there's the like people in the media who are either directly or indirectly just paring, you know what I mean, all of their talking points. And so it's not just that you can kind of like like you make money when there's a conflict, but you have this entire apparatus to like create the conflict and then create the public sentiment for that. And then we're and it's interesting we're we're in in an interesting place cuz we're kind of in this like new frontier of now where shows like this can happen and and there's a lot of them and a lot of them are humongous like yours. Um, but for so long it this just didn't exist. And it was just like, oh, like for so long it was the case that like the New York Times and NBC and CBS and ABC and the Washington Post and the the Associated Press, I guess, they could just move the nation. I mean if they wanted to be like hey there is the the idea that forget even like after 911 the idea that in 1990 1991 that there was any organic movement from the American people going you know we really got to see about the Saddam Hussein guy you know uh the uh dictator in Iraq is having a slant drilling dispute with the uh Amir of Kuwait. We really got to do something about that. Like that is not something that organically came from any that was not like a a few soccer moms hanging out, you know, watching their kids game being like, I really do think I think in in a couple years we're going to have to send these boys over to Iraq to go. Like that's not they just from the top down were able to create this feeling that like, hey, there's a new Adolf Hitler on the rise over here in Iraq. We got to go see about this. There are these poor people in Kuwait. We have to do that. you know, like there's they were able to create this desire for war. Um, that was it's it's really incredible when you think about it because there's for I think for the most part in human history, you would have had to have some type of plausible threat, some type of plausible reality to convince people that we actually have to go to war um in order to deal with this. whereas like you know the United the idea that in 1991 the United States of America would feel threatened by Iraq was just ridiculous and yet they were able to do it. Well so to push back a little bit throughout human history there was also a thing you look at the Roman Empire where just the cultural values were different where military conquest was seen as a good thing. So like we just almost assume in the United States there would war has been framed in the defensive sense like where offensive war we're not doing that anymore. You make a fair point. It's certainly true that throughout human history there's been um there's been like overt um empire building and wars of conquest and things like that. But I guess I'm just saying at least even there you would have some type of cell of like why we're going to go take these resources and why that will be good for us. Whereas the idea that there like Kuwait just needed to be defended by the Americans seems so it seems so hard to convince anybody and yet they were able to do it. If you read like Neocon writing in the 90s, it was very interesting. Um because they would they would tell the truth a lot more. Uh and they were essentially I think there was the Soviet Union had just collapsed. It was what what Charles Crowhammer dubbed the unipolar moment. There was like a lot of there was excitement. There was a feeling of invincibility. Um and also the neocons weren't in power any after '92 really. I mean, they had a little they were in the George HW Bush administration, but after '92, they really weren't. So, they're just writing at these think tanks, and it just didn't seem as, you know, like they weren't as guarded. There weren't like these accusations of you're a war criminal or something like that. But what he said, uh, what Jonah Goldberg agreed with was that every, uh, I think the statement was every 10 years or so, America's got to find a puny little country and put them up against the wall just to let the rest of the world know that we mean business. And that was actually their mentality. I'm sure there's people that agree with that. I happen to disagree with that. But the the drums of war are beating a little bit over Taiwan and China. More than a little bit. Yeah. But there I can't even see a justification for a just war. What is the long-term benefit to society if you do military intervention? I well I also think this and I' I've been saying this for a while but I do think there is this like um there there's like this empire mentality that Americans have got to shake off like as if it's even a question of whether we should allow it or not like are we in a position to allow or not allow that? Why do we have it's it's almost like if you were um you know like I I don't I hope China doesn't invade Taiwan. I hope Taiwan remains as free as possible. I hope China becomes free. I root for freedom and prosperity for everyone, you know, but I also root for like everybody to have a healthy marriage. But if you were like if you were talking to me and you were like, hey, the guy down the street is cheating on his wife. Like I don't think we can allow this. I'd immediately be like, that's really not my place. And then on top of that, I also have no power. I have no authority over what they do in their marriage. Like I have to be concerned with my marriage. And the idea that like imagine if there were the political will to uh invade Mexico like if DC decided we're taking Mexico City like that's that's going to be part of America now and we're taking it by force and then China was like we're not sure if we can allow this. I think immediately most Americans would be like allow like how the fuck do you think you're going to stop us from taking Mexico City? What are you gonna do, China? You're gonna send your navy ships over here to fight us off the coast of Mexico? Good luck with that. And and at least from my understanding, in almost all the war games that they've run, if we did militarily, even if it doesn't come to nuclear weapons being used, in which case the whole world gets blown up. But even if we go to militarily try to stop China from invading Taiwan and no one everyone agrees to not use nukes and we just fight a conventional war, we lose that war every time. I think what you said applies to a lot of the wars we've been involved in. But China and Taiwan is a little bit different because because of TSMC, right? Because there's an economic dependence. If that was the concern, then the response would be we need some type of Manhattan project. And I'm not supporting a government project here, but there would be we need some type of Manhattan project to say we're going to make these things here. We can't. And look, I I was running that experiment before saying like what if we all pinky promise not to use nuclear weapons or something like that. But that's not the reality of the situation. The more reality, look, even in in Ukraine, everybody the biggest hawks, the biggest pushers of this policy and Joe Biden and policy to fund Ukraine, no one's suggesting we send in the 82nd airborne. No. which is really the only thing that could repel the Russians right now and restore, you know, Ukrainian the the original sovereignty of the Ukrainian borders. But no one's suggesting we send in the 82nd airborne cuz we all know, well, we can't have a direct war with Russia. That's the end of the world. And same thing with China. So, you know, I'm not saying microchips or whatever aren't important, but there's we can find other ways to the Taiwan is not magical. Like, we can produce these things in other places. No. So you have the humility to say that you don't really know much about the situation. It sounds ridiculous to say, but there's something magical about not Taiwan but DSMC. It's incredibly difficult to manage the supply chain and manufacture at such a low cost that they are. And to add to that, China has been signaling about the one China policy. But you're absolutely right that you shouldn't be doing the the Washington thing of beating the drums of war. That's like the completely the counterproductive thing. There should you should uh actually try to find partnerships with China. Build friendships and cooperation like India is doing a good job of this like build friendships. This the 21st century conflict this cold war thinking is going to be destructive to the economy, destructive to humanity, to the flourishing of the individual nations of the world. There there's just nothing positive except making money for the military industry. Well, yeah. And and it was totally destructive during the original Cold War, too. um and almost led to nuclear war on a couple of different occasions. But look, I would just say and I I really I'm no defender of the Chinese regime. I hate communism and or fascism, whatever they are. Some hybrid mix of of the two. They're paying you, aren't they? Yeah. No, fuck them. I don't care. By the way, I get a lot of people speculate online, but I am not I'm not getting any of these checks, man. And I'd really like them to start coming in. Um, but there's like even when it's like China, you say China's asserting the one China policy, but the one China policy is the policy of the United States of America and has been for 50 years now, right? So it's not I think what's happening there a lot of times is that essentially even though officially the one China policy is the policy of the United States of America all of these American politicians um and and you know different figureheads across powerful centers in America are are saying that China doesn't have the right to go into Taiwan and then China's in the position of being like well hey wait a minute no that's not actually the policy we maintain this one China policy but we allow them to kind of do what they want to do. And you know, the the most obvious example of this was when Joe Biden actually said like, "Oh, we wouldn't allow that and we would militarily intervene if they went into China." And then, and this was so bizarre, then the White House, whoever that was, came out to correct the president of the United States and say, "No, the policy of the White House is the one China policy." Which, look, I mean, again, I think the whole point of this is that the reason why whoever the hell was able to overrule Joe Biden in his administration, I I don't know who that is. Um but the whole point is that if you say and and this is why there is some wisdom in America accepting the one China policy is that if you tell China that we recognize uh uh Taiwan's independence and that they're not a part of China, that might be the type of thing that would make China invade and say no, we're not accepting that. And so at least right now it's like kind of like okay here's look this is the reality. It's something that you kind of run up against with the war in Ukraine a lot and and with the situation in China and Taiwan is that there are um there are constraints placed on us by reality. It's not all just how would you like the world to be? How would you like it to work? Obviously, I think we would all like that bigger countries don't invade smaller countries and bigger countries don't bully smaller countries around. That is not the way of the world. We are a big country that is the biggest bully in the world. So we're in no position to let but what we're kind of in the position is just like you're like hey we'd sure love if you don't do that. You know you can do it and you can get away with it but we would sure love it if you don't. And so the goal would be to do everything we can to make sure that doesn't happen. When Vladimir Putin starts talking about like hey if you keep pushing the idea of Ukraine joining your military alliance I'm going to invade that country. the goal there the or the move there would be to be like okay we'll stop talking about that is there something else that we can agree on you know like is there is there a way that we you we you will promise you won't do anything to them and okay and we'll promise we won't bring them in our military like that's the goal you don't just go like no fuck you we're doing it anyway over and over and over again until they do the thing I think we got to this discussion from the military-industrial complex and military intervention and Ron Paul before that if you could like rewind a little it uh is there any amount according to you and according to various flavors of libertarianism is there any amount of military intervention that's justified that's okay um well I I would say okay so at least to me in in terms of like pure libertarian theory or just in in terms of like what I think is right or wrong like there is such thing as a just war um the most obvious uh example of that would be like you're invaded by a military and fighting them off. Um, so in in that sense also like even if you want to if you want to kind of isolate from everything else, uh, from, you know, all of the awful US policy toward Russia post Soviet Union to all of the, you know, NATO expansion and color-coded revolutions and all of these things. If you want to, you know, Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine, I do think the Ukrainians have a right to fight and and protect their their land. like there the there's an aggressive there's an aggressor there and you have a right to defend yourself. Uh so certainly in that sense I think um the American Revolution was a just war. Uh I think there are you know there there can be just wars in terms of pure libertarian theory. I think I would say that look you you don't you never have a right to kill innocent people there. That's never morally okay. Now there could be a scenario just like this is true in life in general right like there's lots of things that you don't have the right to do but you could come up with some scenario where you might be in a position where you have to do it because there were all of these extenduating circumstances you know like for you know you could think of something where like you remember the uh the Saw movies where they used to you know these crazy like horror scenarios but it's like um okay so there's a person you know a evil bad guy has buried a key inside this person and you have to kill that person in order to get the key in order to unlock these 20 people to let them out of a cage. Now look, you still don't have a right to kill people. It's horrible and wrong and what you did there was still evil. But if you were taken to trial over it, you could probably explain to a judge and a jury be like, "I know, but the situation I was in was either these 20 people were going to die or this one person was going to die, and under that situation, I chose to save the 20." So like in other words, by perfect theory, no, you never have the right to kill innocent people. There could be a scenario where you were like, look, we had to take this military action and some innocent people did die and it's so tragic and awful that we had to do this, but we are certain that many more people would have died had we not done this. Now, in that case, I would look at that as like um number one, it's much like killing the one person to save the 20. It's still wrong. It's still an immoral thing that you were forced into doing. It's not justified. I would say that the overwhelming onus should have to be on you to demonstrate that you absolutely needed to do that. And that's how I feel about all these these wars. you know, it's not like um you know, I think that like let's just say like if you could make World War II like you could reduce it down to the simplest caricature of what World War II is and say there's no Joseph Stalin. We're not even partnering with him. Like there's a good guy in Russia who we were partnering with and there's and and the British Empire had never done anything wrong. They were just nothing but good guys. And of course FDR was nothing but a good guy. And Hitler was even worse than the real Hitler. You know what I mean? And in order to stop them, we had to go on this bombing campaign. And we only got Nazis. We only killed the bad guys. And we were able to take out the Third Reich. But one 8-year-old girl died. And you did this thing that stopped the whole world from falling into subjugation. So I think almost everybody would agree, Jesus, man, you have to do that. Okay. This is um you have to do that because the whole world's going to be subjugated. There's nothing but good guys here. The Nazis are so evil. And there's one I still would say that every single time World War II came up, we should all just be somber and we should all just think about that little 8-year-old girl who died and what a horrible thing it is that we had to do that, you know? And so the like when there are these campaigns where like, you know, like where tens of millions of people are killed, the fact that anybody's ever like spiking the football or this kind of like rah rah, we were the good ones. And then also when you add in all those other complicated factors like that this wasn't the scenario at all. Um but I do so so I guess essentially I'd say no you don't ever have a right to kill innocent people. It's never self-defense to be killing innocent people. I mean short of like you know some type of scenario where like you know if you're holding a baby and coming at me shooting and I shoot back at you and okay I was acting in self-defense and it happened to kill a baby. I'm I'm talking about like what the scenarios where you're dropping bombs on cities. Um it's never justified and the overwhelming onus should be on have to do it and that that should be the standard because there's so many other standards that I see thrown out that I just think are make no moral sense at all. you know, people will argue about like uh in Gaza, they'll argue about um the civilian to combatant ratio, which I like that to me doesn't really that's not what counts. That's not the measure that's important. Um and also no one knows what the numbers are. They all just kind of like pretend to. Uh and then the other thing will be um that people as someone just recently argued with me about they'll say like uh well Hamas has to go. That's the starting point. Hamas has to go. And I'm like, "No, I don't think you get to say that." Because the the truth is that look, you can make an argument that Hamas has to go. Sure. You can make an argument that the Ludnik have to go. You can make an argument that Kim Jong-un has to go or that G has to go or that Putin has to go or that Zillinsky has to go. Or certainly, I would make an argument that Joe Biden had to go. But just because a government has to go, that doesn't mean you could just go kill all their people. Yeah. That should not be the starting point like the assumption, the axiom of the discussion. Yeah. The the question is, is it is there no other option than doing it this way? It's like, okay, like October 7th happened. We can all agree this was like a a horrific tragedy um and a you know, an indefensible act of terrorism. Like, okay, can is it guaranteed that another one of those is going to happen tomorrow? Or was this the biggest security failure in in you know, Israeli history? Okay. Well, if it's the biggest security failure, let's just say, not even going down the inside job rabbit hole or anything like that, but just saying it's a giant security failure. Okay, then put a bunch more men at that fence first of all. And now you got to talk about how can you achieve your goal while inflicting the minimum amount of devastation on innocent people. Let's talk about it. You brought it up. October 7th. So, what exactly do you think about the October 7th attack by Hamas on Israel? Um well I mean like what I just said that it it was uh horrible and you know uh it's always by the same logic that I'm giving you now. It's always it's always evil to target innocent civilians. I don't believe uh you know civilians can be held responsible for the uh the crimes of their government. Um this was by the way the Osama bin Laden logic which I think would also be the logic of like Bill Clinton or George W. Bush or Barack Obama. But Osama bin Laden very explicitly said when he was asked like, "Well, are you just going to target like US military sites or are you targeting US civilians?" It was an interview in the '9s before 9/11. Um, and he goes, "No, civilians are fair game, too, because you guys have regular elections and you guys vote for your government and therefore you're responsible for the crimes that they commit." Now, I think that's the logic of a fanatic like Osama bin Laden, and that's not the logic that any of us should follow. It it doesn't make any sense, and it's not true that people are responsible for the crimes of their government. Um, I think that that same argument is used quite a bit by people on the pro-Israeli side when they say like, oh, they they had an election in 2005 and Hamas won a plurality, therefore 20 years later, they have no rights. I think that's insane. So, okay. So, Hamas had no right to go after um civilians. Uh, you know, it's horrible. And you see, you know, the um these, you know, teenagers being killed and the people um you know, you see the images of people uh who were who are held hostage for all this time. So, it's like your heart breaks for those people. It's truly tragic. Um, I I do think that it was in many ways an indictment of so many different things. You know, like October 7th happening was an indictment of um the entire occupation/ siege of of Gaza and the West Bank, you know, for that matter. Um it was I I think um should have probably forever destroyed the legacy of Benjamin Netanyahu. Um who is you know I I mean this isn't like George W. Bush you know was I mean he was on the job for almost a year when 9/11 happened but it was still kind of new you know like it was still kind of in his first year of being president. Benjamin Netanyahu was the longest serving prime minister in Israeli history and had explicitly been like, I'm the tough right-winger who's going to be tough on these Palestinians who's going to like move away from the idea of coming to a two-state solution because this is what we need to keep us safe. Like the justification is like I'm going to be hard on these motherfuckers cuz that's cuz I know what it takes to keep us safe. And that culminates in the the worst massacre in in Israeli history. Um, and then I mean the other big one is that I mean and it's not like a I wouldn't even say an open secret at this point. It's just out in the open. He had this strategy of propping up Hamas for years. And so he had this strategy of propping up Hamas um for a myriad of reasons. Um, but a major part of it was that look man, as long as there's terrorists in power there, there's never going to be any pressure on us to give the Palestinians a state because look, are you telling me I got to negotiate with them? He was allowing Qatar money to float. Insisting that Qatar money float to them. When the Qatar money dried up, sent the MSAD in to insist that it gets back to him. Hundreds of millions of dollars, briefcases, and cash. And he said in his own words that the reason for doing this was to keep to his words were prop up Hamas, bolster Hamas, to keep them in power so that the West Bank and the and the Gazins were divided and that the international community as well as the liberal Jewish community in Israel wouldn't be able to put pressure on them to make a deal. But what are the options? So, if he doesn't allow the money in, it also looks really bad for him because if he's not allowing the money in, that means he's not allowing the quote unquote aid in to help the Palestinians. Yeah. But Lex, I mean, the the dynamic here, right, is from 2007 to today, Israel's had a full blockade around the country. They won't let potatoes in. They won't let sugar in. They won't they the they and the the justification is because they're dual use. You know, they they can be used to make rockets as well as they can be used to, you know, feed starving children. So, we can't let that in because it's dual use. But cash to Hamas, does that not have dual usage? Like, is there is there nothing else that they can? So yeah, it's like yes, when you have a full blockade around the country, you take on certain responsibilities. And I think this is, you know, this is the the essence of really the the whole struggle here, which is very tough, I think, for the pro-Israel side to grapple with. But the bottom line is that Israel hasn't occupied Palestine for like a few months after a war or even a couple of years after a war while they're figuring out what we're going to do with them. It's been over 60 years. is the the we're talking about a a one week long war or a day short of a week long war in 1967. Israel's had control of them ever since. And much like in the same way that like if you kidnap someone and you lock them in your basement and you don't feed them, you murdered that person. So in other words uh um stated differently, you're not allowed to kidnap people and lock them in your basement, but once you do, you take on a responsibility to feed those people. You know what I mean? Like you can't you're not allowed to keep someone and not feed them. That is a worse charge than just keeping them. And so yeah. Anyway, I guess my point is the solution to that if if you go like, well, I'm a bad guy if I fund Tamas. I'm a bad guy if I don't let the aid in, was to let the reputable international aid organizations bring aid in to the people of Gaza. Don't have uh don't don't pressure the Qataris to send in briefcases full of cash. allow internationally recognized, reputable human rights organizations who are lining up trying to do it, stop turning them away and let them in. And and and this is just it's so long past due. I mean, like it's it's just I'm not like defending uh Arab terrorism. It's uh I think it's really it's it's a tragedy that the Arabs embraced terrorism. Uh I don't think it's unique to them. And in fact, you know, I think it was the um the Zionist militias who introduced terrorism to that part of the world. But there was also like there look terrorism persists because it works. And this is true with state terrorism and with non-state terrorism. You know, it's like there it terrorism has often worked for people. The I think the thing like early I think early Yaser Arafat I know was very influenced by um the Algerians who you know successfully kicked the French out embracing terrorism and it was almost like the major miscalculation of the the those Palestinian Arabs who did embrace terrorism was that this isn't the French this isn't the French hanging out in some colony with their home country back home where maybe a few acts of violence could work enough to, you know, your the liberal population back home is like, "Oh, I really didn't like the response to that terrorism. We killed so many people. Forget it. This is too much of a headache. Let's get out of here." The Zionist settlers were there to stay. They weren't going anywhere. They weren't going back to Eastern Europe. You know what I mean? They weren't go They were just that. And so, it's a tragedy that this whole thing went the way it did. But you always whenever you're talking about like a conflict like this, the person who has the or the the party who has the power is the one who needs to make concessions, you know, and the there it's just indefensible that the status quo of the Palestinian people having no rights, literally no rights, being ruled by a government that they do not get to vote uh for or against. Um, no right to do commerce with the outside world, no freedom of travel, no freedom of movement, no basic property rights. You can be kicked out of your home at any time, no right to a fair trial, uh, no right to a lawyer, no right to a jury of your peers. I mean, the fact that that has been the status quo since 1967 is just indefensible. And if and and then in the context that that has been the status quo, I guess I'm just not even though I'm against it, it's kind of like when you're just lecturing about the way in which they resist this, I I think it's very tough to be on a strong moral footing, you know. Yeah. You have to you have to really empathize with the decades of suffering. Yeah. In the region. I suppose my question was grounded in um how can the Israeli government, how can the world help the Palestinian people flourish? So you suggested uh allowing reputable aid organizations in but you know that's kind of almost uh patching. Yeah. Just helping humans who are suffering but that's not how you have a nation flourish. You have to build up the infrastructure. You have to build up a culture of the education system, the the you know democratic processes of electing and regular elections and so that the the people are represented and you have to form partnerships, friendships, normalization of relations with the Arab world, with Israel. you can travel back and forth um and lessen the chokeold like the security chokeold you know that you could say is justified in a militaristic situation but why is it a military situation the question is there like where do we go from from here if we you know we'll talk about Netanyahu some more um he is uh you know he's very criticized inside Israel as well Yeah, for sure. Maybe less so after October 7th because the you know again in the same way you can empathize with the Palestinian people, you can empathize with Israelis where October 7th touched just like it did for Americans with 911. It touched some kind of primal thing of fear of like Oh yeah. And like the same the same thing I said before, like I could also very easily go if my if one of my kids was like at that rave or something like that and just got gunned down or kidnapped by I could understand being like level the whole goddamn place. And I'm sure I would feel that way if that was one of my kids, you know. Um, so yeah. No, that's that's exactly right. I mean, there's lots of examples in the world of uh you know, like France and Germany are right next to each other and Ireland and England are right next to each other and they're just totally living in harmony right now. Like there is just no the thought of them going to war is like inconceivable right now. Not saying it could never happen in the future, but it seems it seems pretty hard to imagine. And that being the case would have been very hard to imagine for a very long time. you know, like there I mean there's some serious levels of brutality between those two societies. And even more directly, it involved uh you know, Egypt and Israel went to war four times in in a couple decades. they went to war and then in the late 70s they made a land for peace deal and they haven't been to war since you know and like I do at least try to hold out that like that is you know it's not like Egypt is you're not going to say they don't have an issue with radical Islam in Egypt you know what I mean like there's that's not the answer it's just that they made a land for peace deal and once there wasn't you know once that wasn't the that was solved it was kind of easier to avoid the war and I do like to think that there there could be a solution to the the Israel Palestine question, but that it's going to have to it's going to have to involve Israel taking their boot off of the Palestinians neck. And I know that that's scary and I understand that there are like legitimate concerns about that. There's um was a the great uh Thomas Jefferson quote about slavery which was um we we have the wolf by the tail and we can neither afford to hold on to him nor risk letting him go. um which is like you could see where that would have been like a real concern of people like right toward the end of slavery or or you know whatever in the early 1800s or the first half of the 19th century where you'd be like okay okay we recognize this is wrong now but we've had these millions of people enslaved for all these years if we let them go they're going to fucking kill us and what are you saying they're citizens now meaning the second amendment applies to them meaning that the guy who I enslaved now can get a gun. You know what? And and so, okay, there are the But I think in hindsight, looking back at it, we would all just go, "Yeah, but you can't enslave people." So, like, whatever risks come with the next phase of this, unfortunately, you know, like you're going to have to just deal with that and and move. You have to start with abolishing slavery. And it is good to also remember in the hopeful message you send like at any day you can make a deal. That's one of the frustrating things I had with I hosted a debate on Israel. It's like it just felt hopeless and a lot of people I talked to it feels hopeless. But like I have a lot of I I I maybe naively see a lot of possibilities of peace there. I see for example normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia and Israel and then Saudi Arabia taking some ownership over Gaza. Something like that. some interesting uh where a big major player in that region takes ownership and steps as the middleman. Yeah, I like I I agree with you and you're 100% right that and even before October 7th, I think many steps had been taken away from you know the peace process and the feeling of that. I mean really I think since the second antifada uh is when like the the appetite for peace I think in Israel was greatly diminished. um there. But to your point, I mean, it's going to take really painful concessions on all sides in in order to get there. Um, and I think that the the personally I think and I don't know if I say this for the not necessarily like the Arab world um, but at least the nation states like the their governments I think are are pretty much there like like Saudi Arabia and UAE and Jordan and Egypt like if the Israelis they're almost like look these are American sock puppets you know for the most part right and So their their thing is that like okay 100% of my population is completely opposed to what Israel is doing to Palestine right now and they just hate that Israel that the nation was created at all that all the the Arabs were kicked out of what is you know very important land to them religiously and um and so the governments there are like look we want to continue to have US tax dollars flooding in here and we'd love to make a deal with Israel but like you got to stop doing this to the Palestinians so my own people don't you know rise up against me. So I think as long as the Israelis were like fine we'll do a two-state solution or something like that. I think Saudi Arabia couldn't wait to broker in fact they proposed a two-state solution just a few years ago. I mean they're they would love to be a part of that and normalize relations um amongst the Palestinians like which again I think this I think this had been accepted multiple times at least by their leadership. It's like yeah you're going to have to accept that like you lost in 48. You know you're going to have to accept that you lost in 47. You're going to have to accept that the state of Israel does exist. And you're going to have to accept that like the right of return is not going to literally mean that everybody can go back to where they were. And what Israel is going to have to concede is that it was awfully fucked up that they kicked a lot of people out of their land. And that the whole um a land for people for a people without land was never true. That was just a slogan that made that felt good to avoid what you guys actually did. and the fact that you it was inexcusable that you guys occupied these people for 60 years and that has to end immediately. I interviewed Douglas Murray recently. He just wrote a book on Israel and Hamas called on democracies and death cults. He makes what I think is a strong pro-Israel case focusing on Hamas as a an evil organization, you know, evil for its corrupt leadership who's essentially stealing money uh from the Palestinian people and allocating the money that is there towards terrorist militaristic operations versus like building up um Gaza. Uh can you steel man the case for and then against this perspective sort of centering? We've been talking about people about uh centering around Hamas which is like this extremist religious organization. Uh the perspective being like they need to be as you mentioned before eliminated before any progress can be made. Um, okay. So, if I were So, a steelman Douglas Murray's case, um, I would say, well, I guess the case is, right? Look, Hamas is a fanatical death cult essentially, which I do think is a fair uh, description of them. There is no question that they have pursued they have they have pursued a path that was just devastating to their own people and there's no question they have not spent the resources they have on their priority has not been uplifting their own people. Their priority has been I I think essentially antagonizing Israel into this overreaction so that they can turn world opinion against Israel. I think they've been very effective at doing that. Um, and and okay, again, I think the argument would come back to something like and the people kind of voted for this in 2005 and the people sure do we sure do see a lot of people cheering when Hamas is doing some pretty horrific stuff. And so, hey, you got that on one side and you have a kind of a a country that's much more similar to Western societies on the other side. If we can just like linger on that, Steelman, what do you what do you make of the celebrations in in uh Gaza after October 7th? I think it's sickening and incredibly disturbing. Um I just I guess the way I look at it, I always and maybe there is a degree of like naive to this or perhaps it's just that I just don't want to allow myself to go down a certain path because I think it leads to such dark outcomes. But I just always I I always try to be kind of like against the government for the people, against the powerful, sympathetic to the powerless. Um I think that look, it's it's sickening. You see big crowds cheering on, you know, people who have been, you know, that with these people who have been in captivity for for uh I think some of them for over a year and a half. Um, I also thought when Nikki Haley and other Israeli politicians are signing the bombs before they're launched into Gaza, I found that sickening. Um, I think there's all types I think like mission accomplished banners and flying on jet. I mean, I think all of the I think having Bob Hope specials at the end of the Persian Gulf War was sickening. I just think all of it is like horrific. Um, I just I look at it and I try to say to myself, okay, we had one 9/11 in this country and we all like collectively we lost our minds as a society, you know. Um, we were ready to go bomb whoever the hell our politicians told us to bomb and we didn't care how many people it killed and we killed a lot more than than a lot more than Israel or Hamas has killed doing it. Um, and try to I try to think to myself, okay, imagine being trapped in what is it? You know, people can call it whatever they want to. I do think Pat Buchanan and these guys were right to call it a concentration camp. You're trapped in a fivemile by 25 mile area where you cannot leave. You are stuck there. You don't have an airport cuz the Israelis bombed it. You don't have a seapport cuz they won't allow you. You have no access to trade with the outside world and you're not suffering through a 911. You're suffering through a thousand 911s. Your whole life has been the people the the people in Gaza are their entire life has been being refugees. You know what I mean? Their entire there's generations of of people have been in this status now. And so, you know, if my society lost its mind after one 911, I just have a tough time like judging the people who who came up in this environment. But there's no question it is. I mean, it's, you know, profoundly disturbing. But I wonder how much of the indoctrination is really made uh the software of their mind permanently anti- peace. Yeah. like extreify them and that, you know, it doesn't justify anything, but it's more uh concerning for the prospects of peace. Well, I'd say I get your point. I guess it's an interesting question that I I don't know if any of us know exactly the answer to, but I would say that like um you know even after what was it 80 years of the Soviet Union, you know, it's like and there there were real debates back then about like the new communist man and whether the minds had been so warped of people that they would never even want they would never even care about these things like liberty or national identity or independence and and then yet at the and it was all still there, you know, it was it was very repressed and it went underground and people weren't allowed to talk about it, but they all still had it. Um, and in fact, I was just listening the other day to this Murray Rothbard uh speech from like the early '9s, and he was talking about how there was something where there was like a like a a camera crew interviewed like a Chinese family under uh um like uh real deal Chinese communism. Um, I believe it was before Ma Tong died and they were like, uh, they were just saying all these this crazy shit to the camera. Like they were like, "Would you rather, you know, your your sons are like healthy and live good lives or would you rather they suffer but be loyal obedience to the state?" And they were like, "We would rather they be obedient to the state and blah blah blah and all these things." And Murray Rothburn was saying he saw this interview and he uh he he was talking to his friend. He was, "Oh my god, this is horrible. Like, it's hopeless. These people's minds have been warped." And then he was talking to his friend who's like a China expert who had been there a lot and he was like, "No, they're not." That's what they say when the cameras are around. Soon as the cameras go like they're So anyway, I'm just making the point there that like there there is like look, even in the situation with Israel and Gaza, specifically Gaza, not even the West Bank. Um when you could look at it, when the peace talks were going on, support for Hamas plummeted. When the peace talks fell apart, support for Hamas went way back up. you know, every time there's an aggressive military campaign, support for Hamas goes back up. So, I just think that like I'm more hopeful than not that like you could get to a place where like but it it requires like you you have to like if you do understand the Ron Paul point about blowback, the General Mcristel point about insurgent math. You just realize that it's like you're you're like you're you're fighting in a way that produces more of the thing that you're fighting. And so the first step is to stop doing that. Like your your cure is making the patient more sick. So stop doing that heal. What about the case against the the the Douglas Murray case of the death cults and that a fundamental part of this process Hamas needs to be eliminated. Well, I mean, first of all, I would just say that and I'm not I'm not saying this as a fan of democracy. Um I'm not like a big believer in democracy. I believe in liberty and I think uh democracy is often um uh not in line with liberty. The Chinese government paid you to say that as well or they that was that's literally all I had to get out. But I get to say that what I want the rest of the podcast but just that I had to No, I'm Well, I don't Well, no. I mean, my beef with the Chinese government would not be that they don't hold regular elections. My beef with them would be that they silent speech, that they that they put people in camps and things like that, the surveillance, that stuff. Um, I think look, when you call Israel a democracy, which I guess is right in the title of his book, um, and I, you know, full disclosure, I haven't read the book, but I have I have listened to some of of his thoughts on this stuff. I think you run up against a real problem, which is that the creation of the state of Israel, even though he tried to walk away from those comments, as Norm Finkelestein called out Benny Morris uh for writing in his book 1948, which is a great book, his words were, "The Zionist Project always knew it was going to involve transfer." That was Benny Morris's words. Now, when when Finkelestein was grilling him on this on your podcast, he kind of said like, "Yeah, but that doesn't mean ethnic cleansing. That could be voluntary transfer. or that you know what I mean like but the point is the Zionist settlers and they all they spoke about this openly they all knew they had a major problem which is like well you can't create a Jewish state if it's like 50/50 which is and and in all of Israel it was much less than 50/50 but even in like the the Israeli portion of the partition recommendation it was very close to 50/50 now you can't really have a Jewish state with a 50/50 voter base because now you're just kind of in a breeding war for the next generation and or you know like or like who who turns out the vote any more than we could hope it it it would be the prospect right now of making America an official Republican state or an official Democrat state. Well, how are you going to do that, man? It's like 50/50 between the two. And so I think what Benny Morris was saying was that they always knew some of these Arabs are going to have to get moved out of here so that we could have more of something which ultimately where they got to like an 8020 which is pretty much what Israel's maintained uh the whole time. Now Benny Morris could quarrel about whether that necessarily meant voluntary but when it happened it wasn't voluntary. Okay. So like when it actually happened in effect it involved a massive amount something somewhere between 700 and 800,000 Arabs being forcefully evicted out of this area. Now, that's one thing. You know, a lot of nations are started on some things like that. I suppose if you just did that and then you were left with your 8020 split and you go, "But we have elections from here on out." I guess you could claim it's a democracy. Still seems like kind of gaming the Democratic system a little bit. You know what I mean? Like like if I just if I just deported 80% of Democrats and then say, "Look, Republicans win every election." You might be like, "Yeah, dude, but you didn't exactly get there Democratically. You got there through force, but forget that. I'll let that one go and just say I'll call you a democracy if you just kept being a democracy like that moving forward. The real problem is the occupation that starts in 1967 because what look when you've occupied an area since 1967 you can't even really call it an occupation anymore. It's an annexation. You know, you took these lands. You have control that you are what the definition of the government is. And you could call Hamas the government all you want to, but they're not the sovereigns. They're not the final decision makers. Israel is the final decision maker. Hamas does not meaningfully in any way decide the biggest questions about Gaza. I'm talking before this war, not not even, you know, pre-occtober 7th. And so the problem Israel has in order to call themselves a democracy is that there's somewhere between five and six million people, less now because they've killed a lot of them, but there's somewhere between five and six million people who live under Israeli control who do not have voting rights. And I just by any other like reasonable commonly held standard of democracy, we would not call that a democracy. I mean, like, I'm not, again, I'm not even saying this to try to be inflammatory or try to pick on the Israelis. There's things about Israeli society I like. I don't hate the people there. I'm Jewish. I love Jewish people. It's not But the fact is that that's not a democracy. That's an apartheid state. Like I And that's just I'm not even trying to be inflammatory when I say this. It's just literally describing what's in front of you. If we in America right now said black people no longer get to vote and black people can only live in these few neighborhoods, we don't get to call ourselves a democracy anymore then. You know, and like I'm not even coming at this from a pro-democracy point of view. I'm just saying like if your defense of them is like, well, we're a democracy, which seems to be the case so much. Well, no, you're really not. You're you're really not. As long as you got millions of people who have no say in their own government, like then then you're really not a democracy. And so again, so you could frame it as democracy versus death cult was his language for Hamas. It's like, all right, you know, it's a little bit difficult to accuse another group of being a death cult when the group you're supporting has killed so many more people than them. Now, I'm not saying that's the only metric. Like, there's other things that are factors, too. But the fact is that like you have I I mean I don't know to look over the numbers that for the whole history of the conflict but the amount killed by the Israelis on the Palestinian side versus the amount killed by the Palestinians is 20 to1 in Israel's fa you know killing more people maybe more than that I don't exact you know I'd have to look at the numbers but Israel's killed far far far more Palestinians than Palestinians have ever killed Israelis and so it just it rings a little hollow to me to just call them a death cult like we're the democracy even though none of you know there's millions of people who can't vote over you know who rules them but they're the death cult I mean look they kill people in a more primitive barbaric way I guess you could say you know there's something a little bit cleaner about like you know when it's done by a government um and it's collateral damage and it was done with sophisticated weaponry you know okay still innocent people on the end of those bombs absolutely but there there I think a powerful ethical difference when uh you mentioned about the 8-year-old girl, right? If you're in your stated goals of the war is to do everything you can to avoid the death of that girl versus saying, you know, we love death more than we love life. And Israelis, democracies are not are pro-life for for life. There's a little I mean, okay, I don't I don't 100% disagree with you, but I think if I would say like the degree to which that matters, you know, like at a murder trial after somebody's been convicted and before sentencing, sometimes the judge will allow them to give a statement and like if their statement is like, "I'm very sorry for what I did and I'm so sorry to the family and this or that or that." Like that might be like life without parole rather than the death penalty. You know what I mean? like it might make that bit of difference in that. And if you get up there and you're like, "Hey, I'm happy for what I did. Screw the family blow that might make a judge who was going to give you life without parole give you the death penalty or something like it's like that type of margin around the edge." Let's say like you're a really bad guy and I want to kill you and you're at home with a a bunch of women and children and I know there's women and children there. Like I know for a fact that if I blow up this building, it's going to kill all those babies. You know what I what I would be charged with is murder in the first degree. And the fact that I went in there and said like, "Well, listen, hold on. It's a shame that I had to kill those babies. I really just wanted to kill that one guy. I I wish the babies weren't there." And they'll be like, "Yeah, but you knew they were there and you did it anyway." You get murder in the first degree. Maybe it would make some little difference tinkering around with the sentencing at the end of it, but it doesn't like in kind change what the crime is there. And so I I just think at a certain point when you're if you're doing something like, you know, look, I'll say maybe with a little bit of an edge, you know, let's say Barack Obama wants to drone bomb, you know, this place to kill a terrorist and he thinks he can do it without killing any innocent civilians. Does it and then it ends up killing some innocent civilians. That's one thing. But once you've done it over and over and over again and every single time it kills innocent civilians and then there's a wedding and you order a drone bomb strike on a wedding like no you murdered those people. That's murder in the first degree. Like I just don't. And so yes like you know like whether you say out loud, "Oh, it sure is a shame that we got to kill all these kids." When you're doing it over and over and you know the action you're taking is going to kill more kids. I just don't think it like it's yeah it's a little bit different but really not that much. It's still pretty much and then also when you mix in with that the fact that like you know I mean if you go and I'm not taking an opinion on the word genocide. I don't even like to get into that conversation. I feel like it just derails it anyway. What Israel is doing whether you think it's a genocide or not it's certainly not what most people envision when they hear the word genocide. Um, but you know, if you look at South Africa's case that they promoted at the International Court of Justice, the whole thing is just quotes from Israeli leaders. And so, and I'm just saying like, by the way, it's not like they're always saying, "Oh, it sure is a shame that we had to kill that 8-year-old girl." They're like, half the time they say that when they're talking to the international community, and then the other half the time they seem to basically be saying, "There's no such thing as an innocent 8-year-old girl." And so I just I guess I just don't find that argument to be very compelling, especially when the thing has been going on for so long. There is some disagreement I have with you there. I think the thing you're implying is when whenever they state it, it's not quite genuine to some degree. Not I'm saying it might be it might be genuine by some people. I'm not saying it's necessarily not. I'm saying that when there's a lot of people who are saying the opposite, it doesn't seem like it's um consistently genuine from from the entire, you know, Israeli leadership class. And that even if it is genuine when some people say it, that that's that's kind of not enough to get away from the the fact that it's, you know, when when Tucker was on um Pierce Morgan, he said the thing he goes, you know, I don't like my tax dollars being used to intentionally kill children. And a lot of people really objected to that word intentionally because I think so many of the defenders of Israel fall behind this like no no that's not intentional we're just trying to kill Hamas. But again like I said we would never accept that standard in like a domestic murder case. It's like no like the the thing is that if you know there are kids there and you know they're going to die, then that's intent. I I I think I agree with you fundamentally because war is hell and that's why I'm against war, but there is a difference. So like I think you're we're like mixing in a lot of things. I think you're fundamentally against war and that's why to you it really doesn't doesn't matter. It is murder. it it's just murder and we shouldn't do murder. And there's a lot of democracies with colorful flags and that justify murder because they're trying very hard not to kill civilians. And then when you say you look at the reality of the Obama administration, the entirety of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, you're you're you're murdering civilians. Yes, you're trying to kill bad guys, but you're murdering civilians. That said on a on a ethical consideration on which kind of ideals ideologies you can build a society after the war. One that even on the surface level states that the value of every life of every civilian life is equal and high in value. That's a good society. That's the concern with extremist ideology that uh that basically is very difficult to build a flourishing society on. But then the argument against that is the one you said which is like yeah well Hamas is really supported now because of the war. Right. But by the way I don't disagree with the first part of your statement there. I just don't think it's in conflict with what I'm stating. It's like look, I understand first of all that like um there is a difference between the way you're going to say prosecute crime domestically within your own country and the way you can prosecute crime or what a war between two different countries, right? Like maybe it's it's not exactly the same. You don't have cops…

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