Speaker 1: You had to ask.
Speaker 2: Of course I had to ask. I mean, that's obvious, right, I.
Speaker 1: Didn't know you were a big tricky Oh god, yes, oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah. Ask not what your country can do
for you, ask what you can do for your country.
Speaker 1: It's the Ricochet Podcast. I'm James Lileox, Charles C. W.
Cook is here, Stephen Hayward is here, and we talked
to former Attorney General Bill Barr about just about everything.
So let's have ourselves a podcast.
Speaker 3: Let me say once again to Donald Trump and Christy
no end this occupation. Let's be very very clear. This
long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. Instead,
it's a campaign of organized brutality against the people of
Minnesota by our own federal government.
Speaker 4: This domestic act of terrorism to use your vehicle to
try to kill law enforcement officers is going to stop,
and I'm asking the Department of Justice to prosecute it
as domestic terrorism.
Speaker 1: Welcome everybody, It's the Ricochet Podcast, number seven hundred and
seventy two. Why don't you join us at ricochet dot com.
Why don't you you could be part of the most
stimulating conversations and community on the web. I'm James Lelax
in Minneapolis, peaceful saying, oh so ordinary, Mayberry RFD, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
And I'm joined, of course by Charles C. W. Cook
and Stephen Hayward, and we're going to go right to
our guest. Bill Barr an American attorney, author of one
damn thing after another. He served as the United States
Attorney General twice, once under George HW. Bush and again
under Donald Trump for the president's first term. Before heading
to the DOJ, Barr worked in the Office of Legal Counsel,
where he penned an opinion that is said to have
formed the legal justification for arresting Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega
and thirty six years later the same treatment for Nicholas Maduro.
Speaker 4: Welcome, thank you, great to be here.
Speaker 1: Well, extraordinary rendition. That's the that's the term that's on
everybody's everybody's lips these days. The special Forces operation that
brings it to fruition. I guess the question remains. I
guess some would say, looking at this, hey, what gives
us the right to decide that this is the thing
to do.
Speaker 4: Well both our national security and our law enforcement system.
The opinions you discussed really grew out of a situation
that had emerged at the end of the Cold War.
When I was in the Department of Justice under President
George H. W. Bush, a lot of conflict had moved
to what we call the gray zone. It involved things
like transnational criminal organizations, drug organizations, cartels, and terrorist organizations emerging.
And the question is, how could we deal with these,
especially when they were getting safe haven in countries or
either no man's land, and although they were technically we
didn't sovereign territory of a country, no one was doing
anything about it. It was sort of no man's land
or countries that were absolutely complicit in the activity they
themselves were criminal organizations or terrorists, favored the terrorists in
supporting them. And how does the United States defend themselves
in that kind of situation and deal with it? And
one of the things I'm just going to give you
the genesis of that opinion. One of the things we
dealt with was that under the Jimmy Carter administration, they
had issued an opinion saying that if something violates customary
international law, then it's not even legal under US law,
and the United States doesn't have the power to depart
from it, and that was simply wrong as a matter
of constitutional law and international law, which is customary a
norm that countries follow or don't follow. And so wrote
opinion that said that under customary international law, if you
go in and carry out your law enforcement activities within
another country without their permission, that violates customary international law.
But it's not a violation of US law, and the
US can do that. The US can do that and
can bring the person back for trial. So that question
was can we do it? Is it lawful under US law?
There's another question, which is, okay, does it violate customary
international law? And the answer is normally, normally yes, it
does violate customary international law. But in a situation. There's
sort of two responses to that. One is that in
a situation, it's called the enabling, not able or unwilling doctrine,
which is, if a sovereign country allows its territory to
be used for anti American activity, things that are imposing
not just anti American politically, but predatory action directed against
the United States, hurting the American people, hurting our vital interests,
then they have to stop it. Sovereignty is not a
shield for that kind of activity. They have the corollary
responsibility to stop it, and if they don't stop it,
the country that's being preyed upon can go in and
stop it. And we reasserted that, and under international law
that does give us the right to go in and
deal with terrorist organizations or drug trafficking cartels if another
country is part of the problem. So the other aspect
of it is that something that like that raises our
defense powers, and you know, we can go in and
use our defense powers to protect the vital interests of
the United States. And remember norms. Norms vary and change
over time because countries either follow them or don't follow them,
and under certain circumstances they say, you know, this norm
is not working and we're going to change it. That's
how the twenty mile limit changed, or the three mile
limit changed, and then it became two hundred miles. And
that happened because some states said we're not going to
follow three miles because it doesn't adequately address the circumstance.
So countries do have the freedom to respond to changing
circumstances and say this is the practice that we think
is necessary to protect our vital interests. I know that's
a long winded answer, but it's actually sort of a
complicated legal issue, and I wanted to lay out its
different facets.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot there. And before it toss this
to the other smart guys, just one quick question. When
you talk about international law, a lot of people say, yeah, well,
how many divisions does Brussel have? What specifically are we
talking about when we say international law? What complex that
we sign up for it? And what does the enforcement
mechanism be for them? What are the penalties for violating them?
Other than shrugging the shoulders and saying, well, I guess
the norms they be a shift in.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that is a super question, and it hits right
at the weakness of all these critiques based on international law.
There are two kinds of international law, roughly speaking, really three,
but let me one is customary there's no agreement between
the countries. A second is agreement that don't become part
of US law. They're not so called executed into US law.
Usually that requires a passing a statute that then has
binding effect. Indiana, like, if we're going to this is
gonna be our fishing zone, this is going to be
your fishing zone. You pass a Statute and say American
fishermen have to stay on this side of the line,
then it's part of US law. If it doesn't become
part of US law, it's not executed into the US law,
then it's an agreement. And uh, it's not something that
that has binding legal effect within the United States. It's
something addressed to the sovereign of the United States and
essentially the conscience and prudent judgment. It's like saying, Okay,
I'm not going to follow it. I understand their costs.
I'll bear the cost, live with it, Okay. Now. The
other kind are treaties that you know that are agreed
to the true and and that that are executed, and
then there's those that are not going to execute it.
The treaty in question that everyone's sites is the UN Charter,
and the un Charter has two parts to it. Roughly,
one is to set up an enforcement mechanism, which was
supposed to be the Security Council, and then the other
is to say, because we have the Security Council that's
going to come in and make things right wherever there's
something wrong, you shouldn't use force. And then there's language
and it's saying the only you know that this does
not preclude the use of force against another sovereign state
if you're under attack, armed attack. And the basic debate
that goes on in international laws, does that mean that
the only time you can use force is literally when
someone has you know, guns and is landing on your beach.
And there are restrictionists, Needless to say, most of the
professoria that says yes, that's the only time US doesn't
follow that. We say we can use force to protect
our vital interests, to defend ourselves. It doesn't have to
be you know, if someone conducting cyber attacks, if they're
launching poison into the United States, they're drugs, that's an
attack on US sovereignty. We can use force to defend it. So,
you know, that is the international law issue. But what
makes a lot of it crazy is the premise of
restrictions on the use of force were based on that
there was some authority out there that would come in
and protect you and there that has not happened. It
doesn't work. So it's a little bit like saying, hey,
we're going to establish a police force and you can
give up your guns. In fact, not just give them
up we're going to take your guns because you don't
need them anymore because we have a police force. And
then you never set up a police force. That's the
world we're in and so called international law.
Speaker 5: Hi, the child's cook kit.
Speaker 1: I wonder.
Speaker 5: Why, in your view is the president allowed to take
this step without congress. Obviously, if another country came in
took away our president, we would regard that as an
active war. We wouldn't say it was kinetic action or
another euphemism. Why then, does the Congress not have to
at least pass an authorization for the use of military
force to justify this action that was just taken.
Speaker 4: Well, because the framers, you know, we were right at
the time they wrote the Constitution in the eighteenth century,
the idea of declaring war had a very special meaning.
It was a juridical concept, and when a formal state
of war was declared, it had it had all kinds
of consequences. For example, under in those days, that obliged
every citizen of your country that has declared war to
actually treat members of the other society as enemies, and
you were free to go and you know, seize their
property and so forth. So it had it was a
formal state in the eighteenth century. Now, the Framers quite
realized that wars can be fought, that is, military conflicts,
armed conflicts can take place that are not declared wars,
and that frequently nations find themselves embroiled in that. So
we fought the quasi war with France. We sent a
squadron of frigates to actually overthrow the government of the
Barbary Pirates and substitute another pasha. That was what they
were trying to do there when they storm, you know,
when they were on the shores of Tripoli. And so
ever since the founding of the Republic, there have been
many instances where we have had military conflict without direct
declarations of war, and military conflict without Congress ever approving
scores of them. And I think what has happened historically
is that the executive has running room, and I think
the Framers would have agreed has running room to respond
to particular threats without going to Congress first and getting
permission to do that. It's largely a political question uh
to be ironed out between the you know, the butting
of heads between the branches of government as to where
that line is. And I think that that's a dynamic
political process that the Framers, the Framers conceived of, and
that Congress holds a lot of cards, they hold the money.
Uh and and so uh, I think in practice what
it has boiled down to is that if it is
reacting to a particular threat that does not involve, you know,
exploding into a major war, Uh, then the executive has
as much latitude as as he can without going to
Congress and getting them you know, they could they have
levers to pull if they don't like it.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: Whereas you know, starting in cold blood with a you know,
major attack that could result in a serious military conflict
that embroilers in a serious military conflict. Uh, you know
in terms of its magnitude that uh, you know, that's
the kind the thing that they would expect Congress to
do ahead of time. So, you know, an interesting area
that sort of was on the border here, some would think,
was the Gulf War, where we had Congress had allowed
us to build up six hundred thousand troops right along
the border there, and the question was do we need
congressional permission to actually cross the border and liberate Kuwait
from the Iraqi army? And I actually didn't think we did,
even though that was a major military conflict with Iraq.
But we decided, you know, it was again a political judgment,
which is, we think we can get the permission, let's
go up and get the permission, because that's a better
way to take, you know, to move forward with the country.
And that's how we did it there.
Speaker 2: So General Barr at Steve Hayward out in California, I
want to go back to one follow up question about
the Panama business from thirty seven years ago. Now, Wow,
I'm getting old now. I don't remember now that. I mean,
I know there was the usual fuss from the radical
left complaining about American intervention in Latin American imperialism and
all the rest of that. I don't remember there being
a significant fuss from the opposition party in Congress on
Capitol Hill. And maybe I just don't remember and I
missed it, whereas today there's a lot of fuss. And
I'm wondering, is that just because Trump is such a
polarizing figure and there's this reflex to oppose anything Trump does,
or you don't have the politics of this changed since then,
or or is there some important difference between them and
now I don't see one.
Speaker 4: I think the defining characteristic of the last three to
four decades, the thing that is driving much of what
happens in the United States and our politics, and in fact,
in my view, ultimately the reason there is Trump today
is the radical move of the Democratic Party to the
left and from a party that that was sort of
traditional liberals and still you know, shared a lot of
the values with their political opponents, and above all loved
America and put America, try America first, and had some
different ideas, but still there was a deep love for
this country and trying to do what's right for America.
And that's not where progressives are. Yeah, and so I
think that is the basic difference. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I'm going to take up with James separately later about
how different Minnesota might look today if Hubert Humphrey and
Walter Mondale were still with us since changing there. Right,
that's a serious question. Let me shift gears to Greenland.
I don't know if you have an opinion about Greenland.
I mean, it's mostly thought of as a foreign policy
defense question, I suppose, But do you have either a
a general opinion or a specific legal opinion about what
is going on with Trump's ambitions to acquire Greenland.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I am actually I do not think
we should invade Greenland and start an internal conflict within NATO.
I believe he's right in wanting to. I mean, I
think it would actually be a good idea to have
America control Greenland and control it a sovereign territory, preferably.
And I do believe it's important to the defense of
the West, not just you know, naval things in submarines,
but space and so forth, And it's critical, and we
know that Chinese and Russians are very focused on that,
and so I am sympathetic with it. I think I
hope it can be worked out without a military conflict,
and I expect it will be. I think the important
thing is that the United States has essentially plenary authority
to do what it needs to do to defend Greenland
and the West. And second, I think it's important that
the United States be able to control where those where
the minerals and the important resources of Greenland go, that
they go to the of our allies in the West,
not to our enemies.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, opposing an invasion places you with ninety five percent
of Americans according to polls and including ninety two percent
of Republicans, So not exactly a bold or outrageous place
to be. Let me ask you a question about Trump
Two's I'm calling this non consecutive second term. And you
know your book was called one damn Thing after another.
I have to confess I haven't read it. And wondering
if you got that from the old Edna Saint Vincent
Malay line that history is not one damn thing. No,
it's not one damn thing after another. It's the same
damn thing over and over again.
Speaker 4: She said, yeah, where I got it from is when
Reagan won he asked William Smith to be his attorney general.
And William French Smith wanted to do his homework, and
he went to visit Ed Levy, who had been Attorney
General under Gerald Ford. And as you know, Levy was
an academician. He had been the head of the University
of Chicago Law School and then president of the university.
He wore tweety, you know, the epitome of a professor. Professor,
and William French Smith said, you know, hey, could you
could you tell me about the the position of attorney general,
what it is to serve the Attorney General. He was
expecting a discourse about the rule of law and all
the constitution and so forth. And Levy puffed on his
pipe and looked at him and said, it's one damn
thing after another.
Speaker 2: I say, right, right, yeah, right right, I see.
Speaker 4: Yeah, William Prince Smith lived.
Speaker 2: General Smith lived down the street from my parents where
I was growing up.
Speaker 4: But so I didn't know him.
Speaker 2: But well, the reason I bring this up, and you know,
you may, you know, not wish to answer it too fully,
but so Trump one, I'll put it this way. You know,
you suit it up again. You had a number of
people appointed to cabinet position who I mean, there were
a few of the so that we say, idiosyncratic people
around Trump in the first administration, but you also had
conventional Republicans you might expect in any Republican administration. You know,
what's his name from Exxon for Secretary of State and
so forth. This administration, Well, put it this way. Just
give you one example. The contrast between alex Asar a
good friend of mine, and RFK Junior and Health and
Human Services is about as night and day as you
can possibly get. There don't seem to be any conventional
Republicans in the cabinet, with one or two exceptions like
Secretary of State Rubio. And you know, it's a lot
more a loyalist, which I understand a reason for that,
but also non conventional, non belt way or is the
mag of people will put it, non swampy people, right?
What do you make of all that? Is this deliberate
conscious wise? How do you evaluate this difference between Trump
one and Trump two?
Speaker 4: Well, I would say, you know, it's Trump making an
adjustment based on what he felt with the dynamics of
the first administration, starting with Russia Gate. You know, I
think history would have been a lot different had the
Democrats not not I won't say democrats, I would say,
you know, those involved in that and the progressive way
of the Democratic Party and the media plate especially tried
to orchestrate was effectively a coup. And I think history
would have been different had he not met that as
soon as he walked into the Oval office. And I
think the other thing is I felt I think he
felt that, you know, one of the problems was the
entrenched deep state and the perfidy of the many in
the who worked in the senior ranks of the career people.
He felt that sabotaged his administration, and I think he
felt that, and I think he believed that you have
to fight fire with fire, and that the only way
to break out of this trajectory the country was on
was the fight fire with fire and really take on
the progressives, you know, much more aggressively than our normal
political punk Kilio would permit. And so he's off on
that course, and he may prove to be right as
a great disruptor and someone who achieves things. My own
concern which I don't like fighting fire with fire, I
think obviously he's right at the other side has played
dirty and Republicans tend to play by the Marcus of
Queensberry's rules. But I'm not sure the answer to that
is to descend to their level. I'm concerned about that
and what it does to our institutions over time. And
the other thing is that I'm you know, I do
get worried that that that style may lead to unnecessary
blowback and backlash that makes it harder to achieve our
harder than necessarily achieve our agenda. But I do understand
his frustration, and I think he is accomplishing things that
require bold leadership and aggressive leadership, and so I still
feel that I am much or happy that he's in
charge of things. Alternative.
Speaker 5: I have a question about the Insurrection Act. I think
Trump may not end up needing it, as he's indicated,
because he can send troops in to defend federal assets
without the Insurrection Act. Obviously, there are various parts of
the Insurrection Act, some of them seem easier to meet
than others. What I want to know is what would
constitute as an insurrection, not as a blocking of federal
law making it difficult for the federal government to execute
the law, which is part of it, but what would
constitute an actual insurrection as imagined by those who wrote
that law in eighteen oh seven.
Speaker 4: So I handled the last the last times it was
ever used, you know, I it was involved in sort
of orchestrating it. One was I was at the under
Bush and it was the breakdown of law and order
in Saint Croix, and then after that ninety two in
La Those are the last times it was actually invoked.
I actually don't have in front of me, don't remember
the exact language. But insurrection really isn't the test. There's
you know, best specific language about about uh you know
uh uh interfering with the federal function and provoking you know,
rioting and stuff like breakdown of law and order that
you know, those are usually the things you look for.
It doesn't have to you know, overthrowing the government is
a specie of it, but it doesn't You don't need
over an intent to overthrow the government, uh, in order
to establish an insurrection. It's basically a breakdown of law
and order that the that's not being carried out. You know,
where the state is is not you know, sufficient to
to enforce law in order, and and the and the
federal government force is needed. That's essentially what it is.
And what's happening now is you know the Bolshevik and
Leninist idea of make them feeling the whip of the cossack.
That is the way you radicalize the population is by
provoking the government authority to use force. Uh. And that's
and that's making him feel the whip of the cossack.
And then you say, these people are fascists and you know,
look at them, there's a pressing liberty and so forth.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: That's the tactic that's being used. And I and I
you know, there's another thing going on here, which is
a subtle legal point, but people have to understand, you know,
the law. Justice Scalia wrote an opinion called the Print's
Opinion where he basically said that the federal government can't
force the state too to carry out federal law. That
law involved gun control, and the law required the state
officers to do things and affirmatively do things to carry
out the federal scheme, and Skilly said, you can't commandeer
the state to do that stuff. Unfortunately, that's been taken
to the point where the state feels that it's able
to just not do anything to help or to respond
to information requests or any kind of help to the
federal government. And what we're seeing now, to me, is intolerable.
The police force would protect any other group that was
going about its lawful business and was being interfered with
by mobs. They would keep the peace on the street
and keep the mob from interfering with the lawful activities
of a convention or whatever is going on here. They
are abdicating their responsibilities and leaving the mobs to directly
attack federal officers and create a variance indiary situation that
comes pretty close if it doesn't cross the line into insurrection.
They are they have they are promoting the rule of
the mob, directing directed against the federal government, where they
wouldn't permit that for any other group, and that, to
me is unacceptable and something has to be done about it.
Speaker 1: But what here in Minneapolis? The mayor has said that
he wants the police to fight the ICE agents, and
the chief of police was standing next to him as
he said this and raised an eyebrow sort of spock
like as that was being said.
Speaker 4: What is it that is insurrection?
Speaker 1: But that's what it seems like to me? I mean,
what is to be done? As as the man said,
sure of the Insurrection Act? What can we do? Because
I mean, we have in this city where I live,
and no, I haven't seen it. It happens elsewhere. I
did have a woman drive by my house honking and
pointing at a black suv and blowing a whistle and
mouthing the word ICE, but I think it was actually
a tree trimmer guy who was making the neighbor. So
that's as close as I've gotten to it. But what
what can we do? Because I mean, every day ends
with the culmination of shots of somebody taking of the
guys walking out with the pepper bullets and you know,
hitting them, the knogging and off they go. But we
see cars ripped open, we see documents taken, we see
all manner of things that that that border on pe
civic disorder that looks like it's going to What should
we do short of the Insurrection Act to get my
town a little bit more sane, safe and stable. And
of course people will say, well, just pull out ICE,
just disband ICE, that's all you got to do.
Speaker 4: I think, you know, you have to. You have to
be smart about which cases to use and what circumstances
to push the principle. But for example, if if someone
gets up and makes a speech or does something to
promote interference in federal law enforcement, they should be arrested
and charged. That's not insurrection. That's obstruction or a conspiracy
to obstruct or what have you. You don't need an insurrection.
You know, these people stand up in meetings and say,
you know, if an ICE person comes into this school,
we're going to have our police officers blah blah blah h.
That is interference with the federal function. Could it be insurrection?
You could call it insurrection because you don't have to
call it insurrection. I think you go for those kinds
of examples and you start and you start prosecuting people
for that kind of interference. I do think you also
have to consider bringing suits and going after the politicians
who have created this situation and are doing it. You know,
they're basically withdrawing police protection from the federal government. No
one's asking for the local police to go in and
make the arrests, but we're asking for the normal protection
that every other entity in the United States would get.
And by withdrawing it, you know, I think there's a
violation of the law going on, and I think that
they should be held accountable for it. But you know,
this is why the left is so city is because
this is exactly what they want to trigger. They're very
good at playing in the gray zone, going so far
and then creating a reaction and then demonizing. Of course,
the media plays that game. So it's a difficult situation.
The administration is handling the best they can. I would
just say it takes good judgment to know exactly you know,
where to where to harass, where to take your stand,
and so forth.
Speaker 1: Well, the optics around here are lousy. But that's what's
going to happen when you have the clash of the
people who are carrying out their constitutional federal duties and
the people who are obliged to oppose them because they
don't believe that there's anything wrong with being legal immigrant
in the first place. Just if you know, as the
man said today, that this is stolen land, an ergo
or there's no legal, philosophical, moral precept to arrest somebody
for being here. When you mentioned fighting fire with fire,
I mean it's been the administration has been using a
flamethrower versus a birthday camble. They have not backed off.
They have gone full force at this. Do you see
in that a sort of resolution that seems a contrary
with the way that Republican administrations have worked before, because
usually something bad happens, they back off and say, forgive us,
will be nice.
Speaker 4: Now that's you know, no, I think that's the that's
the thing that is is good. You know, there are
many things. Is Trump is taking the bull by the
horns and tackling difficult issues that everyone else has just
kicked the can down the road. And I give him
a lot of respect and and applause for for that,
and this is an example of that.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: You know, we at the end of the day, we
need to control our borders. That requires not accepting the
fact that millions came in illegally under Biden and now
they have to be they have to be deported and
we have this insists on the rule of law, and
that's a difficult process to carry out, and I think
he's right in making sure it's carried out. So you're right.
I mean, one of the reasons things have gotten as
bad as they have is because Republicans, you know, frequently
in the past have been in the situation of because
largely because of the pressure of the media and the
and the monolithic media we have in this country at
in the country, you know, would pull back and not
take the heat for doing what had to be done.
That's why I support what he's talking about on the cartels.
You know, it is ridiculous that we have these narco
terrorist states right south of us carrying out these predations
where the casualties are higher than they were at the
peak of World War Two in the United States were
killed in action, And what are we supposed to do
about it? You know, it's not a problem of locking up,
you know, all the the pushers on the corners in
our inner cities. That's not going to stop it. It's
going to the root of the problem, the head of
the snake. And when we've done that, we've made great progress.
We wiped out the Cali and the Mediane cartel. Clinton
comes in, pulls back from engagement over there in South America,
they get re entrenched, and we have to go down
there and take these organizations on. We can crush them.
And you know what venefit I've been saying all along.
You know, the war is not the way it used
to be. Where a carpet bomb city. Okay, we can
be very precise. You know, Siria showed that where we
destroyed isis very small group of American special forces. We
know where these people are, We know exactly where they are,
and we can take care of the problem and those countries.
Even if even if you think Mexico government is not complicit,
even if you thought that and you thought they really
wanted to deal with it, they couldn't do it. The
only way we'll get done is the United States going
down there. And so Trump is right, he's taking the
bull by the horns. And when we discussed this in
the first term he said that, he said, you know
it's this is tough, but you know I came into
office to deal with the tough problems, not kick the
can down the road.
Speaker 1: Who's going to do it?
Speaker 4: How are we going to deal with this? And so
I support him taking on some of these tough issues,
the immigration issue, the drug issue and so forth, and
delivering you know, the hard, the hard medicine that it requires,
and not chickening out. That's what's good.
Speaker 1: That's what's good. Bill Barr. We thank you for being
back to the show. It's been a delight to have
you and to hear your opinions again. The last book
is one damn thing after another. Go buy it and
wait for the next one. And we look forward to
the next time we speak. Thank you, thank you, yep
bye bye, hie. The he is when it comes to
the cartels, I was I thinking as he was speaking
about that, that we could indeed, you know, use Oh,
now we know what it is that we had the
object lesson of the Special Forces versus the Cuban soldiers.
There was a film today that I saw on Twitter,
and I think it actually may have been Charles who
responded to it. They were bringing the bodies home from
Venezuela to Cuba. And was it you Charles who actually
asked the question, why are they in shoe boxes?
Speaker 5: It wasn't, but I did want to oay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because there were the very small coffins and
they had it's all that they could probably get up
with a spatuel on a tweezer. Oh so, yes, there
are things that can be done. Question is, gentlemen, now
is let's quickly whips saw around the world and put
on our other hats of expertise that we do not
deserve to wear. Did we flinch with Iran or did
we tens in such a way that revealed all the
things that they were planning to do? In response, That's
been one of the theories that I've been There's a
couple of people that have been following who are quite
quite interesting. I'm not saying they're right, but they're quite
interesting in putting together what this means, what that means,
what this mobilization means, what that mobilization means. And they
made the point that a when we seem to be
on the verge of a blow we got a pretty
good idea of what lit up. And secondly, at this
very moment, the pizza tracker is hitting record numbers. So
who knows. So I'll shut up and let you guys
tell me what you think.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, what problem is is we're really only speculating
by what we can get out of the news media,
which may not even be close to accurate or penetrating
to what really is going on behind the scenes. A
couple of things I think we do know or can conclude.
One is, apparently the scale of the massacre in Iran
is massive, and maybe even more than it's been reported.
But now i'd heard a week ago, by the way,
when the so called official figure, whatever the heck that is,
was a few hundred and I was hearing then from
somebody in Washington. No, no, it's many thousands are being
killed now, And three or four days later, that's what
started to get out into the reporting. On the other hand,
you did hear that Iran paused at least planned executions
of several hundred people. Now is that a concession they got,
a concession they gave to get Trump off their back.
I don't know. It could just be a pause. I
wouldn't for a moment take that to the bank and say, ah,
we've made real progress here. The third question is this
may be a case of where we did not have
and this has been reported, we did not have sufficient
military assets to make an effective strike. Apparently our one
carrier is not yet in Persian Gulf.
Speaker 4: The Lincoln was over.
Speaker 2: Somewhere near Asia, I guess, and is steaming at top
speed to get there. And then I Ron a huge country,
densely populated in places, and so how do you do
strikes that are going to actually erode the regime? It's
one thing to take out their nuclear facilities and so forth.
So you can see that there are some difficulties, practical difficulties. Well,
all right, what are we going to do? And I
have no idea what might be done. It's also reported
again who knows accurately or not, but the Jerusalem Post
has usually got good sources that Prime Minister net Yahoo
asks President Trump to hold off for now. Who knows
what the Israelis are doing inside the borders of Iran.
We tend to ascribe magical powers to the masade in Iran,
and they have done some amazing things in the past.
But bringing down this whole regime is a tough thing
to do. The last thought. Sorry I'm rambling here, but
I do worry that we now look like we did
in nineteen fifty six when we encourage the Hungarians to
revolt and then did not lift a finger to help
them when they did. I think it would be shameful.
The outcome of this is the runnine regime survives, and
Trump essentially said, well, never mind any other fears, Charles,
or are.
Speaker 1: We just going to leave it at that? Well I
don't like spiders, Well there we go, rachnophobia. We can
add to your other phobias and the things that are
are bad. So we'll see. Yeah, we will. I don't
think it's over, but I have been up and I
can't tell you how many times I've seen, you know,
the street rise up and then nothing happens. There's an
inexhaustible supply of thugs that they can get from other
countries to come and shoot and be we'll see you.
Speaker 5: One of the reasons this one's so depressing, other than
that it's been promised on so many occasions and our
hopes have been dashed, is that this is one of
the few examples of a country that needs and would
do well out of a revolution. I'm a conservative, I'm
not reflexively in favor of revolution or chaos or the
overthrow of the existing order. And as I've said many
many times when discussing the American Revolution, the American Revolution
was a strange one relative to say, the French Revolution
or the Russian Revolution, in that it was small, c conservative,
it was restorative. It was full of people saying, we
want to be more like the country that we thought
we were, rather than we wish to get rid of them.
There was no reconstituting the clocks or forcing people to
call each other comrade or any of that. All the
letters to the king in seventeen seventy four said please
give us our birthright. Usually that's not.
Speaker 1: The case, but in Iran it's sort of.
Speaker 5: Ease because the transformation that that country underwent. It wasn't perfect,
of course, nor was the Shah, but the transformation that
that country underwent from nineteen forty to nineteen seventy nine
was remarkable. There was massive increases in literacy. It was
an educated populous. It was secular, by which I don't
mean it was irreligious, but that it was not subordinate
to a politicized form of Islam, and a revolution would
presumably give an awful lot of that back.
Speaker 1: In other words, it would.
Speaker 5: Remove the crazies, it would remove the totalitarians. And this
is why it's just so depressing watching it not happen,
because it's an undoing of a wrong and I keep thinking, oh, finally,
you know that thing that happened is going to be fixed,
and it just doesn't seem to. But it's an odd
sentiment to feel as a Bourkian.
Speaker 1: Well, yes, but no, as much as it's obvious that
the country suffered went backwards as endure hideous mismanagement. I mean,
there's a post on a ricochet ricochet dot com, by
the way, the side that you all should go to
and join and sign up for and comment at a well,
why people weren't marching for the protesters when they were
marching for Gaza And it's one of those it's not
a real head scratcher. Nobody posts something like that because
they really can't figure out the answer. What do you
guys think? I mean, obviously, so it's the fact that
it's anti American, it's the fact that it's anti Israel.
It's the fact that it is. As many have pointed out,
you know, Islam has been conflated now and redefined into
being a race. So if somebody is protesting against Islam,
then they are giving aid and comfort to all the
mega hat racists in you know, VFW club somewhere. No,
they've seen what it is. But the other thing is
that perhaps it is a command economy in a lot
of ways. Now it's a very corrupt economy, it's incredibly
but it is a command economy in many ways stifles
that you know, Persian bizarre instincts. And some people are
saying that, you know, we don't want to give them
too much, the protesters too much credit because they you know,
the ideas well. Yes, Iran has handled it badly, but real,
real theocratic socialism hasn't been tried. Which I'm quoting. I'm
quoting myself there and sounds something I came up with spontaneously.
So there's lots of reasons for people not getting behind this,
and it'll be interesting. I also think that if there
is a successful coup and the SHAW does come back,
or the SHAW is integrated into whatever they come up
with afterwards, that it's going to irritate all those people
who are who are bringing up the coup of the
early fifties over and over and over again. Is one
of the dominating original sins of the Middle East. You know,
how could you expect anything to go well in twenty
twenty six when we topple you know, when we toppled
most of the day the Kami in nineteen fifty one
or fifty three or whenever it was. They'd have to
stop talking about that then.
Speaker 5: Have a national security interest in making sure that all
those beautiful Persian women don't have to avail.
Speaker 1: Yep, that's a big part of it. It's a big
part of it. And you were just so pretty. And
they're all behind these pieces of claw, I know, but
they've taken them off now and they're lighting cigarettes with
pictures of comedy. Come Inny and I love that. It's
a gorgeous still hot, I know.
Speaker 5: And did you pack into one picture some beautiful Persian
women lighting a cigarette she's going after a theocraft.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know. It's just beautiful. And you'd think that
she would be out there as a as a you know,
knocking Gruta Thunberg of the off the pedestal the most preferred,
but unfortunately she's pretty, so we can't have that.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: The Bill Barr talked, we were talking before about Greenland,
which I regarded right now is just sort of an
interesting and amusing diversion. And I Stephen wanted to say,
ninety two percent of people don't want don't want to.
I want who are the eight percent of people who are?
Who are? Who are?
Speaker 4: It's only one right?
Speaker 1: The seven said yeah, you're packing their kit bag and
saying over there. I mean no, I have not, in
my entire life, given more than an hour's worth of
thought to Greenland other than well, it looks big, but
I think that's a distortion of the mercader perspective. It's
probably not that big. And why is it called green
when actually it's full of ice? And why is called
ice when it's actually quite an eye? Yeah, that's it.
But you know, what's what's there that we need other
than the fact that it's where it is?
Speaker 2: Oh well, first of all, I'll be really brief because
I want to toss to Charlie on this because he
wrote a terrific piece about how we can't afford this. Uh,
And I think I mean I entirely agree with that.
I mean, I think the main point is right, it's
a lot of money that we don't have right now. However,
I guess it's mineral rich. I mean oil gas precious
uh uh, you know, the rare earths and stuff that
we'd like to develop a supply independent of China. That
all makes some sense and strategic important, That all makes
sense too. One worry that I have is that if
we do acquire Greenland, then it's going to be federal property,
and that means it's subject to the political control like
all other federal property that has been a plague on
us for mining and oil and gas production for decades now, right,
I mean the energy boom in this country has almost
entirely occurred on privately owned land and state owned land
out west where the federal government had minimal tools.
Speaker 1: To obstruct it.
Speaker 2: And so if you have all of Greenland is federal property,
well guess what The environmentalists under a democratic administration are
going to declare it a national wildlife refuge for you know,
ice bacteria or something, and good luck extracting the value
from it, because I could see, you know, admortizing the
price of acquiring Greenland if Denmark would sell it from
the economic potential of the place. But no one's ever
talked about that. And I think the idea that you
privatize it right away, which is what you ought to do,
who would buy it right I mean, there's all kinds
of problems with the idea that Charlie just just barely
begins to get in this piece.
Speaker 1: Charlie, No, that's all fair.
Speaker 5: And that was a really good counter argument to my
piece by John Perry at National Review in which he
made some of these points. My argument really was just
that I accept that we are broke, and indeed not
just accept it, but talk about it all the time.
We have thirty eight trillion dollars of debt. We're spending
more than it would cost to buy Greenland on servicing
the debt every year nine hundred billion to trillion dollars.
At the moment, Medicare is more expensive than that, Medicaid
is about the same price. You know, Congress is not
going to do this because it would require cuts. But
leaving aside that it is unlikely that we're going to
buy it, and I hope unthinkable that we would invade it.
Seven hundred billion dollars for Greenland is a steel. It
is enormous. It would increase the size of the United
States by twenty two percent. It has so much oil
and natural gas that have all of the world's production
everywhere other than Greenland ceased. It could feed the need
for oil and natural gas globally for three years. It
has an enormous number of rare minerals that we need,
and it's militarily useful. Now you're absolutely right, Steve. The
United States has been really suicidal when it comes to
the use of public lands.
Speaker 1: I don't think the US would be worse than.
Speaker 5: Denmark, which has treated it like a zoo and declined
to permit any extraction. But if you were going to
do it, then you would have to buy it, homestead
it quite quickly, and set in place a set of
rules that permitted private enterprise to go and get the
stuff that is under the ground and under the snow,
which would be more expensive than it is in say Oklahoma. Granted,
if we did that, I think seven hundred billion dollars
is a pretty good price. And the last point that
I made is that an awful lot of America's land,
about forty percent of it was bored in the Alaska purchase.
The Louisiana purchase, we bought much of the Southwest. It
wasn't bought so much, but Florida was in the eighteen
twenties added to the United States. We took on their debts.
Speaker 1: And every time we've done.
Speaker 2: This, it's worked out pretty well.
Speaker 5: And every time we've done this there have been people
who thought that it was really stupid. Thomas Jefferson was
mocked for the Louisiana purchase. Seward in eighteen sixty seven
was mocked for wanting to buy Alaska. It was nicknamed
Stewart's folly. It didn't become popular until eighteen ninety when
we discovered gold everywhere in Alaska.
Speaker 1: It's worth saying as well.
Speaker 5: Seward was the guy who originally wanted to buy Greenland.
That was part of his plan. He only got Alaska,
but he wanted Greenland. Harry Truman tried to buy Greenland
in nineteen forty six. This is not something that Trump
streamed up. So I don't think we're going to do it.
I don't think we're going to afford it. I don't
think we would make the necessary sacrifices. And I agree
with you. There might be problems going forward with the
rules that Congress would set or a democratic president would impose,
But in the abstract the idea is treated as if
it's lunacy. Donald Trump's crazy idea.
Speaker 1: It's not crazy.
Speaker 5: It's actually very sensible if you look at it as
a purely commercial transaction.
Speaker 1: It's entirely possible that at the end of the day,
what we will get are some mining concessions, and we'll
be able to go in and extract some things to
further decouple from China, in which case one might say
that the whole thing about invasion and the rest of
it was just setting up an absurd point that actually
got everybody's attention, and this was sort of, I don't know,
clever deal making. We'll see. I do know that when
you mentioned Seward's folly, that it's been a long time
since anything has been called a folly, and I always
enjoy those because they always point to the most successful
things that ever happened in the human history. Somebody was
calling it, you know, we're going to they're going to
be saying, you know, Elon's folly is the rocket that
that begins colonization of Mars. For example, there will be
a I'm always curious how many of those were they Well,
I know they do, so I don't know how many
of these, whether or not being called a folly by
some drunken wagon the press is actually, you know, it's
actually a guaranteur of success.
Speaker 2: Well, now, James, speaking of folly and rockets to places,
I have an important cultural question for you, all right,
have you had the misfortune of seeing the new.
Speaker 1: Not even not going there? No, no, nope, for the
first time you how for that it is for the
first time in my life, For the first time in
my life, I have refused to even begin to watch
a Star Trek show. And I cannot tell you how
painful this is. I've been there for every single one
of these bleapity beliefs, including Discovery, for which I had
a certain amount of hope at the beginning, until that
rapidly just ebbed away within the first fifteen to twenty
minutes of that thing. No, I am not going to
watch it. One of the things that I saw, I
mean everything that I see. First of all, to me,
the idea that a thousand years hence that the Federation
stills is like that in a speaking English and the
set design is basically the same as ridiculous. And I
don't want to go there. I don't want to look
at a gem hadar klingon high Bred. I don't even
want to think how that happens. I don't like the
look where she looks like she's from hr and she's
come to say something about a joke that you heard.
I told I don't like her. I don't like the
pictures of Holly Hunter all catlike crawled up. You know
it's all cozily crawled up at the captain's chair, reading
a book and with her glasses in three thoy twenty
a d instead of somebody who's striding to the chair,
sitting down, gripping the arms and firing fate. I don't
want to look. They have somebody there in the crowd
scene who, honest to God, has got half of her
face painted white and half of her face painted black.
Now we all know what that means. We all know
it's Frank Gorshan and his You know that, shall I say,
delicate racial analogy that they made and let that be
your last battlefield. I supposedly that rates is extinct, but
I guess somebody brought it back in blow Decks or
Prodigy or something like that. I don't care. They killed
it for me. They gave me and I send off
at the end of the Card three. They got the
gang back together, they got the ship back together. They
kicked ass, and they sat down and they played poker.
It worked and that was the end, and that was good.
And now it's on.
Speaker 2: I knew that would set you off on epic Ram.
What listeners should know, I mean, I watched the form
in a trailer, and if that's the best they can do,
it's got to be awful. All listeners need to know
is that the lead king On character is named Jayden Cayden,
I know, I mean, what next the governor of California
named Gavin. It's almost that side job.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, I know, I know, I know,
And I like Strange New Worlds, even though I think
the third season just got lost in its off and
I'm looking for them to conclude it with a fourth.
It's been good, but no, I mean I used to
just sit down and wait, how they going to start this?
What's the theme gonna be, what's the reveal of the
ship gonna be able?
Speaker 2: Look?
Speaker 1: Look, look, at that look at the voyage you're coming
out of those gaseous clouds with that Oh I'm here,
I'm there already. I know. The first season sucks, as
it always does, but you stay there and you seven
seasons on it concludes and you feel like you've actually
it's been a contribution to the Lord that you remember
you were there eight years old your grandfather's television color
television in horror with North Dakota watching the very first
episode in color terrified because it was really scary stuff,
and you've been there ever since. And then you finally
hit a point where you say, no, it's not that
it's not for me, Oh, this is for the kids.
It's no, no, no, no, it's because it's bad. It's
because it's run by people who just do not get it.
There was a if you look at all the sci
fi of the fifties and sixties, there's still a military
ethos there with their navymen. There's command structures, you know,
there's icer, there's you know, oh god, there's all that stuff,
and all of that has just washed away into this
sort of gallivanting about space and these nice little ships
with these enormous, pointless bridges, so that we can give
somebody a lecture on what they ought to do and
feel good about ourselves for watching it. I say, it's
spinach into hell with it.
Speaker 2: Well, my theory is, oh sorry, My theory is that
behind the scenes, the executive producer is a pseudonym for
Kathleen Kennedy, who's trying to kill two franchises.
Speaker 1: So that's been entirely possible. Well, all I have gone.
Speaker 5: I've never been in a particular treki orthough. I did
like the movies, but the one that I watched when
I was a kid had Captain Picard.
Speaker 4: Is that good?
Speaker 5: Do you like that?
Speaker 1: No? It is good. It found its foot It found
its feeding footing after about a year or so. It
started out odd and tried to the tone wasn't right
thing that everybody inhabited their characters by the second and
third and then I got really good and has the
best cliffhanger in television history. Fire. It was good, but
it was very nineties because the Cold War was over
and now an international group of people were cruising around
in the Hilton solving disputes and luxury. Right, it was
basically in the nineties and then deep Spaces nine comes along,
and that's the post Soviet you know, the Empire's fallen
there on the borderlands and the rest of it. And
then you know, I mean, you can find these analogies
that I'm not the first to say it, you can
find analogies to the time in every one of these.
But yes, Picard was good. It also gave us marvelous
technobabble that we could you know, that we could repeat
to ourselves. And you know, it was like it was
like a vision. It was like a documentary of the future.
It felt like this was a possible thing that we
were going to have at the time. And then they didn't. Okay,
that's that's it. That's it. You did it to me,
you made me do it. What I'm not going to
make you do, however, is go to give us a
five star review. Because I'm not going to ask you
for that yet. I am going to ask you to
go to Ricochet and check to see if there's any
meetups in your area, because that's what Ricochet people do.
It's not just a website where you get together and
blather and plath. You collabor and throw bricks at each other. Now, no, no, no,
early February couple of meetups, one group in Detroit, another
the Florida Space Coast Canaveral. Probably I love that, and
if you'd like to learn more or have your own,
go to ricochet dot com and go to the meetupage
at ricochet dot com slash events. Now, I'm going to
ask you for that five star review, because if you
do well, well, more people see the podcast, more people listen,
more people go to Ricochet, and that ensures that we
go on oh, not just past version five point zero,
but to six point oh and beyond and beyond, as
Buzz would say. So I have to ask you, Charlie.
We're not at five point oh yet, but we are
at last it was four point nine point one point
four point one point four something like that.
Speaker 5: Yes, it's something like that. We've been doing small, little updates,
but you know, more exciting than that is. We have
some new podcasts well, which yes, with our friend Henry Olsen,
Conservative Crossroads with Henry Olsen, in which he hosts a
debate each episode between conservatives of different factions, different views.
Speaker 1: And right down to the studs as well.
Speaker 5: This isn't superficial, Henry says, right, what about Ukraine and
then he lets them argue it out. So that's a
really good news show at Ricochet.
Speaker 1: Ah, I hope you've enjoyed the show, folks. We have
enjoyed making it and bringing it to you. I'm James
Lillack's Minneapolis, Stephen in California, and Charles in Florida. It's
been a pleasure as well. We'll see everybody in the
comments at Ricochet four point whatever. We'll see you there.
Bye bye, Ricochet.
Speaker 2: Join the conversation.