1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,000
Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekanana Show.

2
00:00:03,919 --> 00:00:07,400
Thomas is right back. Two episodes in a row with Thomas.

3
00:00:07,440 --> 00:00:09,880
We are blessed. How you doing, Thomas, I'm.

4
00:00:09,720 --> 00:00:13,199
Speaker 2: Doing well, Thank you. I'm glad. I'm glad people aren't suffering.

5
00:00:13,240 --> 00:00:19,559
Thomas Ordals I guess, but yeah.

6
00:00:17,320 --> 00:00:20,239
Speaker 1: I don't think that's possible. All right. So the last

7
00:00:20,280 --> 00:00:24,199
time we recorded, you had mentioned what we were talking

8
00:00:24,239 --> 00:00:31,440
about Russia. You had mentioned Russian Syrian relations and I'm

9
00:00:31,480 --> 00:00:35,799
just obsessed with Syria, have been for a while now.

10
00:00:36,039 --> 00:00:36,200
Speaker 2: Been.

11
00:00:36,479 --> 00:00:38,520
Speaker 1: I got kicked off of podcast ones for saying that

12
00:00:38,600 --> 00:00:40,759
Asad was probably one of the best leaders in the

13
00:00:40,759 --> 00:00:45,640
world right now. And when you look at the post

14
00:00:46,240 --> 00:00:50,200
the post Nuremberg order, these are two countries that you're

15
00:00:50,240 --> 00:00:54,719
supposed to hate. So I have great interest in them,

16
00:00:54,880 --> 00:01:00,799
and you have information on their relations since this sense

17
00:01:00,840 --> 00:01:04,159
disorder kicked off, and I want to hear about that,

18
00:01:04,239 --> 00:01:05,640
So start anywhere you want.

19
00:01:08,439 --> 00:01:13,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's two there's two variables that even

20
00:01:13,439 --> 00:01:22,079
people who are generally dissident adjacent don't fully grasp regarding

21
00:01:22,079 --> 00:01:28,719
the relationship between Russia and Syria. Syria's got outsized significance

22
00:01:29,400 --> 00:01:32,760
for a small country, for a lot of reasons. Okay,

23
00:01:33,840 --> 00:01:36,159
some of those are cultural, some of those are Jewish strategic,

24
00:01:38,079 --> 00:01:40,840
you know, some of them oh to the kind of

25
00:01:41,200 --> 00:01:48,200
peculiar circumstances that Syrian people, who are unique people. It's

26
00:01:48,239 --> 00:01:53,359
not just some kind of euschauvinistic mythology that the Syrians

27
00:01:53,359 --> 00:01:58,920
themselves you know promote, you know, they they view themselves.

28
00:01:58,920 --> 00:02:00,879
They're very much the air the kind of like the

29
00:02:00,879 --> 00:02:07,280
Hellenic tradition. You know. But when the case of the

30
00:02:07,319 --> 00:02:12,439
Soviet Union and then Russia, you know, a major component

31
00:02:13,319 --> 00:02:16,639
of the Cold War was the ability to index with

32
00:02:18,000 --> 00:02:23,159
both developing societies as well as as well as well

33
00:02:23,280 --> 00:02:29,439
established national cultures in a meaningful way. You were basically

34
00:02:29,479 --> 00:02:32,879
like selling your culture, okay, and the case of the Russians,

35
00:02:35,520 --> 00:02:38,960
stuff like this was deeply historical in a way. It

36
00:02:39,080 --> 00:02:41,719
wasn't for America. I mean, for reasons that I think

37
00:02:41,759 --> 00:02:44,960
are fairly obvious. You know, like what America had is

38
00:02:45,039 --> 00:02:47,840
kind of its selling point, to be kind of basic

39
00:02:47,879 --> 00:02:53,280
about it, you know, was a technology, a model for prosperity,

40
00:02:53,960 --> 00:02:59,439
you know, an opportunity to kind of align oneself with

41
00:03:01,039 --> 00:03:04,439
what appeared to be the sewer power that had kind

42
00:03:04,439 --> 00:03:07,960
of like the momentum of history and and kind of

43
00:03:08,000 --> 00:03:14,080
the glamour and prestige of of what is new behind it.

44
00:03:17,039 --> 00:03:21,639
The Russians really, I mean, maybe this is somewhat ironic

45
00:03:21,840 --> 00:03:28,479
considering the kind of dictates of Marxist Leninism. You know,

46
00:03:28,520 --> 00:03:31,960
the Russians really kind of sold the Soviet Union, and

47
00:03:32,000 --> 00:03:36,840
the Russians today kind of like sell their diplomacy in

48
00:03:36,919 --> 00:03:40,719
terms of you know, like them representing a deep and

49
00:03:40,759 --> 00:03:47,680
powerful heritage. Okay, And as I'm sure people have noticed,

50
00:03:47,680 --> 00:03:51,240
there's been something of an orthodox resurgence which is really

51
00:03:51,280 --> 00:03:56,759
interesting that very much owes kind of like United Russia

52
00:03:56,840 --> 00:04:00,439
and not just putin himself. I don't think it's particularly religious,

53
00:04:00,879 --> 00:04:03,000
but that it was very much to kind of the

54
00:04:03,759 --> 00:04:07,319
you know, Russian public diplomacy. And I mean there's historical

55
00:04:07,319 --> 00:04:12,599
and Zeitgeist variables obviously they facilitated, but you know, Syria

56
00:04:12,800 --> 00:04:16,920
is very much part of that. Okay, you know, after

57
00:04:18,279 --> 00:04:22,639
I'm jumping around a bit, but bear with me. I

58
00:04:22,800 --> 00:04:26,480
cite nineteen ninety nine is the year when not only

59
00:04:26,519 --> 00:04:31,120
did kind of the the neo conservative backs truly triumph

60
00:04:31,120 --> 00:04:35,120
and foreign policy corridors, but that's also when the Bush

61
00:04:35,199 --> 00:04:39,399
Baker concord that they established with Moscow, which is like

62
00:04:39,439 --> 00:04:43,480
shattered for all time. And what shattered it was like

63
00:04:43,600 --> 00:04:48,879
the unprovoked and like latantly irrational attack on Serbia, because

64
00:04:49,079 --> 00:04:52,920
I mean Serbia, Serbia is the Russian Federation and like

65
00:04:52,920 --> 00:04:56,319
the Russian nation, kind of what Croatias did Germany, but

66
00:04:56,360 --> 00:05:01,199
even more like deeply felt because obviously, you know, there's

67
00:05:01,279 --> 00:05:08,160
a there's a there's a sectarian homogeneity in among Russian

68
00:05:08,160 --> 00:05:11,079
people that there's not as part of it, but you

69
00:05:11,120 --> 00:05:16,040
know that when when NATO assaulted Serbia, it it was, uh,

70
00:05:16,680 --> 00:05:17,959
it was like it was kind of like viewed as

71
00:05:17,959 --> 00:05:23,360
like an assault and Byzantium itself. Okay. Now, Syria obviously

72
00:05:23,920 --> 00:05:30,160
is very diverse in sectarian terms. However, there's a tremendous

73
00:05:30,160 --> 00:05:36,839
amount of Orthodox artifacts of Orthodox lore in in Syria,

74
00:05:37,600 --> 00:05:43,720
you know. And I believe, although cultural anthropologists or relisous

75
00:05:43,720 --> 00:05:46,920
scholars will disagree on this somewhat, I believe that Alo

76
00:05:46,920 --> 00:05:53,000
whites are are occulted Christians. Okay, even if they're not,

77
00:05:53,399 --> 00:05:59,639
they're very much adjacent Oriental Christianity, which itself is a

78
00:05:59,720 --> 00:06:05,839
very or indexes very tightly with Orthodoxy. Okay, So there's

79
00:06:05,839 --> 00:06:10,360
something of a special relationship between Russia and Syria anyway,

80
00:06:11,600 --> 00:06:17,360
and not to be I mean crass, isn't the word,

81
00:06:17,519 --> 00:06:20,800
like not to be like overly simplistic about it, or

82
00:06:20,839 --> 00:06:27,800
not to like fetishize, you know, racial matters. But I

83
00:06:27,800 --> 00:06:28,920
mean if you look at if you look at the

84
00:06:28,920 --> 00:06:35,160
Syrian uh kind of like ruling cadre Alo white or Moslim.

85
00:06:35,879 --> 00:06:38,639
I mean, these look like white people. Okay, that's not

86
00:06:38,879 --> 00:06:41,279
like some that's not just like they're it's not that's

87
00:06:41,319 --> 00:06:46,839
not Telemundo optics. That's not some accident. You know. Traditionally

88
00:06:46,879 --> 00:06:50,279
everybody kind of viewed like the Levantine Arabs and especially

89
00:06:51,279 --> 00:06:53,279
you know, like the Alo Whites and the Christians is

90
00:06:53,319 --> 00:06:55,720
like basically like not a Western people, but like a

91
00:06:55,800 --> 00:06:59,839
civilized people. So trying to cast the Syrians is like

92
00:07:00,120 --> 00:07:02,879
a bunch of like Beto Win like salavies or something

93
00:07:03,000 --> 00:07:06,680
is totally bizarre. Like that's that's like saying like the

94
00:07:06,759 --> 00:07:09,480
Japanese or a bunch of like primitive like cave dwellers

95
00:07:09,519 --> 00:07:13,279
or something like. It's really it's really really ignorant. But

96
00:07:13,360 --> 00:07:15,519
it's also just like totally at odds with kind of

97
00:07:15,560 --> 00:07:21,319
how how Near Eastern cultures sort of like index with

98
00:07:21,360 --> 00:07:24,199
the West and with Russia, which isn't the West, but

99
00:07:24,240 --> 00:07:31,839
which is you know, a powerful, a powerful cultural force

100
00:07:31,920 --> 00:07:36,360
to this day, although obviously not not I know the

101
00:07:36,360 --> 00:07:41,519
same degree as as kind of anglophone societies and mores

102
00:07:41,600 --> 00:07:50,319
have have formative power. But there's a lot here. And

103
00:07:50,360 --> 00:07:54,680
if you want to, like, if you want to understand,

104
00:07:54,879 --> 00:07:59,560
like why the Syrian War also like Syrian Civil War

105
00:07:59,720 --> 00:08:05,439
like cut so deep in the minds of Zionis, Like

106
00:08:06,759 --> 00:08:11,199
Russia has been at war with Israel for decades, like intermittently, okay,

107
00:08:11,680 --> 00:08:16,360
And a lot of that derives from Israel's ongoing conflict

108
00:08:16,399 --> 00:08:20,879
with Syria, you know, as looking into like Russian forces

109
00:08:20,959 --> 00:08:24,399
literally went into action against the IDF. There was a

110
00:08:24,480 --> 00:08:31,120
huge dog fight over the Suez Canal between Soviet MiGs

111
00:08:31,160 --> 00:08:35,200
and like Israeli F four's and Mirage fighters. I'm talking

112
00:08:35,279 --> 00:08:37,799
like the largest like Ariel and like larger than anything

113
00:08:37,840 --> 00:08:40,679
happened over Vietnam. This was like a general war between

114
00:08:40,720 --> 00:08:45,440
the Soviet Union and Israel. Okay, this is why the

115
00:08:45,480 --> 00:08:51,720
nineteen seventy three crisis was so dangerous, you know, Like

116
00:08:51,720 --> 00:08:54,279
I'm always saying, that's what the Nixon quotes from the

117
00:08:54,320 --> 00:08:56,120
Nickson tapes where he says, like, you know, we can't

118
00:08:56,159 --> 00:08:58,559
blow up the damn world for these people, like these

119
00:08:58,559 --> 00:09:04,159
people meaning the Israelis, that's what he's talking about. Okay,

120
00:09:04,240 --> 00:09:09,799
it wasn't just an ordinary matter of coldor proxy battle

121
00:09:09,840 --> 00:09:15,600
that kind of got out of control. You know. I

122
00:09:15,600 --> 00:09:18,240
think we should get a little bit into like Jewish

123
00:09:18,320 --> 00:09:22,080
Russian relations it just to kind of recap. If that's

124
00:09:22,080 --> 00:09:26,960
not gonna derail the conversation too much. This might have

125
00:09:27,000 --> 00:09:29,159
to be like a two part thing. If that's agreeable,

126
00:09:30,399 --> 00:09:33,200
no problem at all, Okay. And I know that we've

127
00:09:33,240 --> 00:09:41,240
dealt somewhat with so Jewish relations before. But let me

128
00:09:41,279 --> 00:09:44,000
give like a brief, like a little background, Okay, and

129
00:09:44,519 --> 00:09:47,759
stop me if I'm I'm kind of becoming too tangential,

130
00:09:51,000 --> 00:09:54,399
like for context. By the turn of the twentieth century,

131
00:09:54,600 --> 00:09:59,360
like by nineteen hundred, the majority of European Jewry, like

132
00:09:59,440 --> 00:10:02,480
as we've think of it were, like lived in the

133
00:10:02,559 --> 00:10:06,759
Russian Empire. There was about eight eight point between eight

134
00:10:06,759 --> 00:10:11,639
point five and eight point seven million, like European Jews.

135
00:10:12,919 --> 00:10:15,799
Over five million of those people lived in the Russian Empire.

136
00:10:16,120 --> 00:10:19,120
They constant do about four percent of the total population

137
00:10:19,200 --> 00:10:22,840
of the Russian Empire, and about ninety percent of that

138
00:10:23,000 --> 00:10:27,440
population they lived in the pale of settlement, you know,

139
00:10:27,559 --> 00:10:30,559
to which they were. They were largely restricted there, you know,

140
00:10:30,600 --> 00:10:33,799
like going to owing to both law and custom. Okay,

141
00:10:36,200 --> 00:10:41,360
like we got the uh and all, but about like

142
00:10:41,440 --> 00:10:44,559
three to five percent. I've heard varying statistics. I rely

143
00:10:44,639 --> 00:10:46,480
on Hannah or Rent for a lot of this because

144
00:10:46,519 --> 00:10:48,879
I I don't think people can I mean, people try

145
00:10:48,919 --> 00:10:51,320
to impeach her credibility all the time, but like serious

146
00:10:51,320 --> 00:10:57,039
people don't, you know, really attempt to suggest that she's

147
00:10:57,080 --> 00:11:02,080
not a wasn't a credible scholar, but basic but close

148
00:11:02,120 --> 00:11:06,399
to close to ninety seven percent of these these Jewish

149
00:11:06,440 --> 00:11:10,360
people in the palest settlement or or it works as

150
00:11:10,399 --> 00:11:13,679
like middlemen of a sort, okay, in commodities, you know,

151
00:11:13,799 --> 00:11:17,120
like uh, it was like literally like the converse, like

152
00:11:17,120 --> 00:11:22,440
this funny converse of of uh, like the Russian Orthodox

153
00:11:22,480 --> 00:11:26,360
peasant population where like the lot majority of them were farmers,

154
00:11:26,759 --> 00:11:30,399
you know, like virtually virtually no, virtually none of the

155
00:11:30,440 --> 00:11:32,919
people in the Pale settlement were farmers or factory workers.

156
00:11:34,320 --> 00:11:38,080
The primary role of these Pale settlement Jews, you know,

157
00:11:38,159 --> 00:11:43,360
they bought, shipped, resold local produce. You know, they provided

158
00:11:43,519 --> 00:11:49,399
uh commodities on credit to provide a kind of a

159
00:11:49,440 --> 00:11:56,480
basic uh like security to to the standing crops, as

160
00:11:56,519 --> 00:11:59,320
well as you know, like more and more speculative endeavors

161
00:12:00,720 --> 00:12:04,519
they're involved in in in a state management, you know,

162
00:12:04,600 --> 00:12:10,240
and and and leasing. You know, they held the deed

163
00:12:10,679 --> 00:12:16,120
or the title to a lot of productive capital, you know, tanneries, distilleries,

164
00:12:16,120 --> 00:12:20,360
like sugar mills, like graneries, and like taverns and inns,

165
00:12:20,919 --> 00:12:24,200
which the latter were like heavily indexed with the government

166
00:12:24,320 --> 00:12:26,679
because there was the government had and a lot of

167
00:12:26,720 --> 00:12:31,879
these Eastern European kingdoms and states like a monopoly on

168
00:12:32,159 --> 00:12:41,720
liquor production and things. I mean, it's complicated, but you know, uh,

169
00:12:41,799 --> 00:12:47,399
they were disproportioning represented in the in professional services, namely

170
00:12:47,440 --> 00:12:51,200
as doctors and pharmacists, which obviously had you know, some

171
00:12:51,240 --> 00:12:54,639
prestige behind it. I mean it's like today it doesn't really,

172
00:12:54,720 --> 00:13:01,799
but in those days it really did, you know, And

173
00:13:01,840 --> 00:13:05,240
there was a this became an issue during the Second

174
00:13:05,240 --> 00:13:09,000
World War as like ethnic cleansing began in earnest I

175
00:13:09,000 --> 00:13:13,559
mean between various populations. But there's a lot of Jewish artisans,

176
00:13:13,679 --> 00:13:17,519
you know, like Taylor's shoemakers, guys who understood like medals,

177
00:13:17,559 --> 00:13:21,840
how to work medals. You know, jew specialized jewelers and watchmakers.

178
00:13:22,720 --> 00:13:29,720
These guys are overwhelmingly Jewish, and and especially in rural environments.

179
00:13:30,360 --> 00:13:35,120
You know, I think we got into before two. These people,

180
00:13:35,559 --> 00:13:38,799
the Russian Jews and the and the and the Russian peasantry.

181
00:13:39,519 --> 00:13:44,399
They lived in absolutely segregated quarters. Like the Jews spoke Yiddish.

182
00:13:44,679 --> 00:13:47,679
You know, they woren't distinctive clothes. They observed, you know,

183
00:13:47,840 --> 00:13:53,279
a dietary regiment totally different than the majority. They practiced

184
00:13:53,279 --> 00:13:57,240
a rigid kind of endogamy. You know, they only married

185
00:13:57,240 --> 00:14:01,799
within the tribe. You know, they basically like every aspect

186
00:14:01,799 --> 00:14:07,519
of kind of like their cultural learning was oriented towards like, uh,

187
00:14:07,960 --> 00:14:11,919
the preservation of a collective memory, which was contra that

188
00:14:12,080 --> 00:14:16,639
and the majority. Okay, you know they the centers of

189
00:14:16,639 --> 00:14:20,679
communal life obviously were you know, like the synagogue. You know,

190
00:14:20,720 --> 00:14:22,799
like in Russian culture, like there's like going to like

191
00:14:22,879 --> 00:14:24,960
the bathhouse or Sona is a big thing. There was

192
00:14:24,960 --> 00:14:29,320
like Jewish saunas and like you know Russian ones. You know,

193
00:14:29,440 --> 00:14:32,679
these these people that were not like assimilated into like

194
00:14:32,759 --> 00:14:36,080
Russian society. And it wasn't just like because they desperately

195
00:14:36,080 --> 00:14:38,559
wanted to be but like Russians were racist or something

196
00:14:38,919 --> 00:14:41,799
like these like these people literally lived like parallel but

197
00:14:41,879 --> 00:14:45,559
not intersecting lives and like the Russians themselves, like they

198
00:14:45,639 --> 00:14:48,039
viewed Jews as like this kind of they did the

199
00:14:48,080 --> 00:14:51,440
culture is bizarre and opaque. They viewed it as as

200
00:14:51,519 --> 00:14:55,200
as hostile to the christ. They viewed it as like unclean,

201
00:14:55,440 --> 00:14:58,200
like literally and like ritually like other you know, those

202
00:14:58,200 --> 00:15:03,360
were three people, you know, so basically these people on

203
00:15:03,399 --> 00:15:07,759
the cross paths in the course of business, which was

204
00:15:07,840 --> 00:15:13,600
sometimes basically amiable, sometimes pretty hostile, and occasionally you know,

205
00:15:13,679 --> 00:15:17,240
they they'd run across each other, and you know, because

206
00:15:17,279 --> 00:15:18,879
they they both had to deal with the same you know,

207
00:15:18,919 --> 00:15:23,799
state bureaucracies to which one of the other population was

208
00:15:24,000 --> 00:15:27,399
you know, like heavily represented, depending on mandate and locale

209
00:15:27,480 --> 00:15:31,159
and stuff, you know, and I mean like not non

210
00:15:31,279 --> 00:15:33,919
Jews didn't even most it was very other than scholars,

211
00:15:35,200 --> 00:15:38,600
you know, and and linguists, like almost no Russians even

212
00:15:38,639 --> 00:15:43,960
understoody Ish, you know. And this went beyond just Russia,

213
00:15:44,120 --> 00:15:48,799
like in in Ukraine and Lithuania, Lafia and Moldova and Belarus,

214
00:15:48,840 --> 00:15:54,000
like we're like, what's now Poland, Like these these these

215
00:15:54,039 --> 00:15:58,039
pale settlement people and the people outside the pale settlement nonetheless,

216
00:15:58,039 --> 00:16:02,759
who were like you know, heavily indexed into that cultural milu,

217
00:16:03,039 --> 00:16:04,919
Like they didn't a lot of them didn't even speak

218
00:16:04,960 --> 00:16:07,120
like the national language what we think of as the

219
00:16:07,200 --> 00:16:13,279
national language. You know. It's so there you're you're talking

220
00:16:13,320 --> 00:16:20,960
about you're talking about like an enforced alienation, okay, coming

221
00:16:21,000 --> 00:16:24,519
from you know, Russian jewelry itself. I don't mean that

222
00:16:24,639 --> 00:16:26,759
like the Tsarist system was like we must exclude these

223
00:16:26,759 --> 00:16:28,879
people at all costs. Like, don't get me wrong, there

224
00:16:28,919 --> 00:16:32,840
was definitely like reciprocal enmity, you know. But it's but

225
00:16:32,879 --> 00:16:35,840
people gotta understand. It's like you read you read these

226
00:16:35,879 --> 00:16:38,240
like dummy accounts where it's like, oh there was you know,

227
00:16:38,320 --> 00:16:40,840
Russian and Polish Jews were just like everybody else. But

228
00:16:40,879 --> 00:16:42,360
then there was this prejudice that came out in the

229
00:16:42,360 --> 00:16:46,320
twentieth century that's totally completely acidine. It was nothing like that.

230
00:16:47,120 --> 00:16:50,600
You know, you could make the case in Berlin, which

231
00:16:50,639 --> 00:16:52,600
might as well have been a different planet, you know

232
00:16:53,799 --> 00:16:56,360
than the Russian Empire especially and it's kind of rural

233
00:16:57,320 --> 00:17:02,960
geographic corridors. You had Jewish Berliners who basically like looked

234
00:17:02,960 --> 00:17:07,480
askance at kind of like there the ostudent, their their

235
00:17:07,519 --> 00:17:11,920
ostudent brethren. You know, they they spoke German. You know,

236
00:17:12,000 --> 00:17:16,400
they even if they didn't particularly want to mix or

237
00:17:16,440 --> 00:17:21,039
integrate with German people, you know, they they kept up appearances.

238
00:17:21,319 --> 00:17:23,839
You know, it was totally different. You can't extrapolate that

239
00:17:23,960 --> 00:17:27,599
experience or or the experience like Parisan Jews to that

240
00:17:27,759 --> 00:17:31,200
of to there the East. You know, like I'm not

241
00:17:31,240 --> 00:17:34,720
saying there weren't like enmities in in the case of

242
00:17:34,759 --> 00:17:38,480
the former that sort of dictated the terms of cultural interaction,

243
00:17:38,640 --> 00:17:41,400
but it was it was not remotely comparable. It's like

244
00:17:41,440 --> 00:17:43,240
I want to move, I want to jump ahead a bit,

245
00:17:43,759 --> 00:17:46,519
you know. So that's this kind of like laid so

246
00:17:46,640 --> 00:17:50,400
this is the context, understand you know, like the the

247
00:17:50,519 --> 00:17:53,920
the Russian national culture and the place of like Jews

248
00:17:54,000 --> 00:17:59,480
in it now obviously like the Bolshevik Revolution. You know,

249
00:17:59,519 --> 00:18:02,759
it's kind of mac Donald. He coded a lot of

250
00:18:02,839 --> 00:18:05,200
data and he wrote a lot about you know, the

251
00:18:05,279 --> 00:18:12,400
outsized role that the outsize role that Russian Jewish people

252
00:18:12,440 --> 00:18:15,519
played in in the NKVD and the terror apparatus and

253
00:18:15,519 --> 00:18:18,920
things like that. You know that that's all true, okay.

254
00:18:20,279 --> 00:18:24,559
And then of course, you know we've talked about you know,

255
00:18:24,759 --> 00:18:27,839
Yaqui's view of the Doctor's plot in what was then

256
00:18:27,880 --> 00:18:32,759
Czechoslovakia and the kind of purging of these elements from

257
00:18:34,279 --> 00:18:37,839
the nomenclatura. I don't want to rehash all of that

258
00:18:37,880 --> 00:18:39,640
because it's kind of too outside the scope. But the

259
00:18:39,680 --> 00:18:42,799
point is when people today talk about it, like, oh, Russia,

260
00:18:42,960 --> 00:18:46,279
Russia is zog quote unquote zog or like Russia is

261
00:18:46,319 --> 00:18:50,119
this you know vis a the you know, the the

262
00:18:50,200 --> 00:18:54,160
Jewish diaspra or Israel. You're talking about like deep seated

263
00:18:54,519 --> 00:18:59,440
hatred and animosity, like real hatred. You know, the fact

264
00:18:59,440 --> 00:19:03,200
that like Theians don't like as that punch the air

265
00:19:03,319 --> 00:19:06,920
and like openly curse you data every morning. But the

266
00:19:06,920 --> 00:19:09,039
fact that like Putin doesn't go on TV and like

267
00:19:09,160 --> 00:19:12,720
declare that like you know, I deny the Holocaust, and

268
00:19:12,720 --> 00:19:16,759
the fact that you know, Netanyaho doesn't say inflammatory things

269
00:19:16,759 --> 00:19:19,839
about the Russians publicly, like it means absolutely nothing. Like

270
00:19:19,880 --> 00:19:22,160
first of all, I mean, if you don't understand politics,

271
00:19:22,200 --> 00:19:25,519
if you think it's about you know, wearing your actual

272
00:19:25,519 --> 00:19:28,519
feelings on your sleeve. You don't understand diplomacy, even at war,

273
00:19:28,720 --> 00:19:31,279
especially at war if you think that does as characteristic

274
00:19:31,319 --> 00:19:35,039
about enemies relate. But anybody would say that, you know,

275
00:19:35,160 --> 00:19:39,160
like Moscow is something like love for jewelry is an idiot, Okay,

276
00:19:39,200 --> 00:19:43,000
I mean that's not This is a very very very

277
00:19:43,079 --> 00:19:49,480
hostile and tragic history. You know, so jumping forward as

278
00:19:49,519 --> 00:19:53,960
people know, you know, Stalin, who is the constant machiavellian.

279
00:19:54,960 --> 00:19:58,119
Stalin played cards pretty close to his chest when like

280
00:19:58,240 --> 00:20:03,759
the uh when you know, during the when when Israel

281
00:20:03,880 --> 00:20:07,440
like you know, from nineteen forty seven to forty nine

282
00:20:08,519 --> 00:20:10,920
basically you know, like when when when Israel is a

283
00:20:10,960 --> 00:20:13,400
Jewish state it was being established. He did it for

284
00:20:13,400 --> 00:20:16,079
a couple of reasons. First of all, because elements like

285
00:20:16,240 --> 00:20:19,559
Ergun you know, and Hagan and whatever we're like get

286
00:20:19,640 --> 00:20:22,319
war with the British Empire what remained like the falling

287
00:20:22,359 --> 00:20:26,279
British Empire, and Stalin obviously like supported that. But Stalin

288
00:20:26,319 --> 00:20:29,920
also like he wasn't clear like what kind of trajectory

289
00:20:30,000 --> 00:20:34,119
Israeli politic from take like very quickly, you know, the

290
00:20:34,200 --> 00:20:37,359
Soviets like dropped and you know, all appearance of good

291
00:20:37,400 --> 00:20:41,160
offices with Israel whenever game clear that this was you know,

292
00:20:41,200 --> 00:20:45,200
the the that it was basically, you know, a state

293
00:20:45,319 --> 00:20:48,240
that represented kind of like the express political will of

294
00:20:48,359 --> 00:20:52,000
like radicals and and and highly racializion is and it

295
00:20:52,039 --> 00:20:53,680
was it was just like it was totally off the

296
00:20:53,720 --> 00:20:57,240
table for like the Soviets to get behind Israel. And

297
00:20:58,759 --> 00:21:07,160
really by after the Suez Canal crisis, like like Israel,

298
00:21:07,920 --> 00:21:11,359
like Palestine became like literally kind of like other than

299
00:21:11,640 --> 00:21:14,319
other than Europe Central. It became kind of like the

300
00:21:14,599 --> 00:21:21,119
conflict diet of the Cold War, okay, and the Soviet

301
00:21:21,240 --> 00:21:24,559
Union literally went to war with Israel. And the key

302
00:21:24,640 --> 00:21:32,759
to this, you know, hostilities in absolute earnest really emerge

303
00:21:32,799 --> 00:21:35,640
in conventional terms, and the immediate aftermath of the Sixth

304
00:21:35,720 --> 00:21:39,599
Day War in ninety sixty seven, this kicked off what

305
00:21:39,680 --> 00:21:43,119
was called by the Kremlin as well as as well

306
00:21:43,160 --> 00:21:48,319
as by Nasaar's people the Continuity War. It translates Rolughi

307
00:21:48,400 --> 00:21:55,000
to the Continuity War. It so between nineteen sixty seven

308
00:21:55,039 --> 00:21:58,720
and seventy three, the story is not only it took

309
00:21:58,720 --> 00:22:04,559
a massive reireament and retraining program of the of Egyptian

310
00:22:04,640 --> 00:22:07,960
forces they actually started trying to prop up Egypt when

311
00:22:08,039 --> 00:22:11,640
well the sixty were was still in progress. But regular

312
00:22:11,720 --> 00:22:14,799
Soviet troops, I'm not talking advisors, I'm talking the Red Army.

313
00:22:15,240 --> 00:22:19,240
They took up infantry positions opposite Israeli forces to hold

314
00:22:19,240 --> 00:22:22,480
the Suez Canal line at all costs. There was there

315
00:22:22,559 --> 00:22:25,480
was Soviets who were manning the anti aircraft defenses around Cairo.

316
00:22:28,119 --> 00:22:31,920
There was a there there were Soviet advisors who were

317
00:22:31,960 --> 00:22:37,079
like leading company level elements of Egyptians against the IDEF.

318
00:22:37,920 --> 00:22:42,200
You know, Like again, this isn't speculation or or or

319
00:22:42,240 --> 00:22:44,640
something or something that was like you know, filtered out

320
00:22:44,640 --> 00:22:48,119
of some like CIA memo that may or may not

321
00:22:48,200 --> 00:22:51,480
have been an accurate reading of the the battle space.

322
00:22:51,559 --> 00:22:54,359
This is this is this, This happened, This is documented,

323
00:22:57,559 --> 00:23:03,599
something that became a grave concern to Kissinger himself as

324
00:23:03,640 --> 00:23:07,599
well as uh people at Defense Intelligence as well as

325
00:23:07,640 --> 00:23:12,359
the Pentagon. There was uh this So there was a

326
00:23:12,400 --> 00:23:17,559
massive deployment of of integral Soviet combat units the Egypt

327
00:23:18,279 --> 00:23:21,720
in response to what Israel called depth bombing in the

328
00:23:21,720 --> 00:23:29,359
Egyptian hinterland. Like like basically this this this, this is

329
00:23:29,599 --> 00:23:32,480
this is a campaign of strategic bombing of basically like

330
00:23:32,559 --> 00:23:37,279
any like any target that uh it could remotely be

331
00:23:37,319 --> 00:23:42,559
construed like infrastructural okay, like they're basically trying to flatten

332
00:23:43,039 --> 00:23:46,960
Egypt and you know, like and that and bombed back

333
00:23:47,000 --> 00:23:54,119
to the Stone Age as it were. Okay, Naser visited

334
00:23:54,200 --> 00:24:05,799
Moscow secretly on grounds of you know, legitimate urgency, and

335
00:24:05,880 --> 00:24:10,039
this accelerate this rapidly accelerated implementation basically NASA for a

336
00:24:10,079 --> 00:24:12,720
head of state, especially in those days when I mean

337
00:24:13,599 --> 00:24:15,720
this is obviously like well into like the jet commercial

338
00:24:15,720 --> 00:24:19,599
travel era, but for the chief executive of a nation

339
00:24:19,680 --> 00:24:22,599
at war to travel to Moscow and say, like we're

340
00:24:22,640 --> 00:24:28,119
getting killed like a help, I mean, that's that's that's crazy. Okay.

341
00:24:30,359 --> 00:24:34,559
So from that point forward until the conclusion of the

342
00:24:34,599 --> 00:24:39,279
seventy three war, like basically the Soviets took over uh

343
00:24:39,440 --> 00:24:46,039
like operational authority, like on the Egyptian front, the Soviet

344
00:24:46,039 --> 00:24:49,400
expeditionary force that showed up in Egypt. It was the

345
00:24:49,440 --> 00:24:54,559
most advanced element. They had some of these uh like

346
00:24:54,640 --> 00:24:57,039
service their missile systems they were using. They weren't even

347
00:24:57,039 --> 00:24:59,400
sending these to North Vietnam. This is like still a

348
00:24:59,440 --> 00:25:02,559
spiritmental They were sending like their best man, their best material,

349
00:25:02,599 --> 00:25:08,640
their best hardware the Egypt to fight the idea, you know,

350
00:25:09,000 --> 00:25:13,000
and contra of what Israeli propaganda was at the time,

351
00:25:13,960 --> 00:25:17,640
I think not. I think this wasn't just capped kind

352
00:25:17,640 --> 00:25:22,319
of like both to the perception of IDFs aptitude, but

353
00:25:22,400 --> 00:25:24,880
it was also kind of like a suage American anxieties,

354
00:25:24,880 --> 00:25:28,079
which at that point were at a fever pitch. You know.

355
00:25:28,119 --> 00:25:31,480
These Raelis claimed that by the time the ceasefire in

356
00:25:31,519 --> 00:25:36,240
August nineteen seventy, there was like this tascit ceasefire with Egypt.

357
00:25:38,359 --> 00:25:41,720
They claimed that, like, well, you know, there's this o

358
00:25:41,920 --> 00:25:44,759
to like our victory over Soviet and Egyptian forces and such,

359
00:25:44,880 --> 00:25:46,920
and it's only like a you know, it's only like

360
00:25:46,920 --> 00:25:50,720
a skeleton crew or kind of like a token detachment

361
00:25:50,799 --> 00:25:53,799
of of of Warsaw Pact forces on the ground in Egypt.

362
00:25:54,079 --> 00:25:56,359
Like that that was complete that that was completely at

363
00:25:56,400 --> 00:26:02,359
odds with reality the uh and and also too, I mean,

364
00:26:02,400 --> 00:26:05,119
if you're fighting if the Soviets, and I mean today

365
00:26:05,240 --> 00:26:07,200
with far lesser degree, but I think the point still

366
00:26:07,279 --> 00:26:12,440
stands in some capacities saying that like the Soviets saying

367
00:26:12,480 --> 00:26:15,640
that Russians can't stand the attrition you're implementing. I mean,

368
00:26:15,640 --> 00:26:17,920
that's that's ridiculous. I mean, the one thing is Russian

369
00:26:17,960 --> 00:26:21,799
whatever their problems, and I don't have any illusions about

370
00:26:22,079 --> 00:26:26,519
the problems Russians had the Russian Federation and Russians historically

371
00:26:26,559 --> 00:26:30,880
have in in military operations. Uh, Like, suggesting they can't

372
00:26:30,960 --> 00:26:33,759
handle attrition is I mean, it's kind of like laughable.

373
00:26:34,039 --> 00:26:36,079
I mean, that's like the one thing they can absolutely handle.

374
00:26:38,799 --> 00:26:48,160
So there's so this uh kind of bizarre uh state

375
00:26:48,200 --> 00:26:51,599
of things like set in. We're on the one hand,

376
00:26:51,680 --> 00:26:55,519
on you know, there was a there was this, there

377
00:26:55,559 --> 00:26:59,119
was kind of like this the like the official party

378
00:26:59,160 --> 00:27:03,160
line in Washington was that this wasn't a meaningful deployment

379
00:27:03,240 --> 00:27:07,480
by the Soviet Union, although the theater remains critical. You know,

380
00:27:08,119 --> 00:27:10,640
you had the actual Soviet army on the ground like

381
00:27:10,720 --> 00:27:15,440
fighting IDF in nineteen seventy two. And part of this,

382
00:27:15,559 --> 00:27:18,920
I believe was NASA's alleged Maine and and and and

383
00:27:18,920 --> 00:27:23,119
and then and Naster's successors alledgered Maine because like periodically

384
00:27:23,160 --> 00:27:26,000
this was declared nineteen seventy two, there was a quote

385
00:27:26,039 --> 00:27:31,559
nquote rift between Cairo and Moscow whereby Soviet advisors were

386
00:27:31,559 --> 00:27:35,279
supposedly like expelled from Cairo. Meanwhile, like the Soviet army

387
00:27:35,319 --> 00:27:40,559
again is fully indexed at you know, in the command

388
00:27:40,599 --> 00:27:45,480
and commanding control capacity on you know what, on the

389
00:27:45,720 --> 00:27:48,880
on the Egyptian front Contra I d F and they're

390
00:27:48,880 --> 00:27:54,200
like waging active war and you know this, So this

391
00:27:54,400 --> 00:27:58,480
was uh that this was murky as anything was during

392
00:27:58,480 --> 00:28:01,440
the Cold War. But that's like the standard rebuttal people

393
00:28:01,480 --> 00:28:03,119
have is like, oh, but what about what about the

394
00:28:03,279 --> 00:28:05,759
you know, the expulsion of Soviet advisors. But it's like, okay,

395
00:28:06,039 --> 00:28:08,039
its big the questions like why this would be some

396
00:28:08,119 --> 00:28:10,680
public schism, you know, I mean it's not That's not

397
00:28:10,720 --> 00:28:12,400
the way the Communists did things. That's certainly not the

398
00:28:12,400 --> 00:28:14,200
way the Russians do things, and that's certainly not the

399
00:28:14,240 --> 00:28:21,119
way Nasaites Egypt did things. There were tensions between Moscow

400
00:28:21,200 --> 00:28:24,279
and Cairo leading up to the seventy three war, but

401
00:28:24,519 --> 00:28:32,319
I mean literally on the October sixth offensive and in

402
00:28:32,440 --> 00:28:37,880
concert with UH, with with with Syria, this was literally

403
00:28:37,920 --> 00:28:44,000
planned on the Arab's side by bye by Soviet command elements,

404
00:28:44,559 --> 00:28:45,839
you know. So I mean like if if there was

405
00:28:45,839 --> 00:28:48,519
this like a rift whereby like Soviet advisors or something

406
00:28:48,559 --> 00:28:50,720
like banished from Cairo. It's like, well, I mean apparently

407
00:28:50,759 --> 00:28:53,799
they were. They remained, you know, like prop practical purposes,

408
00:28:53,920 --> 00:29:02,279
like the war planners in Cairo. But the uh, there's

409
00:29:02,279 --> 00:29:05,440
a guy named Victor Kayak and he was a he

410
00:29:05,519 --> 00:29:11,880
was a KGB type who in a ninety two back

411
00:29:11,880 --> 00:29:14,119
when a lot of these security apparatus types on the

412
00:29:14,119 --> 00:29:16,680
Formeries block. I mean they were both substantially younger then

413
00:29:16,759 --> 00:29:18,559
a lot more than we're alive. But also there was

414
00:29:19,400 --> 00:29:22,000
it was a rare brought nineteen ninety one to like

415
00:29:22,039 --> 00:29:25,559
nineteen ninety six, there was a rare kind of candor

416
00:29:25,759 --> 00:29:27,960
that these guys were prone to and in terms of

417
00:29:28,319 --> 00:29:35,640
discussing cooler operations. But and Kayak and said, uh, you

418
00:29:35,640 --> 00:29:39,279
know it was the KGB like US, US made the

419
00:29:39,319 --> 00:29:43,720
kgby quote, the KGB persuaded President Nashoul to wage the

420
00:29:43,759 --> 00:29:46,759
war of attrition to the bitter end. You know, Naster

421
00:29:46,880 --> 00:29:50,079
may not, Naser may not trusted the KGB entirely, but

422
00:29:50,160 --> 00:29:57,440
he did ask for help, and US, the KGB, the

423
00:29:57,480 --> 00:30:01,000
best friend of oppress nations, did help and military gear

424
00:30:01,200 --> 00:30:03,720
when it became clear there it's gonna do it on

425
00:30:03,759 --> 00:30:06,039
the own by sending in our own forces. That's a

426
00:30:06,079 --> 00:30:10,759
quote from Kayagin. Okay, now the actual more matrician I

427
00:30:10,799 --> 00:30:17,559
will bring it back to Syria, I promise. From seventy

428
00:30:19,119 --> 00:30:23,839
this involved fire between not just the idea the i

429
00:30:24,000 --> 00:30:26,599
F on one side, and not just Egypt, but also Jordan,

430
00:30:27,160 --> 00:30:32,359
the PLO Kuwait and really kind of the what I

431
00:30:32,359 --> 00:30:35,480
think of it is like the step punk the USSR,

432
00:30:35,920 --> 00:30:40,240
the Cubans as well as Syria all right, from sixty

433
00:30:40,279 --> 00:30:42,519
seven to seventy is kind of the peak of this

434
00:30:42,599 --> 00:30:47,920
conflict cycle, you know, and then did it endure the

435
00:30:48,000 --> 00:30:51,599
varying intensities until seventy three, and then seventy three led

436
00:30:51,640 --> 00:30:56,039
to you know, the escalation to the point of of

437
00:30:56,039 --> 00:30:59,160
of Defcon three in America and that that changed everything.

438
00:30:59,200 --> 00:31:04,400
But that's that that's kind of ahead of ourselves. Following

439
00:31:04,400 --> 00:31:07,599
the sixty seven sixty war, there was no serious diplomatic

440
00:31:07,599 --> 00:31:11,960
efforts the for for a political solution to the Arab

441
00:31:12,039 --> 00:31:15,880
Israeli conflict like the Arab League in sixty seven. I mean,

442
00:31:15,920 --> 00:31:20,000
in the media aftermath there possibly became known as the

443
00:31:20,039 --> 00:31:25,200
three no's, you know, no no recognition, no negotiations with Israel,

444
00:31:25,319 --> 00:31:30,440
and like no peace until Palestine is liberated, okay, And

445
00:31:30,480 --> 00:31:36,200
the Soviets basically they're the ones who, like, uh, who

446
00:31:36,200 --> 00:31:40,440
made this possible. They made the confidence the side on

447
00:31:40,599 --> 00:31:44,200
for the the several you know, for the Arab League

448
00:31:44,279 --> 00:31:47,680
plus some of these non state actors to sign off

449
00:31:47,720 --> 00:31:55,279
on a long campaign all right, initially as it's kind

450
00:31:55,279 --> 00:32:07,799
of the the traditional Russian doctrine it like in in

451
00:32:07,839 --> 00:32:10,759
the opening cells, as there were of this kind of

452
00:32:11,279 --> 00:32:16,519
period and hostilities engagement with form like limited artillery doables

453
00:32:16,519 --> 00:32:23,680
like small scale incursions from sign into Sinai and vice versa.

454
00:32:24,319 --> 00:32:29,759
By sixty nine, the Egyptians, uh or at least or

455
00:32:29,759 --> 00:32:37,359
at least there's Soviet advisors and commanders judged U judge

456
00:32:38,920 --> 00:32:42,720
like company size and forces level company sized forces and beyond,

457
00:32:43,279 --> 00:32:45,400
like they judged them like prepared for like a higher

458
00:32:45,519 --> 00:32:51,160
level of operational sophistication. Okay, because it's kind of when

459
00:32:51,200 --> 00:32:53,519
like the true like war of attrition kicked off. I

460
00:32:53,559 --> 00:32:55,559
think in like the public mind in terms of people

461
00:32:55,559 --> 00:32:58,400
who consume like global news and things, as well as

462
00:32:58,440 --> 00:33:02,640
people kind of on the periphery of of military affairs,

463
00:33:02,680 --> 00:33:09,079
you know, extensive aerial warfare like large scale shelling, you know,

464
00:33:09,160 --> 00:33:14,400
like commando raids, like you know, combined arms assaults the frontiers.

465
00:33:14,400 --> 00:33:16,519
I mean the same as when the war began, but

466
00:33:16,599 --> 00:33:21,680
this you're talking about like real clashes of combined arms here, okay.

467
00:33:23,920 --> 00:33:28,480
The Israeli Air Force responded by directly targeting Soviet military personnel.

468
00:33:28,960 --> 00:33:32,160
From January to March in nineteen seventy forty eight Soviet

469
00:33:32,200 --> 00:33:34,920
troops and pilots were killed in bombing raids at Cairo.

470
00:33:35,480 --> 00:33:37,640
And then this there's a suburb of Cairo called that Sure,

471
00:33:38,440 --> 00:33:40,960
this was uh, this is where most like Soviet fighter

472
00:33:41,039 --> 00:33:49,640
pilots like lived. Okay. The Soviets responded, which was in

473
00:33:49,720 --> 00:33:54,200
flagrant violation international agreements. They deployed S one service in

474
00:33:54,200 --> 00:33:56,880
their missile system to the Sewiz Canal zone like they

475
00:33:56,880 --> 00:33:59,759
were fortifying the Suez Canal zone like a smaller scale

476
00:33:59,799 --> 00:34:04,799
like as deep as Hannoi was, okay, And this led

477
00:34:04,839 --> 00:34:09,800
to like heavy attrition. This this culminated in a massive

478
00:34:09,880 --> 00:34:14,079
dog flight over a This is the this the operation

479
00:34:14,199 --> 00:34:18,519
was coding ramone twenty by the Israeli Air Force. There

480
00:34:18,599 --> 00:34:22,800
was twelve to fourteen Soviet Mid twenty ones and twelve

481
00:34:22,920 --> 00:34:28,480
Israeli Mirage threes and F four phantom twos. They it

482
00:34:28,519 --> 00:34:30,480
was like I said, it was this massive dog flight

483
00:34:30,760 --> 00:34:35,239
in the Suez Canal operational area, like five Soviet aircraft

484
00:34:35,280 --> 00:34:37,679
went down. At least four of those pilots were killed.

485
00:34:39,159 --> 00:34:42,159
Israeli attrition it's hard to say. I mean, the Soviets

486
00:34:42,199 --> 00:34:44,679
claimed it was like far higher than it was. The

487
00:34:44,760 --> 00:34:47,840
Israeli's claimed like minimal attrition, but it was probably uncomparable.

488
00:34:49,480 --> 00:34:51,800
But the entire purpose of this by idea, that was

489
00:34:51,840 --> 00:34:55,400
the lower Soviet fighter pilots into in the in the

490
00:34:55,480 --> 00:34:57,320
air at air combat so that they could be taken

491
00:34:57,320 --> 00:35:00,840
out because I mean, it's cast you will like kill

492
00:35:01,440 --> 00:35:04,400
fighter pilots, you know, I mean obviously you know. And

493
00:35:05,719 --> 00:35:07,360
but this is for the for the people who claim

494
00:35:07,400 --> 00:35:11,000
it's like euphemistic that you know, the Soviets right war

495
00:35:11,039 --> 00:35:13,639
with Israel. I mean this this is my rebuttal okay,

496
00:35:13,679 --> 00:35:19,199
I'm in a serious people don't don't claim that the

497
00:35:19,400 --> 00:35:25,679
uh in it's aftermath like varying sources like some people

498
00:35:26,079 --> 00:35:29,119
I mean, and I'm talking objective people, not not just

499
00:35:29,320 --> 00:35:32,000
zion as shields or something like some people claim that

500
00:35:32,119 --> 00:35:36,519
like well Israel was stood Soviet combined arms and you

501
00:35:36,519 --> 00:35:39,679
know they were able to fight off. Uh, you know,

502
00:35:39,679 --> 00:35:41,960
they they're able to fight in ways that here there

503
00:35:42,000 --> 00:35:45,719
too they hadn't been comfortable with, or that hitherto had

504
00:35:45,760 --> 00:35:48,440
been an alien type of warfare. I mean, I don't

505
00:35:49,480 --> 00:35:50,960
I don't know any think that's true. I mean, I

506
00:35:50,960 --> 00:35:54,440
think the Soviets brought brought they brought a quality of

507
00:35:54,480 --> 00:35:59,840
hardware and manpower and operational sophistication to the table. Obviously,

508
00:36:00,039 --> 00:36:02,880
but the idea was used to fighting Arab armies that

509
00:36:03,599 --> 00:36:08,400
had real problems but were basically following warsaw peg doctrine.

510
00:36:09,159 --> 00:36:16,760
You know. The American claim was that well, Israel successful

511
00:36:16,760 --> 00:36:19,440
and continuing to hold the mainline of resistance, which was

512
00:36:19,440 --> 00:36:23,320
the Barrow called the Barrow level line, and forcing the

513
00:36:23,320 --> 00:36:28,199
Egyptians ultimately to come to the table. But uh, you

514
00:36:28,239 --> 00:36:31,920
know eventually, I mean, but the but the consensus really

515
00:36:34,840 --> 00:36:37,760
on both sides of the Aisle was that this this

516
00:36:37,880 --> 00:36:41,440
really kind of sapped Israeli morale, you know, and this

517
00:36:41,559 --> 00:36:45,079
this really this culminated really in the seventy three warrants conclusion.

518
00:36:45,800 --> 00:36:48,679
I mean, is Israel had some big victories in seventy three,

519
00:36:48,760 --> 00:36:51,199
but they also took some big hits. You know, this

520
00:36:51,400 --> 00:36:55,280
wasn't people kind of trying to cast Israeli history as

521
00:36:55,320 --> 00:36:57,880
like the Sixth Day War into perpetuity, like oh, these

522
00:36:57,920 --> 00:37:00,599
really armies just top notch and they just over all

523
00:37:00,639 --> 00:37:04,039
their ops Like that's not true, you know. And admittedly,

524
00:37:04,159 --> 00:37:09,599
like if you're fighting the Soviet army and what was

525
00:37:09,679 --> 00:37:12,440
then you know they're cutting edge wartech, like it's not

526
00:37:12,480 --> 00:37:14,360
a minor thing, Like I'm not even saying that, like

527
00:37:15,039 --> 00:37:17,320
there's some like shame in it, you know, it's.

528
00:37:18,840 --> 00:37:19,159
Speaker 1: I U.

529
00:37:20,559 --> 00:37:24,320
Speaker 2: Interestingly, there's a couple. There's a guy and a lady

530
00:37:24,639 --> 00:37:29,039
there Israeli military type academics. The guy's name is Gideon

531
00:37:29,480 --> 00:37:34,000
ramez Lay. His name is Isabella Jenor or Ginnor. They've

532
00:37:34,000 --> 00:37:38,599
written a lot on Soviet Israeli hostilities. And obviously, like

533
00:37:38,639 --> 00:37:41,199
I said, these people are both like Israeli Jews, They're not.

534
00:37:41,599 --> 00:37:44,440
They're certainly not you know, people gonna be said to

535
00:37:44,519 --> 00:37:48,519
have a poor review of the zigon of state. They

536
00:37:48,559 --> 00:37:51,719
they both consider the war have been like a defeat

537
00:37:51,760 --> 00:37:54,880
for israel I mean Israel. Their argument is Israel is

538
00:37:54,880 --> 00:37:59,719
forced to accept the ceasefire and and basically a change

539
00:37:59,760 --> 00:38:03,440
like a change in uh kind of like the criteria

540
00:38:03,480 --> 00:38:05,800
for peace on the Israeli side and just like a

541
00:38:05,840 --> 00:38:08,639
holy and just and and they you know, just completely

542
00:38:08,679 --> 00:38:11,599
a complete sea change in the tenor of negotiations. But

543
00:38:11,760 --> 00:38:14,360
so Soviet air defenses were dropping it for fantoms out

544
00:38:14,360 --> 00:38:18,880
of the sky at an unsustainable rate. The Soviets and

545
00:38:18,880 --> 00:38:26,639
the Egyptians proved they they blatantly violate not just proceeding

546
00:38:26,760 --> 00:38:32,960
uh you know, ceasefire and treaty arrangements in the theater.

547
00:38:33,719 --> 00:38:37,280
But they they didn't care a whit about you know,

548
00:38:37,519 --> 00:38:41,320
deploying you know, banned weapons systems to the region. You know,

549
00:38:41,320 --> 00:38:43,400
they they were in it to win it. You know

550
00:38:46,119 --> 00:38:51,960
ramone twenty, this aerial operation that you know was purposed

551
00:38:51,960 --> 00:38:56,679
to zapp the Soviet Air Force tactically. Yeah, that that

552
00:38:56,679 --> 00:39:00,039
that was ah, that that was a victory. But I

553
00:39:00,079 --> 00:39:02,119
think that as part of the whole paradigm, like that

554
00:39:02,159 --> 00:39:05,719
allowed the Israelis to kind of accept what theretofore would

555
00:39:05,760 --> 00:39:11,079
have been not acceptable to design as hardliners, but will

556
00:39:11,119 --> 00:39:13,599
also saving face. You know, hey, look like we we

557
00:39:13,719 --> 00:39:16,440
defeated the mighty Soviet Air Force. You know, we we

558
00:39:16,480 --> 00:39:19,599
can't we can't be said to have have lost. So

559
00:39:19,599 --> 00:39:23,599
I mean, it's complicated okay, But like my point is

560
00:39:23,639 --> 00:39:29,440
that like Israel's fortunes were literally decided by the Soviet Union,

561
00:39:30,079 --> 00:39:33,400
you know, in the Continuity War then in seventy three,

562
00:39:34,320 --> 00:39:36,880
you know, so this, I I mean there's two things here.

563
00:39:36,960 --> 00:39:40,119
So I mean this, this is demonstrative of how heavily

564
00:39:42,880 --> 00:39:47,239
the Soviet Union and Russia wasn't as like politically invested

565
00:39:47,360 --> 00:39:51,239
in Arab fortunes and specifically Syrian ones. But it's also

566
00:39:51,280 --> 00:39:53,239
like you think you think the Israelis have like good

567
00:39:53,280 --> 00:39:57,880
feelings towards Russia. I mean really, I mean it's you know,

568
00:39:59,320 --> 00:40:08,679
it's from possible is closer to this The main subject

569
00:40:08,719 --> 00:40:13,320
at hand, what uh halfes As Sad was doing during

570
00:40:13,360 --> 00:40:16,760
this period. Hafesa Sad himself was a MiG driver, he

571
00:40:16,800 --> 00:40:21,360
was a fighter pilot in nineteen seventy one, as a

572
00:40:21,480 --> 00:40:27,400
Syrian bath was kind of consolidating its hold, like serious

573
00:40:27,400 --> 00:40:30,960
Syrian politics. We were very byzantine and and and a

574
00:40:31,000 --> 00:40:33,079
lot of a lot of backstabbing, a lot of corruption,

575
00:40:33,280 --> 00:40:35,920
things like this. Not quite as bad as as the

576
00:40:35,960 --> 00:40:39,440
Iraqi situation has developed about a decade later, but it

577
00:40:39,519 --> 00:40:44,760
was very chaotic asades A Sad. Really, it's kind of

578
00:40:44,760 --> 00:40:48,760
like the father of modern serious political culture. Okay, but

579
00:40:48,800 --> 00:40:52,400
that's kind of a subject for another day. But in

580
00:40:52,480 --> 00:40:57,800
nineteen seventy one, halfes a sad than the Soviet Union.

581
00:40:58,199 --> 00:41:00,400
He permitted the Soviet Union to open its naval and

582
00:41:00,440 --> 00:41:06,960
Tartis and then that the so the Russians community, you

583
00:41:07,039 --> 00:41:11,239
utilize this this base. To this day Tartis is the

584
00:41:11,280 --> 00:41:14,559
sole Mediterranean naval base for the Black Sea Fleet of

585
00:41:14,559 --> 00:41:20,760
the Russian Navy. Okay, this was this is a big deal,

586
00:41:22,599 --> 00:41:25,440
not just in not not just in like you know,

587
00:41:25,559 --> 00:41:29,840
strategic terms, but uh, it it it demonstrates like a

588
00:41:29,880 --> 00:41:34,840
willingness of uh the Russians the sign on for the

589
00:41:34,920 --> 00:41:39,559
long term on on on what am also like a

590
00:41:39,599 --> 00:41:44,320
mutual defense treaty. So they've really got like absolute confidence

591
00:41:44,480 --> 00:41:47,039
and like the tenure the perennial tenure of of the

592
00:41:47,079 --> 00:41:50,079
regime currently situated in Damascus, or they're absolutely not gonna

593
00:41:50,119 --> 00:41:54,159
let that regime fall. Okay, Like the Tartars treaty for example,

594
00:41:54,239 --> 00:41:58,679
it runs, it ran it uh. It was set to

595
00:41:58,760 --> 00:42:02,840
run for twenty years with automatic five year extensions unless

596
00:42:02,960 --> 00:42:12,440
unilateral unilaterally terminated I mean at uh and immediately immediately

597
00:42:12,440 --> 00:42:15,719
after the fall of the Soviet Union officially like a

598
00:42:15,840 --> 00:42:20,679
fesisade recognized the Russian Federation as the legal successor to

599
00:42:20,679 --> 00:42:24,000
the USSR and you know, retaining all basing rights and

600
00:42:24,000 --> 00:42:30,920
everything else. Okay. The during the seventy three war obviously,

601
00:42:31,480 --> 00:42:34,679
which was kind of like Syria's moment in the sun,

602
00:42:35,440 --> 00:42:41,000
because they proved themselves, you know, that they could think

603
00:42:41,039 --> 00:42:44,159
they could function at a high level of operational sophistication.

604
00:42:45,639 --> 00:42:53,840
Thousands of Soviet advisors, technicians, officers like commat officers assisted

605
00:42:53,880 --> 00:42:56,719
the Syrian Arab Army. At least twenty were killed in action.

606
00:42:58,239 --> 00:43:01,920
Almost three fifty funds of aid was airlifted to Syria.

607
00:43:02,679 --> 00:43:05,679
They seelifted at the at the conclusion no hostilities. The

608
00:43:05,719 --> 00:43:12,800
Sovietians sealifted over sixty thousand tons materials UH to Syria

609
00:43:12,920 --> 00:43:17,400
to replenished losses, you know, like infrastructural military, you know,

610
00:43:17,639 --> 00:43:22,000
like food stuffs like you name it. The one, uh,

611
00:43:22,519 --> 00:43:26,119
the one kind of blip in Soviet or Russian Syrian

612
00:43:26,159 --> 00:43:29,960
relations came in seventy six. The Soviets were just pleased

613
00:43:30,000 --> 00:43:33,119
when Asad deployed the Syrian Air of Army to Lebanon,

614
00:43:36,360 --> 00:43:40,119
and something of a diplomatic rift emerged. The Soviets were

615
00:43:40,119 --> 00:43:43,079
really worried about a confrontation between the PLO and the

616
00:43:43,119 --> 00:43:45,280
Syrian era of Army, and for good reason, like they

617
00:43:45,280 --> 00:43:49,039
were very much at odds. You know, both of them

618
00:43:49,039 --> 00:43:53,719
were Moscow clients. This would have this could have been

619
00:43:53,760 --> 00:44:01,119
catastrophic in terms of broader interests held by Moscow in

620
00:44:01,159 --> 00:44:04,480
the Near East, and like taking sides in the sectarian

621
00:44:04,519 --> 00:44:08,559
war between Arab factions. I mean, that's that's always going

622
00:44:08,639 --> 00:44:16,920
to be a losing proposition. The UH. Brezhnev went as

623
00:44:16,960 --> 00:44:24,559
far as UH threatening the threatened to freeze UH military

624
00:44:24,599 --> 00:44:30,559
aid shipments. It's ultimately was like smoothed over like a fence.

625
00:44:30,679 --> 00:44:33,960
Visited at Moscow in nineteen seventy seven, like much fan fear.

626
00:44:34,320 --> 00:44:39,599
He met with Brezhnev and Alexi Cossagen among others, or Cossagan,

627
00:44:42,199 --> 00:44:47,760
you know, the UH Assade openly endorsed and supported one

628
00:44:47,800 --> 00:44:53,840
hundred percent the the the the Soviet attack in Afghanistan,

629
00:44:54,199 --> 00:44:57,360
which distanced them from basically every other Arab leader. But

630
00:44:57,440 --> 00:45:00,599
I mean he didn't care like Assad's assad the message

631
00:45:00,599 --> 00:45:02,880
like he stands with Russia. So I mean the final

632
00:45:03,000 --> 00:45:05,119
kind of if there was in fact, like a rift

633
00:45:05,199 --> 00:45:08,880
that still need a remedy by Christmas nineteen seventy nine.

634
00:45:09,199 --> 00:45:14,239
Like that. What sealed that, like Russian Syrian kind of

635
00:45:14,239 --> 00:45:16,840
like the affinity for all time was the fact that

636
00:45:16,880 --> 00:45:19,159
Asad said, like, you know, we stand, we stand with

637
00:45:19,199 --> 00:45:24,760
the Soviet Union like against its enemies in Afghanistan, you know,

638
00:45:24,880 --> 00:45:28,519
which was incredibly ballsy among other things, and it was

639
00:45:28,519 --> 00:45:31,920
the right play for Asad, but it was very ballsy.

640
00:45:32,320 --> 00:45:35,960
I covered nineteen eighty uh, Syria, the Soviet Union sign

641
00:45:36,079 --> 00:45:42,480
the Treaty of friendship really until until it all went

642
00:45:42,599 --> 00:45:49,760
down in eighty nine. You know, Uh, Syria South Yemen

643
00:45:49,920 --> 00:45:53,400
was the only Marxist Leninist Arab state, but Syria was

644
00:45:53,400 --> 00:45:55,840
that even though Syria was not a Communist state at all,

645
00:45:56,320 --> 00:45:58,360
like they were the jewel in the crown a warsaw

646
00:45:58,440 --> 00:46:00,880
packed in terms of their in terms of era of

647
00:46:00,920 --> 00:46:11,440
affairs and in the Middle Eastern theater. This uh. Gorbachev

648
00:46:11,559 --> 00:46:20,000
scaled this back in April eighty seven, but once uh,

649
00:46:21,239 --> 00:46:26,440
but again like within after after. I mean, your Russia

650
00:46:26,559 --> 00:46:30,559
was a mess like post Gorbachev, but the the any

651
00:46:30,679 --> 00:46:36,119
uh any unwillingness other other newly um a scale in

652
00:46:36,199 --> 00:46:40,320
Russian Federation. The back a Sade like evaporated with you know,

653
00:46:40,440 --> 00:46:47,119
the end of Gorbachev's tenure that uh, interestingly he met Videv.

654
00:46:47,880 --> 00:46:49,719
He was the first run He was the first Russian

655
00:46:50,199 --> 00:46:57,480
president to visit Syria, like uh Putin visited Syria. I

656
00:46:57,559 --> 00:47:01,719
believe he was on the ground for the there's two

657
00:47:01,880 --> 00:47:05,320
parades or on me a condor a legion honestly, like

658
00:47:05,360 --> 00:47:10,800
the the Russian UH military contingent, you know, marched in

659
00:47:11,239 --> 00:47:18,639
Damascus after UH after victory, and I think, uh, I

660
00:47:18,639 --> 00:47:21,039
can't remember if Pudin was made a state visit there

661
00:47:21,119 --> 00:47:23,400
or not, but point being, maybe it was the first

662
00:47:23,480 --> 00:47:30,519
leader of the Russian Federation to visit Syria. Jumping ahead

663
00:47:31,119 --> 00:47:35,239
closer to the present for context, you know that this

664
00:47:35,320 --> 00:47:38,320
is exactly why Syria was targeted for destruction in tart

665
00:47:38,400 --> 00:47:46,320
okayd joined Boshwiti was golf or coalition which was instrumental,

666
00:47:46,800 --> 00:47:52,519
you know, and the Syrians deployed to fight uh Saiddam.

667
00:47:52,960 --> 00:47:56,039
You know, like any anybody remotely reasonable would view assad

668
00:47:56,119 --> 00:47:59,679
as as like you know, somebody who the West wants

669
00:47:59,719 --> 00:48:04,400
on their side. But of course you know he was it. Uh,

670
00:48:04,599 --> 00:48:08,639
there's no like strategic logic to trying to destroy Syria.

671
00:48:09,199 --> 00:48:13,199
And utilizing you know, terrorists and ISIS and and these

672
00:48:13,239 --> 00:48:20,960
tech theory lunatics as is a deadnaz strategy. At the

673
00:48:21,079 --> 00:48:26,920
onset of the Russian intervention in Syria, government forces, they

674
00:48:26,960 --> 00:48:29,840
controlled only about twenty six percent of the country. You know,

675
00:48:29,840 --> 00:48:38,360
they're truly beleaguered. The uh you know, Russia was fighting

676
00:48:38,360 --> 00:48:41,719
the Islamic State, they were fighting the el news for affront,

677
00:48:41,760 --> 00:48:44,440
which is basically al Qaeda. These the guys, like John

678
00:48:44,480 --> 00:48:47,079
McCain said, are like are great guys and are like,

679
00:48:47,239 --> 00:48:50,320
you know, fighting for democracy. He was talking about al Qaeda.

680
00:48:51,239 --> 00:48:53,159
John McKay waned, he said, we need to support al

681
00:48:53,199 --> 00:48:56,199
Qaeda to murder the Asad family. And I guess everybody

682
00:48:56,199 --> 00:48:59,599
else who like al Qaeda doesn't like, you know, great

683
00:48:59,599 --> 00:49:07,800
guy Thatjohn McCain. The U Putin and I mean for context,

684
00:49:07,800 --> 00:49:11,360
I mean Putin is constantly cautious, as I think people know,

685
00:49:12,719 --> 00:49:15,079
which is ironic that he's painted as this like mad,

686
00:49:15,199 --> 00:49:20,079
reckless mad man, like he's you know, he really it

687
00:49:20,559 --> 00:49:26,679
really uh disturviced uh to the Russian State that he's

688
00:49:26,880 --> 00:49:34,360
he's he's pissed poor at at decision points. I think. Okay,

689
00:49:34,519 --> 00:49:37,480
so it's not that he's prone to ultimatums. It's not

690
00:49:37,679 --> 00:49:41,719
he's prone to absolute declarations of matters of war in peace.

691
00:49:42,480 --> 00:49:48,679
But uh, Putin said that the you know, the Bath

692
00:49:48,719 --> 00:49:51,760
regime is absolutely not going to be allowed to fall,

693
00:49:52,400 --> 00:49:54,800
you know, And he said, we don't negotiate with terrorists.

694
00:49:54,880 --> 00:49:59,840
Neither does not neither does, you know, President Asad. And

695
00:50:00,000 --> 00:50:01,360
I mean that was the core of the issue too,

696
00:50:01,440 --> 00:50:03,159
like there was still there was on a tail end

697
00:50:03,159 --> 00:50:05,599
of such things, there was still an America supposedly fighting

698
00:50:05,599 --> 00:50:09,119
the global war on terror. I remember like a Bath

699
00:50:09,199 --> 00:50:12,360
party spokeswoman who I can't remember her name, which she was,

700
00:50:12,400 --> 00:50:15,920
got this like severe Arab lady of whom there are many,

701
00:50:16,039 --> 00:50:20,599
but uh, she was addressing some British media contingent and

702
00:50:20,639 --> 00:50:22,960
she said, like, we don't negotiate with terrorists. We're not

703
00:50:23,000 --> 00:50:25,159
we're not gonna let We're not gonna let al Kaita.

704
00:50:25,199 --> 00:50:26,960
We're not gonna let Isis. We're not gonna let some

705
00:50:26,960 --> 00:50:31,960
constellation of of jahadas, you know, forced us to change

706
00:50:31,960 --> 00:50:35,039
the government by murdering people, you know, And I mean

707
00:50:35,039 --> 00:50:37,679
there was this they're just kind of just like dummy

708
00:50:37,760 --> 00:50:40,639
silence by these media people. Then you know, when they're

709
00:50:40,679 --> 00:50:43,000
like the great chorus of talking about like how evil

710
00:50:43,039 --> 00:50:46,679
Lacade is. But I mean that's really this to me

711
00:50:46,880 --> 00:50:50,039
is really this is when America lost all credibility in

712
00:50:50,119 --> 00:50:53,239
foreign policy. You know, you're like you're literally saying that

713
00:50:53,480 --> 00:50:59,039
you're you're arming and equipping al Qaeda to destroy a

714
00:50:59,119 --> 00:51:02,639
secular regime led by a guy who's an eye doctor

715
00:51:02,719 --> 00:51:06,440
who was raised in London. You know, like it's I mean,

716
00:51:06,440 --> 00:51:08,960
that's it's not this isn't even like a you can't

717
00:51:08,960 --> 00:51:12,119
even raginalize. They hadn't under you know, some kind of

718
00:51:12,119 --> 00:51:16,440
appeal in Machiavellian necessity. It's just like it's just bizarre.

719
00:51:16,639 --> 00:51:20,199
It's it's just like it's just like a bizarre uh

720
00:51:20,400 --> 00:51:26,559
scorched earth position, you know, uh that only makes sense designs,

721
00:51:27,119 --> 00:51:29,880
you know. Yeah.

722
00:51:30,000 --> 00:51:32,079
Speaker 1: A buddy of mine, a buddy of mine used to say,

723
00:51:32,480 --> 00:51:34,480
how do you make excuses for what? Trying to kill

724
00:51:34,559 --> 00:51:36,920
somebody who wakes up and shaves his chin every day?

725
00:51:37,719 --> 00:51:42,800
Speaker 2: Is that It's like it's interestingly back with CNN. I mean,

726
00:51:42,840 --> 00:51:45,280
CNN was always they always had some goofs on their staff,

727
00:51:45,280 --> 00:51:47,360
but they you know, talking like thirty years ago, they

728
00:51:47,360 --> 00:51:50,480
were like they were like a normal News Network, you know,

729
00:51:50,559 --> 00:51:53,000
like they had they had goops like Peter Arnett, but

730
00:51:53,480 --> 00:51:55,119
like there was this they did this big interview with

731
00:51:55,119 --> 00:51:57,840
a Fez Astad who people viewed as a compelling guy,

732
00:51:58,400 --> 00:52:02,760
you know, and he kind of came to dominance, oh

733
00:52:02,880 --> 00:52:06,960
to the Gulf or coalition, you know, and uh, people

734
00:52:07,039 --> 00:52:09,639
seemed grateful for that, you know, and I'm sure like

735
00:52:09,679 --> 00:52:12,880
Baker State Department was. But it's like if you you know,

736
00:52:12,960 --> 00:52:17,440
his like we paid back the Asad family by arming

737
00:52:17,480 --> 00:52:20,800
al Qaeda and like calling for you know, Bishah Asad

738
00:52:20,920 --> 00:52:23,480
his family to be murdered. I mean, like like who

739
00:52:23,519 --> 00:52:26,760
does that? You know, Like you can't there's no percentage.

740
00:52:26,800 --> 00:52:30,480
And uh, you know if you if you lay down

741
00:52:30,519 --> 00:52:33,360
with pigs, you're gonna get dirty, you know. And not

742
00:52:33,360 --> 00:52:35,320
not only gonna get dirty a boy dealing with America,

743
00:52:35,400 --> 00:52:37,440
but they'll they're gonna try and like arbitrarily murder you

744
00:52:37,480 --> 00:52:39,719
at some point, you know what I mean, Like this

745
00:52:39,800 --> 00:52:44,280
isn't that it's aside from like the naked irrationality of it.

746
00:52:44,320 --> 00:52:48,119
I mean, you you can't conduct politics that way, you know.

747
00:52:48,239 --> 00:52:52,800
I mean that's uh, that's like trying to that that's

748
00:52:52,800 --> 00:52:55,320
like trying to go into business with Jeffrey Dahmer or something,

749
00:52:56,000 --> 00:53:00,480
you know, like uh, some some unhit like a Mary

750
00:53:00,559 --> 00:53:04,239
is literally like it's a second unhinte psychopath that might

751
00:53:04,280 --> 00:53:06,840
like randomly trying to murder you, like you know, but

752
00:53:06,880 --> 00:53:09,840
you're supposed to They're supposed to be something percentage and

753
00:53:10,039 --> 00:53:16,840
playing ball with with the with its ambitions. But we

754
00:53:16,880 --> 00:53:18,760
should probably wrap it up because I'm coming up on

755
00:53:18,800 --> 00:53:23,119
an hour and my our dear friend, uh Jay Burden,

756
00:53:24,039 --> 00:53:26,719
I gotta he's hosting me in a minute on his show.

757
00:53:26,840 --> 00:53:29,400
But I'm starting to break this up into two segments.

758
00:53:29,400 --> 00:53:32,000
If that's not what you had planned. But there's a

759
00:53:32,000 --> 00:53:33,079
lot here. Is that cool?

760
00:53:34,639 --> 00:53:35,119
Speaker 1: Absolutely?

761
00:53:35,159 --> 00:53:38,679
Speaker 2: All right? Yeah, yeah, let me know when you want

762
00:53:38,679 --> 00:53:41,639
to complete part two and we'll get it done.

763
00:53:42,639 --> 00:53:45,159
Speaker 1: Sure as per normal. Two plugs.

764
00:53:45,400 --> 00:53:48,519
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, for those who don't know, I'm sure everybody

765
00:53:48,559 --> 00:53:51,440
probably does know already. Like I'm back on Twitter. It's

766
00:53:51,440 --> 00:53:54,800
like the same account. It's at Capital r e a

767
00:53:55,000 --> 00:53:59,920
L underscore number seven h on as seven seven seven.

768
00:54:00,119 --> 00:54:04,320
I'm on substack real Thomas seven seven seven at subsec

769
00:54:04,360 --> 00:54:09,199
dot com. I'm on Instagram, I I'm on I'm on Telegram,

770
00:54:09,280 --> 00:54:13,079
I'm I got a website, it's number seven hm S

771
00:54:13,079 --> 00:54:16,519
seven seven seven dot com. Like finding all those places

772
00:54:16,559 --> 00:54:20,000
and I got like a merse line that people seem

773
00:54:20,039 --> 00:54:24,280
to like, and I'm very honored by that. Put they

774
00:54:24,519 --> 00:54:27,760
put that in the description line, if you would please.

775
00:54:28,719 --> 00:54:32,719
Speaker 1: Always yeah, some good Eric Craig does some good, good works.

776
00:54:32,760 --> 00:54:34,639
Speaker 2: The man I really owe him a lot, Like he's

777
00:54:34,639 --> 00:54:36,320
a great I mean, he's like he's just a good dude,

778
00:54:36,320 --> 00:54:40,559
but his designs are really a really tremendous man. Yeah, definitely.

779
00:54:41,960 --> 00:54:47,039
Speaker 1: All right, Thomas, thank you very much. I want to

780
00:54:47,039 --> 00:54:51,360
welcome everyone back to the Peca Show. Thomas is back

781
00:54:51,960 --> 00:54:56,639
for more Syria and Russia talk. How are you doing, Thomas, I'm.

782
00:54:56,519 --> 00:55:01,760
Speaker 2: Well, thank you. I'm not It's been a minute since

783
00:55:02,079 --> 00:55:06,920
we recorded, so if I'm repeating myself, please correct me.

784
00:55:07,039 --> 00:55:12,800
So I can't remember exactly where I left off. I

785
00:55:12,840 --> 00:55:17,719
think I think we left off approximately where I was

786
00:55:17,760 --> 00:55:21,719
talking about some of the more recent scholarship on the

787
00:55:21,800 --> 00:55:22,960
nineteen seventy three war.

788
00:55:24,320 --> 00:55:26,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it, That's exactly where it was.

789
00:55:26,079 --> 00:55:29,679
Speaker 2: Yeah, which has something of an outside significance. It's warranted.

790
00:55:29,679 --> 00:55:31,800
I don't I don't mean outsized in the sense that

791
00:55:33,039 --> 00:55:39,800
it's emphasized on duly that really changed the regional security

792
00:55:39,840 --> 00:55:44,159
paradigm in the Near East, exposed a lot of idea

793
00:55:44,199 --> 00:55:47,079
of weaknesses. I mean, don't get me wrong, ideaf on

794
00:55:47,119 --> 00:55:54,440
the Egyptian front, they performed exceedingly well. The Syrians, however,

795
00:55:54,519 --> 00:56:01,280
caught them lacking in some key capacities, you know, and

796
00:56:01,320 --> 00:56:06,440
one of the reasons why Israel is so fixated on Iran. Admittedly,

797
00:56:08,000 --> 00:56:11,000
then Yah was very clumsy in the way he articulates propaganda.

798
00:56:11,039 --> 00:56:12,840
I mean that that's just a fact that I don't

799
00:56:12,880 --> 00:56:16,639
think that can be denied. Ariel Sharon didn't have a

800
00:56:16,639 --> 00:56:21,639
lot of finesse, but Sharon was something of a military

801
00:56:21,719 --> 00:56:26,880
prodigy at these comparative terms. And obviously then Yah, who

802
00:56:26,960 --> 00:56:36,480
doesn't possess that skill set. However, the his blass Syria,

803
00:56:39,360 --> 00:56:44,559
the Syrian Arab Army, you know, and in the art

804
00:56:44,599 --> 00:56:47,159
forms of the Russian Federation. You've kind of got to

805
00:56:47,159 --> 00:56:54,360
look at all those actors. It's kind of operationally integrated.

806
00:56:55,519 --> 00:56:59,360
You know, there's nothing conspiratorial there. I mean, these are

807
00:56:59,400 --> 00:57:02,679
these are israel primary ops, okay, And you know we've

808
00:57:02,679 --> 00:57:08,880
talked about before and anybody who is it all knowledgeable

809
00:57:08,880 --> 00:57:16,599
about the conflict paradigm dynamics understands that Israel and NATO

810
00:57:18,159 --> 00:57:21,719
to varying degrees back you know, these Salafi elements. Okay,

811
00:57:23,480 --> 00:57:29,320
that's something of a detonation strategy, you know, because they

812
00:57:29,360 --> 00:57:35,239
identify their their primary ops is is Syria. Hisbil Uh

813
00:57:36,719 --> 00:57:39,440
you know, hasibial a slash Iran. I mean, in all

814
00:57:39,480 --> 00:57:42,199
but name his was kind of the Iranian foreign Legion,

815
00:57:43,480 --> 00:57:47,199
and the Russian Federation is part of that is like

816
00:57:47,199 --> 00:57:50,239
an essential part of the constellation. And this goes way back.

817
00:57:51,519 --> 00:57:56,880
And that's Keith understanding the state of war and peace

818
00:57:59,400 --> 00:58:05,000
in and occupied Palestine, and and and and with respect

819
00:58:05,039 --> 00:58:07,880
to the Jewish state, they saidly so they I mean,

820
00:58:08,039 --> 00:58:13,639
Israel essentially has two problems. They've got this internal crisis,

821
00:58:13,880 --> 00:58:18,880
demographic crisis relating to the fact that Israel is a

822
00:58:19,440 --> 00:58:28,920
racial state, you know, and they've got this unmanageable majoritarian population.

823
00:58:29,119 --> 00:58:35,199
It's like super majoritarian population. You know, it's not their

824
00:58:35,239 --> 00:58:41,360
strategic situation is not unlike they're the Republic of South

825
00:58:41,400 --> 00:58:45,800
Africa around the time of Bota, you know, when the

826
00:58:46,119 --> 00:58:49,480
when the kind of permanent emergency set in. You know,

827
00:58:49,679 --> 00:58:53,880
I mean, I'm not I'm not comparing Israel to the

828
00:58:53,920 --> 00:58:57,719
Boer Republic at all, unlike cultural or ideological or ethical

829
00:58:57,760 --> 00:59:00,800
terms or anything like that. But in terms of the

830
00:59:00,800 --> 00:59:07,199
military situation, there's a parallel, you know. And so they've

831
00:59:07,199 --> 00:59:13,360
got this internal, this ongoing internal emergency. They've also got

832
00:59:13,360 --> 00:59:19,559
this geostrategic problem, you know, with respect to what they

833
00:59:19,599 --> 00:59:25,000
call the Shia Crescent, which I mean, she are obviously

834
00:59:25,119 --> 00:59:32,599
very much the minority in darl Islam. But there's there's

835
00:59:32,639 --> 00:59:37,679
a critical kind of like the Shia heartland, you know,

836
00:59:37,880 --> 00:59:43,760
is is I ran in Iraq obviously, and it cuts

837
00:59:43,800 --> 00:59:49,880
across the region in the Webanon, you know, So it

838
00:59:53,400 --> 01:00:01,280
there's a that's that's a very dawn thing. That's a

839
01:00:01,360 --> 01:00:07,000
very daunting arrangement, you know, in a general war. It's

840
01:00:07,039 --> 01:00:09,320
a discussion for another time, but it kind of begs

841
01:00:09,360 --> 01:00:16,599
the question like why exactly Israel maintains nuclear arms. You know,

842
01:00:16,679 --> 01:00:20,599
some people argued it was a prestige and cloud move

843
01:00:21,199 --> 01:00:26,599
during the Cold War. Being Prebaal, he basically suggests it's

844
01:00:26,639 --> 01:00:35,320
like a Samson options sort of thing, whereby people wouldn't

845
01:00:35,360 --> 01:00:39,719
let Tel Aviv fall because there'd be this uncertainty relating

846
01:00:39,760 --> 01:00:42,400
to what they would do with these weapons of mass destruction.

847
01:00:43,440 --> 01:00:46,880
I think that's a bit too imprecise, Like it's not

848
01:00:46,920 --> 01:00:53,519
really a military imperative. That doesn't mean it's impossible. And

849
01:00:53,679 --> 01:00:59,920
Israel is kind of strange in the way they approached

850
01:01:00,079 --> 01:01:06,639
things because they're a totally abnormal state, invokes novelty a

851
01:01:06,679 --> 01:01:12,599
lot and discussions of you know, dialectical processes and things,

852
01:01:12,639 --> 01:01:27,599
and but he was he was kind of reluctant during

853
01:01:27,599 --> 01:01:31,920
the Cold War to like diagnose, like then current strategic matters.

854
01:01:32,960 --> 01:01:35,480
But the exception was kind of the case of Israel,

855
01:01:35,559 --> 01:01:39,519
and he made the point that you know, Israel is

856
01:01:39,559 --> 01:01:42,320
not really Israel's not an anachronism in the way some

857
01:01:43,159 --> 01:01:46,320
people on the left would talk about it and still

858
01:01:46,400 --> 01:01:48,840
do to some degrees. It's not like it's not like

859
01:01:48,920 --> 01:01:53,599
it's a retrograde state like colonial power or something, despite

860
01:01:55,360 --> 01:01:57,920
you know, a lot of the a lot of the

861
01:01:57,960 --> 01:02:02,360
propaganda in the era of that effect that it derived

862
01:02:03,480 --> 01:02:07,760
from the same kind of like dialectical process and like

863
01:02:09,599 --> 01:02:15,960
causal nexus sociologically, historically, ideologically speaking, is the Third Reich

864
01:02:16,039 --> 01:02:18,960
in the Soviet Union, Like that's why it's so strange.

865
01:02:20,440 --> 01:02:25,079
I mean, obviously, Department of State, in the executive branch,

866
01:02:25,840 --> 01:02:29,159
they're constantly claiming it's a liberal democracy, because I mean

867
01:02:29,199 --> 01:02:34,559
that that's just a floating signifier that's suggests moral approval.

868
01:02:35,159 --> 01:02:39,280
But even even where that's not the case, it would

869
01:02:39,320 --> 01:02:43,480
be difficult to describe what exactly Israel is, you know,

870
01:02:45,039 --> 01:02:51,559
it just would be because it's it's it's not just

871
01:02:51,559 --> 01:02:58,599
an outlier like North Korea is owing to its to

872
01:02:58,719 --> 01:03:01,480
a strategic situation. And it's not like one of these

873
01:03:01,480 --> 01:03:05,599
emirates or one of these small countries or constellation of

874
01:03:07,880 --> 01:03:10,320
a sovereignties that you know, like rolled by a monarch

875
01:03:10,400 --> 01:03:13,079
or something. It's it's something totally different than that, and

876
01:03:13,119 --> 01:03:16,000
it very much belongs to the twentieth century, the twentieth

877
01:03:16,039 --> 01:03:22,119
century dialectic. But anyway, I kind of bring it back.

878
01:03:24,400 --> 01:03:28,880
The consensus these days is essentially that the seventy three

879
01:03:29,000 --> 01:03:38,679
war was a stalemate. Okay. David A. Korn he was

880
01:03:39,280 --> 01:03:43,440
a diplomat back when Department of State was still a

881
01:03:43,519 --> 01:03:47,880
triating quality people. And he's he's written a lot, he's

882
01:03:47,880 --> 01:03:53,039
contributed a lot of articles, especially to publications like Foreign Affairs,

883
01:03:54,159 --> 01:03:58,719
you know, things like that. He served he served for

884
01:03:58,840 --> 01:04:03,639
some time until eve as it's called the political officer

885
01:04:04,239 --> 01:04:07,920
and Hansho what's called the political section. That's kind of

886
01:04:07,960 --> 01:04:14,679
like a halfway. If you're in that role, you're kind

887
01:04:14,679 --> 01:04:20,119
of halfway between an intelligence officer and a diplomat, you know.

888
01:04:20,199 --> 01:04:25,400
I mean, everybody who's assigned to a diplomatic posting is

889
01:04:26,679 --> 01:04:32,280
in some ways an intelligence representative under light diplomatic cover,

890
01:04:32,400 --> 01:04:38,079
and everybody knows that. But guys like Coren they deal

891
01:04:38,159 --> 01:04:42,760
more in diagnostic analysis and things, and they're then they're

892
01:04:42,760 --> 01:04:45,039
not just going to cocktail parties and and kind of

893
01:04:45,039 --> 01:04:51,639
trying to dominate, you know, palace intrigues and things that

894
01:04:53,280 --> 01:04:55,599
determine what the true seat of power is. You know,

895
01:04:55,639 --> 01:05:00,679
they they've got a more they got more serious roles

896
01:05:00,719 --> 01:05:10,960
in that. And he made the point pretty consistently that

897
01:05:11,599 --> 01:05:16,440
one of the reasons why the paradigm is so volatile

898
01:05:17,880 --> 01:05:24,000
Israel contra the that Shia Crescent, the states that constitute

899
01:05:24,039 --> 01:05:28,559
that you a strategic concept. One of the reasons that's

900
01:05:28,559 --> 01:05:35,639
so volatile is because you know, there was the outcome

901
01:05:35,760 --> 01:05:37,559
was it's not now it was a no clear victor

902
01:05:37,559 --> 01:05:40,880
on the Syrian front. Is the outcome is poorly understood,

903
01:05:41,880 --> 01:05:45,719
you know, especially in Israel. It was retrospectively deemed a

904
01:05:45,800 --> 01:05:52,199
success because there was some big there, there's some there's

905
01:05:52,239 --> 01:06:00,599
some major kills scored by the idea app in some

906
01:06:00,639 --> 01:06:03,719
cases where they were pretty seriously outnumbered, like combined arms.

907
01:06:06,039 --> 01:06:10,559
But the fact that they kind of convinced themselves of this,

908
01:06:11,079 --> 01:06:13,960
they led to a false sense of security, especially on

909
01:06:14,000 --> 01:06:19,480
the political side of things. The military IDEAF whatever it's problems,

910
01:06:19,880 --> 01:06:23,679
it's it's military is pretty serious because they have to

911
01:06:23,679 --> 01:06:35,119
be to sustain the status quo, you know, and as

912
01:06:35,119 --> 01:06:39,039
people on the left, they don't so much anymore because

913
01:06:38,760 --> 01:06:43,920
the intellectual left is kind of dead. But during the

914
01:06:44,000 --> 01:06:46,360
Cold War and even beyond the event into the nineties,

915
01:06:46,760 --> 01:06:49,480
they make the point that IDF is I mean, yeah,

916
01:06:49,480 --> 01:06:54,599
they've got a National service law in place. You know,

917
01:06:54,639 --> 01:06:57,920
it's like young people get drafted, but generally they get

918
01:06:58,000 --> 01:07:01,440
drafted into support roles like you're talking about like special operations,

919
01:07:01,519 --> 01:07:05,079
capable elements and like infantry elements. You basically have to

920
01:07:05,159 --> 01:07:09,199
sign up for that, and the guys who do, they're

921
01:07:09,199 --> 01:07:13,239
going to be pretty racialized in the first place. That's

922
01:07:13,280 --> 01:07:16,400
why they want to do that kind of work. And

923
01:07:16,480 --> 01:07:18,840
even if they weren't before, it's going to become that way.

924
01:07:19,599 --> 01:07:22,440
You know, Like they there's no pretension in an army,

925
01:07:22,599 --> 01:07:26,119
like the idef of like, hey, we're a political we

926
01:07:26,159 --> 01:07:29,119
don't you know, take any position. We're just we're just

927
01:07:29,199 --> 01:07:32,519
like loyal to the state. I mean, part of that

928
01:07:32,599 --> 01:07:35,480
is because the fact that this you know, that Israel's

929
01:07:36,760 --> 01:07:40,639
find itself in a ross and creed. But part of

930
01:07:40,679 --> 01:07:45,000
it also is that, you know, again, like Israel's not

931
01:07:47,239 --> 01:07:51,000
it didn't develop organically like a European country did or something,

932
01:07:51,760 --> 01:07:54,440
So there's not there's not this tradition of like an

933
01:07:54,599 --> 01:07:59,960
Israeli state that's you know, they like the post medieval

934
01:08:00,119 --> 01:08:03,760
heritage of the people who live there or something. You know,

935
01:08:06,360 --> 01:08:11,679
Israel is the Jewish state. The way it's configured isn't

936
01:08:11,719 --> 01:08:17,399
really important so long as it is capable of sustaining

937
01:08:18,479 --> 01:08:27,199
that demographic balance and being able to perpetuate its demographic

938
01:08:27,279 --> 01:08:34,079
supremacy despite being massively outnumbered. So you're not gonna have

939
01:08:34,439 --> 01:08:38,880
I mean, even if the just under those conditions like

940
01:08:38,960 --> 01:08:40,880
you can't mean, I guess I'm getting as you can't

941
01:08:40,920 --> 01:08:45,920
extricate those conditions from like ideological and parabise. Okay, So

942
01:08:48,399 --> 01:08:52,680
that's probably a force multiplier in some ways. Like when

943
01:08:52,760 --> 01:08:57,159
IDF actually goes into action, it can also lead to

944
01:08:57,239 --> 01:09:03,760
some bad outcomes because it's the institutions like that, particularly

945
01:09:03,800 --> 01:09:08,279
military institutions. We're having the wrong opinion can be interpreted

946
01:09:08,319 --> 01:09:12,079
as like a breaching doctrine or something. It becomes this

947
01:09:12,199 --> 01:09:18,920
kind of like ideological ghetto, you know. And Ehud Barak,

948
01:09:21,199 --> 01:09:23,880
he's really the Israeli guy I pay attention to. Okay,

949
01:09:25,800 --> 01:09:31,319
he's an interesting guy. He was a military man, you know,

950
01:09:31,399 --> 01:09:37,239
like career idef type, and he's not a particularly charming guy,

951
01:09:38,880 --> 01:09:42,640
but he's really kind of been the only champion oft

952
01:09:42,680 --> 01:09:46,800
jitsuk ra Being's memory, you know, we're being of course,

953
01:09:46,880 --> 01:09:52,159
is unceremoniously murdered in ninety five by this crazy young

954
01:09:52,279 --> 01:09:56,520
guy who's like rotting in prison now. But you know,

955
01:10:00,079 --> 01:10:03,720
I I'm not gonna say there was some conspiracy to

956
01:10:03,800 --> 01:10:06,640
whack Rabine, but a lot of people were happy that

957
01:10:06,960 --> 01:10:11,039
that that that that happened, and from that point forward,

958
01:10:12,159 --> 01:10:15,359
Israel became a one party state, you know, and Rabine

959
01:10:15,479 --> 01:10:21,479
was going to Rabine was was looking to commit to

960
01:10:21,560 --> 01:10:25,720
some way out of the racial war. Okay, I don't

961
01:10:25,720 --> 01:10:28,199
think that would have I don't think you ever would

962
01:10:28,199 --> 01:10:32,880
have seen any kind of like formal equality between the populations.

963
01:10:33,800 --> 01:10:36,359
Nor was Rabine just gonna throw his hands up and

964
01:10:37,600 --> 01:10:41,800
be forced into the position that the clerk was in

965
01:10:41,920 --> 01:10:45,479
South Africa and just say, okay, we're you know, any

966
01:10:45,880 --> 01:10:49,279
any any any man or woman of majority within Israel Palestine,

967
01:10:49,680 --> 01:10:52,560
or we're just gonna have you know where, We're gonna

968
01:10:52,560 --> 01:10:55,439
give them the ballot and and see where the ships followed.

969
01:10:55,439 --> 01:10:59,920
That wouldn't have happened, but some kind of extra case

970
01:11:00,079 --> 01:11:09,359
and from grant apartheide would have happened. Okay, But Barack, Ehud, Barack,

971
01:11:11,279 --> 01:11:14,359
he's the guy who made the point as well, that

972
01:11:17,079 --> 01:11:22,279
really was keeping that Nyahu alive politically. It's the fact

973
01:11:22,319 --> 01:11:27,199
that swapping out the civilian executive or kind of like

974
01:11:27,279 --> 01:11:31,319
rendering it headless, like if you Donta was removed by

975
01:11:31,359 --> 01:11:33,800
no confidence or if he was indicted, which you may

976
01:11:33,920 --> 01:11:39,159
very well be if and when this war results, but

977
01:11:40,199 --> 01:11:44,199
just perverse incentives that kind of pursue like bad strategy

978
01:11:44,319 --> 01:11:47,000
is what I'm getting at, okay, and and what Barack

979
01:11:47,159 --> 01:11:55,000
is getting it. You know, people turn around, I know

980
01:11:55,119 --> 01:11:58,039
what I hear from them, and they say, like, well,

981
01:11:58,880 --> 01:12:01,239
how does real performing so well? If what you say

982
01:12:01,359 --> 01:12:05,840
is true? Well, two things like I said, We're talking

983
01:12:05,840 --> 01:12:12,760
about basically two totally different conflicts that are related and

984
01:12:13,279 --> 01:12:17,880
increasingly is she and soon you are breaching the sectarian

985
01:12:17,960 --> 01:12:25,960
divide to tentatively cooperate against the common Zionist enemy. But

986
01:12:27,439 --> 01:12:31,000
the gods of situation and in the situation in the

987
01:12:31,119 --> 01:12:35,680
Levant and syria Is are two different things. I don't

988
01:12:35,680 --> 01:12:38,479
feel comfortable going as far as to say that they're

989
01:12:38,520 --> 01:12:41,840
just like two fronts of the same conflict. I mean,

990
01:12:41,880 --> 01:12:47,479
there's like a common nexus and causes, but it's more

991
01:12:47,560 --> 01:12:53,159
complicated than that. However, you know, Idea got caught lacking

992
01:12:53,319 --> 01:12:57,680
when Hamas assaulted. I think I covered this on a pod,

993
01:12:58,079 --> 01:13:05,000
so if I'm repeating myself, forgive me. You know, on

994
01:13:05,119 --> 01:13:12,319
October seventh, Price it's almost been a year. But when

995
01:13:12,359 --> 01:13:19,920
Hamas breached the barrier fence, they assumed that the lead

996
01:13:20,000 --> 01:13:23,359
element was gonna get wiped out, you know, basically like

997
01:13:23,439 --> 01:13:26,439
a company sized element like storm to the mainline of resistance.

998
01:13:26,920 --> 01:13:31,640
But when they did that, there was nobody there, you know,

999
01:13:31,760 --> 01:13:34,880
like these Raelis were. It was like a skeleton crew

1000
01:13:36,359 --> 01:13:42,720
that was not abiding any kind of alert deployment at all,

1001
01:13:43,159 --> 01:13:46,000
Like some of them were literally sleeping, and Hamas just

1002
01:13:46,239 --> 01:13:50,239
like waxed them, and then when they broke through, immediately

1003
01:13:50,960 --> 01:13:53,760
Hamas like immediately started storming the breach with like as

1004
01:13:53,840 --> 01:13:56,600
many men as they could get through as possible. You know.

1005
01:13:57,800 --> 01:13:59,960
Then ID have like swarm drones on him and combine

1006
01:14:00,079 --> 01:14:02,239
garb and sort of like hosing them with fire. But

1007
01:14:02,399 --> 01:14:04,640
my point is that shouldn't have happened in the first place,

1008
01:14:05,359 --> 01:14:08,960
you know that feel like if when that'd be like

1009
01:14:09,000 --> 01:14:10,720
I point, it became clear the Russians were going to

1010
01:14:10,800 --> 01:14:16,479
like assault you know, don Bass to like relieve they're

1011
01:14:16,560 --> 01:14:20,880
people who were under pressure there from these guys who

1012
01:14:20,920 --> 01:14:24,039
were like supposedly like irregulars like Azo, but were very

1013
01:14:24,079 --> 01:14:33,279
obviously you know, very obviously like acting as official you know,

1014
01:14:33,319 --> 01:14:35,840
and in the service of the Kya regime. That'd be

1015
01:14:35,920 --> 01:14:37,800
like a point. It became clear like Russia was going

1016
01:14:37,840 --> 01:14:42,159
to assault these like as of guys, and uh, the

1017
01:14:42,279 --> 01:14:47,239
Ukrainian armed forces like preemptively like assaulted them then like

1018
01:14:47,359 --> 01:14:50,560
broke through the Russian mainline resistance like ended up in Russia.

1019
01:14:50,880 --> 01:14:54,319
Then like the Russians had to reconstitute like bring up

1020
01:14:54,359 --> 01:14:58,640
their bring up bring their firepower to bear on them,

1021
01:14:58,760 --> 01:15:00,319
like in the form of like armor and you know,

1022
01:15:01,239 --> 01:15:05,520
like hyperbard artillery and stuff like get the situation under control.

1023
01:15:05,760 --> 01:15:08,439
Like if that had happened, like Putin would have been gone.

1024
01:15:09,600 --> 01:15:13,000
You know that that's that's that's a catastrophic fuck up.

1025
01:15:14,199 --> 01:15:17,960
So you know, I'm not I'm not saying like, oh,

1026
01:15:18,039 --> 01:15:22,000
IDF is like a shit force, because they're not. But

1027
01:15:24,279 --> 01:15:27,279
there's real problems there, okay, And this isn't just like

1028
01:15:27,359 --> 01:15:29,119
some like intelligence failure or something.

1029
01:15:30,800 --> 01:15:37,960
Speaker 1: But moving on, there were, like immediately immediately after that,

1030
01:15:38,079 --> 01:15:41,199
there were I was tracking people in the State Department

1031
01:15:41,239 --> 01:15:45,039
who are retiring, and there was one specifically, I can't

1032
01:15:45,039 --> 01:15:48,119
remember his name, but I did an episode with someone

1033
01:15:48,199 --> 01:15:53,399
else talking about it. Was that he retired because he

1034
01:15:53,600 --> 01:15:56,880
was in charge of getting the IDF and getting foreign

1035
01:15:56,960 --> 01:16:02,079
militaries are weapons and he said that there were divisions

1036
01:16:02,119 --> 01:16:05,279
in the IDF that he was not comfortable with arming.

1037
01:16:06,840 --> 01:16:10,359
Speaker 2: Yeah. I I'm sure that's true, and they've got real problems,

1038
01:16:11,319 --> 01:16:14,239
you know. Like I I'm not some expert. I know

1039
01:16:14,359 --> 01:16:18,560
something about Judaism, like the like the faith. I know

1040
01:16:18,680 --> 01:16:21,119
something about their heritages of people. I mean I do.

1041
01:16:22,920 --> 01:16:26,119
I am not some expert on the internal situation in Israel,

1042
01:16:26,279 --> 01:16:33,239
but I do know that hard line Zionus of the

1043
01:16:33,359 --> 01:16:38,840
kind who like sustain the military apparatus. Those people are

1044
01:16:38,960 --> 01:16:40,720
aging and there's not a lot of young people to

1045
01:16:40,840 --> 01:16:44,000
replace them, Like there is a hard line Jewish right,

1046
01:16:45,000 --> 01:16:50,119
but more and more it's that's kind to be constituted

1047
01:16:50,199 --> 01:16:53,720
by the people who are called correctly or incorrectly in

1048
01:16:53,760 --> 01:16:57,520
clogial terms like the ultra Orthodox. And they have a

1049
01:16:57,560 --> 01:17:01,680
strange they have a strange and somewhat contentious relationship with

1050
01:17:01,760 --> 01:17:05,880
the military. I mean, Israel's got real problems, you know.

1051
01:17:06,000 --> 01:17:10,840
I mean they that they can't be denied. So I

1052
01:17:11,239 --> 01:17:15,239
don't doubt that guy's testimony for a minute, But I mean,

1053
01:17:15,279 --> 01:17:17,279
like why would he lie about that. That doesn't if

1054
01:17:17,319 --> 01:17:19,199
he was going to try and make if he was

1055
01:17:19,239 --> 01:17:20,920
going to drop some kind of cap to try and

1056
01:17:21,159 --> 01:17:23,600
make the situation seem less severe than it was, or

1057
01:17:23,680 --> 01:17:25,800
to try and make Israel look like more cable with

1058
01:17:25,880 --> 01:17:30,560
your role. Like you wouldn't say that, but you know

1059
01:17:30,840 --> 01:17:36,760
the degree of which two you know, Israel had to

1060
01:17:36,880 --> 01:17:41,159
kind of Israel kind of had to win in Syria, Okay,

1061
01:17:41,439 --> 01:17:43,399
if they could have like knocked out a sod and

1062
01:17:43,560 --> 01:17:47,039
like crushed the string era of army and also like

1063
01:17:47,479 --> 01:17:52,359
hit Hesiblah and like really really hard because the idea's

1064
01:17:52,359 --> 01:17:55,680
been smarting from from their fight with HESBLA in two

1065
01:17:55,680 --> 01:18:00,399
thousand and six for almost like twenty years now. You know,

1066
01:18:01,279 --> 01:18:03,439
they really kind of needed to make a statement like that.

1067
01:18:03,760 --> 01:18:07,800
And if if it's if Damasks had gone down in

1068
01:18:07,920 --> 01:18:14,840
flames and Syria kind of became partitioned, they were the

1069
01:18:14,880 --> 01:18:18,079
would have been totally fine with like these lunatic killers

1070
01:18:18,159 --> 01:18:21,319
like isis controlling like some chunk of it, you know.

1071
01:18:21,920 --> 01:18:24,159
Then they wanted to like basically like you know, create

1072
01:18:24,239 --> 01:18:27,279
some like fake like Kurdistan like through like you know,

1073
01:18:27,319 --> 01:18:30,079
a swath of Iraq and like assimilate part of Syria

1074
01:18:30,119 --> 01:18:34,760
into that, and then probably like have some some zone

1075
01:18:34,880 --> 01:18:37,399
that was like occupied by America but it was technically

1076
01:18:37,560 --> 01:18:40,039
like you know the a d m Z or something

1077
01:18:40,159 --> 01:18:42,760
or some kind of like free zone. So it's like okay,

1078
01:18:42,840 --> 01:18:48,239
then like basically like they've sown up, they've sown up

1079
01:18:48,279 --> 01:18:51,439
their problem. And also too then like the Russians can't

1080
01:18:51,520 --> 01:18:54,279
like access like their key port there, like the Russian

1081
01:18:54,279 --> 01:18:57,039
Our Federation can't deploy there. That would have solved the

1082
01:18:57,239 --> 01:19:01,199
like basically like that that would have solved like one

1083
01:19:01,279 --> 01:19:04,640
half of the equation, you know, and then they could

1084
01:19:04,680 --> 01:19:09,720
have brought like full firepower to bear and you know,

1085
01:19:09,760 --> 01:19:12,399
one hundred percent of forces and being like to bear

1086
01:19:12,600 --> 01:19:15,720
like on Gaza, and there's really nothing anybody could do

1087
01:19:15,840 --> 01:19:19,039
about it. So the Russian the Russians really food barred

1088
01:19:19,119 --> 01:19:22,279
their program. Like the degree of which they did, like

1089
01:19:22,399 --> 01:19:26,079
can't be overstated. That's why like when I say to people,

1090
01:19:26,199 --> 01:19:28,640
like when I point out to them the fact that

1091
01:19:29,640 --> 01:19:32,359
you know, like the Ukrainian War is literally like a

1092
01:19:32,439 --> 01:19:35,199
secondary front. I mean, it's not secondary to people there.

1093
01:19:35,279 --> 01:19:38,279
It's a disaster and it's scale, it's it's it's just

1094
01:19:38,359 --> 01:19:45,439
like a they're is suffering and death is staggering. But

1095
01:19:45,800 --> 01:19:49,039
I'm saying, like to Israel, that's like a secondary front

1096
01:19:49,960 --> 01:19:52,600
where they can bring pressure to bear on Russia. And

1097
01:19:52,680 --> 01:19:55,079
the fact that when I raise that to people, they

1098
01:19:55,199 --> 01:19:57,039
look at me like why would you say that, It's

1099
01:19:57,079 --> 01:20:00,279
like you really don't understand that Russian Israel are like

1100
01:20:00,279 --> 01:20:03,439
like hate each other. You know, they're like literally like

1101
01:20:03,560 --> 01:20:08,560
mortal enemies. You know. It's like the fact that Putin

1102
01:20:08,600 --> 01:20:12,199
doesn't like call them the K word and like shake

1103
01:20:12,279 --> 01:20:14,359
his fist in the ear and call for them to

1104
01:20:15,800 --> 01:20:18,640
be destroyed, like you know, like you sound like Arab

1105
01:20:18,760 --> 01:20:22,680
strong man or something. I guess people are feel literally minded,

1106
01:20:22,720 --> 01:20:25,319
they can't like compute this or something. But the fact

1107
01:20:25,359 --> 01:20:28,600
that like you know, likeever Offen going around like calling

1108
01:20:28,640 --> 01:20:31,680
for some like pogram of like Ukrainian jewelry or something like.

1109
01:20:31,800 --> 01:20:34,920
I don't know, I don't know how people can't discern this.

1110
01:20:35,159 --> 01:20:42,439
But that's really what's so dangerous about this situation. And

1111
01:20:42,520 --> 01:20:46,800
that's also why it's also more like NATO's being so reckless.

1112
01:20:47,439 --> 01:20:49,119
You know, if it was just a question of we

1113
01:20:49,239 --> 01:20:54,640
want to murk the Russians and moving forward, you know,

1114
01:20:54,720 --> 01:20:58,000
we want to forward deployment where we can. That's like

1115
01:20:58,359 --> 01:21:05,880
farther east and central these are the you know, the

1116
01:21:05,960 --> 01:21:10,239
central Asian land mass. You know, then then Germany is

1117
01:21:11,640 --> 01:21:13,880
that America wouldn't be going about it. And it's kind

1118
01:21:13,920 --> 01:21:17,560
of like just like catastrophically reckless way. It's because it's

1119
01:21:18,840 --> 01:21:23,239
you know it, this is this is a this is

1120
01:21:23,279 --> 01:21:26,880
like a key front of basically of of Israel's war

1121
01:21:27,000 --> 01:21:30,199
to survive and perpetuate it as like the Jewish racial state,

1122
01:21:31,039 --> 01:21:34,560
you know, that's also what it likes the Lenski's in

1123
01:21:34,640 --> 01:21:39,600
there like outfront like that that's not good optics at all.

1124
01:21:40,079 --> 01:21:42,359
And it's not just that the Ukraineism and Alibi like,

1125
01:21:42,399 --> 01:21:44,600
oh no, we're not you know that this isn't some

1126
01:21:44,760 --> 01:21:49,439
criminal psychotic regime. Look we've got we've got the Jewish

1127
01:21:49,479 --> 01:21:53,239
guy out FRONTO. You know, it's involved in the entertainment

1128
01:21:53,319 --> 01:21:56,600
business and you know we're a normal country. Like that's

1129
01:21:56,640 --> 01:22:03,199
not why they're doing it. It's because uh, there's no way, uh,

1130
01:22:03,760 --> 01:22:06,279
there's no way some like boyish front man would would

1131
01:22:06,319 --> 01:22:08,880
be trusted there because I at any minute, like he

1132
01:22:08,920 --> 01:22:13,039
could flip, even if he wasn't intending to that, he

1133
01:22:13,119 --> 01:22:16,760
could find himself in a Melosovitch situation. We're suddenly like

1134
01:22:16,800 --> 01:22:18,479
a bunch of band right, So like, look, we're like

1135
01:22:18,560 --> 01:22:21,079
tired of this, you know, like we were not gonna

1136
01:22:21,880 --> 01:22:23,720
like we're gonna keep killing the Ivans, but we're not.

1137
01:22:23,920 --> 01:22:28,560
We're not taking orders from from his zid they call them.

1138
01:22:30,560 --> 01:22:37,239
But that's you know, that's and Seria is an important

1139
01:22:37,279 --> 01:22:42,520
country and it's got an outsized significance. There was I

1140
01:22:42,600 --> 01:22:48,239
know that your friend he was asking forgive me for

1141
01:22:48,359 --> 01:22:51,600
being a little scared, or he was asking about why

1142
01:22:51,640 --> 01:22:55,760
there's Panthers in Syria and Lebanon. One of the reasons why,

1143
01:22:55,880 --> 01:22:58,439
part of it is because of the peculiar dynamics of

1144
01:22:58,439 --> 01:23:01,520
the Lebanese Civil War that went on for decades, and

1145
01:23:01,600 --> 01:23:03,840
then the French were kind of backing all sides in

1146
01:23:03,920 --> 01:23:05,920
that war depending on like who had the upper hand.

1147
01:23:06,199 --> 01:23:09,600
That's what the French do, and the French like shove

1148
01:23:09,680 --> 01:23:17,199
some Panthers into the breach on on the Arab side.

1149
01:23:18,199 --> 01:23:25,119
But there were a few dozen Vermacht officers who serving

1150
01:23:25,199 --> 01:23:31,720
the Court of Nasa as well as in Syria both

1151
01:23:31,760 --> 01:23:37,680
before and after, you know, the Syrian Bath conquered the

1152
01:23:37,680 --> 01:23:45,960
political culture and the Czechs the Skoda Arms Works, which

1153
01:23:46,000 --> 01:23:49,319
is kind of like the Czechs make great weapons, they're

1154
01:23:49,359 --> 01:23:52,960
like the Transylvanian Saxons historically, and like the Skoda Arms Works,

1155
01:23:53,560 --> 01:23:57,600
that's kind of like the Czech counterpart to Krupp that

1156
01:23:57,800 --> 01:24:01,760
during a comunist Czechoslovakia there are so many Panzers and

1157
01:24:01,920 --> 01:24:06,359
like various like warsaw packed armies and adjacent armies. They

1158
01:24:06,399 --> 01:24:11,000
started like manufacturing replacing parts for panders and also too

1159
01:24:11,119 --> 01:24:15,159
obviously that's what that that's that's what these Vermachs guys

1160
01:24:15,199 --> 01:24:17,920
were familiar with, you know, and that's then that's why

1161
01:24:18,399 --> 01:24:21,920
that's the armor they knew how to fight in and

1162
01:24:22,079 --> 01:24:25,000
habituating yourself to a new tank model that you can

1163
01:24:25,119 --> 01:24:27,760
do it if you're a skilled tanker, but it's hard.

1164
01:24:31,600 --> 01:24:37,399
Franco Spain in nineteen forty three, they got about twenty

1165
01:24:37,520 --> 01:24:42,199
panzers like Mark four panzers that they'd ordered and Serrano Sooner,

1166
01:24:43,199 --> 01:24:45,920
who's a great man. I'm like Franco, and he was

1167
01:24:45,960 --> 01:24:49,920
like a diehard national socialist. He was constantly looking for

1168
01:24:50,000 --> 01:24:53,359
a way to get Spain into the war against the

1169
01:24:53,479 --> 01:24:59,960
UK in an official capacity. And after negotiations broke down

1170
01:25:00,159 --> 01:25:02,479
because like Franco was like a ludicrous demands that were

1171
01:25:02,920 --> 01:25:08,880
you know, purposely that personally sabotaged any agreement between you know,

1172
01:25:08,960 --> 01:25:13,640
the the Reich and Madrid, there was still hope and

1173
01:25:15,079 --> 01:25:18,119
the Pandras that arrived like towards that end because people

1174
01:25:18,159 --> 01:25:21,479
thought so highly a Sooner and I mean German counter

1175
01:25:21,640 --> 01:25:24,760
legion had like spilled blood on Spain. I mean that

1176
01:25:24,840 --> 01:25:27,560
was sacred. You know. These Mark four as they got

1177
01:25:27,600 --> 01:25:29,439
were like the same ones that like the pans are

1178
01:25:29,560 --> 01:25:31,920
arm used. They weren't these they were they weren't his

1179
01:25:32,039 --> 01:25:35,039
like off brand like knockoffs, you know, they were real

1180
01:25:35,159 --> 01:25:37,479
pantheras and like most of them had never like been

1181
01:25:37,520 --> 01:25:42,319
deployed anywhere. So the Syrians got they the Syrians got

1182
01:25:42,359 --> 01:25:44,359
like a bunch of like brand spanking new like mark

1183
01:25:44,399 --> 01:25:46,760
for panders, and they also got some like yeah, they

1184
01:25:46,800 --> 01:25:49,039
also got some yag coons are like tank killers like

1185
01:25:49,199 --> 01:25:52,640
what was called assault guns in those days. So yeah,

1186
01:25:52,760 --> 01:25:55,039
like in sixty seven and seventy three, like there was

1187
01:25:55,159 --> 01:25:59,960
a there were panthers like assaulting idea, which is pretty

1188
01:26:00,159 --> 01:26:00,960
pretty cool.

1189
01:26:01,680 --> 01:26:05,279
Speaker 1: And there's a certain level of irony there that's not exact,

1190
01:26:05,439 --> 01:26:07,279
but still.

1191
01:26:11,039 --> 01:26:18,399
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm people like me, I you know, I'm

1192
01:26:18,520 --> 01:26:21,960
very much like an anglophone person. I mean, I'm I

1193
01:26:22,199 --> 01:26:27,239
uh I realized, uh, I realized proper Englishman. And Scott's

1194
01:26:27,760 --> 01:26:29,680
like Peter Brimlow, who's like an awesome guy and he

1195
01:26:29,840 --> 01:26:31,840
was like very cool to us at either. But I

1196
01:26:31,880 --> 01:26:33,840
can tell you things. I can tell you things that

1197
01:26:33,880 --> 01:26:36,399
I'm like, I can tell you things that I'm kind

1198
01:26:36,399 --> 01:26:38,880
of like a little ulster bastard and like that's not wrong,

1199
01:26:39,479 --> 01:26:42,239
but uh, I'm like a very anglophone person. So I've

1200
01:26:42,279 --> 01:26:47,680
got I think every I think every angle. Saxon is

1201
01:26:47,760 --> 01:26:54,199
something of like a an orientalist. So I find I

1202
01:26:54,319 --> 01:26:58,000
find Eastern people is very interesting for various reasons, you know,

1203
01:26:58,079 --> 01:27:00,319
as did guys like Johann Van and Lee and a

1204
01:27:00,359 --> 01:27:03,680
lot of these National socialist guys who ended up in

1205
01:27:03,720 --> 01:27:07,159
these Arab states. It was twofold. On the one hand,

1206
01:27:07,159 --> 01:27:11,760
they're like, okay, well we've got to accept Cold War realities,

1207
01:27:11,840 --> 01:27:17,560
but there's room to there's proverbial room to breathe and

1208
01:27:18,119 --> 01:27:20,760
ideological and cultural terms in some of these places in

1209
01:27:20,840 --> 01:27:24,760
Latin America and the Near East, and there's people or

1210
01:27:24,920 --> 01:27:29,000
remain receptive to our ideas and kind of want to

1211
01:27:29,039 --> 01:27:33,079
be shaped by our ways. And uh they were also

1212
01:27:33,159 --> 01:27:37,800
kind of like the shock troops contra Zionism, you know.

1213
01:27:39,880 --> 01:27:43,000
So there wasn't ideological component to it. There's like incredibly

1214
01:27:43,039 --> 01:27:46,760
silly propaganda and cap like put out by guys you

1215
01:27:46,840 --> 01:27:50,880
know about oh, like you know, Islamism is is just uh,

1216
01:27:52,039 --> 01:27:56,079
it's just this sort of anti Semitic, you know, Nazi conspiracy.

1217
01:27:56,199 --> 01:27:58,960
I mean, there's like very stupid stuff that affects. But

1218
01:28:00,199 --> 01:28:03,079
there was an is ideological affinity between people like the

1219
01:28:03,159 --> 01:28:08,840
Syrian bath and and and National socialists that's not the

1220
01:28:08,880 --> 01:28:10,840
reason why. Like I mean, I like the Syrian people.

1221
01:28:10,920 --> 01:28:12,439
I know a lot of Syrians, and I hold in

1222
01:28:12,479 --> 01:28:14,920
a highest scheme. I think, I think they're interesting in

1223
01:28:15,039 --> 01:28:19,159
like a cultured people. But they also you know, if

1224
01:28:19,199 --> 01:28:24,239
you if youre's some of these are are are with

1225
01:28:24,359 --> 01:28:27,159
the Third Reich and what it stood for, you know,

1226
01:28:27,399 --> 01:28:31,239
the obviously like a like like I think too too much.

1227
01:28:31,319 --> 01:28:34,760
Croatia was the only it was the only true like

1228
01:28:34,880 --> 01:28:37,399
national social estate that existed after the day to feed.

1229
01:28:38,119 --> 01:28:42,199
But like an adjacent political culture is like is like

1230
01:28:42,319 --> 01:28:46,960
bath is Syria? Like absolutely so yeah, I mean that's

1231
01:28:47,000 --> 01:28:51,000
not to your point, Like it's not it's not totally

1232
01:28:51,079 --> 01:28:54,279
all base or anything. But I'll i'll movie ahead. I

1233
01:28:54,359 --> 01:28:55,920
realized I'm getting tangential.

1234
01:28:56,039 --> 01:28:56,279
Speaker 1: But the.

1235
01:28:58,279 --> 01:29:01,960
Speaker 2: You know, in the the Russians cultivated. I can't remember

1236
01:29:01,960 --> 01:29:03,439
how much we got into this. I should have reviewed

1237
01:29:03,479 --> 01:29:07,880
our earlier episode before, like like yesterday this morning, So

1238
01:29:07,960 --> 01:29:10,119
forgive me again if I'm repeating myself, please call me

1239
01:29:10,199 --> 01:29:17,960
on it. But you know, the the Soviet leadership, they

1240
01:29:18,079 --> 01:29:23,039
really they really cultivated and like vice versa. You know,

1241
01:29:23,159 --> 01:29:30,279
like I the naval basic tartis, which is essential, it's

1242
01:29:30,279 --> 01:29:34,680
the Soul. It's the sole Mediterranean base for the for

1243
01:29:34,800 --> 01:29:38,239
the Russian Navy's Black Sea Fleet to this day, that

1244
01:29:38,359 --> 01:29:41,920
was a big deal after if the Sue Union went

1245
01:29:42,000 --> 01:29:46,079
down the assade and the Russian Federation worked out that

1246
01:29:46,239 --> 01:29:48,840
this is like like the so is that like permanent rights,

1247
01:29:49,000 --> 01:29:57,239
like the Tartist Naval base. You know, it's uh and

1248
01:29:57,399 --> 01:30:01,079
it was it was. It was a sad. I mean,

1249
01:30:01,119 --> 01:30:04,319
it takes nothing away obviously from the game. That's the

1250
01:30:04,399 --> 01:30:07,680
Syrian Air of Army and and and their toughness and

1251
01:30:07,760 --> 01:30:14,279
there and they desire to win and things like that.

1252
01:30:14,560 --> 01:30:18,960
But during the seventy three war, you know, which which

1253
01:30:19,039 --> 01:30:25,640
males is called the Ramadan War, Alo Whites and Christians

1254
01:30:27,359 --> 01:30:29,199
call it a couple of different things, or just the

1255
01:30:29,279 --> 01:30:32,199
nineteen seventy three war. The Israelis call it the yan

1256
01:30:32,279 --> 01:30:35,079
Kapoor War. But you know, like we like we talked about,

1257
01:30:35,119 --> 01:30:42,000
there was thousands of advisors, technicians there, there were there

1258
01:30:42,039 --> 01:30:45,960
were special operations type Soviet true, it's about twenty of

1259
01:30:46,000 --> 01:30:52,439
whom died in action in seventy three, you know, and

1260
01:30:52,560 --> 01:30:55,560
over close to four thousand tons of aid you know

1261
01:30:56,119 --> 01:31:01,560
ammo uh like ration packs, you medical supplies like you

1262
01:31:01,720 --> 01:31:06,399
name it by the by the conclusion, by the end

1263
01:31:06,439 --> 01:31:09,640
of October, you know, it's a station about still is

1264
01:31:09,640 --> 01:31:14,720
immediately beyond the Soviet Navy. They'd see lifted over sixty

1265
01:31:14,760 --> 01:31:20,680
thousand tons of gear like weapons again like weapons, AMMO,

1266
01:31:21,880 --> 01:31:30,159
food stuffs, agricultural commodities to Syria or replace its losses.

1267
01:31:30,239 --> 01:31:34,279
I mean, that's that that's a huge effort, you know.

1268
01:31:37,720 --> 01:31:41,439
And as as we talked about, there was some tension

1269
01:31:43,520 --> 01:31:47,359
from about seventy five to seventy seven, I guess the

1270
01:31:47,439 --> 01:31:51,520
Syrians directly intervened in a webinon. There was this kind

1271
01:31:51,560 --> 01:31:57,640
of tense minuet because you know, the PLO, the PLO,

1272
01:31:58,079 --> 01:32:03,800
despite its, despite his like declared secularism, was always you know,

1273
01:32:03,880 --> 01:32:09,439
like a like a Sunni outfit, and the Soviets were

1274
01:32:09,479 --> 01:32:15,399
really concerned about, you know, active hostilities breaking out between

1275
01:32:15,439 --> 01:32:20,359
the Syrian Air of Army and and the plofes. Asad

1276
01:32:20,560 --> 01:32:26,880
was able to smooth that over with skillful diplomacy. But

1277
01:32:27,119 --> 01:32:35,319
what really what really kind of solidified their relationship even

1278
01:32:36,239 --> 01:32:38,720
in the midst of some of these like intersne conflicts

1279
01:32:38,880 --> 01:32:45,760
between Soviet Allied elements, was Ad Asad unconditionally backed like

1280
01:32:45,840 --> 01:32:48,920
the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, and he made a lot

1281
01:32:48,960 --> 01:32:52,239
of people really upset by doing that, you know, like

1282
01:32:52,319 --> 01:32:56,680
within his own within Daryl Islam, you know, but it

1283
01:32:56,800 --> 01:33:02,319
was it was the right play considering the circumstances. And

1284
01:33:02,600 --> 01:33:07,199
it was also essential, I mean building during the Cold

1285
01:33:07,279 --> 01:33:14,319
War like that, that kind of consensus building across UH

1286
01:33:14,920 --> 01:33:18,159
national frontiers was essential, you know, and it was, uh,

1287
01:33:19,800 --> 01:33:26,319
the kind of last hurrah of that sort of war

1288
01:33:26,399 --> 01:33:30,479
in peace diplomacy was Bush forty one's like quorum that

1289
01:33:30,600 --> 01:33:34,199
he gathered to wage the Gulf War, which was an

1290
01:33:34,239 --> 01:33:38,319
incredible which was a master stroke, you know, but that

1291
01:33:38,560 --> 01:33:40,039
was I think of that is kind of the book

1292
01:33:40,159 --> 01:33:42,680
end of the Cold War and in the entire Prodige

1293
01:33:43,760 --> 01:33:46,680
and of course the Physicsade you know, the syiener have

1294
01:33:46,760 --> 01:33:52,680
already deployed, you know, to back to back US forces

1295
01:33:53,279 --> 01:33:55,479
and of course America. How is America like pay that

1296
01:33:55,640 --> 01:33:58,199
back by like trying to murder the Assade family. It's

1297
01:33:58,399 --> 01:34:02,479
it's it's unconstable, like it's it's a vile I mean,

1298
01:34:02,640 --> 01:34:05,319
aside in the fact it's totally irrational, but it's just

1299
01:34:05,439 --> 01:34:11,680
it's just vile, Like you don't do that. April seventy seven,

1300
01:34:12,760 --> 01:34:17,000
as Asade, he made a state visit to Moscow and

1301
01:34:17,199 --> 01:34:20,279
he got an audience in the president himself as well

1302
01:34:20,279 --> 01:34:27,079
as Alexi proceedon Kaseigan, you know who were I mean

1303
01:34:27,119 --> 01:34:29,000
basically got to meet the old Control Group of the

1304
01:34:29,039 --> 01:34:32,760
Soviet Union. I mean for for a small, you know,

1305
01:34:33,199 --> 01:34:39,880
underdeveloped country, that's that's pretty remarkable. And they signed h

1306
01:34:40,239 --> 01:34:42,039
they put pen to paper on what was called the

1307
01:34:42,159 --> 01:34:44,960
Treaty of Friendship in nineteen eighty, you know, less than

1308
01:34:44,960 --> 01:34:47,840
a year after the Soviets assaulted Afghanistan. And that was

1309
01:34:49,159 --> 01:34:51,640
that was not a that was not coincidental. That was

1310
01:34:51,720 --> 01:34:55,960
very much Taylor to send a message to the world.

1311
01:34:56,319 --> 01:35:01,039
And subsequently there became a permanent gar sin in Syria

1312
01:35:01,399 --> 01:35:07,560
of Soviet troops. You know. Not only were the balk

1313
01:35:07,600 --> 01:35:11,880
Assyrian weapons you know, coming from Warsaw Pact, you know,

1314
01:35:11,960 --> 01:35:16,279
the Soviet Union itself, the d d R, Czechoslovakia, Hungary,

1315
01:35:17,159 --> 01:35:21,399
what have you, but also like North Korea, you know,

1316
01:35:21,560 --> 01:35:26,600
like Syria, because there wasn't the only uh, the only

1317
01:35:26,720 --> 01:35:32,520
Marxist Leninist Arab state was South Yemen, you know, so

1318
01:35:34,039 --> 01:35:39,880
having having an ally in the Arab world, which again

1319
01:35:40,039 --> 01:35:48,680
Syria had and has something about outside profile and conceptual terms.

1320
01:35:49,119 --> 01:35:52,279
This is this is a big win for the for

1321
01:35:52,399 --> 01:35:55,920
the communist world, even even though the Syrian Bath was

1322
01:35:57,880 --> 01:36:05,479
not particularly empathetic to doctrinal Marcis Latinism, but that, you know,

1323
01:36:05,680 --> 01:36:10,880
that's the degree to which the Soviets became tolerant increasingly

1324
01:36:11,000 --> 01:36:14,199
of what a lot of people would have viewed as

1325
01:36:14,279 --> 01:36:17,000
kind of like a third position as tendency. That's very

1326
01:36:17,079 --> 01:36:20,560
that's highly significant. And of course that's kind of stuff

1327
01:36:20,600 --> 01:36:23,720
that guys like Auto Riemer and and George Switzervik and A.

1328
01:36:23,880 --> 01:36:27,920
She Thompson and Francis Yaki. I mean, that was their

1329
01:36:27,960 --> 01:36:35,399
whole that that was their whole kind of diagnostic prediction,

1330
01:36:35,920 --> 01:36:37,359
you know, and that's one of the reasons why they

1331
01:36:39,880 --> 01:36:44,840
did this. Incredibly ignorant people who they like to bandy

1332
01:36:44,920 --> 01:36:48,000
that there's some kind of third worldism. I don't even

1333
01:36:48,000 --> 01:36:52,359
know what that means, but it, you know, within the

1334
01:36:52,520 --> 01:36:55,159
X time, within the extent paradigm of the Cold War,

1335
01:36:56,760 --> 01:37:01,800
this made absolute sense for you know, anybody who was

1336
01:37:02,119 --> 01:37:05,119
on the you know, on the national socialist or fascist

1337
01:37:05,159 --> 01:37:09,880
side of things. You know, it's it absolutely tracks. And

1338
01:37:12,359 --> 01:37:16,760
Carrie Bolton, he's one of the only he's one of

1339
01:37:16,800 --> 01:37:20,000
the only kind of contemporary. I mean, he's an old

1340
01:37:20,039 --> 01:37:23,720
guy now. But when I take contemporary, I mean like

1341
01:37:24,239 --> 01:37:27,640
somebody is active. He's the only sort of like to

1342
01:37:27,880 --> 01:37:34,560
like dissident, like like national socialists, like academic writers. I

1343
01:37:34,920 --> 01:37:38,199
take really seriously, like he's great, you know, and I

1344
01:37:39,479 --> 01:37:41,199
he's kind of an eccentric guy. He's some of his

1345
01:37:41,319 --> 01:37:46,399
interests are kind of eccentric, but I you know, he's

1346
01:37:46,600 --> 01:37:51,800
his his viewpoint is closest to mine own out of anybody.

1347
01:37:52,800 --> 01:37:56,239
He's kind of active in writing about you know, political

1348
01:37:56,319 --> 01:38:04,680
theory and national socialism and stuff. In twenty ten, Medgetev

1349
01:38:04,800 --> 01:38:07,399
became he became the first president of the Russian Federation

1350
01:38:07,600 --> 01:38:10,840
to reciprocate and visit Syria. I think, like I said before,

1351
01:38:11,000 --> 01:38:17,039
I can't I cannot remember if when the Russians after

1352
01:38:18,119 --> 01:38:25,079
at the Syriana of our army routed isis you know,

1353
01:38:25,199 --> 01:38:28,239
there was a there was this parade for the Russian

1354
01:38:28,359 --> 01:38:32,479
contingent there there reminded me of the Conor Legion parade.

1355
01:38:32,479 --> 01:38:36,279
It was I thought it was really cool. I was.

1356
01:38:37,319 --> 01:38:40,680
I watched it on there's a YouTube stream that came

1357
01:38:40,760 --> 01:38:45,439
through live at like three am. And I can't remember

1358
01:38:45,560 --> 01:38:51,439
if Putin was there or not, but regardless it was

1359
01:38:52,359 --> 01:38:57,039
you know, the first state visit by a Russian Federation executive,

1360
01:38:57,039 --> 01:39:03,600
it was Mitigadev and that was h That was a

1361
01:39:03,680 --> 01:39:06,119
big deal too. And obviously in twenty ten, like less

1362
01:39:06,119 --> 01:39:09,199
than a year later, you know, the civil war kicked

1363
01:39:09,279 --> 01:39:15,119
off and that that wasn't that that wasn't uh, that

1364
01:39:15,279 --> 01:39:22,399
wasn't accidental. You know, ever conducts I can't remember we

1365
01:39:22,479 --> 01:39:28,359
got into this or not, but the did it to

1366
01:39:28,439 --> 01:39:35,079
understand the situation in Syria with Isis al Qaeda on

1367
01:39:35,279 --> 01:39:40,880
news refront the the Salafi terrorist elements who were assaulting

1368
01:39:43,119 --> 01:39:50,000
the government. These guys were these guys were rapidly successful.

1369
01:39:50,600 --> 01:39:55,800
You know, like obviously they had deep support, you know,

1370
01:39:58,479 --> 01:40:02,920
above border or not from from Washington and Tel Aviv.

1371
01:40:03,800 --> 01:40:08,960
You know, they the Syrian government by the time of

1372
01:40:10,279 --> 01:40:14,279
Russian intervention, they could be set in control only about

1373
01:40:14,279 --> 01:40:16,840
twenty six percent of the country. I mean, they had

1374
01:40:16,920 --> 01:40:19,720
Damascus and they had most of the built up areas

1375
01:40:19,800 --> 01:40:26,720
that but that didn't matter. You know, when the integrating

1376
01:40:27,840 --> 01:40:33,000
between Damascus and these kind of like outlying territories that

1377
01:40:33,079 --> 01:40:39,159
were held by government forces and and UH and adjacent allies,

1378
01:40:40,399 --> 01:40:43,640
it was they couldn't operationally integrate with the forces and

1379
01:40:43,800 --> 01:40:46,720
being that they had, that's one of the things that

1380
01:40:46,760 --> 01:40:53,680
the Russian Federation brought to the table, you know. Russia

1381
01:40:53,760 --> 01:40:58,720
also they showed absolutely no mercy to these to these

1382
01:40:58,800 --> 01:41:03,800
Salafi Islamis, you know, the they were practicing a scorched

1383
01:41:03,840 --> 01:41:10,520
earth campaign against them. But that's what so the most

1384
01:41:10,560 --> 01:41:15,199
horrifying modern more footage I've seen is when Isis they assaulted,

1385
01:41:15,800 --> 01:41:20,720
they assaulted the suburb of Aleppo, and they beheaded all

1386
01:41:20,760 --> 01:41:23,800
the males, you know, from like little kids to like

1387
01:41:23,920 --> 01:41:28,439
military age, like teenage boys, to like old men. And

1388
01:41:29,720 --> 01:41:33,279
it was like this forest of like heads like impaled

1389
01:41:33,319 --> 01:41:42,319
on these steaks, and these Isis guys, Uh, they were

1390
01:41:42,399 --> 01:41:46,359
doing their they were doing one of their afternoon prayers

1391
01:41:47,720 --> 01:41:53,520
and you know, they were on their prayer mats. Like

1392
01:41:53,600 --> 01:41:58,279
it's probably like a whole platoon of them, and there

1393
01:41:58,399 --> 01:42:03,039
was just these heads, you know, like it's it is

1394
01:42:03,199 --> 01:42:06,680
like something out of a horror movie, you know, I mean,

1395
01:42:06,760 --> 01:42:12,199
that's those are the kinds of animals that American Israel

1396
01:42:12,279 --> 01:42:17,239
returning it loose on on Syria as a dead nation strategy,

1397
01:42:17,960 --> 01:42:22,920
you know, and to the Russians, I mean, God bless

1398
01:42:22,920 --> 01:42:27,239
the Russians for like blasting those guys to help. But

1399
01:42:29,039 --> 01:42:37,319
you know, the that that's probably the greatest victory, like

1400
01:42:37,439 --> 01:42:46,000
battlefield victory. The anybody like who should be you should

1401
01:42:46,039 --> 01:42:51,279
view as like an adjacent element if you're right wing,

1402
01:42:51,359 --> 01:42:55,840
and that that's really like what the what the Syrina

1403
01:42:55,920 --> 01:42:58,399
of r and the Russian Federation and his block accomplished

1404
01:42:58,399 --> 01:43:01,600
there other than operations storm like when the Cross routed

1405
01:43:01,640 --> 01:43:06,279
the chet Nicks and like liberated the crying, that's like

1406
01:43:06,359 --> 01:43:08,840
the only thing in my lifetime that was comparable. So

1407
01:43:09,560 --> 01:43:13,880
when these like demento internet guys like don't go outside

1408
01:43:14,000 --> 01:43:16,359
or something instead of talking about, say love Ukraine, it's

1409
01:43:16,399 --> 01:43:20,039
I realized, like how sick these fucking people are, and

1410
01:43:20,159 --> 01:43:22,479
like I'm just like delusional, you know, like they don't

1411
01:43:22,880 --> 01:43:27,000
they they're they're like they're either like ops or like

1412
01:43:27,079 --> 01:43:29,720
masquerading as being like right wing, or they're or they're

1413
01:43:29,760 --> 01:43:32,560
just like or they just like think that ship's like

1414
01:43:32,680 --> 01:43:36,039
video games or something. I don't know, but you know,

1415
01:43:36,159 --> 01:43:38,199
I make the point again and again if you don't

1416
01:43:40,319 --> 01:43:42,600
if you don't understand that, like the Syrians are like

1417
01:43:42,680 --> 01:43:46,920
your allies and and this this is an international struggle.

1418
01:43:47,159 --> 01:43:49,000
You can't isolate it and say like I don't care

1419
01:43:49,079 --> 01:43:52,119
what happens outside of America. Like that's this that the

1420
01:43:52,319 --> 01:43:55,359
basic bitch like white and words stuff. But it's also

1421
01:43:56,199 --> 01:43:58,039
like you're not in the game if you think these

1422
01:43:58,119 --> 01:44:00,960
things occurr in isolation. You know, whether you like like

1423
01:44:01,039 --> 01:44:04,439
globalism or not, it doesn't matter. Like it's you can't

1424
01:44:04,479 --> 01:44:07,960
ignore gravity, you know, it's it's the same thing. Globalism

1425
01:44:08,079 --> 01:44:12,199
is like gravity. The power playable paradigm you live under

1426
01:44:12,319 --> 01:44:15,079
is like the weather. You can't change it. I mean,

1427
01:44:15,319 --> 01:44:17,000
I mean, you can change it, but if you got

1428
01:44:17,079 --> 01:44:19,399
to like work within its parameters, you know, like saying

1429
01:44:20,560 --> 01:44:24,279
you're a you're you're gonna like you're gonna take some

1430
01:44:24,359 --> 01:44:28,279
like non position owing owing to some like ethical orientation

1431
01:44:28,520 --> 01:44:32,119
that you know, you convince yourself like means you like

1432
01:44:32,199 --> 01:44:37,119
rechecked like the prevailing the prevailing order that I mean,

1433
01:44:37,159 --> 01:44:41,479
that's that's that's that's meaningless and in playable terms. But

1434
01:44:43,520 --> 01:44:46,920
you know the U plus too, that's when the Russian

1435
01:44:47,000 --> 01:44:50,840
Federation like finally drew a line in the sand, you know,

1436
01:44:50,920 --> 01:44:56,000
and I had they not, I I think Russia would

1437
01:44:56,039 --> 01:44:58,359
be an even worse shape today than than than it

1438
01:44:58,560 --> 01:45:02,600
is okay, I'm not saying bad things aret Russian people.

1439
01:45:02,640 --> 01:45:06,720
I mean, the Russians are in a desperate situation. Putin

1440
01:45:06,760 --> 01:45:09,960
said that like demand like like like I said, is

1441
01:45:10,000 --> 01:45:12,520
not going down. He said, the bad regime is going

1442
01:45:12,560 --> 01:45:19,000
to remain at all costs, and that and and he

1443
01:45:19,119 --> 01:45:21,880
and he delivered on it. You know, that's that's that's

1444
01:45:21,920 --> 01:45:27,439
what's kept Russia alive, is in in Warranty's terms, you know, like,

1445
01:45:27,600 --> 01:45:29,800
had had the Russians just allowed Seria to go down

1446
01:45:30,640 --> 01:45:35,000
like they they would have had a cascading effect of

1447
01:45:36,520 --> 01:45:43,960
of of catastrophes. You know, you've he developed certain instincts

1448
01:45:44,000 --> 01:45:50,960
for identifying what events are gonna have those sort of

1449
01:45:51,039 --> 01:45:55,840
seismic kinetic effects, and you halver believe if Damasius had fallen,

1450
01:45:55,920 --> 01:46:01,960
that would have been one of those events. Uh. It's

1451
01:46:02,000 --> 01:46:06,159
also it was executed pretty splendidly, man. You know, I'm

1452
01:46:07,640 --> 01:46:12,199
We've talked a lot in various capacities, and I recommend

1453
01:46:12,319 --> 01:46:15,640
you know, super off. He's most known for Icebreaker, but

1454
01:46:15,760 --> 01:46:21,880
his book Inside the Red Army, you know, it's about

1455
01:46:21,880 --> 01:46:24,960
the state of it's about the state of the Soviet Army.

1456
01:46:26,279 --> 01:46:29,520
You know, basically in the in the in the later

1457
01:46:29,640 --> 01:46:35,840
bresident of the era and something that remains this day

1458
01:46:36,199 --> 01:46:41,760
and something that preceded the Bolshek Revolution. You know, the

1459
01:46:42,039 --> 01:46:48,359
Russians big thing, the big military science imperative is to

1460
01:46:49,079 --> 01:46:58,119
do everything possible to like overcome fog of war issues,

1461
01:47:00,159 --> 01:47:04,840
you know, situational awareness issues within the battle space, you know,

1462
01:47:05,159 --> 01:47:11,319
by eradicating and certainties. So they treat they treat battle

1463
01:47:11,399 --> 01:47:13,960
doctor and almost like a Western army or like or

1464
01:47:14,039 --> 01:47:19,199
like the US Army would treat regulation. It's highly inflexible, okay,

1465
01:47:20,800 --> 01:47:23,279
but for what they rush. By the way the Russians fight,

1466
01:47:24,319 --> 01:47:31,000
it does work. And the combined arms the Russians brought

1467
01:47:31,039 --> 01:47:36,319
to bear against isis like cut them to pieces, you know,

1468
01:47:39,319 --> 01:47:44,439
and it was absolutely you know, like a like like

1469
01:47:44,479 --> 01:47:47,640
the Russians isn't just like rashally deployed like I remember,

1470
01:47:48,840 --> 01:47:52,319
I can't remember his name he was. He said black

1471
01:47:52,399 --> 01:47:55,439
guy on I don't even think he's on TV anymore.

1472
01:47:55,560 --> 01:47:58,039
But he was kind of like he was kind of

1473
01:47:58,079 --> 01:48:00,640
like mini me Lester Holt or something. He was. I mean,

1474
01:48:00,680 --> 01:48:03,560
not that Lester Halts any great shakes, but this guy

1475
01:48:03,840 --> 01:48:05,479
was like he was kind of like the bush Ley

1476
01:48:05,600 --> 01:48:10,720
Lester Halt and he was he was talking to he

1477
01:48:10,840 --> 01:48:15,239
suns like uber Zionists, like like NATO Schill, like idiot

1478
01:48:16,119 --> 01:48:18,000
who was like a light current, like a retired like

1479
01:48:18,159 --> 01:48:21,880
light colonel or something. And this guy was dropping Cavaboll like,

1480
01:48:21,920 --> 01:48:24,479
well we saw him, Chuch beyond ninety four. The Russians

1481
01:48:24,520 --> 01:48:26,640
can't fight. It's like, first of all those you know

1482
01:48:27,319 --> 01:48:35,039
twenty years ago, you fool. Secondly, it you know, if

1483
01:48:36,800 --> 01:48:38,000
if that was a state of the arm front of

1484
01:48:38,000 --> 01:48:40,359
the Russian Federation, frankly wouldn't be able to deploy a

1485
01:48:40,439 --> 01:48:43,359
scale the Syria at all. You know. It's it's not

1486
01:48:43,399 --> 01:48:46,640
like he would have been able to like arrive in

1487
01:48:46,720 --> 01:48:50,039
the battlespace, you know, deploy in depth and then and

1488
01:48:50,119 --> 01:48:52,840
then and then completely food bar the operation. I mean,

1489
01:48:52,840 --> 01:48:58,800
they definitely could have lost it. But and I'm not

1490
01:48:58,840 --> 01:49:01,560
going to suggest that the rush An Army deploying the

1491
01:49:01,680 --> 01:49:08,560
Syria as like something on order of the British accomplishing

1492
01:49:08,600 --> 01:49:10,199
that kind of logistic what mirrorably they did at the

1493
01:49:10,239 --> 01:49:12,359
falk Whens maybe two or something, but it was was

1494
01:49:12,399 --> 01:49:16,840
pretty damn impressive, Okay. And once they were able to

1495
01:49:18,159 --> 01:49:21,199
essentially like immediately drop like you know, five thousand boots

1496
01:49:21,239 --> 01:49:25,680
on the ground and a whole gang a mid twenty

1497
01:49:25,840 --> 01:49:32,279
nines and some kind of sex stuff like thermobar re

1498
01:49:32,399 --> 01:49:35,159
artillery and things like that. It's like, okay, I mean,

1499
01:49:35,199 --> 01:49:39,359
i it appears as if like the Russian army's back.

1500
01:49:40,479 --> 01:49:43,520
I mean, the raginary performed pretty well in Georgia in

1501
01:49:43,600 --> 01:49:47,600
two thousand and eight, but there were still there were

1502
01:49:47,640 --> 01:49:54,119
still problems. I mean, there's problems today. But the you know,

1503
01:49:54,800 --> 01:50:02,000
I nobody who's not resorting the kind of callow propaganda,

1504
01:50:02,359 --> 01:50:04,359
very deliberate sword is is going to say that, you know,

1505
01:50:04,359 --> 01:50:08,479
the Russian operation in Syria wasn't impressive or something. You know,

1506
01:50:09,119 --> 01:50:24,079
it's but uh, moving on, Yeah, it's uh the Russian

1507
01:50:26,119 --> 01:50:34,640
the chief of Staff of the Russian Air Force grass

1508
01:50:34,680 --> 01:50:41,600
him of he stated in twenty seventeen, In twenty seventeen,

1509
01:50:42,079 --> 01:50:44,960
like in twenty sixteen, like twenty seventeen, there's kind of

1510
01:50:45,000 --> 01:50:49,199
like this big like retrospective on the Syrian operation, and

1511
01:50:49,359 --> 01:50:51,279
part of it was you know, like a Russian flex

1512
01:50:51,479 --> 01:50:53,520
like hey, this is what we did. Like you know,

1513
01:50:53,760 --> 01:50:57,239
rah rah, we're back. We you know, we we're a

1514
01:50:57,319 --> 01:51:02,560
serious you know, we're we're we're serious military power again

1515
01:51:04,439 --> 01:51:10,039
but they carried out They carried out around twenty thousand sorties,

1516
01:51:10,199 --> 01:51:12,960
like like yeah, between like eighteen and twenty thousand sorties,

1517
01:51:15,079 --> 01:51:20,560
and there was over seventy thousand strikes on what grass

1518
01:51:20,640 --> 01:51:26,159
them off called quote the infrastructure of terrorism, which what

1519
01:51:26,279 --> 01:51:27,920
I take that to me is like a lot of

1520
01:51:27,960 --> 01:51:31,119
ground assault type stuff like basically like it has blood

1521
01:51:31,119 --> 01:51:36,479
on the Seria Army going into action, probably backed up

1522
01:51:36,560 --> 01:51:40,920
by some Russian armor and artillery, and then like basically

1523
01:51:41,119 --> 01:51:44,880
like the Russians that uh, they like pound the hell

1524
01:51:45,439 --> 01:51:48,439
out of Isis positions from the air, you know, like

1525
01:51:48,520 --> 01:51:54,239
in immediate advance of that combined ground and element you know,

1526
01:51:54,279 --> 01:51:59,119
which would then like encircle these positions with kind of

1527
01:51:59,159 --> 01:52:03,520
like textbook like Warsaw Pag deep battle just like smaller

1528
01:52:03,640 --> 01:52:12,680
scale you know, and basically treat basically treat the operation

1529
01:52:12,920 --> 01:52:16,039
as as like you know, the advance of fire wherever possible,

1530
01:52:16,159 --> 01:52:21,560
you know, like lay as much fire as possible on

1531
01:52:21,680 --> 01:52:27,479
the opposing force to kill it, you know, and even

1532
01:52:27,600 --> 01:52:30,239
overkill it. You know. It's not exactly a lot of

1533
01:52:30,279 --> 01:52:32,880
places to hide in the in the battle space and

1534
01:52:34,840 --> 01:52:39,439
the uh, there are some very serious fighting in Damascus,

1535
01:52:39,560 --> 01:52:43,159
but I believe by the time there are ferends of

1536
01:52:43,159 --> 01:52:48,600
the Russian Federation arrived on the ground, I believe that

1537
01:52:48,680 --> 01:52:53,720
it basically resolved, you know, the had the Russians had

1538
01:52:53,760 --> 01:52:59,279
to route Isis from demand. I mean, I it might

1539
01:52:59,359 --> 01:53:03,439
be an improper counterfactual because like if Isis was holding Damascus,

1540
01:53:03,560 --> 01:53:05,520
it's like what I mean that that would indicate the

1541
01:53:05,600 --> 01:53:09,000
war was over. But it the point being, you know,

1542
01:53:09,119 --> 01:53:15,560
they that would have changed things, if that would have

1543
01:53:15,680 --> 01:53:18,159
changed things, if like his Blah was charged basically it

1544
01:53:18,279 --> 01:53:20,239
was like liberating Damascus. I mean, like what do you

1545
01:53:21,199 --> 01:53:25,239
that would have kind of neutralized Russian firepower too, unless

1546
01:53:25,239 --> 01:53:27,399
they were playing on like leveling the city without regard

1547
01:53:27,520 --> 01:53:34,039
to without regard to you know, friendly attrition in things.

1548
01:53:35,560 --> 01:53:51,439
But yeah, it's uh, yeah, I I guess we went

1549
01:53:51,479 --> 01:53:55,079
on an hour. Yeah, I'm sorry, those two like heavy

1550
01:53:55,119 --> 01:54:01,079
on the military side of things. I'd like to I

1551
01:54:01,199 --> 01:54:03,720
realize we still get a grip of our Gladio series.

1552
01:54:05,159 --> 01:54:10,000
There's if you want to do like an epilogue in this,

1553
01:54:10,079 --> 01:54:11,520
I mean, it's totally up to you. Obviously, it's just

1554
01:54:11,680 --> 01:54:18,800
so literally there's something to be said for like the

1555
01:54:19,000 --> 01:54:22,279
the Jackson Vanic amendments and what led to its passing

1556
01:54:24,359 --> 01:54:29,399
and the whole kind of narrative of Soviet Jewry being

1557
01:54:29,479 --> 01:54:34,199
like under threat and you know, the g r U

1558
01:54:34,359 --> 01:54:39,720
and the kg D quite literally uh establishing a directorate

1559
01:54:39,840 --> 01:54:42,680
to monitor Zionism. I mean this, this is part of

1560
01:54:42,720 --> 01:54:47,279
the equation. I mean there's a lot to the Russian

1561
01:54:47,399 --> 01:54:49,960
Syrian relationship and and just kind of like the Russian

1562
01:54:53,079 --> 01:54:56,279
you know, Russian enmity with with Israel. And we could

1563
01:54:56,319 --> 01:54:58,199
definitely go like another hour on that if you want,

1564
01:54:58,279 --> 01:55:01,239
but it's totally up to you. Just let me know

1565
01:55:01,399 --> 01:55:02,359
what you want to do next.

1566
01:55:03,960 --> 01:55:07,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's finish since we're on this, let's finish this

1567
01:55:08,000 --> 01:55:10,319
up and then we'll come back into a wrap up

1568
01:55:10,359 --> 01:55:12,720
episode on Gladio and then figure out where you want

1569
01:55:12,720 --> 01:55:17,479
to go from there. Yeah that's great, man, all right,

1570
01:55:17,920 --> 01:55:20,560
So just tell everybody where they can find your stuff

1571
01:55:20,600 --> 01:55:23,479
and uhpe Yeah, man.

1572
01:55:25,680 --> 01:55:30,560
Speaker 2: You can find me on substick. This for my podcast

1573
01:55:30,720 --> 01:55:35,199
content is it's real Thomas seven seven seven. That's substick

1574
01:55:35,279 --> 01:55:41,800
dot com. I'm doing some by week we pods with

1575
01:55:42,039 --> 01:55:45,199
Jay Burden. He's like my homeboy. He's great, like he

1576
01:55:45,319 --> 01:55:49,560
really is. We're putting that up on gum Road and

1577
01:55:49,680 --> 01:55:52,199
having Burn do it like I might be a total retard.

1578
01:55:52,279 --> 01:55:55,640
I literally found gum Road like fucking unusable. I spent

1579
01:55:55,760 --> 01:55:57,560
like four hours of that fucking platform.

1580
01:55:59,039 --> 01:55:59,840
Speaker 1: It's not easy.

1581
01:56:00,039 --> 01:56:04,720
Speaker 2: It's it's it's like always there's always like there's always

1582
01:56:04,760 --> 01:56:07,479
like redundant buttons that don't do anything, and it's like

1583
01:56:08,479 --> 01:56:12,840
it's like some fucking uh yeah, it's it's like some

1584
01:56:13,000 --> 01:56:16,920
crazy person or like some like what bottomized page like

1585
01:56:17,079 --> 01:56:20,479
programmed or something. So I after like four hours this garbage,

1586
01:56:20,479 --> 01:56:22,479
I'm like, what the am I doing? I'm like, I'm

1587
01:56:22,479 --> 01:56:25,520
not gonna. I'm like it's I'd rather have a root

1588
01:56:25,560 --> 01:56:28,920
canal than like just like Burden do it. He's young

1589
01:56:29,640 --> 01:56:33,279
exactly to do it. And the main thing is I

1590
01:56:33,399 --> 01:56:37,079
love substick because it's literally simple as like point and

1591
01:56:37,199 --> 01:56:41,359
click or like drag and populate, but they make it difficult.

1592
01:56:41,680 --> 01:56:44,960
You can like add collaborators on substack, but it doesn't

1593
01:56:45,000 --> 01:56:47,359
just like automatically like split revenue.

1594
01:56:48,319 --> 01:56:53,319
Speaker 1: Right, it's uh, now we're getting inside baseball.

1595
01:56:54,159 --> 01:56:59,880
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, check out check out Burn's action on gum Road.

1596
01:57:00,000 --> 01:57:03,399
It's radio free Chicago, And I shouted out when we

1597
01:57:03,520 --> 01:57:06,439
record new stuff, like on my substick. I like post

1598
01:57:06,479 --> 01:57:07,520
a link and stuff.

1599
01:57:07,279 --> 01:57:09,479
Speaker 1: As well as I'll pick up a link to it

1600
01:57:09,560 --> 01:57:10,439
and add it in.

1601
01:57:10,840 --> 01:57:12,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you and yeah, I mean obviously I'm on

1602
01:57:14,399 --> 01:57:18,479
I'm on X formerly bird app. You know, I'm at

1603
01:57:18,960 --> 01:57:23,560
Capital R E A L underscore number seven h on

1604
01:57:23,640 --> 01:57:27,800
A S seven seven seven. Here Kreig has been. He's

1605
01:57:27,880 --> 01:57:32,119
been busily making some new swag for like our merchandise,

1606
01:57:32,600 --> 01:57:35,399
which I think is pretty cool. Man, Like I legit,

1607
01:57:35,640 --> 01:57:37,800
like I stand by it because I think it's cool

1608
01:57:38,479 --> 01:57:42,199
and people seem to like it. So yeah, if you

1609
01:57:42,199 --> 01:57:44,640
could like drop a link to the merse stuff in

1610
01:57:44,760 --> 01:57:48,920
the description, that would probably be cool. But that's otherwise. Man.

1611
01:57:49,039 --> 01:57:55,079
I'm I'm I'm trying to get a jump on my

1612
01:57:55,920 --> 01:58:00,319
I make progress on my my manuscript stuff, my long

1613
01:58:00,439 --> 01:58:04,560
form written stuff, especially cousin. I'm gonna have to travel

1614
01:58:04,600 --> 01:58:07,239
a bunch this winter, which I didn't, which is fine.

1615
01:58:07,319 --> 01:58:13,560
I am blessed people enjoy my company and want me

1616
01:58:13,640 --> 01:58:17,359
to go places where they're hosting things, but I didn't.

1617
01:58:17,880 --> 01:58:19,680
I didn't think i'd be like hitting the road again

1618
01:58:19,760 --> 01:58:24,000
until like springtime. So I'm gonna try, and you know,

1619
01:58:24,079 --> 01:58:26,239
like the next month, I'm I'm hoping I can have

1620
01:58:26,359 --> 01:58:31,279
like a workable manuscript. It just takes time, especially when

1621
01:58:31,279 --> 01:58:34,399
you got to properly like cite you know, your data

1622
01:58:34,479 --> 01:58:36,520
on things. But that's what I've been up on.

1623
01:58:38,800 --> 01:58:42,239
Speaker 1: Awesome, all right, till the next time, we'll wrap this

1624
01:58:42,439 --> 01:58:45,239
and wrap up Gladio and figure out where to go

1625
01:58:45,319 --> 01:58:45,600
from there.

1626
01:58:46,199 --> 01:58:47,079
Speaker 2: Yeah. Man, that's great.

1627
01:58:47,760 --> 01:58:51,000
Speaker 1: Take care, Thomas, Thank you. I want to welcome everyone

1628
01:58:51,119 --> 01:58:54,920
back to the Pecananas Show. Thomas, how have you been?

1629
01:58:55,520 --> 01:58:59,159
I'm right, let's uh, let's finish this up talking about

1630
01:58:59,239 --> 01:59:02,239
Russian series and I think, uh, I think I know

1631
01:59:02,279 --> 01:59:05,960
where you're gonna go with this one, so just let loose.

1632
01:59:07,760 --> 01:59:10,479
Speaker 2: Yeah, sort of thing. You know. Obviously we're coming up

1633
01:59:10,520 --> 01:59:13,520
to in the in the university of the Ramadan war

1634
01:59:13,960 --> 01:59:18,680
you or they're the Yan Kapoor war is, which interestingly

1635
01:59:18,840 --> 01:59:22,119
doesn't get it doesn't appear a lot in media these days.

1636
01:59:25,399 --> 01:59:28,359
Some of the fellows that made the point in our

1637
01:59:28,439 --> 01:59:34,880
discussions that you know, historical events don't really occur anymore.

1638
01:59:34,920 --> 01:59:39,079
I mean that, like you know, like Zazec makes that

1639
01:59:39,159 --> 01:59:41,000
point a lot, and and so does some of these

1640
01:59:41,039 --> 01:59:44,680
other guys who are kind of trying to salvage what

1641
01:59:45,000 --> 01:59:48,199
remains a condo philosophy. I mean, there's something that's that's

1642
01:59:48,239 --> 01:59:51,680
a deeply psychological mechanism, you know, and there's like sociological

1643
01:59:51,800 --> 01:59:55,239
locations to it too, but in more kind of prosaic terms.

1644
01:59:55,760 --> 01:59:58,359
That that's an important point because I'm always emphasizing to

1645
01:59:58,439 --> 02:00:02,640
the fellas who don't remember because they weren't born yet,

1646
02:00:02,960 --> 02:00:07,600
that media narratives like however corrupt they were corrupted they

1647
02:00:07,600 --> 02:00:10,720
were by ideology and like conceptual biases, they did in

1648
02:00:10,840 --> 02:00:15,079
fact build on a continuing foundation of historical time, you know.

1649
02:00:15,159 --> 02:00:17,159
I make the point even really up until two thousand,

1650
02:00:18,800 --> 02:00:20,840
kind of like the last instance of this in this

1651
02:00:22,239 --> 02:00:25,520
in the spring or it was like summer or fall

1652
02:00:25,600 --> 02:00:28,079
of two thousand. I remember this vivid lead because I

1653
02:00:28,159 --> 02:00:31,359
made my dad really upset, and he went in this

1654
02:00:31,439 --> 02:00:35,720
local radio show to talk about it, the show Beyond

1655
02:00:35,760 --> 02:00:38,680
the Beltway that used to be like based here in Chicago,

1656
02:00:39,119 --> 02:00:43,239
and me and like my then girlfriend, we went down

1657
02:00:43,279 --> 02:00:45,119
to the studio to meet him, like in the loop.

1658
02:00:45,239 --> 02:00:48,239
And the subject that my dad was on this panel

1659
02:00:48,239 --> 02:00:50,680
with this like foreign navy seal guy and this kind

1660
02:00:50,720 --> 02:00:53,960
of crusty older dude was a civilian, but he'd been

1661
02:00:54,000 --> 02:00:58,960
on William Odom's staff in some capacity. But Peter Arnett

1662
02:00:59,000 --> 02:01:00,399
and this is one of the things that kind of

1663
02:01:00,439 --> 02:01:03,000
crushed his career. I mean, he was getting old up

1664
02:01:03,039 --> 02:01:07,920
there in years anyway, but he broke this story where

1665
02:01:07,960 --> 02:01:11,119
this guy claimed that. First of all, guy claimed that

1666
02:01:11,439 --> 02:01:13,600
he was a deserter in the Vietnam War, and he

1667
02:01:13,680 --> 02:01:16,880
claimed he ended up in Laos, Okay, and he said

1668
02:01:16,920 --> 02:01:20,479
there was this village like full of like you know,

1669
02:01:20,720 --> 02:01:24,199
like young white men who were like married to Indigenous women.

1670
02:01:24,560 --> 02:01:26,399
And he's like, what's happening here? And they're like, oh,

1671
02:01:26,439 --> 02:01:29,000
we're all deserters. This is like our commune where we're

1672
02:01:29,039 --> 02:01:32,199
like escaping the war. And if anybody who knows the

1673
02:01:32,319 --> 02:01:35,640
history of the conflict, that's preposterous on his own terms. Okay,

1674
02:01:36,279 --> 02:01:38,640
there's no way that happened. But he was or that

1675
02:01:38,800 --> 02:01:40,920
was taking what this guy said is fact. So our

1676
02:01:41,000 --> 02:01:43,359
nets like, well, like what happened. There's no record of

1677
02:01:43,399 --> 02:01:47,119
this place. So this guy's like, well, you know, he's

1678
02:01:47,159 --> 02:01:50,199
like Army special forces arrived one day after they bombarded

1679
02:01:50,279 --> 02:01:53,239
us with nerve gas and everybody died. But I was

1680
02:01:53,319 --> 02:01:55,720
out in the fields that day or the rice patties,

1681
02:01:55,960 --> 02:02:00,800
so I escaped and he's like it was called Operation Tailwind,

1682
02:02:02,119 --> 02:02:04,920
you know, and my Dad's like, this is outrageous. This

1683
02:02:05,079 --> 02:02:08,560
is outrageous is being reported as news, And how dare

1684
02:02:08,640 --> 02:02:13,680
this guy like defame uh these Special Forces operators? But

1685
02:02:13,760 --> 02:02:16,359
did it takes that real? Seriously? You know, he was

1686
02:02:16,399 --> 02:02:18,039
a civilian, but he got to know a lot of

1687
02:02:18,079 --> 02:02:22,000
these guys very well, you know, and he takes he

1688
02:02:22,039 --> 02:02:26,279
takes the honor of such people seriously, you know. And

1689
02:02:26,319 --> 02:02:28,359
I mean for me, I mean, it was just I mean,

1690
02:02:28,399 --> 02:02:29,880
aside from that, it was like, I mean, our NETT

1691
02:02:29,960 --> 02:02:32,960
was just like lying, like it's if you're a serious journalist,

1692
02:02:33,039 --> 02:02:35,479
this guy's story was preposterous. You know. Like I said,

1693
02:02:36,119 --> 02:02:38,960
I was, I was like twenty four to twenty five

1694
02:02:39,039 --> 02:02:41,159
years old, and I was just kind of like a

1695
02:02:41,239 --> 02:02:43,159
student of the Vietnam War, and I'm like, there's no

1696
02:02:43,239 --> 02:02:45,319
way that happened. And of course it broke that this

1697
02:02:45,399 --> 02:02:48,159
guy with some crazy liars that our net kind of disappeared.

1698
02:02:48,239 --> 02:02:52,359
But it was a big deal, man, because you know,

1699
02:02:53,119 --> 02:02:58,439
even twenty five years after Saigon went to put you know,

1700
02:02:58,600 --> 02:03:01,319
Vietnam was still on people's mind man. You know, in

1701
02:03:01,399 --> 02:03:03,439
conceptual terms, it was one of their main kind of

1702
02:03:03,560 --> 02:03:09,199
like pull stars of historical events so that it doesn't

1703
02:03:09,239 --> 02:03:11,439
really that's it's just like not the case anymore. And

1704
02:03:11,560 --> 02:03:13,960
part of it's deliberate. It's like a deliberate sort of

1705
02:03:14,039 --> 02:03:17,520
like whitewashing of the collective memory. They're not so much

1706
02:03:17,640 --> 02:03:19,600
it's just kind of like erasing the collective memory of

1707
02:03:19,680 --> 02:03:24,760
historical time. But it's also these narratives increasingly are just

1708
02:03:24,840 --> 02:03:27,279
kind of generated out of nothing, you know, they're they

1709
02:03:27,640 --> 02:03:29,640
draw upon these kinds of like endure it this kind

1710
02:03:29,680 --> 02:03:37,000
of like enduring phraseology that regime information or propaganda. Oh,

1711
02:03:37,119 --> 02:03:40,560
let's disseminate, you know. So there's a certain structure to it,

1712
02:03:40,680 --> 02:03:44,039
there's a certain conceptual structure, but it's very much like

1713
02:03:44,560 --> 02:03:46,680
it kind of like every every aspect of it's just

1714
02:03:46,800 --> 02:03:49,720
kind of like autonomously situated in a psychological terms. It's

1715
02:03:49,760 --> 02:03:55,439
really weird. But in any event, even uh, even to

1716
02:03:55,560 --> 02:04:01,520
the late nineties, they when when there was when when

1717
02:04:01,560 --> 02:04:03,760
when any kind of crisis was an emergent between like

1718
02:04:03,880 --> 02:04:08,479
Israel and its and its enemies, they there there'd be

1719
02:04:09,680 --> 02:04:12,880
contextual references to the Ramanan War, which they called the

1720
02:04:12,960 --> 02:04:16,560
yan Kapor War in the nineteen sixty seven Six Day War,

1721
02:04:16,560 --> 02:04:19,960
which was Israel's greatest victory. That's not just cap that

1722
02:04:22,119 --> 02:04:27,119
Israel had. They were unusually larded with military talent at

1723
02:04:27,319 --> 02:04:32,239
operational level for various reasons. And I mean that was

1724
02:04:32,319 --> 02:04:33,920
so that was a big deal. And that's kind of

1725
02:04:33,920 --> 02:04:36,880
what the myth of Israeli military supremacy like was emergent,

1726
02:04:37,560 --> 02:04:39,840
because in sixty seven it wasn't a myth. I mean,

1727
02:04:39,920 --> 02:04:43,359
on the one hand, like modern combat resolves rapidly. That's

1728
02:04:43,359 --> 02:04:45,640
why I was trying to side the people. You know,

1729
02:04:45,720 --> 02:04:50,399
they people get a corrupted view of this because pretty

1730
02:04:50,439 --> 02:04:53,279
much like the only like the only wars in living

1731
02:04:53,359 --> 02:04:58,760
memory involve uh, these kinds of nonsensical paradigms were like

1732
02:05:00,119 --> 02:05:04,279
you know, some Pentagon guy or some State department spokesman

1733
02:05:04,439 --> 02:05:08,840
or woman is suggesting, well, we're making incremental progress, you know,

1734
02:05:08,960 --> 02:05:11,239
like the he's kind of like endless deployments that don't

1735
02:05:11,279 --> 02:05:14,560
resolve anything. Like people think that that's normal, Like they

1736
02:05:15,079 --> 02:05:18,600
don't understand that even on condition, even under conditions are

1737
02:05:18,600 --> 02:05:22,279
relative parody. You know, like modern combined arms war, it's

1738
02:05:22,680 --> 02:05:26,199
battles are usually massively one sided, it's usually your route,

1739
02:05:26,359 --> 02:05:32,199
it usually resolves like within days you know, but just

1740
02:05:32,319 --> 02:05:36,840
the same. Uh, the idea's performance in sixty seven was

1741
02:05:37,000 --> 02:05:42,399
unusually strong. But all of that, all that basically came

1742
02:05:42,439 --> 02:05:44,960
to an end in the seventy three war. And it's

1743
02:05:45,000 --> 02:05:48,520
significant to US. I mean, even people who aren't particularly

1744
02:05:48,560 --> 02:05:51,960
invested in Israel Palestine. I don't think that's a correct

1745
02:05:52,760 --> 02:05:58,079
disposition because if you know, within the current paradigm, you

1746
02:05:58,520 --> 02:06:00,720
you can't just kind of like select, we choose what

1747
02:06:00,800 --> 02:06:03,319
you quote care about that wasn't of caring about it either,

1748
02:06:03,439 --> 02:06:08,439
Like everything is impactful. You know anywhere that anywhere that

1749
02:06:09,119 --> 02:06:12,279
the US forces are deployed under roscas a NATO or

1750
02:06:12,319 --> 02:06:15,840
the IDF has deployed you know, with the full with

1751
02:06:15,960 --> 02:06:19,319
the full faith and blessing and operational integration with an

1752
02:06:19,319 --> 02:06:23,039
other the United States. You know that this has this

1753
02:06:23,159 --> 02:06:27,079
has implications for everything that occurs in clinical nature. But

1754
02:06:28,960 --> 02:06:33,800
you know, in seventy three, I I believe that that

1755
02:06:33,960 --> 02:06:42,079
was a more dangerous crisis, uh modality than the Cuban

1756
02:06:42,119 --> 02:06:44,920
missile crisis, like the cubanstal prices, the way it was

1757
02:06:45,000 --> 02:06:49,359
unfolding in real time and the way these Soviet naval

1758
02:06:49,600 --> 02:06:53,439
vessels were approaching Cuba. And there's a question like will

1759
02:06:53,479 --> 02:06:56,359
they run the blockade or not? Or like how will

1760
02:06:56,399 --> 02:06:59,279
this resolve? Like and and as like the days and

1761
02:06:59,359 --> 02:07:04,800
hours were away in Kennedy's war room. You know, people

1762
02:07:04,880 --> 02:07:08,199
got the perception that this was especially critical and it

1763
02:07:08,439 --> 02:07:13,720
was don't get me wrong. However, there was nothing approaching

1764
02:07:13,800 --> 02:07:18,359
strategic parody. Then in nineteen seventy three, there absolutely was,

1765
02:07:19,079 --> 02:07:22,520
like the stories didn't officially accomplish like strategic parody in

1766
02:07:22,640 --> 02:07:26,119
terms of forces and being you know that were in

1767
02:07:26,279 --> 02:07:31,399
fact deployed until seventy six or seventy seven. By seventy three,

1768
02:07:31,600 --> 02:07:37,159
that they they had the capability to absolutely devastate Western

1769
02:07:37,239 --> 02:07:42,039
Europe and the Connell the United States, you know, and

1770
02:07:42,319 --> 02:07:47,560
uh Oinger command and control duances and the shrinking of

1771
02:07:47,640 --> 02:07:51,640
the window where human decision makers are capable of reacting,

1772
02:07:53,000 --> 02:07:57,720
you know, that window of opportunity to render decision had

1773
02:07:58,840 --> 02:08:03,800
had shrunk dramatic from a decade previous, you know, And

1774
02:08:05,279 --> 02:08:10,000
so I maintaining that nineteen seventy three when America went

1775
02:08:10,079 --> 02:08:12,119
to deaf Con three, and it's the only time that's

1776
02:08:12,159 --> 02:08:17,119
ever happened, you know. And for context, it's not like

1777
02:08:17,239 --> 02:08:19,399
during the early years the War on Terror with those

1778
02:08:19,439 --> 02:08:22,039
like goofy like color coded alerts like today you look

1779
02:08:22,079 --> 02:08:24,560
at terror thread as purple, so like chovid drubel up

1780
02:08:24,600 --> 02:08:26,760
your rest or whatever like you're supposed to do. It

1781
02:08:26,880 --> 02:08:31,640
wasn't like that, Like, it was quite serious. And at

1782
02:08:31,720 --> 02:08:37,840
deaf Con three, you know, basically that means America shifted

1783
02:08:37,880 --> 02:08:42,199
to a war footing and missileers in their silos. They

1784
02:08:42,279 --> 02:08:45,720
strapped into their siege to prepare for deep impact and

1785
02:08:45,880 --> 02:08:48,800
awaited launch orders and like the little doors like atop

1786
02:08:48,840 --> 02:08:53,520
the silo went like you know, which is kind of horrifying.

1787
02:08:54,439 --> 02:09:02,199
But and Brezhnev he mobilized the Soviet Union operationally. In

1788
02:09:02,319 --> 02:09:04,920
some ways they mirrored the NATI or order of battle,

1789
02:09:05,239 --> 02:09:07,920
but in other ways they were totally different. But they

1790
02:09:08,079 --> 02:09:11,760
had you know, America's kind of America's kind of rapid

1791
02:09:11,840 --> 02:09:15,600
reaction force during the Cold War was uh, it was

1792
02:09:15,600 --> 02:09:22,640
the eighty second Airborne Division. The Soviets mirrored that, like

1793
02:09:22,760 --> 02:09:24,920
the Soviet airborne troops and at that point we're like

1794
02:09:24,960 --> 02:09:31,560
an air assault element. They they went on high alert

1795
02:09:32,239 --> 02:09:36,159
and they were preparing to deploy to the Middle East

1796
02:09:36,239 --> 02:09:40,359
to relieve the Egyptian Army. You know, so this was

1797
02:09:40,439 --> 02:09:44,720
this was really really bad but that it's interesting that

1798
02:09:44,800 --> 02:09:47,960
that's been conspicuously absent. I mean, it's to somebody in

1799
02:09:48,039 --> 02:09:51,319
my age, the absence is conspicuous. I haven't read one

1800
02:09:51,439 --> 02:09:58,000
reference to it. And since the IDEF assaulted that Russian target,

1801
02:09:58,960 --> 02:10:01,840
which don't get me wrong, happened many times before, okay,

1802
02:10:02,000 --> 02:10:05,720
but it does constitute if only in the court of

1803
02:10:08,399 --> 02:10:12,399
public opinion, and public opinion in wartime takes on and

1804
02:10:12,479 --> 02:10:16,159
outside significance, it does represent a kind of escalation that

1805
02:10:16,359 --> 02:10:19,800
you know, the idea of is flagrantly assaulting Russian targets.

1806
02:10:19,960 --> 02:10:21,359
And it was one thing to do that during the

1807
02:10:21,439 --> 02:10:25,199
Serian Civil Wars. Nothing to do that now. But I

1808
02:10:25,279 --> 02:10:31,520
would think that any newsman or lady would you know,

1809
02:10:31,680 --> 02:10:35,159
kind of like invoke the seventy three war as the

1810
02:10:35,279 --> 02:10:39,479
direct precedent to conteptualize what's happening, you know, and they're

1811
02:10:39,560 --> 02:10:43,720
not doing that at all. So that's just something that

1812
02:10:43,960 --> 02:10:45,880
sort of jumped out of me. But like moving on

1813
02:10:46,039 --> 02:10:50,239
to you know, the topic of the day. You know,

1814
02:10:50,319 --> 02:10:53,239
once again, I as I indicated, I don't want to

1815
02:10:53,279 --> 02:10:56,920
sound like some crazy old person, but if I'm repeating myself,

1816
02:10:57,039 --> 02:10:59,199
let me know, because I do forget sometimes where we

1817
02:10:59,319 --> 02:11:01,960
left off, and I try to refresh my recollection from

1818
02:11:02,000 --> 02:11:03,880
the last episode, but it always I don't always have

1819
02:11:04,000 --> 02:11:06,479
time to like totally go through it. So I'm not

1820
02:11:06,520 --> 02:11:08,920
gonna be offended if if you stop me and say,

1821
02:11:08,960 --> 02:11:12,039
like we're already covered that. But I think where we ended,

1822
02:11:13,039 --> 02:11:16,399
we were talking about, you know, the Russian Federation in

1823
02:11:16,560 --> 02:11:21,439
Syria and how one of the major, one of the

1824
02:11:21,479 --> 02:11:26,119
major foreign policy moves, even even in the Yeltsin era,

1825
02:11:27,159 --> 02:11:30,520
was to absolutely you know, guarantee that you know, the

1826
02:11:31,439 --> 02:11:35,279
Soviet Mediterranean Fleet could still base in Syria, and the

1827
02:11:35,399 --> 02:11:39,479
Syrians were still obviously very much amenable to that. But

1828
02:11:39,880 --> 02:11:44,600
you know, despite even even Jelson's either you know, apathy

1829
02:11:44,760 --> 02:11:48,399
or gross in confidence or combination of both on paraplitical matters,

1830
02:11:49,720 --> 02:11:51,600
you know, it wasn't just him obviously either. It was

1831
02:11:51,720 --> 02:11:55,039
you know, the the the equivalent of the General Staff

1832
02:11:55,079 --> 02:11:58,680
and the enforced the Russian Federation and and in the

1833
02:11:58,760 --> 02:12:02,000
Foreign Ministry and other things. But they even when they

1834
02:12:02,119 --> 02:12:04,640
were not at all in a position to you know,

1835
02:12:04,800 --> 02:12:12,880
be pursuing a true kind of world velt politique strategy,

1836
02:12:13,359 --> 02:12:16,079
you know, they made sure they locked in a continuation

1837
02:12:16,399 --> 02:12:23,319
of of good offices with Syria, you know, and this

1838
02:12:23,520 --> 02:12:27,640
is the nineteen seventy one Naval Treaty that was signed

1839
02:12:27,640 --> 02:12:34,079
with Halfes al Asad. It granted the Soviet Union. He

1840
02:12:34,159 --> 02:12:37,399
basically understoot the access to the naval basic artists that

1841
02:12:37,479 --> 02:12:43,560
it had built and they continue to this day, you know.

1842
02:12:43,680 --> 02:12:47,119
And if the treaty runs for twenty years and there's

1843
02:12:47,119 --> 02:12:49,479
automatic five year extensions and it's one of the parties

1844
02:12:50,199 --> 02:12:53,760
oppsiturnity agreement, but it but it's it's a rubber stamp

1845
02:12:53,840 --> 02:12:57,560
sort of thing, you know. And the the Syrian state,

1846
02:12:57,840 --> 02:13:04,159
Hauf as Asad, who passed away in two thousand, he

1847
02:13:04,279 --> 02:13:06,359
was one of the first uh heads of state to

1848
02:13:07,079 --> 02:13:11,039
recognize the Russian Federation. You know, basically immediately as a

1849
02:13:11,079 --> 02:13:14,560
Soviet Union became the Russian Federation, he recognized it and

1850
02:13:15,920 --> 02:13:18,920
made clear that the Syrian government was going to abide

1851
02:13:19,760 --> 02:13:25,079
any and any military agreements, and specifically the the naval

1852
02:13:25,239 --> 02:13:29,920
treaty regarding tartists. But you know, and the UH I

1853
02:13:29,960 --> 02:13:31,680
can remember got into this or not. We were talking

1854
02:13:31,720 --> 02:13:35,760
about the Continuity War between sixty seven and seventy three

1855
02:13:36,760 --> 02:13:39,159
and how the the Israeli Air Force, you know, they

1856
02:13:39,199 --> 02:13:42,359
fought this pitch it was this pitched air battle, you know,

1857
02:13:42,439 --> 02:13:47,439
between the Israeli Air Force and and and Soviet megs.

1858
02:13:48,680 --> 02:13:52,920
But during the during the the Ramedan War, Jogapor War itself, uh,

1859
02:13:53,600 --> 02:13:56,439
you know, there's thousands of Soviet advisors on the ground

1860
02:13:56,479 --> 02:14:02,039
as well as you know, direct action military elements, you know, technicians, know,

1861
02:14:02,159 --> 02:14:06,479
a veritable battalion and technicians to assist the Syrian Arab

1862
02:14:06,640 --> 02:14:12,920
army and you know, to maintain their equipment and their

1863
02:14:13,039 --> 02:14:19,119
armored platforms, their aircraft, all of that. And at least

1864
02:14:19,159 --> 02:14:21,720
twenty of them died the Russians, so at least twenty

1865
02:14:21,800 --> 02:14:24,600
KIA and probably more. I mean, that's just what the

1866
02:14:24,720 --> 02:14:29,199
Kremline acknowledged. But there was a during the war. There

1867
02:14:29,359 --> 02:14:34,439
was over thirty seven hundred tons of aid airlifted to

1868
02:14:34,760 --> 02:14:39,359
the battlespace by the end of October ninety seventy three

1869
02:14:41,199 --> 02:14:46,079
by sea, the Soviet Union that transported sixty three thousand

1870
02:14:46,239 --> 02:14:51,680
tons to Steia or replaced it's military and infrastructural losses.

1871
02:14:52,359 --> 02:14:56,399
That's a massive commitment in relative and absolute terms. I'm

1872
02:14:56,439 --> 02:15:01,039
not sure people recognize that because you know, America throw

1873
02:15:01,159 --> 02:15:05,479
his money around like water and it's constantly just like

1874
02:15:05,600 --> 02:15:09,880
dumping these like aid packages and secondary theaters. That this

1875
02:15:10,039 --> 02:15:15,760
was a big deal. Okay, I think I got into

1876
02:15:15,800 --> 02:15:19,439
the fact that there was some tension. In seventy six

1877
02:15:19,560 --> 02:15:24,399
seventy seven between Damascus and Moscow. The Syrian Arab Army

1878
02:15:24,479 --> 02:15:29,000
deployed to the Lebanese battle space, which put them directly

1879
02:15:29,079 --> 02:15:32,600
opposite the PLO, and you know the PLO the Popular

1880
02:15:32,640 --> 02:15:36,680
Front and the Popular Front Delivery of Palestine. They were

1881
02:15:36,840 --> 02:15:39,560
very warsaw packed adjacent. There's a big concern in the

1882
02:15:39,640 --> 02:15:43,640
Soviet camp that this would upset the kind of delicate

1883
02:15:43,760 --> 02:15:47,560
balance that was in place in the Arab Cold War

1884
02:15:47,680 --> 02:15:53,119
as it's called. This was remedied basically one hundred and

1885
02:15:53,239 --> 02:15:56,960
ten percent when the when the sovietwents were in Afghanistan.

1886
02:15:57,640 --> 02:15:59,720
Because I can't remember if I mentioned this or not either,

1887
02:16:00,000 --> 02:16:04,359
I guess aside immediately like declared like solidarity with the

1888
02:16:04,439 --> 02:16:07,800
Soviet Union in in the war from in Afghanistan, and

1889
02:16:08,680 --> 02:16:11,479
obviously I put him at odds with basically every other

1890
02:16:11,560 --> 02:16:15,359
Arab government you know, and that that and that's huge,

1891
02:16:16,319 --> 02:16:20,239
it's and it's always it's significant too. I mean, because

1892
02:16:20,279 --> 02:16:26,199
the there's obvious and inherent tensions between the Soviet between

1893
02:16:26,399 --> 02:16:28,479
there were between the Soviet Union and i Ran and

1894
02:16:28,479 --> 02:16:30,560
there out a day between the Russian Federation and Iran.

1895
02:16:31,079 --> 02:16:34,799
Some of these a sectarian and religious theological. Some of

1896
02:16:34,840 --> 02:16:38,079
these are ethnic you know, I that the persons in

1897
02:16:38,079 --> 02:16:41,879
the Russians aren't aren't particularly cozy, but there's there's a

1898
02:16:42,000 --> 02:16:46,239
very large Azeri minority in Iran, you know, Amadina Jods

1899
02:16:46,280 --> 02:16:51,879
and ethnic ASII. There's there, there's there's some bad blood there,

1900
02:16:53,040 --> 02:16:56,120
you know, aside from the the intrinsic value with Syria

1901
02:16:56,879 --> 02:17:00,879
in absolute geo strategic terms to the Russian Federation, it's

1902
02:17:00,959 --> 02:17:03,559
it's also very much like a con it represents kind

1903
02:17:03,600 --> 02:17:08,360
of like it facilitates concord between the Russians and in

1904
02:17:08,799 --> 02:17:20,360
Tehran in a real way. You know the UH I'm

1905
02:17:20,399 --> 02:17:28,559
sorry one second, oh and it's in UH in April

1906
02:17:28,600 --> 02:17:30,840
of seventy seven, like it has this kind of Lebanon

1907
02:17:30,959 --> 02:17:38,159
situation was developing. Asa he had he traveled the Moscow

1908
02:17:38,479 --> 02:17:42,399
and there's some interesting sort of like cool footage that

1909
02:17:42,520 --> 02:17:46,959
the Russians shot, and there's there's also some there's also

1910
02:17:47,000 --> 02:17:50,399
some British UH media guy in the ground. The British

1911
02:17:50,440 --> 02:17:53,959
were very well, very well indexed with the Soviet Union

1912
02:17:54,040 --> 02:17:57,360
and in terms of media for whatever reason. So a

1913
02:17:57,399 --> 02:17:59,879
lot of this, but there's this this footage of Hafesisa

1914
02:18:00,719 --> 02:18:04,479
arriving in Moscow and receiving you know, like great honors.

1915
02:18:05,079 --> 02:18:09,120
You know, it's really it's really interesting, and especially for

1916
02:18:09,200 --> 02:18:13,920
a small country. You know, it's Syria has a very

1917
02:18:14,000 --> 02:18:22,639
outsized relevance for this reason. But it's uh he he

1918
02:18:22,920 --> 02:18:27,360
got a side gottage an audience with Presden, but uh

1919
02:18:27,920 --> 02:18:35,360
with Alexei Pasigan, who uh was uh he. The way

1920
02:18:35,399 --> 02:18:36,559
to think of him is he he was kind of

1921
02:18:36,600 --> 02:18:39,399
in the role that Lavrov is today. You know, it's

1922
02:18:39,399 --> 02:18:44,559
an imperfect analogy, but for foreign policy purposes and Warren

1923
02:18:44,600 --> 02:18:47,799
peace terms, especially like if he's a via the Arab world,

1924
02:18:48,879 --> 02:18:52,959
it tracks, and you know it's not that's that's no

1925
02:18:53,079 --> 02:18:56,399
small thing and it's not you know, that's why when

1926
02:18:56,399 --> 02:18:58,760
people when people talk about the Assad family like they're

1927
02:19:00,079 --> 02:19:02,520
they're like you know, like like they're like Saddam and

1928
02:19:02,600 --> 02:19:06,200
his clan, they're there, not at all, you know, they're there,

1929
02:19:07,120 --> 02:19:10,879
sad was anything but just some like tinpot dictator. You know,

1930
02:19:11,000 --> 02:19:15,360
I mean I I I think they're I think the

1931
02:19:15,440 --> 02:19:18,920
Syrians are a noble people generally, and I find the

1932
02:19:18,959 --> 02:19:23,040
ASSAD is particularly impressive. But that that's not that's not

1933
02:19:23,239 --> 02:19:27,159
just that, that's not just cap I mean a conceptual

1934
02:19:27,239 --> 02:19:33,079
bias or something. You know. Fesisade visited at Moscow again

1935
02:19:33,799 --> 02:19:39,319
in early spring eighty seven April nineteen eighty seven, and

1936
02:19:41,600 --> 02:19:46,079
he traveled there with the then serving Defense Minister Mustafa

1937
02:19:46,200 --> 02:19:54,879
class and he has to require the this advanced service

1938
02:19:54,920 --> 02:19:59,920
to air missile system it UH and Gorbachev denied it,

1939
02:20:00,520 --> 02:20:04,879
which is really interesting. And this was during a time

1940
02:20:04,959 --> 02:20:09,239
when it's a critical period when when when avionics were

1941
02:20:09,280 --> 02:20:16,840
becoming hyper advanced. You know, obviously the stealth but like

1942
02:20:16,920 --> 02:20:20,440
the BET stealth bomber, it was a very different kind

1943
02:20:20,440 --> 02:20:24,520
of plaid for him than those that the these missile

1944
02:20:24,559 --> 02:20:28,280
systems that the Syrians wanted to acquire were tailored the

1945
02:20:29,280 --> 02:20:32,920
as a counter measure for But that that entire sort

1946
02:20:32,959 --> 02:20:38,000
of like skunk Works series of projects that was the

1947
02:20:38,040 --> 02:20:41,159
emergent from this, that this kind of culture of high

1948
02:20:41,200 --> 02:20:45,840
tech adeonics. Okay, so you know the Syrians were asking,

1949
02:20:46,280 --> 02:20:49,799
were requesting this for a reason, you know, they they

1950
02:20:49,879 --> 02:20:56,879
need they desperately needed countermeasures because Israel uh Israel and

1951
02:20:59,120 --> 02:21:02,000
in Western Germanian the Cold War, they were getting America's

1952
02:21:02,040 --> 02:21:03,959
best equipment. I mean the Germans and their own right,

1953
02:21:04,040 --> 02:21:06,680
I think the I think the Leopard tank is the best,

1954
02:21:07,000 --> 02:21:11,280
like modern bail tank, like hands down, but the but

1955
02:21:12,799 --> 02:21:16,280
they the West Germans in Israel, I mean in the

1956
02:21:16,399 --> 02:21:17,920
in the in the former case that you know what,

1957
02:21:18,159 --> 02:21:21,719
obviously cold residencies. The latter was ideological and the ladder

1958
02:21:21,719 --> 02:21:23,319
obviously still this is the case in terms of what

1959
02:21:23,399 --> 02:21:26,719
they received. But they weren't getting like, they weren't getting

1960
02:21:27,360 --> 02:21:31,200
like knockoff versions of of American aircraft. They were getting

1961
02:21:31,200 --> 02:21:36,680
the real thing, you know. And this obviously decides to

1962
02:21:36,760 --> 02:21:40,479
give the Syrians pause because even before even before UH,

1963
02:21:41,120 --> 02:21:46,200
stealth technology became the norm, you know, long before it

1964
02:21:47,559 --> 02:21:51,879
advanced avionics were making it increasingly difficult really to but

1965
02:21:52,040 --> 02:21:54,399
he developed any counter, any counter versions at all, and

1966
02:21:56,000 --> 02:21:59,120
the Soviets uh. One of the things the worstaw packed

1967
02:21:59,360 --> 02:22:05,239
did very very well was aircraft countermagers, Okay, particularly service

1968
02:22:05,280 --> 02:22:07,799
the air missiles, like you know, the old the old

1969
02:22:07,879 --> 02:22:10,159
book and film Flag of the Intruder. It's it's a

1970
02:22:10,239 --> 02:22:12,959
dumb movie, but it's a pretty good book. If you're

1971
02:22:13,040 --> 02:22:14,479
just sit in the air where I read I read

1972
02:22:14,520 --> 02:22:16,680
the book and saw the movie. Yeah, the book is

1973
02:22:16,719 --> 02:22:20,360
a lot better. Yeah, but it's and Stephen koons Is

1974
02:22:20,559 --> 02:22:22,760
is kind of a he's kind of a strange guy,

1975
02:22:22,920 --> 02:22:27,760
but he he flew Ay sixes over Vietnam and the

1976
02:22:27,920 --> 02:22:33,719
part where the the the kind of the kind of

1977
02:22:33,799 --> 02:22:37,639
John Wayne type aviator Jake Rafton, you know, his new

1978
02:22:37,840 --> 02:22:41,840
his new UH radar intercept officer, his new ra O

1979
02:22:42,079 --> 02:22:46,239
is is this kind of like wild guy. But even

1980
02:22:46,360 --> 02:22:50,360
he like fun sorties were downtown Hanoi is like a

1981
02:22:50,479 --> 02:22:53,879
terrifying prospect for American aviators because other other than Moscow,

1982
02:22:54,120 --> 02:22:56,079
like it was like the most hardened like target on

1983
02:22:56,120 --> 02:22:56,639
this planet.

1984
02:22:57,200 --> 02:22:57,399
Speaker 1: Like that.

1985
02:22:57,520 --> 02:23:01,000
Speaker 2: That's not that wasn't creative license. That was including the

1986
02:23:01,040 --> 02:23:03,799
book or something. And that owed the fact that, I

1987
02:23:03,840 --> 02:23:06,040
mean the Soviets built it up to make it that way.

1988
02:23:06,639 --> 02:23:10,079
You know, it wasn't it obviously there was you know,

1989
02:23:10,159 --> 02:23:13,680
they the Vietnamese are and industrious people, but they they

1990
02:23:13,760 --> 02:23:17,680
had nothing approaching that kind of technology. And you know,

1991
02:23:17,760 --> 02:23:21,600
they the Soviets knew that. I mean that was before

1992
02:23:22,399 --> 02:23:26,680
the sound of Soviets split. But you know, the like

1993
02:23:26,840 --> 02:23:29,280
like the Chinese had nothing remotely honorable, you know, like

1994
02:23:29,399 --> 02:23:34,000
the the chadac On equivalent was junk. But in any event,

1995
02:23:34,079 --> 02:23:38,719
so this was, uh, that was kind of a turning

1996
02:23:38,760 --> 02:23:42,040
point obviously in eighty seven when Garbasheff refused basically the

1997
02:23:43,520 --> 02:23:48,639
kind of honor the good offices that had been sustained

1998
02:23:48,680 --> 02:23:50,959
with serious really since day one, at least, you know,

1999
02:23:51,399 --> 02:23:55,239
in as regards military necessities and exigencies. But you know,

2000
02:23:55,280 --> 02:24:01,360
that was the what what garbage off was attempting to accomplish.

2001
02:24:02,680 --> 02:24:04,959
I was writing something about this the other day, but

2002
02:24:05,040 --> 02:24:07,440
that's kind of a subject for another episode. I know,

2003
02:24:07,600 --> 02:24:09,280
if if we go off on that tangent like we'll

2004
02:24:09,319 --> 02:24:14,239
be here all night. But it is uh that that

2005
02:24:14,559 --> 02:24:16,559
that was definitely like a novelist though, you know, like

2006
02:24:16,639 --> 02:24:21,079
I said, it even even even under Yel since tenure,

2007
02:24:21,200 --> 02:24:25,360
the you know, the Moscow never made any indication that

2008
02:24:25,840 --> 02:24:31,440
they did any intention of abandoning Syria. But moving forward,

2009
02:24:31,600 --> 02:24:35,000
what's I mean obviously it was most relevant to the

2010
02:24:35,120 --> 02:24:38,280
president is the Serian civil War, you know, and I

2011
02:24:40,319 --> 02:24:44,440
it's it's hard to diminate really what's what people are

2012
02:24:44,520 --> 02:24:48,520
thinking in Washington because you don't have a serious foreign

2013
02:24:48,559 --> 02:24:51,799
policy establishment, and you haven't since you know, nineteen ninety two.

2014
02:24:52,920 --> 02:24:56,840
But when Obama's people, when they were saying that Damascus

2015
02:24:56,920 --> 02:25:00,440
is imminiately going to fall, that that that was that

2016
02:25:00,559 --> 02:25:05,719
was in fact accurate at the outset of the intervention,

2017
02:25:06,040 --> 02:25:09,120
the Russian intervention, and there's another case of pot putin

2018
02:25:09,159 --> 02:25:12,239
waited far too long intervene. I mean it it's a

2019
02:25:12,319 --> 02:25:15,319
credit to the Syrian people, you know, those loyal to

2020
02:25:15,360 --> 02:25:20,000
Asad and Hezebla and those Russian forces were deployed. That

2021
02:25:20,079 --> 02:25:25,319
they won, but it was becoming critical. You know, the

2022
02:25:26,719 --> 02:25:31,079
the Syrian government they officially only controlled about a quarter

2023
02:25:31,120 --> 02:25:34,399
of the country. You know, the statistics separated is like

2024
02:25:34,440 --> 02:25:37,680
twenty six percent of overall like territory. And how how

2025
02:25:37,760 --> 02:25:40,479
much of that territory you can deploy in depth or defended.

2026
02:25:41,120 --> 02:25:45,000
I mean they had they they had the built up

2027
02:25:45,040 --> 02:25:48,520
areas buying large but you know they were they were

2028
02:25:48,600 --> 02:25:51,719
essentially there was this there's this garrison. Demaskus was like

2029
02:25:51,760 --> 02:25:57,680
becoming a frontline city, you know. And assad Uh Asad

2030
02:25:57,760 --> 02:26:03,079
sends his wife away, and he sent his Asad away,

2031
02:26:03,600 --> 02:26:08,879
and you know he I developed huge respect for Bashar

2032
02:26:09,440 --> 02:26:12,600
the son because he said, I'm not leaving Damascus if

2033
02:26:12,639 --> 02:26:15,360
I have to well die here and that's you know,

2034
02:26:15,399 --> 02:26:16,879
I'm like, Okay, this guy's a real man, and he's

2035
02:26:16,920 --> 02:26:19,079
a real president. You know, he's he's a real leader

2036
02:26:19,120 --> 02:26:23,879
of he's a real worldlord now, you know, because that's

2037
02:26:23,879 --> 02:26:28,280
the way it has to be. But you know, when

2038
02:26:28,280 --> 02:26:32,520
the Russians did arrive, you know, they rapidly integrated with

2039
02:26:33,760 --> 02:26:37,879
you know, a lot of the Syrian Arab Army defected.

2040
02:26:38,799 --> 02:26:41,719
You know, I think a lot of that the degree

2041
02:26:41,760 --> 02:26:45,760
to which that Sunny Bath elements and the Iraqi Bath

2042
02:26:45,840 --> 02:26:48,760
and the Syrian Bath Party are very different animals, but

2043
02:26:48,879 --> 02:26:52,760
there is like a common ideological core and there's and

2044
02:26:52,799 --> 02:26:56,479
there's a common sociological rationale to like the men who

2045
02:26:58,040 --> 02:27:01,879
were in our heavily index with the party. And you know,

2046
02:27:01,959 --> 02:27:07,440
a bunch of Saddam's officers who were you know, part

2047
02:27:07,440 --> 02:27:09,840
of the Sunni minority in Iraq, like they clipped they

2048
02:27:09,879 --> 02:27:12,520
cliped up with ices basically immediately, not all of them,

2049
02:27:12,520 --> 02:27:14,479
but a lot of them did. And they were accepted

2050
02:27:14,520 --> 02:27:18,399
by these guys, which is really interesting. And some of

2051
02:27:18,479 --> 02:27:24,000
the same thing happened in Syria, you know. And the uh,

2052
02:27:26,760 --> 02:27:30,040
the Syrian Bath Party even like at the top, is

2053
02:27:30,159 --> 02:27:34,799
more ecumenical than they're credited, but it still is. I mean,

2054
02:27:34,840 --> 02:27:36,920
it's it's basically, you know, like an an Alley white

2055
02:27:37,079 --> 02:27:44,239
like minority rule situation. But and it's it's interesting. And

2056
02:27:44,440 --> 02:27:49,040
in May twenty ten, like before the formal on set

2057
02:27:49,079 --> 02:27:57,600
of hostilities, Medvedev had visited Syria and that mid Medviedev's

2058
02:27:57,639 --> 02:28:02,959
like brief ten, you're as the president is interesting, man,

2059
02:28:04,040 --> 02:28:07,000
and it's interesting how we became. It was like out

2060
02:28:07,120 --> 02:28:15,120
bad with Putin subsequently. But it's pretty obvious that NATO

2061
02:28:15,440 --> 02:28:21,159
Israel and I'm sure their proxies in these isis types

2062
02:28:21,479 --> 02:28:26,479
as well, because those guys weren't stupid. They realize, you know, look,

2063
02:28:26,559 --> 02:28:29,040
the time to move, you know, the time to truly

2064
02:28:29,239 --> 02:28:31,879
escalate is when the Russians are are having some kind

2065
02:28:31,879 --> 02:28:35,879
of crisis of leadership, you know, or if not not,

2066
02:28:36,079 --> 02:28:37,959
if not so much a crisis and a literal like

2067
02:28:38,159 --> 02:28:40,479
you know, war in the Kremlin, like it happened after

2068
02:28:40,559 --> 02:28:45,399
a drop off died. You know, you when the civilian

2069
02:28:45,440 --> 02:28:51,399
executive is kind of headless, that that causes problems. You know,

2070
02:28:53,079 --> 02:28:55,959
it causes problems in terms of like grand schemes, peated

2071
02:28:56,000 --> 02:28:58,440
decision making, it all the way down to the operational level,

2072
02:28:59,319 --> 02:29:02,840
That's that's when I really when Yahoo was secure. Unfortunately,

2073
02:29:03,040 --> 02:29:07,559
because even people who despise them, you know, they're playing

2074
02:29:07,600 --> 02:29:10,680
musical chairs with with the civilian executive is not what

2075
02:29:10,799 --> 02:29:14,760
you want to do at war. But because it may.

2076
02:29:17,479 --> 02:29:21,879
When the Russians did deploy, they immediately integrated, you know,

2077
02:29:21,920 --> 02:29:24,879
with HESBLO and the Serenira of army and comand control capacities,

2078
02:29:25,360 --> 02:29:29,799
you know, like like deeply and this how this you know,

2079
02:29:29,879 --> 02:29:32,680
there were the Russians no like wartime diplomacy, man, I

2080
02:29:32,760 --> 02:29:36,040
mean that during the Cold War, I'd say the key

2081
02:29:36,159 --> 02:29:39,319
ways I mean NATO had them beat in all kinds

2082
02:29:39,360 --> 02:29:44,360
of capacities like material, political and otherwise. But you know

2083
02:29:44,399 --> 02:29:47,600
what the Russians head was. I mean they had firepower, obviously,

2084
02:29:48,600 --> 02:29:51,559
they had a very tough and game population in the

2085
02:29:51,639 --> 02:29:55,559
Russian people, but they were very they weren't aren't very

2086
02:29:55,639 --> 02:30:00,760
adept at like war and keys politics and that uh

2087
02:30:02,399 --> 02:30:04,120
that that that's how they were able to accomplish that,

2088
02:30:04,239 --> 02:30:08,959
you know because like I I mean obviously, especially considering

2089
02:30:09,040 --> 02:30:13,200
the the tactical situation on the ground in Syria, I mean,

2090
02:30:13,280 --> 02:30:15,920
Habla wasn't about to say, like we won't index with

2091
02:30:15,959 --> 02:30:20,680
the Russian the Russian Federation. But there's always tensions in

2092
02:30:21,079 --> 02:30:24,000
trying to integrate a command and control structure, you know.

2093
02:30:24,840 --> 02:30:30,680
And this was accomplished seamlessly essentially. But the well, you know,

2094
02:30:30,719 --> 02:30:35,639
the Russians, they the Russians brought in like real firepower

2095
02:30:35,680 --> 02:30:39,159
to bear. You know. The Russians can't do high tech

2096
02:30:39,280 --> 02:30:43,040
like America can. But the war tech as during the

2097
02:30:43,120 --> 02:30:47,479
Cold War is now was good enough. And the Syrian

2098
02:30:47,520 --> 02:30:51,360
intervention and the way they you know, they they pursued

2099
02:30:51,399 --> 02:30:54,879
it truly scorched earth policy in the on the in

2100
02:30:54,959 --> 02:30:57,559
the battle space, like against their against the up for

2101
02:30:58,440 --> 02:31:02,600
and it paid off, you know, the and and Putin

2102
02:31:02,639 --> 02:31:07,319
declared in knowing certain terms that you know, the the

2103
02:31:07,680 --> 02:31:09,520
like the Asad government is not going to be allowed

2104
02:31:09,520 --> 02:31:17,360
to fall. There is some momentum behind Syria two in

2105
02:31:17,399 --> 02:31:19,399
the quart of world opinion. It's like we talked about,

2106
02:31:20,760 --> 02:31:23,559
I'm not successful to propaganda, and I mean I I'm

2107
02:31:23,639 --> 02:31:28,280
not some young naive person. I was legitimately horrified by

2108
02:31:28,399 --> 02:31:30,399
those scenes from you know, like the subbers of a

2109
02:31:30,479 --> 02:31:34,719
Lepo over these these Isis barbarians. You know, we're beheading

2110
02:31:34,840 --> 02:31:40,319
people and putting heads on steaks, you know, like I said,

2111
02:31:40,360 --> 02:31:42,159
I saw the video of them. You know, they were

2112
02:31:42,280 --> 02:31:45,479
doing their afternoon prayers and their prayer mats, and uh,

2113
02:31:45,959 --> 02:31:48,879
there's like a forest of hits. You know, it's it's

2114
02:31:48,879 --> 02:31:52,600
like a horror movie. But you know people were seeing

2115
02:31:52,680 --> 02:31:57,799
that kind of thing. And I remember a Bath Party

2116
02:31:57,840 --> 02:32:03,520
spokeswoman in knowing certain terms, telling some European media type like, look,

2117
02:32:03,559 --> 02:32:06,920
we're not we do not negotiate with people who we

2118
02:32:07,000 --> 02:32:08,719
will not negotiate with. We're not going to change our

2119
02:32:08,760 --> 02:32:12,239
government because terrorists are are bombing us and killing people

2120
02:32:12,399 --> 02:32:16,639
and beheading people. Like what that's you can't ever allow that,

2121
02:32:17,479 --> 02:32:20,440
you know this is and you know this was also

2122
02:32:20,559 --> 02:32:22,760
too when the War on Terror was still on. It's like,

2123
02:32:23,920 --> 02:32:27,440
so you America is telling us and telling the world like,

2124
02:32:27,719 --> 02:32:30,079
you know, we're waging the war on terror, yet you're

2125
02:32:30,239 --> 02:32:34,680
you're trying to bring down a secularist eye doctor who

2126
02:32:35,719 --> 02:32:37,719
it's got like a pretty wife who looks kind of

2127
02:32:37,799 --> 02:32:40,680
like any white woman in the United States, and you're

2128
02:32:40,680 --> 02:32:42,959
saying that like isis are the good guys? Like that's

2129
02:32:43,159 --> 02:32:46,200
that's really when America lost all credibility, you know, like

2130
02:32:46,280 --> 02:32:49,799
even more so, I think than the Iraq fiasco, because

2131
02:32:49,799 --> 02:32:52,000
that was just like laid there. You know, it's like

2132
02:32:52,079 --> 02:32:57,079
we will burn down civilization and hand it to barbarians.

2133
02:32:57,479 --> 02:33:00,440
You know that basically that cows what we want and

2134
02:33:00,559 --> 02:33:05,000
that's the opposite of civilization. You know, the say nothing

2135
02:33:05,040 --> 02:33:09,520
of the fact that that's I mean, nine eleven should

2136
02:33:09,520 --> 02:33:14,000
never happen, but it did happen, and it's like okay,

2137
02:33:14,040 --> 02:33:17,040
so okay, decades on, you know, a mere decade subsequent

2138
02:33:17,280 --> 02:33:20,200
like now, now, now you're willing to like accept that

2139
02:33:20,360 --> 02:33:22,600
as you know, just kind of like the verbial costs

2140
02:33:22,639 --> 02:33:26,879
of doing business. It's like, that's that's unconstable. It scoresesque,

2141
02:33:28,319 --> 02:33:32,399
but you know, and then Putin clarified in twenty fifteen.

2142
02:33:33,280 --> 02:33:36,200
It's really interesting too because when speaking of the Medvita

2143
02:33:36,360 --> 02:33:41,559
situation for three four years, when when Putin, you know,

2144
02:33:44,520 --> 02:33:48,719
he's kind of like second uh permanent tenure as President

2145
02:33:48,760 --> 02:33:52,200
of Russian Federation, there's this kind of window where we're

2146
02:33:52,239 --> 02:33:54,639
speaking very candle I think I think Putin quotes himself

2147
02:33:54,680 --> 02:33:58,360
pretty well generally, but he plays up post of the

2148
02:33:58,479 --> 02:34:01,559
chest and issues. He's like non answers that policy questions.

2149
02:34:02,360 --> 02:34:04,600
There's like this brief period of a few years where

2150
02:34:04,639 --> 02:34:06,399
he was he was kind of trying to like humanize

2151
02:34:06,440 --> 02:34:10,280
his image. I think I remember in October twenty fifteen. Yeah,

2152
02:34:10,360 --> 02:34:12,719
it was like it was like October November twenty fifteen.

2153
02:34:13,239 --> 02:34:15,799
He gives us an interview and he's like, look, he's

2154
02:34:15,879 --> 02:34:18,760
like this, He's like, you know, our the Syrian intervention

2155
02:34:18,920 --> 02:34:21,600
was prepared well in advance. Despite like made have appeared,

2156
02:34:22,040 --> 02:34:24,520
we weren't just responding to an emergency situation on the ground.

2157
02:34:24,600 --> 02:34:26,719
We knew that America and Israel wanted to bring down

2158
02:34:27,399 --> 02:34:30,520
the bath regime. We consider this unacceptable. We still do.

2159
02:34:31,079 --> 02:34:33,639
It was really interesting things like he'd never think. He

2160
02:34:33,719 --> 02:34:36,040
just doesn't talk that way anymore, you know. And one

2161
02:34:36,079 --> 02:34:39,120
of the things people criticize him for is is this

2162
02:34:39,280 --> 02:34:42,879
kind of like ambiguous language about Ukraine. You know, oh no,

2163
02:34:43,040 --> 02:34:45,559
this this is a special military operation, and you know,

2164
02:34:46,479 --> 02:34:50,120
not not being clear about objectives and things. It's it's

2165
02:34:50,239 --> 02:34:55,120
very different, but I think it's relevant, you know it,

2166
02:34:57,239 --> 02:34:58,639
I know it is. But uh.

2167
02:35:00,079 --> 02:35:00,479
Speaker 1: The uh.

2168
02:35:02,159 --> 02:35:06,680
Speaker 2: In Putin's terms and uh Russian speakers I'm sure will

2169
02:35:06,879 --> 02:35:12,120
suggest and suggest correctly. This is an imprecise, imprecise translation,

2170
02:35:13,319 --> 02:35:18,879
but it's the most coherent when I found, like in

2171
02:35:18,920 --> 02:35:22,719
the same interview he said, quote that that the objective

2172
02:35:23,399 --> 02:35:27,360
wasn't remains quote stabilizing the legitimate power in Syria and

2173
02:35:27,479 --> 02:35:33,479
creating conditions for political compromise. And that's very much a Putinism.

2174
02:35:34,440 --> 02:35:39,479
Putin's always resorting the you know, the rules based international

2175
02:35:39,639 --> 02:35:42,719
order that purportedly exists, and like, I understand why he

2176
02:35:42,879 --> 02:35:45,239
does that, but I think the time has passed for

2177
02:35:45,360 --> 02:35:50,360
that those sorts of appeals. But it's just it's just interesting,

2178
02:35:50,879 --> 02:35:53,760
the uh and if I can't remember, we dropped the

2179
02:35:53,840 --> 02:35:57,479
brass tax, like the like the literal numbers of what

2180
02:35:57,719 --> 02:36:04,040
this operation constituted in Syria. In some ways, especially considering

2181
02:36:04,719 --> 02:36:08,399
a lot of the discussion about the deterioration of Russian capabilities,

2182
02:36:08,719 --> 02:36:11,799
in some ways, this was as much a coup in

2183
02:36:12,799 --> 02:36:18,120
world opinion terms as the UK's effort in the fault Ones,

2184
02:36:19,120 --> 02:36:23,920
you know, because people were, I mean, Washington's always suggesting

2185
02:36:23,959 --> 02:36:30,280
that Russians can't do anything right in military terms, but

2186
02:36:31,280 --> 02:36:34,559
even relatively serious people were prone to talking that way.

2187
02:36:36,399 --> 02:36:40,639
But the Russian Air Force, it carried out over nineteen

2188
02:36:40,760 --> 02:36:46,040
thousand sorties, seventy one thousand direct strikes on what they

2189
02:36:46,159 --> 02:36:51,479
called the quote infrastructure of terrorists, you know, I interpret

2190
02:36:51,520 --> 02:36:54,840
that in like real human language, not military language, as

2191
02:36:54,920 --> 02:37:01,680
a combination of you know, ground support, attack missions, you know,

2192
02:37:01,719 --> 02:37:07,440
as well as uh you know, as well as bonding

2193
02:37:07,440 --> 02:37:14,319
of any positions and things. But I uh, close air

2194
02:37:14,440 --> 02:37:19,920
support and direct support of ground element forces is what

2195
02:37:20,079 --> 02:37:24,239
really carried the day. And again, the Russians, they've always

2196
02:37:24,319 --> 02:37:27,760
viewed warfare as as kind of the advance of fire.

2197
02:37:28,559 --> 02:37:30,159
You know, they're very clouds of woodsy and and they're

2198
02:37:30,399 --> 02:37:34,120
like literally clouds of wits end in their perspectives. You know.

2199
02:37:34,200 --> 02:37:36,799
That's who train them to fight modern war. You know.

2200
02:37:36,920 --> 02:37:42,680
It was uh clouds with himself and officers and there

2201
02:37:43,520 --> 02:37:46,440
are for the Russian Federation on parade they still you know,

2202
02:37:46,600 --> 02:37:51,000
perform the goose stuff. This you know, not a coincidence

2203
02:37:51,159 --> 02:37:54,399
because they they think it looks really sharp, which it does,

2204
02:37:54,680 --> 02:37:59,959
but it's because that's how they learned drill, you know.

2205
02:38:00,159 --> 02:38:04,600
And this this this solidified Russia as uh as a

2206
02:38:04,680 --> 02:38:09,079
real military power on the world stage once again, you know.

2207
02:38:09,159 --> 02:38:14,200
And that's why it's there's it's not as like a

2208
02:38:14,799 --> 02:38:18,159
conceptual bias or like a categorical ignorance, when it's both

2209
02:38:18,200 --> 02:38:20,920
those things too. What you know, like the honset of

2210
02:38:20,959 --> 02:38:24,239
facilities in Ukraine, like however mismanaged that war has been

2211
02:38:24,319 --> 02:38:26,079
and it's kind of like grossing is managed on on

2212
02:38:26,120 --> 02:38:30,120
the Russian side. Okay, But this idea that like Russia

2213
02:38:30,280 --> 02:38:33,760
lacks the capability to deploy its scale, it's like, what

2214
02:38:33,959 --> 02:38:36,319
are you talking about? I mean that that's that's at

2215
02:38:36,360 --> 02:38:42,319
odds with reality, you know. And if you're gonna if

2216
02:38:42,319 --> 02:38:44,920
you're gonna fight the uh, if you're gonna fight the

2217
02:38:45,040 --> 02:38:47,280
arm force of the Russian Federation like literally on their

2218
02:38:47,319 --> 02:38:52,000
own frontier, you know, the the direct precedent, the cons

2219
02:38:52,079 --> 02:38:55,159
that bear as well what happened in Syria. You know,

2220
02:38:55,680 --> 02:38:58,440
I not not make a mistake. I there is no

2221
02:38:58,799 --> 02:39:02,000
like military objective on you know that that Ukraine is

2222
02:39:02,079 --> 02:39:05,000
pursuing because there's no there's no path in victory in

2223
02:39:05,040 --> 02:39:10,079
military terms. And it's but if you accept that, you know, US, NATO,

2224
02:39:10,479 --> 02:39:13,639
Israel their only interest is you know, and it is

2225
02:39:14,000 --> 02:39:20,239
in creating attrition. You know, it's uh, it makes perfect sense.

2226
02:39:20,319 --> 02:39:24,319
But this idea that these these it's not as these

2227
02:39:24,360 --> 02:39:29,360
fools like blinking either, like as you know, there's this people.

2228
02:39:29,360 --> 02:39:30,920
I don't think there's any serious people in the foreign

2229
02:39:30,920 --> 02:39:34,760
policies stay asman, but even people less kind of you know,

2230
02:39:34,840 --> 02:39:37,239
out of it than he is. You know, they were

2231
02:39:37,319 --> 02:39:40,120
talking like, well, yeah, you know, the the Russian mainline

2232
02:39:40,120 --> 02:39:42,360
resistance is just going to collapse. You know, the moment

2233
02:39:43,479 --> 02:39:46,840
basically we start popping off combined arms and you know

2234
02:39:47,200 --> 02:39:49,959
from a borough, communitions or whatever, and and then like

2235
02:39:50,040 --> 02:39:51,959
the you know, the the United Russia is just going

2236
02:39:52,040 --> 02:39:55,559
to collapse. It's like what are you smoking? Crack? Like

2237
02:39:55,680 --> 02:40:00,399
that's you know, the one thing, the one thing the

2238
02:40:00,520 --> 02:40:04,239
Russians have going for them again is the fact that

2239
02:40:05,239 --> 02:40:08,040
they can bring firepower to bear. They've got a very

2240
02:40:08,159 --> 02:40:13,760
game population, and I as long as as long as

2241
02:40:13,840 --> 02:40:16,760
Putin is alive and relatively healthy, like United Russia is

2242
02:40:16,760 --> 02:40:20,040
like never been stronger, like they're Their problem is that

2243
02:40:20,399 --> 02:40:24,879
apparently they can't achieve consensus on who on a man

2244
02:40:24,920 --> 02:40:30,040
to take his place. But this idea that butth of

2245
02:40:30,120 --> 02:40:33,719
Russians literally took twenty five million dead. You know, if

2246
02:40:33,760 --> 02:40:37,000
you lose one in seven of your population to the

2247
02:40:37,120 --> 02:40:40,520
Wehrmacht in four years, and not only do you not

2248
02:40:40,680 --> 02:40:47,159
fall apart, you you can reconstitute into a superpower, albeit

2249
02:40:47,200 --> 02:40:51,799
a crippled one, immediately subsequent there's nothing sort of incredible,

2250
02:40:52,479 --> 02:40:55,799
and I think I think it's basically unprecedented, you know,

2251
02:40:55,959 --> 02:41:01,440
like some some sort of comparable scenario or a state

2252
02:41:01,600 --> 02:41:06,799
endoors that level of devastation and is able to you know,

2253
02:41:08,239 --> 02:41:12,959
it's not profit from it to uh, you know, immediately

2254
02:41:13,079 --> 02:41:21,319
reconstitute and project power in a way theretofore unthinkable even

2255
02:41:21,399 --> 02:41:26,559
prior to the onset of hostilities. But you know, the uh,

2256
02:41:29,440 --> 02:41:33,440
that's one of the reasons why I mean the the

2257
02:41:34,040 --> 02:41:36,600
You've got to understand the Ukraine War as as literally

2258
02:41:36,719 --> 02:41:41,200
like another a secondary front, a secondary theater of the

2259
02:41:41,360 --> 02:41:47,000
same conflict as was underway in Syria. And one of

2260
02:41:47,079 --> 02:41:51,959
the things facility Russian facilitated by Russian victory there was

2261
02:41:52,079 --> 02:41:55,360
not just clout in the national stage, but uh, it

2262
02:41:55,479 --> 02:41:59,559
basically guaranteed them access to the Eastern Mediterranean, you know,

2263
02:41:59,680 --> 02:42:02,959
and uh uh from there you can stage, you can

2264
02:42:03,000 --> 02:42:09,920
stage comment operations like fear wide basically, you know, including

2265
02:42:09,959 --> 02:42:13,000
in places like Libya that for reasons, some of which

2266
02:42:13,000 --> 02:42:18,440
are within the bound rationality of ah, you know, NATO

2267
02:42:18,520 --> 02:42:21,879
decision making, and for some reasons they have it Libya

2268
02:42:21,959 --> 02:42:25,559
that makes sense. There's some that don't. But like point

2269
02:42:25,680 --> 02:42:29,840
being Russia absolutely can deploy their in depth if they're

2270
02:42:29,879 --> 02:42:33,159
not tied down in their own frontier viause of Ukraine.

2271
02:42:33,239 --> 02:42:35,639
And that's really the key to understanding what is underway

2272
02:42:35,680 --> 02:42:41,040
there in in in in like hard material terms, I mean.

2273
02:42:42,120 --> 02:42:56,079
But the Aside himself apparently on the h on the

2274
02:42:56,159 --> 02:43:01,959
eve of Russian intervention, he I assume this came from

2275
02:43:02,040 --> 02:43:05,840
his general staff, and I the Serienniray of Army. I know,

2276
02:43:05,959 --> 02:43:09,680
people claim that they're shit, like the Egyptian Army or something.

2277
02:43:09,760 --> 02:43:11,799
I don't accept that. I don't accept that because of

2278
02:43:11,799 --> 02:43:14,520
the nineteen seventy three war. And like I said, the

2279
02:43:14,600 --> 02:43:17,280
issue with the syriennery of Army, it wasn't that like

2280
02:43:17,399 --> 02:43:21,239
they were getting mauled in the field. It's that basically

2281
02:43:21,440 --> 02:43:24,879
like this soon he said, like we're not gonna fight

2282
02:43:25,000 --> 02:43:34,360
this war, you know. But Asad again I'm certain through

2283
02:43:34,479 --> 02:43:39,280
like his general staff ors equivalent, they issued this series

2284
02:43:39,360 --> 02:43:42,959
of reports to Moscow saying like this is the this

2285
02:43:43,120 --> 02:43:46,600
is the tactical situation, this is what we absolutely need,

2286
02:43:47,319 --> 02:43:49,760
this is what needs to be brought to bear. You know.

2287
02:43:49,959 --> 02:43:53,000
They basically like identified and characterized up for and like

2288
02:43:53,159 --> 02:43:57,280
how it was hurting them and in a very concise

2289
02:43:57,360 --> 02:44:01,239
and clearheaded way said like this is why we're going

2290
02:44:01,319 --> 02:44:04,799
to lose this war unless you're able to deploy and

2291
02:44:04,879 --> 02:44:08,799
guarantee A, B and C, you know, and that that

2292
02:44:08,959 --> 02:44:12,399
events is like a remarkable level of trust because like

2293
02:44:12,440 --> 02:44:16,040
among other things, if you invite a great power and

2294
02:44:16,239 --> 02:44:18,719
in very reduced terms, Russia still is a great power

2295
02:44:18,760 --> 02:44:22,120
in relative terms, although like nothing you know, like a superpower.

2296
02:44:22,680 --> 02:44:24,680
You know, you invite the Russians to deploy in depth

2297
02:44:24,760 --> 02:44:28,840
and in hand your command control mechanism over to them,

2298
02:44:28,879 --> 02:44:30,959
they may will just decide that like now serious part

2299
02:44:31,000 --> 02:44:33,239
of Russia for all practical purposes like that that's not

2300
02:44:33,399 --> 02:44:35,479
just cap like when people like you know who's going

2301
02:44:35,520 --> 02:44:39,040
to attack one, Like it's it's no small measure inviting

2302
02:44:39,159 --> 02:44:41,760
like five or eight thousand like armed Russians and their

2303
02:44:41,799 --> 02:44:45,319
common aircraft and guys in their general staff like into

2304
02:44:45,360 --> 02:44:47,559
your country and saying like okay, fellas, like you know,

2305
02:44:47,639 --> 02:44:53,399
do do you do best? Then implement like death at

2306
02:44:53,479 --> 02:44:55,600
scale among like those people, but then like kind of

2307
02:44:55,600 --> 02:44:59,239
politely bow out when it's done. I mean, it's it's

2308
02:44:59,280 --> 02:45:02,959
a rare case, like real kind of like respect and

2309
02:45:03,040 --> 02:45:09,280
reciprocity at like cultural level as well as practical levels.

2310
02:45:10,319 --> 02:45:13,799
But yeah, and that's why, uh you know, like I said,

2311
02:45:13,840 --> 02:45:18,959
if I could, if I can meet the when I

2312
02:45:19,200 --> 02:45:21,280
head to state, like I found a little anteresting as

2313
02:45:21,399 --> 02:45:26,520
Vishar al Assade, Like you know, he's, uh, he's a

2314
02:45:26,559 --> 02:45:35,280
fascinating dude, and I find it highly relatable. But yeah,

2315
02:45:35,360 --> 02:45:42,399
the I think that's uh, yeah, I was gonna get

2316
02:45:45,239 --> 02:45:47,600
at some point. And we covered some of this in earlier,

2317
02:45:48,319 --> 02:45:52,239
I mean in like a different series. I mean we

2318
02:45:52,319 --> 02:45:57,319
were talking about, you know, the the Jackson Vanic Amendment

2319
02:45:57,559 --> 02:46:02,079
and what prompted it, which wasn't a large measure, you know,

2320
02:46:02,200 --> 02:46:06,079
the the public bro and the Supreme Soviet moving moving

2321
02:46:06,159 --> 02:46:10,120
to literally like outlaws of Zionism, like it became it

2322
02:46:10,159 --> 02:46:13,239
became a political crime against the state to you know,

2323
02:46:13,360 --> 02:46:17,399
like advocate for Zionism, you know. And there's a party

2324
02:46:17,479 --> 02:46:23,559
official in in April eighty three, they're like this full page,

2325
02:46:23,799 --> 02:46:30,440
this full page ad titled quote from the Soviet leadership

2326
02:46:33,239 --> 02:46:37,360
laying out the case against the Zionism as as as

2327
02:46:37,479 --> 02:46:42,040
viewed from Moscow, which is fascinating, you know, and this

2328
02:46:43,120 --> 02:46:48,120
and then subsequently, you know, that's when you started hearing

2329
02:46:48,399 --> 02:46:50,600
in media this narrative like like a Soviet Jews the

2330
02:46:50,719 --> 02:46:53,760
right risk of annihilation, you know, the Soviet Union is

2331
02:46:53,799 --> 02:46:56,840
this you know, anti Semitic country. I mean they've been

2332
02:46:56,879 --> 02:47:02,360
at war for decades already, but it's it. Uh, it

2333
02:47:02,479 --> 02:47:07,559
took on like an over the you know and above

2334
02:47:07,639 --> 02:47:14,559
board like character, you know. And this uh, the the

2335
02:47:14,799 --> 02:47:17,680
you know, the purported plate of Soviet jewelry. It it

2336
02:47:18,799 --> 02:47:22,719
was something that was endlessly bandied about by not just

2337
02:47:22,959 --> 02:47:27,479
NGOs and sympathetic media people, by the Reagan administration like

2338
02:47:27,559 --> 02:47:31,760
it's really it's really wild. And you know, speaking of

2339
02:47:31,959 --> 02:47:35,319
cold war movies or cold war theme movies, then we

2340
02:47:35,520 --> 02:47:39,840
Firefox I is a really good movie. This if you can,

2341
02:47:39,920 --> 02:47:41,479
I mean you've got to look like the propaganda. But

2342
02:47:41,559 --> 02:47:43,000
I when I was like a little kid, my mom

2343
02:47:43,040 --> 02:47:44,319
and dad, I want to see it with them, and

2344
02:47:44,399 --> 02:47:47,600
it like blew my mind. But uh, you know, one

2345
02:47:47,639 --> 02:47:50,639
of the subtexts of it is that you know that

2346
02:47:50,760 --> 02:47:54,840
Clint Eastwood is like the Russo American like non era

2347
02:47:55,040 --> 02:47:58,719
combat pilot. You know, he uh he goes hit his

2348
02:47:58,799 --> 02:48:03,159
mission is like steel. Uh what the then fictional mid

2349
02:48:03,280 --> 02:48:05,600
thirty one, like there is an actual mid thirty one.

2350
02:48:05,680 --> 02:48:09,040
It's it's call signs his fox bat, but it didn't

2351
02:48:09,079 --> 02:48:13,000
exist when Firebox came out. But the the med thirty one,

2352
02:48:13,079 --> 02:48:19,040
Firefox is like the super plane and it directly interfaces

2353
02:48:19,079 --> 02:48:21,840
with the pilot's brain waves, so like if you so

2354
02:48:21,959 --> 02:48:26,120
you think commands to the central processing unit and then

2355
02:48:26,200 --> 02:48:30,399
it responds. And because Eastwood in the film, his character

2356
02:48:30,559 --> 02:48:33,600
is this Russian guy Russian to he he speaks Russian,

2357
02:48:34,600 --> 02:48:37,159
you know, so it's so he can think in Russian

2358
02:48:37,280 --> 02:48:42,360
to manipulate the avionics. But any event, like a subplot

2359
02:48:42,520 --> 02:48:48,040
is there's this Jewish avi ONYX engineer and the Soviets

2360
02:48:48,040 --> 02:48:51,040
are basically they're like threatening to like waste his family

2361
02:48:51,159 --> 02:48:56,360
if he doesn't build the Firefox, and like uh, at

2362
02:48:56,399 --> 02:49:00,239
one point, like Queneatwood's character makes conted with him and

2363
02:49:00,319 --> 02:49:02,959
he's like, yeah, you know, like the the Soviets are

2364
02:49:03,239 --> 02:49:05,719
you know, they're they're as bad as like the German Reich.

2365
02:49:05,799 --> 02:49:09,040
And that's kind of like obvious propaganda insinuated, you know,

2366
02:49:09,120 --> 02:49:12,600
But that he like he even that wasn't just like

2367
02:49:12,719 --> 02:49:16,040
Hollywood stuff like that's that was the narrative being presented,

2368
02:49:16,200 --> 02:49:22,079
but that that's kind of a tangential when it's a

2369
02:49:22,200 --> 02:49:27,479
long topic. But yeah, I think, uh, I think we're

2370
02:49:27,520 --> 02:49:32,920
coming up in the hour. Yeah. Now that's uh, that's

2371
02:49:32,959 --> 02:49:36,360
about all I got for this series. I don't I

2372
02:49:36,399 --> 02:49:41,399
don't want to break off another like subtopic. Man, And

2373
02:49:41,520 --> 02:49:44,079
forgive me if I repeated myself, but uh, yeah, I

2374
02:49:44,159 --> 02:49:49,799
think uh unless uh and unless I'm I got a

2375
02:49:49,879 --> 02:49:52,479
real gap and uh my recollection, I think we I

2376
02:49:52,520 --> 02:49:56,360
think we covered quite a bit of the of uh

2377
02:49:56,559 --> 02:49:59,239
what's relevant you know over these past few sessions.

2378
02:50:01,120 --> 02:50:04,479
Speaker 1: Can I hit you with one question from yeah, what

2379
02:50:04,680 --> 02:50:08,479
was your what was your take on the the Iranian

2380
02:50:08,680 --> 02:50:12,399
uh missile offensive?

2381
02:50:13,920 --> 02:50:16,479
Speaker 2: The Iranians had to do something, I mean, yes, like

2382
02:50:16,760 --> 02:50:19,440
his blase is for all practical purposes, you know, like

2383
02:50:19,520 --> 02:50:23,760
the foreign the Iranian foreign legion. But there's a plausible

2384
02:50:23,799 --> 02:50:28,079
deniability that the Iranians like very sort of jealously guard there,

2385
02:50:28,680 --> 02:50:32,000
but also just in in in terms of in terms

2386
02:50:32,000 --> 02:50:34,879
of poopolitical terms as well as for domestic consumption as

2387
02:50:34,920 --> 02:50:37,440
well as in the court of world opinion, like I

2388
02:50:37,799 --> 02:50:41,360
Ran had to respond somehow. And this this is basically identical.

2389
02:50:41,799 --> 02:50:45,120
It is basically a redux of when when Solomoni was

2390
02:50:46,000 --> 02:50:47,120
you know, it was the same thing. It was just

2391
02:50:47,239 --> 02:50:51,200
like it was just like very very controlled response. You know,

2392
02:50:51,879 --> 02:50:55,120
the target the areas targeted were like exclusively counter value.

2393
02:50:56,079 --> 02:50:59,159
You know, it was announced that this was going to happen,

2394
02:51:00,280 --> 02:51:02,600
so that that's the way I read it. And it's

2395
02:51:02,680 --> 02:51:05,639
more for the benefit of like they were in regime

2396
02:51:05,760 --> 02:51:08,319
despite the time about media says this, it's not like

2397
02:51:08,520 --> 02:51:11,959
the Taliban or something, and it's it's also like it's

2398
02:51:11,959 --> 02:51:15,520
already they actually hold election as and I ran all

2399
02:51:15,559 --> 02:51:20,079
the time, and like the regime does have like certain

2400
02:51:20,120 --> 02:51:24,639
credibility problems, but like I'm a Dana Jod you know,

2401
02:51:24,719 --> 02:51:26,319
he was not only in a Zeri. But the reason

2402
02:51:26,479 --> 02:51:28,520
he's were that like members only jacket. I remember, like

2403
02:51:28,600 --> 02:51:30,760
media people that make fun of him, But it's like

2404
02:51:30,959 --> 02:51:33,200
the dude work he was like an he was he

2405
02:51:33,360 --> 02:51:35,000
was he was like an oil rig worker or like

2406
02:51:35,040 --> 02:51:39,000
a pipeline like a like a foreman, and like that's

2407
02:51:39,040 --> 02:51:40,479
why he was trying to look the part of like

2408
02:51:40,559 --> 02:51:43,040
you know, mister like a Zeri working man. He was

2409
02:51:43,120 --> 02:51:45,799
like this big like socialist kind of like labor leader

2410
02:51:45,920 --> 02:51:49,159
like Rabel Rouser. And like the religious authorities didn't like

2411
02:51:49,280 --> 02:51:53,760
him at all, like they basically allowed him they into

2412
02:51:53,840 --> 02:51:56,479
the top job because they had to, you know, and

2413
02:51:56,840 --> 02:51:59,000
so talking about something is a lamist it's like this

2414
02:51:59,120 --> 02:52:01,280
most like you like looking crack if you think that.

2415
02:52:02,319 --> 02:52:07,200
But point being Iran's it just gets it's a complicated

2416
02:52:07,239 --> 02:52:12,799
situation domestically and the regime there. They do have to

2417
02:52:13,680 --> 02:52:17,159
cater to public opinion more than people acknowledge in the West,

2418
02:52:18,040 --> 02:52:21,520
and especially if it looks like I mean, even if

2419
02:52:21,559 --> 02:52:25,079
even if these like retaliatory strikes like don't mean anything,

2420
02:52:25,159 --> 02:52:28,879
it doesn't matter. It's for domestic consumption anyway, you know,

2421
02:52:29,120 --> 02:52:33,200
like Iran's Iran's ground element in real terms is hepla.

2422
02:52:35,719 --> 02:52:36,639
That's my interversation.

2423
02:52:38,000 --> 02:52:41,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it seems like with some of the incursions

2424
02:52:41,840 --> 02:52:44,559
that I've been monitoring over the past twenty four to

2425
02:52:44,639 --> 02:52:48,440
thirty six hours, was doing a pretty damn good job

2426
02:52:48,559 --> 02:52:51,799
on the ground there. Yeah, it seems like it seems

2427
02:52:51,840 --> 02:52:55,440
like Israel they're only they can only do anything from

2428
02:52:55,479 --> 02:52:56,079
the air right now.

2429
02:52:56,920 --> 02:52:58,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, they don't want Well, it's also too what are

2430
02:52:58,600 --> 02:53:01,280
they gonna do? Are they gonna assault Evanon? Like it's

2431
02:53:01,399 --> 02:53:04,840
some the eighties early nineties. You were in two thousand

2432
02:53:04,840 --> 02:53:06,879
and six and they tried that you're not You're not

2433
02:53:06,920 --> 02:53:09,000
gonna they don't have the forces, they don't have the

2434
02:53:09,120 --> 02:53:13,079
force structure or the political will to assault Beirut and

2435
02:53:13,200 --> 02:53:16,920
try and like route Hesibla from the Shia urban heartland.

2436
02:53:17,239 --> 02:53:19,479
You're gonna fight house to house against Hesbla off for

2437
02:53:19,520 --> 02:53:22,680
the next five years and you know, and take like

2438
02:53:23,319 --> 02:53:25,600
twenty thousand dead in a few months. Like, no, you're

2439
02:53:25,600 --> 02:53:29,479
not gonna do that. No, his was They're they're no joke, man,

2440
02:53:29,520 --> 02:53:34,200
They're they're definitely the most capable ground element other than

2441
02:53:34,280 --> 02:53:35,520
IDF in the region.

2442
02:53:38,760 --> 02:53:41,920
Speaker 1: Cool, well, do your plugs. We'll get out of here,

2443
02:53:42,000 --> 02:53:44,120
and I guess the next uh next time we get

2444
02:53:44,159 --> 02:53:46,840
together will finish up the gladiol and then move on

2445
02:53:46,959 --> 02:53:47,799
to something after that.

2446
02:53:48,639 --> 02:53:53,559
Speaker 2: That's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, man. You can find me

2447
02:53:53,680 --> 02:53:58,159
on Subspect. It's real Thomas seven seven seven of subspect

2448
02:53:58,200 --> 02:54:02,719
dot com. That's where the pod is at, and as

2449
02:54:02,719 --> 02:54:05,520
well as like longer form stuff and just like various things.

2450
02:54:06,559 --> 02:54:11,319
I uh, I'm on social media at Capital R E

2451
02:54:11,559 --> 02:54:16,399
A L Underscore number seven h O M A S

2452
02:54:16,879 --> 02:54:20,440
seven seven seven. I'm on Instagram, I'm on t Gram.

2453
02:54:20,959 --> 02:54:23,959
I got my own website. It's Thomas seven seven seven

2454
02:54:24,040 --> 02:54:27,319
dot com number seven h O M A S seven

2455
02:54:27,440 --> 02:54:33,600
seven seven dot com and I got uh, I got

2456
02:54:33,760 --> 02:54:37,959
like merse that I sell because owing to popular demand.

2457
02:54:38,040 --> 02:54:40,239
I'm not trying to be corny like that's literally why

2458
02:54:40,399 --> 02:54:45,399
like I started doing it with my friend and partner

2459
02:54:45,479 --> 02:54:48,639
in crime, Hair Cree. But if you would include a

2460
02:54:48,719 --> 02:54:51,120
link to that in the description, that would be a

2461
02:54:51,200 --> 02:54:53,239
great help so people can find it.

2462
02:54:54,840 --> 02:54:58,319
Speaker 1: Yep idah, last time it'll be it'll be there this time.

2463
02:54:58,520 --> 02:54:58,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you.

2464
02:54:59,079 --> 02:55:01,600
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. Thomas, It's all the next time. Thank you, boys,