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Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekanana Show.

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Thomas is right back. Two episodes in a row with Thomas.

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We are blessed. How you doing, Thomas, I'm doing well,

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Thank you.

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Speaker 2: I'm glad. I'm glad people aren't suffering. Thomas Ordals I guess,

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but yeah.

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Speaker 1: I don't think that's possible. All right. So the last

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time we recorded, you had mentioned what we were talking

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about Russia. You had mentioned Russian Syrian relations and I'm

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just obsessed with Syria, have been for a while now.

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Speaker 2: Been.

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Speaker 1: I got kicked off of podcast ones for saying that

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Asad was probably one of the best leaders in the

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world right now. And when you look at the post

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the post Nuremberg order, these are two countries that you're

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supposed to hate. So I have great interest in them,

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and you have information on their relations since this sense

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disorder kicked off, and I want to hear about that,

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So start anywhere you want.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's two there's two variables that even

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people who are generally dissident adjacent don't fully grasp regarding

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the relationship between Russia and Syria. Syria's got outsized significance

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for a small country, for a lot of reasons. Okay,

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some of those are cultural, some of those are Jewish strategic,

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you know, some of them oh to the kind of

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peculiar circumstances that Syrian people, who are unique people. It's

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not just some kind of euschauvinistic mythology that the Syrians

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themselves you know promote, you know, they they view themselves.

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They're very much the air the kind of like the

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Hellenic tradition. You know. But when the case of the

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Soviet Union and then Russia, you know, a major component

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of the Cold War was the ability to index with

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both developing societies as well as as well as well

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established national cultures in a meaningful way. You were basically

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like selling your culture, okay, and the case of the Russians,

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stuff like this was deeply historical in a way. It

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wasn't for America. I mean, for reasons that I think

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are fairly obvious. You know, like what America had is

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kind of its selling point, to be kind of basic

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about it, you know, was a technology, a model for prosperity,

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you know, an opportunity to kind of align oneself with

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what appeared to be the sewer power that had kind

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of like the momentum of history and and kind of

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the glamour and prestige of of what is new behind it.

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The Russians really, I mean, maybe this is somewhat ironic

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considering the kind of dictates of Marxist Leninism. You know,

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the Russians really kind of sold the Soviet Union, and

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the Russians today kind of like sell their diplomacy in

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terms of you know, like them representing a deep and

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powerful heritage. Okay, And as I'm sure people have noticed,

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there's been something of an orthodox resurgence which is really

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interesting that very much owes kind of like United Russia

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and not just putin himself. I don't think it's particularly religious,

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but that it was very much to kind of the

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you know, Russian public diplomacy. And I mean there's historical

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and Zeitgeist variables obviously they facilitated, but you know, Syria

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is very much part of that. Okay, you know, after

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I'm jumping around a bit, but bear with me. I

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cite nineteen ninety nine is the year when not only

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did kind of the the neo conservative backs truly triumph

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and foreign policy corridors, but that's also when the Bush

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Baker concord that they established with Moscow, which is like

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shattered for all time. And what shattered it was like

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the unprovoked and like latantly irrational attack on Serbia, because

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I mean Serbia, Serbia is the Russian Federation and like

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the Russian nation, kind of what Croatias did Germany, but

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even more like deeply felt because obviously, you know, there's

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a there's a there's a sectarian homogeneity in among Russian

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people that there's not as part of it, but you

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know that when when NATO assaulted Serbia, it it was, uh,

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it was like it was kind of like viewed as

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like an assault and Byzantium itself. Okay. Now, Syria obviously

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is very diverse in sectarian terms. However, there's a tremendous

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amount of Orthodox artifacts of Orthodox lore in in Syria,

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you know. And I believe, although cultural anthropologists or relisous

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scholars will disagree on this somewhat, I believe that Alo

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whites are are occulted Christians. Okay, even if they're not,

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they're very much adjacent Oriental Christianity, which itself is a

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very or indexes very tightly with Orthodoxy. Okay, So there's

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something of a special relationship between Russia and Syria anyway,

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and not to be I mean crash isn't the word,

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like not to be like overly simplistic about it, or

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not to like fetishize, you know, racial matters. But I

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mean if you look at if you look at the

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Syrian uh kind of like ruling cadre Alo white or Moslim.

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I mean, these look like white people. Okay, that's not

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like some that's not just like they're it's not that's

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not Telemundo optics. That's not some accident. You know. Traditionally

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everybody kind of viewed like the Levantine Arabs and especially

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you know, like the Alo Whites and the Christians is

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like basically like not a Western people, but like a

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civilized people. So trying to cast the Syrians is like

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a bunch of like Beto Win like salavies or something

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is totally bizarre. Like that's that's like saying like the

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Japanese or a bunch of like primitive like cave dwellers

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or something like. It's really it's really really ignorant. But

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it's also just like totally at odds with kind of

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how how Near Eastern cultures sort of like index with

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the West and with Russia, which isn't the West, but

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which is you know, a powerful, a powerful cultural force

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to this day, although obviously not not I know, the

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same degree as as kind of anglophone societies and mores

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have have formative power. But there's a lot here. And

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if you want to, like, if you want to understand,

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like why the Syrian War also like Syrian Civil War

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like cut so deep in the minds of Zionis, Like

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Russia has been at war with Israel for decades, like intermittently, okay,

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And a lot of that derives from Israel's ongoing conflict

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with Syria. You know, as we get into like Russian

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forces literally went into action against the IDF. There was

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a huge dog fight over the Suez Canal between Soviet

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MiGs and like Israeli F four's and Mirage fighters. I'm

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talking like the largest like Ariel and like larger than

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anything happened over Vietnam. This was like a general war

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between the Soviet Union and Israel. Okay, this is why

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the nineteen seventy three crisis was so dangerous, you know,

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Like I'm always saying, that's what the Nixon quotes from

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the Nickson tapes where he says, like, you know, we

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can't blow up the damn world for these people, like

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these people meaning the Israelis, that's what he's talking about. Okay,

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it wasn't just an ordinary matter of coldor proxy battle

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that kind of got out of control. You know. I

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think we should get a little bit into like Jewish

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Russian relations it just to kind of recap. If that's

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not gonna derail the conversation too much. This might have

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to be like a two part thing. If that's agreeable,

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no problem at all, Okay. And I know that we've

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dealt somewhat with so Jewish relations before. But let me

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give like a brief, like a little background, Okay, and

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stop me if I'm I'm kind of becoming too tangential,

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like for context. By the turn of the twentieth century,

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like by nineteen hundred, the majority of European Jewry, like

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as we've think of it were, like lived in the

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Russian Empire. There was about eight eight point between eight

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point five and eight point seven million, like European Jews.

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Over five million of those people lived in the Russian Empire.

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They constant do about four percent of the total population

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of the Russian Empire, and about ninety percent of that

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population they lived in the pale of settlement, you know,

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to which they were. They were largely restricted there, you know,

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like going to owing to both law and custom. Okay,

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like we got the uh and all, but about like

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three to five percent. I've heard varying statistics. I rely

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on Hannah or Rent for a lot of this because

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I I don't think people can I mean, people try

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to impeach her credibility all the time, but like serious

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people don't, you know, really attempt to suggest that she's

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not a wasn't a credible scholar, but basic but close

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to close to ninety seven percent of these these Jewish

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people in the palest settlement or or it works as

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like middlemen of a sort, okay, in commodities, you know,

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like uh, it was like literally like the converse, like

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this funny converse of of uh, like the Russian Orthodox

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peasant population where like the lot majority of them were farmers,

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you know, like virtually virtually no, virtually none of the

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people in the Pale settlement were farmers or factory workers.

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The primary role of these Pale settlement Jews, you know,

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they bought, shipped, resold local produce. You know, they provided

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uh commodities on credit to provide a kind of a

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basic uh like security to to the standing crops, as

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well as you know, like more and more speculative endeavors

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they're involved in in in a state management, you know,

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and and and leasing. You know, they held the deed

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or the title to a lot of productive capital, you know, tanneries, distilleries,

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like sugar mills, like graneries, and like taverns and inns,

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which the latter were like heavily indexed with the government

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because there was the government had and a lot of

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these Eastern European kingdoms and states like a monopoly on

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liquor production and things. I mean, it's complicated, but you know, uh,

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they were disproportioning represented in the in professional services, namely

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as doctors and pharmacists, which obviously had you know, some

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prestige behind it. I mean it's like today it doesn't really,

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but in those days it really did, you know, And

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there was a this became an issue during the Second

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World War as like ethnic cleansing began in earnest I

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mean between various populations. But there's a lot of Jewish artisans,

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you know, like Taylor's shoemakers, guys who understood like medals,

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how to work medals, you know, specialized jewelers and watchmakers.

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These guys are overwhelmingly Jewish, and and especially in rural environments.

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You know, I think we got into before two. These people,

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the Russian Jews and the and the and the Russian peasantry.

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They lived in absolutely segregated quarters. Like the Jews spoke Yiddish.

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You know, they woren't distinctive clothes. They observed, you know,

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a dietary regiment totally different than the majority. They practiced

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a rigid kind of endogamy. You know, they only married

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within the tribe. You know, they basically like every aspect

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of kind of like their cultural learning was oriented towards like, uh,

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the preservation of a collective memory, which was contra that

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and the majority. Okay, you know they the centers of

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communal life obviously were you know, like the synagogue. You know,

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like in Russian culture, like there's like going to like

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the bathhouse or sona is a big thing. There was

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like Jewish saunas and like you know Russian ones. You know,

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these these people that were not like assimilated into like

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Russian society. And it wasn't just like because they desperately

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wanted to be but like Russians were racist or something

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like these like these people literally lived like parallel but

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not intersecting lives and like the Russians themselves, like they

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viewed Jews as like this kind of the did the

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culture is bizarre and opaque. They viewed it as as

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uh as hostile to the Christ. They viewed it as

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like unclean, like literally and like ritually like other you know,

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those were three people, you know, so basically these people

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on the cross paths in the course of business, which

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was sometimes basically amiable, sometimes pretty hostile, and occasionally you know,

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they they'd run across each other, and you know, because

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they they both had to deal with the same you know,

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state bureaucracies to which one of the other population was

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you know, like heavily represented, depending on mandate and locale

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and stuff, you know, and I mean like not non

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Jews didn't even most it was very other than scholars,

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you know, and and linguists, like almost no Russians even

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understoody Ish, you know. And this went beyond just Russia,

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like in in Ukraine and Lithuania, Lafia and Moldova and Belarus,

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like we're like, what's now Poland, Like these these these

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pale settlement people and the people outside the pale settlement, nonetheless,

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who were like you know, heavily indexed into that cultural milu,

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like they didn't a lot of them didn't even speak

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like the national language what we think of as the

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national language. You know. It's so there you're you're talking

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about you're talking about like an enforced alienation, okay, coming

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from you know, Russian jewelry itself. I don't mean that

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like the Tsarist system was like we must exclude these

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people at all costs. Like, don't get me wrong, there

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was definitely like reciprocal enmity, you know. But it's but

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people gotta understand. It's like you read you read these

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like dummy accounts where it's like, oh, there was you know,

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Russian and Polish Jews were just like everybody else. But

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then there was this prejudice that came out in the

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twentieth century that's totally completely acidine. It was nothing like that.

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You know, you could make the case in Berlin, which

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might as well have been a different planet, you know

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than the Russian Empire. Especially and it's kind of rural

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geographic corridors. You had Jewish Berliners who basically like looked

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askance at kind of like there the ostudent their their

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

237
00:17:12,000 --> 00:17:16,400
they even if they didn't particularly want to mix or

238
00:17:16,440 --> 00:17:21,039
integrate with German people, you know, they they kept up appearances.

239
00:17:21,319 --> 00:17:23,839
You know, it was totally different. You can't extrapolate that

240
00:17:23,960 --> 00:17:27,599
experience or or the experience like Parisan Jews to that

241
00:17:27,759 --> 00:17:31,200
of to there the East. You know, like I'm not

242
00:17:31,240 --> 00:17:34,720
saying there weren't like enmities in in the case of

243
00:17:34,759 --> 00:17:38,480
the former that sort of dictated the terms of cultural interaction,

244
00:17:38,640 --> 00:17:41,400
but it was it was not remotely comparable. It's like

245
00:17:41,440 --> 00:17:43,240
I want to move, I want to jump ahead a bit,

246
00:17:43,759 --> 00:17:46,519
you know. So that's this kind of like laid so

247
00:17:46,640 --> 00:17:50,400
this is the context, understand you know, like the the

248
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the Russian national culture and the place of like Jews

249
00:17:54,000 --> 00:17:59,480
in it now obviously like the Bolshevik Revolution. You know,

250
00:17:59,519 --> 00:18:02,759
it's kind of mac Donald. He coded a lot of

251
00:18:02,839 --> 00:18:05,200
data and he wrote a lot about you know, the

252
00:18:05,279 --> 00:18:12,400
outsized role that the outsize role that Russian Jewish people

253
00:18:12,440 --> 00:18:15,519
played in in the NKVD and the terror apparatus and

254
00:18:15,519 --> 00:18:18,920
things like that. You know that that's all true, okay.

255
00:18:20,279 --> 00:18:24,559
And then of course, you know we've talked about you know,

256
00:18:24,759 --> 00:18:27,839
Yaqui's view of the Doctor's plot in what was then

257
00:18:27,880 --> 00:18:32,759
Czechoslovakia and the kind of purging of these elements from

258
00:18:34,279 --> 00:18:37,839
the nomenclatura. I don't want to rehash all of that

259
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because it's kind of too outside the scope. But the

260
00:18:39,680 --> 00:18:42,799
point is when people today talk about it like, oh, Russia,

261
00:18:42,960 --> 00:18:46,279
Russia is zog quote unquote zog or like Russia is

262
00:18:46,319 --> 00:18:50,119
this you know vis a the you know, the the

263
00:18:50,200 --> 00:18:54,160
Jewish diaspra or Israel. You're talking about like deep seated

264
00:18:54,519 --> 00:18:59,400
hatred and animosity, like real hatred. You know, the fact

265
00:18:59,440 --> 00:19:03,200
that like Theians don't like as that punch the air

266
00:19:03,319 --> 00:19:06,920
and like openly curse you Da every morning. But the

267
00:19:06,920 --> 00:19:09,039
fact that like Putin doesn't go on TV and like

268
00:19:09,160 --> 00:19:12,720
declare that like you know, I deny the Holocaust, and

269
00:19:12,759 --> 00:19:16,559
the fact that you know, Netanya who doesn't say inflammatory

270
00:19:16,599 --> 00:19:19,680
things about the Russians publicly, like that means absolutely nothing.

271
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Like first of all, I mean, if you don't understand politics,

272
00:19:22,200 --> 00:19:25,519
if you think it's about you know, wearing your actual

273
00:19:25,519 --> 00:19:28,519
feelings on your sleeve. You don't understand diplomacy, even at war,

274
00:19:28,720 --> 00:19:31,279
especially at war if you think that does as characteristic

275
00:19:31,319 --> 00:19:35,039
about enemies relate. But anybody would say that, you know,

276
00:19:35,160 --> 00:19:39,160
like Moscow is something like love for jewelry is an idiot? Okay,

277
00:19:39,200 --> 00:19:43,000
I mean that's not This is a very very very

278
00:19:43,079 --> 00:19:49,480
hostile and tragic history. You know, so jumping forward as

279
00:19:49,519 --> 00:19:53,960
people know, you know, Stalin, who is the constant machiavellian.

280
00:19:54,960 --> 00:19:58,119
Stalin played cards pretty close to his chest when like

281
00:19:58,240 --> 00:20:03,759
the uh when you know, during the when when Israel

282
00:20:03,880 --> 00:20:07,440
like you know, from nineteen forty seven to forty nine

283
00:20:08,519 --> 00:20:10,920
basically you know, like when when when Israel is a

284
00:20:10,960 --> 00:20:13,400
Jewish state it was being established. He did it for

285
00:20:13,400 --> 00:20:16,079
a couple of reasons. First of all, because elements like

286
00:20:16,240 --> 00:20:19,559
Ergun you know, and Hagan and whatever we're like get

287
00:20:19,640 --> 00:20:22,319
war with the British Empire would remained like the falling

288
00:20:22,359 --> 00:20:26,279
British Empire, and Stalin obviously like supported that. But Stalin

289
00:20:26,319 --> 00:20:29,920
also like he wasn't clear like what kind of trajectory

290
00:20:30,000 --> 00:20:34,119
Israeli politic from take like very quickly, you know, the

291
00:20:34,200 --> 00:20:37,359
Soviets like dropped and you know, all appearance of good

292
00:20:37,400 --> 00:20:41,160
offices with Israel whenever game clear that this was you know,

293
00:20:41,200 --> 00:20:45,200
the the that it was basically you know, a state

294
00:20:45,319 --> 00:20:48,240
that represented kind of like the express political will of

295
00:20:48,359 --> 00:20:52,000
like radicals and and and highly racializion is and it

296
00:20:52,039 --> 00:20:53,680
was it was just like it was totally off the

297
00:20:53,720 --> 00:20:57,240
table for like the Soviets to get behind Israel. And

298
00:20:58,759 --> 00:21:07,279
really by after the Suez Canal crisis, like like Israel,

299
00:21:07,920 --> 00:21:11,359
like Palestine became like literally kind of like other than

300
00:21:11,640 --> 00:21:14,319
other than Europe Central. It became kind of like the

301
00:21:14,599 --> 00:21:21,119
conflict diet of the Cold War, okay, and the Soviet

302
00:21:21,240 --> 00:21:24,559
Union literally went to war with Israel. And the key

303
00:21:24,640 --> 00:21:32,759
to this, you know, hostilities in absolute earnest really emerge

304
00:21:32,799 --> 00:21:35,640
in conventional terms, and the immediate aftermath of the Sixth

305
00:21:35,720 --> 00:21:39,599
Day War in ninety sixty seven, this kicked off what

306
00:21:39,680 --> 00:21:43,119
was called by the Kremlin as well as as well

307
00:21:43,160 --> 00:21:48,400
as by Nasaar's people the Continuity War. It translates Rolphick

308
00:21:48,400 --> 00:21:55,000
to the Continuity War. It so between nineteen sixty seven

309
00:21:55,039 --> 00:21:58,720
and seventy three, the story is not only it took

310
00:21:58,720 --> 00:22:05,160
a massive reireament and retraining program of the of Egyptian forces.

311
00:22:05,440 --> 00:22:08,200
They actually started trying to prop up Egypt when well

312
00:22:08,240 --> 00:22:12,519
the sixty were was still in progress. But regular Soviet troops,

313
00:22:12,519 --> 00:22:15,400
I'm not talking advisors, I'm talking the Red Army. They

314
00:22:15,440 --> 00:22:19,279
took up infantry positions opposite Israeli forces to hold the

315
00:22:19,319 --> 00:22:22,599
Suez Canal line at all costs. There was there was

316
00:22:22,680 --> 00:22:25,480
Soviets who were manning the anti aircraft defenses around Cairo.

317
00:22:28,119 --> 00:22:31,920
There was a there there were Soviet advisors who were

318
00:22:31,960 --> 00:22:37,079
like leading company level elements of Egyptians against the IDEF.

319
00:22:37,920 --> 00:22:42,200
You know, Like again, this isn't speculation or or or

320
00:22:42,240 --> 00:22:44,640
something or something that was like you know, filtered out

321
00:22:44,640 --> 00:22:48,119
of some like CIA memo that may or may not

322
00:22:48,200 --> 00:22:51,480
have been an accurate reading of the the battle space.

323
00:22:51,559 --> 00:22:54,359
This is this is this, This happened, This is documented,

324
00:22:57,559 --> 00:23:03,599
something that became a grave concern to Kissinger himself as

325
00:23:03,640 --> 00:23:07,599
well as uh people at Defense Intelligence as well as

326
00:23:07,640 --> 00:23:12,359
the Pentagon. There was uh this So there was a

327
00:23:12,400 --> 00:23:17,559
massive deployment of of integral Soviet combat units the Egypt

328
00:23:18,279 --> 00:23:21,720
in response to what Israel called depth bombing in the

329
00:23:21,720 --> 00:23:29,359
Egyptian hinterland. Like like basically this this this, this is

330
00:23:29,599 --> 00:23:32,480
this is a campaign of strategic bombing of basically like

331
00:23:32,559 --> 00:23:37,319
any like any target that uh it could remotely be

332
00:23:37,319 --> 00:23:42,559
construed like infrastructural okay, like they're basically trying to flatten

333
00:23:43,039 --> 00:23:46,759
Egypt and and you know, like and that and bombed

334
00:23:46,799 --> 00:23:52,279
back to the Stone Age as it were. Okay, Naser

335
00:23:53,759 --> 00:24:03,359
visited Moscow secretly on grounds of you know, legitimate urgency,

336
00:24:05,640 --> 00:24:09,920
and this accelerated, this rapidly accelerated implementation basically NASA for

337
00:24:10,000 --> 00:24:12,519
a head of state, especially in those days when I

338
00:24:12,519 --> 00:24:15,240
mean this is obviously like well into like the jet

339
00:24:15,240 --> 00:24:19,319
commercial travel era, but for the chief executive of a

340
00:24:19,400 --> 00:24:22,240
nation at war to travel to Moscow and say, like

341
00:24:22,400 --> 00:24:26,400
we're getting killed like a help, I mean, that's that's

342
00:24:26,400 --> 00:24:33,680
that's crazy. Okay. So from that point forward until the

343
00:24:33,839 --> 00:24:37,839
conclusion of the seventy three war, like basically the Soviets

344
00:24:37,839 --> 00:24:44,400
took over uh like operational authority, like on the Egyptian front,

345
00:24:45,599 --> 00:24:48,960
the Soviet expeditionary force that showed up in Egypt. It

346
00:24:49,039 --> 00:24:53,680
was the most advanced element. They had some of these

347
00:24:53,799 --> 00:24:56,640
uh like service their missile systems they were using. They

348
00:24:56,640 --> 00:24:59,079
weren't even sending these to North Vietnam. This is like

349
00:24:59,119 --> 00:25:01,559
still a spiritmental They were sending like their best man,

350
00:25:01,599 --> 00:25:04,720
their best material, their best hardware the Egypt to fight

351
00:25:04,799 --> 00:25:12,240
the idea, you know, and contra of what Israeli propaganda

352
00:25:12,359 --> 00:25:15,599
was at the time, I think not. I think this

353
00:25:15,759 --> 00:25:18,759
wasn't just capped kind of like both to the perception

354
00:25:18,920 --> 00:25:23,319
of IDFs aptitude, but it was also kind of like

355
00:25:23,319 --> 00:25:26,480
a suage American anxieties, which at that point were at

356
00:25:26,519 --> 00:25:29,720
a fever pitch. You know. These Raelis claimed that by

357
00:25:29,759 --> 00:25:32,720
the time the ceasefire in August nineteen seventy, there was

358
00:25:32,759 --> 00:25:39,839
like this tascit ceasefire with Egypt. They claimed that like, well,

359
00:25:39,920 --> 00:25:43,440
you know, there's this to like our victory over Soviet

360
00:25:43,440 --> 00:25:45,599
and Egyptian forces and such, and it's only like a

361
00:25:46,039 --> 00:25:48,240
you know, it's only like a skeleton crew or kind

362
00:25:48,240 --> 00:25:52,480
of like a token detachment of of of Warsaw Pact

363
00:25:52,519 --> 00:25:55,200
forces on the ground in Egypt. Like that that was complete,

364
00:25:55,519 --> 00:26:01,039
that that was completely at odds with reality the uh

365
00:26:01,279 --> 00:26:03,359
and and also too, I mean, if you're fighting if

366
00:26:03,400 --> 00:26:06,200
the Soviets, and I mean today with far lesser degree,

367
00:26:06,279 --> 00:26:09,200
but I think the point still stands in some capacities

368
00:26:10,799 --> 00:26:13,640
saying that like the Soviets saying that Russians can't stand

369
00:26:13,640 --> 00:26:17,079
the attrition you're implementing. I mean, that's that's ridiculous. I Mean,

370
00:26:17,079 --> 00:26:19,279
the one thing is Russian whatever their problems, and I

371
00:26:19,680 --> 00:26:23,319
don't have any illusions about the problems Russians had the

372
00:26:23,400 --> 00:26:29,880
Russian Federation and Russians historically have in in military operations. Uh, Like,

373
00:26:29,920 --> 00:26:33,000
suggesting they can't handle attrition is I mean, it's kind

374
00:26:33,000 --> 00:26:34,880
of like laughable. I mean, that's like the one thing

375
00:26:34,920 --> 00:26:41,799
they can absolutely handle. So there's so this uh kind

376
00:26:41,799 --> 00:26:50,839
of bizarre uh state of things like set in. We're

377
00:26:50,880 --> 00:26:54,400
on the one hand, on you know, there was a

378
00:26:54,759 --> 00:26:58,160
there was this, there was kind of like this the

379
00:26:58,319 --> 00:27:01,720
like the official party line in Washington was that this

380
00:27:01,880 --> 00:27:04,759
wasn't a meaningful deployment by the Soviet Union, although the

381
00:27:04,759 --> 00:27:09,480
theater remains critical. You know, you had the actual Soviet

382
00:27:09,599 --> 00:27:14,480
army on the ground like fighting IDF in nineteen seventy two.

383
00:27:14,920 --> 00:27:17,599
And part of this, I believe was NASA's alleged Maine

384
00:27:18,000 --> 00:27:20,799
and and and and and then and Naster's successors alledgered

385
00:27:20,799 --> 00:27:25,000
Maine because like periodically this was declared nineteen seventy two,

386
00:27:25,480 --> 00:27:28,119
there was a quote nquote rift between Cairo and Moscow

387
00:27:28,240 --> 00:27:34,240
whereby Soviet advisors were supposedly like expelled from Cairo. Meanwhile,

388
00:27:34,279 --> 00:27:39,599
like the Soviet army again is fully indexed at you know,

389
00:27:39,839 --> 00:27:44,720
in the command and commanding control capacity on you know what,

390
00:27:45,039 --> 00:27:48,039
on the on the Egyptian front contra I d F

391
00:27:48,559 --> 00:27:53,839
and they're like waging active war and you know this,

392
00:27:53,960 --> 00:27:58,039
So this was uh that, this was murky as anything

393
00:27:58,160 --> 00:28:00,759
was during the Cold War. But that's like the standard

394
00:28:00,799 --> 00:28:02,720
rebuttal people have is like, oh but what about what

395
00:28:02,759 --> 00:28:05,119
about the you know, the expulsion of Soviet advisors? But

396
00:28:05,160 --> 00:28:07,359
it's like, okay, it also bigs the questions like why

397
00:28:07,359 --> 00:28:09,759
this would be some public schism, you know, I mean

398
00:28:09,799 --> 00:28:11,920
it's not That's not the way the Communists did things.

399
00:28:11,920 --> 00:28:13,559
That's certainly not the way the Russians do things, and

400
00:28:13,559 --> 00:28:19,480
that's certainly not the way Nasaites Egypt did things. There

401
00:28:19,480 --> 00:28:22,599
were tensions between Moscow and Cairo leading up to the

402
00:28:22,599 --> 00:28:27,440
seventy three war, but I mean literally on the October

403
00:28:27,480 --> 00:28:37,000
sixth offensive and in concert with uh, with with with Syria,

404
00:28:37,160 --> 00:28:41,000
this was literally planned on the Arab's side by bye,

405
00:28:41,039 --> 00:28:45,319
by Soviet command elements, you know. So I mean like

406
00:28:45,319 --> 00:28:47,279
if if there was this like a rift whereby like

407
00:28:47,359 --> 00:28:50,039
Soviet advisors or something like banished from Cairo. It's like, well,

408
00:28:50,079 --> 00:28:52,519
I mean apparently they were. They remained, you know, like

409
00:28:52,680 --> 00:28:56,920
prop practical purposes, like the war planners in Cairo. But

410
00:28:59,200 --> 00:29:04,680
the U there's a guy named Victor Kayak and he

411
00:29:04,799 --> 00:29:10,880
was a he was a KGB type who in a

412
00:29:10,960 --> 00:29:13,640
ninety two back when a lot of these security apparatus

413
00:29:13,680 --> 00:29:15,640
types on the Formeries block. I mean they were both

414
00:29:15,640 --> 00:29:18,000
substantially younger then a lot more than we're alive. But

415
00:29:18,039 --> 00:29:21,559
also there was it was a rare brought nineteen ninety

416
00:29:21,559 --> 00:29:24,759
one to like nineteen ninety six, there was a rare

417
00:29:24,880 --> 00:29:27,319
kind of candor that these guys were prone to and

418
00:29:27,400 --> 00:29:34,640
in terms of discussing cooler operations. But and Kayak and said, uh,

419
00:29:35,519 --> 00:29:39,160
you know it was the KGB like US, US made

420
00:29:39,240 --> 00:29:43,640
the kgby quote, the KGB persuaded President Nashoul to wage

421
00:29:43,680 --> 00:29:46,240
the war of attrition to the bitter end. You know,

422
00:29:46,519 --> 00:29:49,920
Naster may not, Naser may not trusted the KGB entirely,

423
00:29:50,000 --> 00:29:56,079
but he did ask for help, and US, the KGB,

424
00:29:57,319 --> 00:30:00,680
the best friend of oppress nations, did help and military

425
00:30:00,720 --> 00:30:03,599
gear when it became clear there it's gonna do it

426
00:30:03,640 --> 00:30:05,960
on the own by sending in our own forces. That's

427
00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:10,599
a quote from Kayagin. Okay, now the actual more matrician

428
00:30:10,720 --> 00:30:16,079
I will bring it back to Syria, I promise. From

429
00:30:16,359 --> 00:30:23,720
seventy this involved fighting between not just the idea, the

430
00:30:23,759 --> 00:30:25,720
idea f on one side, and not just Egypt but

431
00:30:25,839 --> 00:30:32,039
also Jordan, the PLO Kuwait and really kind of the

432
00:30:32,119 --> 00:30:33,599
what I think of it is like the step punk

433
00:30:34,599 --> 00:30:38,559
the USSR, the Cubans as well as Syria, all right,

434
00:30:39,680 --> 00:30:42,279
from sixty seven to seventy is kind of the peak

435
00:30:42,359 --> 00:30:47,279
of this conflict cycle, you know, and then did it

436
00:30:47,440 --> 00:30:51,000
endure the varying intensities until seventy three, and then seventy

437
00:30:51,039 --> 00:30:54,559
three led to you know, the escalation to the point

438
00:30:54,599 --> 00:30:58,319
of of of Defcon three in America and that that

439
00:30:58,440 --> 00:31:01,640
changed everything. But that's that that's kind of ahead of ourselves.

440
00:31:04,000 --> 00:31:07,119
Following the sixty seven sixty war, there was no serious

441
00:31:07,119 --> 00:31:11,759
diplomatic efforts the for for a political solution to the

442
00:31:11,799 --> 00:31:15,599
Arab Israeli conflict like the Arab League in sixty seven.

443
00:31:15,640 --> 00:31:19,720
I mean, in the media aftermath there possibly became known

444
00:31:19,720 --> 00:31:23,880
as the three no's, you know, no no recognition, no

445
00:31:24,000 --> 00:31:28,480
negotiations with Israel, and like no peace until Palestine is liberated, okay.

446
00:31:28,960 --> 00:31:35,119
And the Soviets basically they're the ones who, like, uh,

447
00:31:36,000 --> 00:31:40,319
who made this possible. They made the confidence the side

448
00:31:40,359 --> 00:31:43,880
on for the the several you know, for the Arab

449
00:31:43,960 --> 00:31:47,400
League plus some of these non state actors to sign

450
00:31:47,480 --> 00:31:54,960
off on a long campaign all right, initially as it's

451
00:31:55,079 --> 00:32:07,720
kind of the the traditional Russian doctrine it like in

452
00:32:07,720 --> 00:32:10,680
in the opening cells, as it were, of this kind

453
00:32:10,680 --> 00:32:16,519
of period and hostilities engagement form like limited artillery doables

454
00:32:16,519 --> 00:32:23,680
like small scale incursions from sign into Sinai and vice versa.

455
00:32:24,319 --> 00:32:29,759
By sixty nine, the Egyptians, uh or at least or

456
00:32:29,759 --> 00:32:37,359
at least there's Soviet advisors and commanders judged the judge

457
00:32:38,920 --> 00:32:42,720
like company size and forces level, company sized forces and beyond,

458
00:32:43,279 --> 00:32:45,400
like they judged them like prepared for like a higher

459
00:32:45,519 --> 00:32:51,160
level of operational sophistication. Okay, because it's kind of when

460
00:32:51,200 --> 00:32:53,519
like the true like war of attrition kicked off. I

461
00:32:53,559 --> 00:32:55,519
think in like the public mind in terms of people

462
00:32:55,559 --> 00:32:58,400
who consumed like global news and things, as well as

463
00:32:58,440 --> 00:33:02,640
people kind of on the periphery of of military affairs,

464
00:33:02,680 --> 00:33:09,079
you know, extensive aerial warfare like large scale shelling, you know,

465
00:33:09,160 --> 00:33:14,400
like commando raids, like you know, combined arms assaults the frontiers.

466
00:33:14,400 --> 00:33:16,519
I mean the same as when the war began, but

467
00:33:16,599 --> 00:33:21,680
this you're talking about like real clashes of combined arms here, okay.

468
00:33:23,920 --> 00:33:28,480
The Israeli Air Force responded by directly targeting Soviet military personnel.

469
00:33:28,960 --> 00:33:32,160
From January to March in nineteen seventy forty eight Soviet

470
00:33:32,200 --> 00:33:34,920
troops and pilots were killed in bombing raids at Cairo.

471
00:33:35,480 --> 00:33:37,640
And then this there's a suburb of Cairo called that Sure,

472
00:33:38,440 --> 00:33:40,960
this was uh, this is where most like Soviet fighter

473
00:33:41,039 --> 00:33:49,640
pilots like lived. Okay. The Soviets responded, which was in

474
00:33:49,720 --> 00:33:54,359
flagrant violation international agreements. They deployed S one service their

475
00:33:54,359 --> 00:33:57,039
missile system to the Sewiz Canal zone like they were

476
00:33:57,079 --> 00:33:59,880
fortifying the Suiz Canal zone like a smaller scale like

477
00:34:00,039 --> 00:34:04,920
as deep as Hannoi was, okay, And this led to

478
00:34:04,960 --> 00:34:10,159
like heavy attrition. This this culminated in a massive dog

479
00:34:10,199 --> 00:34:14,239
flight over a This is the this the operation was

480
00:34:14,280 --> 00:34:18,679
coding ramone twenty by the Israeli Air Force. There was

481
00:34:18,880 --> 00:34:23,239
twelve to fourteen Soviet Mid twenty ones and twelve Israeli

482
00:34:23,320 --> 00:34:28,599
Mirage threes and F four phantom twos. They it was

483
00:34:28,639 --> 00:34:30,840
like I said, it was this massive dog flight in

484
00:34:30,880 --> 00:34:35,760
the Suez Canal operational area, like five Soviet aircraft went down.

485
00:34:35,920 --> 00:34:39,920
At least four of those pilots were killed. Israeli attrition

486
00:34:40,159 --> 00:34:42,599
it's hard to say. I mean, the Soviets claimed it

487
00:34:42,679 --> 00:34:45,599
was like far higher than it was. The Israelis claimed

488
00:34:45,599 --> 00:34:49,719
like minimal attrition, but it was probably uncomparable. But the

489
00:34:49,880 --> 00:34:52,159
entire purpose of this, by idea app was the lowreer

490
00:34:52,280 --> 00:34:55,719
Soviet fighter pilots into in the in the air at

491
00:34:55,719 --> 00:34:59,400
air combat so that they could be taken out because

492
00:34:59,400 --> 00:35:02,280
I mean, it's cast you will like kill fighter pilots,

493
00:35:02,400 --> 00:35:05,960
you know, I mean obviously you know. And but this

494
00:35:06,159 --> 00:35:07,639
is for that for the people who claim it's like

495
00:35:07,639 --> 00:35:11,599
euphemistic that you know, the Soviets right war with Israel.

496
00:35:11,639 --> 00:35:13,880
I mean this this is my rebuttal okay, I'm in

497
00:35:13,920 --> 00:35:22,360
a serious people don't don't claim that the uh in

498
00:35:22,400 --> 00:35:26,320
it's aftermath like varying sources like some people, I mean,

499
00:35:26,880 --> 00:35:30,039
and I'm talking objective people, not not just Zionis shields

500
00:35:30,159 --> 00:35:33,320
or something like some people claim that like well Israel

501
00:35:33,400 --> 00:35:36,960
was stood Soviet combined arms and you know they were

502
00:35:36,960 --> 00:35:40,159
able to fight off. Uh, you know, they they're able

503
00:35:40,199 --> 00:35:42,639
to fight in ways that here there too they hadn't

504
00:35:42,679 --> 00:35:46,440
been comfortable with, or that hitherto had been an alien

505
00:35:46,480 --> 00:35:49,800
type of warfare. I mean, I don't I don't know

506
00:35:49,880 --> 00:35:52,559
any think that's true. I mean, I think the Soviets

507
00:35:52,599 --> 00:35:56,400
brought brought they brought a quality of hardware and manpower

508
00:35:56,400 --> 00:36:00,559
and operational sophistication to the table. Obviously, but the idea

509
00:36:00,760 --> 00:36:04,760
was used to fighting Arab armies that had real problems

510
00:36:04,800 --> 00:36:13,039
but were basically following warsaw peg doctrine. You know. The

511
00:36:13,119 --> 00:36:17,360
American claim was that well, Israel successful and continuing to

512
00:36:17,440 --> 00:36:19,840
hold the main line of resistance, which was the Barrow

513
00:36:20,119 --> 00:36:24,280
called the bar Level line, and forcing the Egyptians ultimately

514
00:36:24,280 --> 00:36:29,239
to come to the table. But uh, you know eventually,

515
00:36:29,320 --> 00:36:35,320
I mean, but the but the consensus really on both

516
00:36:35,360 --> 00:36:38,320
sides of the Aisle was that this this really kind

517
00:36:38,320 --> 00:36:41,960
of sapped Israeli morale, you know, and this this really

518
00:36:42,039 --> 00:36:46,039
this culminated really in the seventy three warrants conclusion. I mean,

519
00:36:46,159 --> 00:36:48,840
is Israel had some big victories in seventy three, but

520
00:36:48,880 --> 00:36:51,679
they also took some big hits. You know, this wasn't

521
00:36:53,079 --> 00:36:55,360
people kind of trying to cast Israeli history as like

522
00:36:55,400 --> 00:36:58,159
the Sixth Day War into perpetuity, like oh, these really

523
00:36:58,239 --> 00:37:00,760
armies just top notch and they just over all their

524
00:37:00,760 --> 00:37:04,280
ops Like that's not true, you know. And admittedly, like

525
00:37:05,760 --> 00:37:09,840
if you're fighting the Soviet army and what was then

526
00:37:09,920 --> 00:37:12,599
you know they're cutting edge wartech, like it's not a

527
00:37:12,639 --> 00:37:15,280
minor thing, Like I'm not even saying that, like there's

528
00:37:15,280 --> 00:37:17,320
some like shame in it, you know, it's.

529
00:37:18,840 --> 00:37:19,159
Speaker 3: I U.

530
00:37:20,559 --> 00:37:24,320
Speaker 2: Interestingly, there's a couple. There's a guy and a lady

531
00:37:24,639 --> 00:37:29,039
there Israeli military type academics. The guy's name is Gideon

532
00:37:29,480 --> 00:37:34,000
ramez Lay. His name is Isabella Jenor or Ginnor. They've

533
00:37:34,000 --> 00:37:38,599
written a lot on Soviet Israeli hostilities. And obviously, like

534
00:37:38,639 --> 00:37:41,199
I said, these people are both like Israeli Jews, They're not.

535
00:37:41,599 --> 00:37:44,440
They're certainly not you know, people gonna be said to

536
00:37:44,519 --> 00:37:48,519
have a poor review of the zigon of state. They

537
00:37:48,559 --> 00:37:51,719
they both consider the war have been like a defeat

538
00:37:51,760 --> 00:37:54,880
for israel I mean Israel. Their argument is Israel is

539
00:37:54,880 --> 00:37:59,719
forced to accept the ceasefire and and basically a change

540
00:37:59,760 --> 00:38:03,440
like a change in uh kind of like the criteria

541
00:38:03,480 --> 00:38:05,800
for peace on the Israeli side and just like a

542
00:38:05,840 --> 00:38:08,639
holy and just and and they you know, just completely

543
00:38:08,679 --> 00:38:11,599
a complete sea change in the tenor of negotiations. But

544
00:38:11,760 --> 00:38:14,360
so Soviet air defenses were dropping it for fantoms out

545
00:38:14,360 --> 00:38:18,880
of the sky at an unsustainable rate. The Soviets and

546
00:38:18,880 --> 00:38:26,639
the Egyptians proved they they blatantly violate not just proceeding

547
00:38:26,760 --> 00:38:32,960
uh you know, ceasefire and treaty arrangements in the theater.

548
00:38:33,719 --> 00:38:37,280
But they they didn't care a whit about you know,

549
00:38:37,519 --> 00:38:41,320
deploying you know, banned weapons systems to the region. You know,

550
00:38:41,320 --> 00:38:43,400
they they were in it to win it. You know

551
00:38:46,119 --> 00:38:51,960
ramone twenty, this aerial operation that you know was purposed

552
00:38:51,960 --> 00:38:56,679
to zapp the Soviet Air Force tactically. Yeah, that that

553
00:38:56,679 --> 00:39:00,039
that was Ah, that that was a victory. But I

554
00:39:00,079 --> 00:39:02,119
think that as part of the whole paradigm, like that

555
00:39:02,159 --> 00:39:05,480
allowed the Israelis to kind of accept what there toofore

556
00:39:05,519 --> 00:39:10,519
would have been not acceptable to design as hardliners, but

557
00:39:10,880 --> 00:39:13,519
will also saving face. You know, hey, look like we

558
00:39:13,519 --> 00:39:16,280
we defeated the mighty Soviet Air Force. You know, we

559
00:39:16,280 --> 00:39:19,119
we can't we can't be said to have have lost.

560
00:39:19,559 --> 00:39:23,400
So I mean it's complicated, Okay, but like my point

561
00:39:23,519 --> 00:39:28,599
is that like Israel's fortunes were literally decided by the

562
00:39:28,639 --> 00:39:32,639
Soviet Union, you know, in the Continuity War then in

563
00:39:32,719 --> 00:39:36,320
seventy three, you know, so this, I I mean, there's

564
00:39:36,320 --> 00:39:38,960
two things here. So I mean this, this is demonstrative

565
00:39:39,000 --> 00:39:46,039
of how heavily the Soviet Union and Russia wasn't as

566
00:39:46,079 --> 00:39:49,760
like politically invested in Arab fortunes and specifically Syrian ones.

567
00:39:50,559 --> 00:39:52,639
But it's also like you think, you think the Israelis

568
00:39:52,760 --> 00:39:55,920
have like good feelings towards Russia. I mean really, I

569
00:39:55,960 --> 00:40:07,199
mean it's you know, it's propossible. Is closer to this

570
00:40:07,360 --> 00:40:12,199
The main subject at hand, what uh halfes As Sad

571
00:40:12,480 --> 00:40:16,079
was doing during this period. Hafesa Sad himself was a

572
00:40:16,079 --> 00:40:20,639
MiG driver, he was a fighter pilot. In nineteen seventy one,

573
00:40:21,119 --> 00:40:25,559
as a Syrian bath was kind of consolidating its hold,

574
00:40:26,920 --> 00:40:30,719
like serious Syrian politics. We were very byzantine and and

575
00:40:30,719 --> 00:40:32,599
and a lot of a lot of backstabbing, a lot

576
00:40:32,599 --> 00:40:35,440
of corruption, things like this. Not quite as bad as

577
00:40:35,639 --> 00:40:38,519
as the Iraqi situation has developed about a decade later,

578
00:40:38,599 --> 00:40:44,519
but it was very chaotic asades A Sad. Really, it's

579
00:40:44,559 --> 00:40:47,559
kind of like the father of modern serious political culture. Okay,

580
00:40:48,679 --> 00:40:52,239
but that's kind of a subject for another day. But

581
00:40:52,320 --> 00:40:57,800
in nineteen seventy one, Halfes as sad than the Soviet Union.

582
00:40:58,199 --> 00:41:00,400
He permitted the Soviet Union to open its naval and

583
00:41:00,440 --> 00:41:06,960
Tartis and then that the so the Russians community, you

584
00:41:07,039 --> 00:41:11,239
utilize this this base. To this day Tartis is the

585
00:41:11,280 --> 00:41:14,559
sole Mediterranean naval base for the Black Sea Fleet of

586
00:41:14,559 --> 00:41:20,760
the Russian Navy. Okay, this was this is a big deal,

587
00:41:22,599 --> 00:41:25,440
not just in not not just in like you know,

588
00:41:25,559 --> 00:41:29,840
strategic terms, but uh it it it demonstrates like a

589
00:41:29,880 --> 00:41:34,840
willingness of uh the Russians the sign on for the

590
00:41:34,920 --> 00:41:39,559
long term on on on what am also like a

591
00:41:39,599 --> 00:41:44,320
mutual defense treaty. So they've really got like absolute confidence

592
00:41:44,480 --> 00:41:47,039
and like the tenure the perennial tenure of of the

593
00:41:47,079 --> 00:41:50,079
regime currently situated in Damascus, or they're absolutely not gonna

594
00:41:50,119 --> 00:41:54,159
let that regime fall. Okay. Like the Tartars treaty for example,

595
00:41:54,239 --> 00:41:58,679
it runs, it ran it uh. It was set to

596
00:41:58,760 --> 00:42:02,840
run for twenty years with automatic five year extensions unless

597
00:42:02,840 --> 00:42:10,719
the unilateral unilaterally terminated I mean at uh and immediately

598
00:42:11,920 --> 00:42:15,599
immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union, officially like

599
00:42:15,679 --> 00:42:20,599
a fesisade recognized the Russian Federation as the legal successor

600
00:42:20,639 --> 00:42:23,880
to the USSR and you know, retaining all basing rights

601
00:42:23,920 --> 00:42:30,920
and everything else. Okay. During the seventy three war obviously,

602
00:42:31,480 --> 00:42:34,679
which was kind of like Syria's moment in the sun,

603
00:42:35,440 --> 00:42:41,000
because they proved themselves, you know, that they could think

604
00:42:41,039 --> 00:42:44,159
they could function at a high level of operational sophistication.

605
00:42:45,639 --> 00:42:53,840
Thousands of Soviet advisors, technicians, officers like combat officers assisted

606
00:42:53,880 --> 00:42:56,719
the Syrian Arab Army. At least twenty were killed in action.

607
00:42:58,239 --> 00:43:01,920
Almost three fifty funds of aid was airlifted to Syria.

608
00:43:02,679 --> 00:43:05,679
They seelifted at the at the conclusion no hostilities, the

609
00:43:05,719 --> 00:43:12,840
Sovietians sealifted over sixty thousand tons materials UH to Syria

610
00:43:12,920 --> 00:43:17,400
to replenished losses, you know, like infrastructural military, you know,

611
00:43:17,639 --> 00:43:22,000
like food stuffs like you name it. The one, uh,

612
00:43:22,519 --> 00:43:26,119
the one kind of blip in Soviet or Russian Syrian

613
00:43:26,159 --> 00:43:29,960
relations came in seventy six. The Soviets were just pleased

614
00:43:30,000 --> 00:43:33,119
when ASAD deployed the Syrian Air of Army to Lebanon

615
00:43:36,360 --> 00:43:40,119
and something of a diplomatic rift emerged. The Soviets were

616
00:43:40,119 --> 00:43:43,079
really worried about a confrontation between the PLO and the

617
00:43:43,119 --> 00:43:45,280
Syrian Era of Army, and for good reason, like they

618
00:43:45,280 --> 00:43:49,239
were very much at odds. You know, both of them were

619
00:43:49,239 --> 00:43:54,559
Moscow clients. This would have this could have been catastrophic

620
00:43:54,639 --> 00:44:01,280
in terms of broader interests held by Moscow in the

621
00:44:01,320 --> 00:44:04,760
Near East, and like taking sides in the sectarian war

622
00:44:05,440 --> 00:44:08,679
between Arab factions. I mean, that's that's always going to

623
00:44:08,719 --> 00:44:17,159
be a losing proposition. The UH. Brezhnev went as far

624
00:44:17,280 --> 00:44:25,599
as UH threatening the threatened to freeze UH military aid shipments.

625
00:44:28,119 --> 00:44:31,000
This ultimately was like smoothed over like a fence visited

626
00:44:31,039 --> 00:44:34,000
at Moscow in nineteen seventy seven, like much fan fear.

627
00:44:34,320 --> 00:44:39,599
He met with Brezhnev and Alexei Cossagen among others, or Cossagan,

628
00:44:42,199 --> 00:44:47,760
you know, the UH Assade openly endorsed and supported one

629
00:44:47,800 --> 00:44:53,840
hundred percent the the the the Soviet attack in Afghanistan,

630
00:44:54,199 --> 00:44:57,360
which distanced them from basically every other Arab leader. But

631
00:44:57,440 --> 00:45:00,599
I mean he didn't care like Assad's assad the message,

632
00:45:00,599 --> 00:45:02,880
like he stands with Russia. So I mean the final

633
00:45:03,000 --> 00:45:05,119
kind of if there was in fact, like a rift

634
00:45:05,199 --> 00:45:08,880
that still need a remedy by Christmas nineteen seventy nine.

635
00:45:09,199 --> 00:45:14,239
Like that. What sealed that, like Russian Syrian kind of

636
00:45:14,239 --> 00:45:16,880
like the affinity for all time was the fact that

637
00:45:16,880 --> 00:45:19,159
Asad said, like, you know, we stand, we stand with

638
00:45:19,199 --> 00:45:24,760
the Soviet Union like against its enemies in Afghanistan, you know,

639
00:45:24,880 --> 00:45:28,519
which was incredibly ballsy among other things, and it was

640
00:45:28,519 --> 00:45:31,920
the right play for Asad, but it was very ballsy.

641
00:45:32,320 --> 00:45:35,960
I covered nineteen eighty uh, Syria, the Soviet Union side,

642
00:45:36,079 --> 00:45:42,480
the Treaty of friendship really until until it all went

643
00:45:42,599 --> 00:45:49,760
down in eighty nine. You know, Uh, Syria, South Yemen

644
00:45:49,920 --> 00:45:53,400
was the only Marxist Leninist Arab state, but Syria was

645
00:45:53,400 --> 00:45:55,840
that even though Syria was not a Communist state at all,

646
00:45:56,320 --> 00:45:58,360
like they were the jewel in the Crown, a warsaw

647
00:45:58,440 --> 00:46:00,880
packed in terms of their in terms of era of

648
00:46:00,920 --> 00:46:11,440
affairs and in the Middle Eastern theater. This uh. Gorbachev

649
00:46:11,559 --> 00:46:20,039
scaled this back in April eighty seven, but once uh,

650
00:46:21,239 --> 00:46:26,440
but again like within after after. I mean your Russia

651
00:46:26,559 --> 00:46:30,559
was a mess like post Gorbachev, but the the any

652
00:46:30,679 --> 00:46:36,119
uh any unwillingness other other newly m a stale in

653
00:46:36,199 --> 00:46:40,360
Russian Federation, the back a sade like evaporated with you know,

654
00:46:40,440 --> 00:46:47,079
the end of Gorbachev's tenure that uh interestingly he met Videv.

655
00:46:47,880 --> 00:46:49,719
He was the first run He was the first Russian

656
00:46:50,199 --> 00:46:57,480
president to visit Syria, like uh Putin visited Syria. I

657
00:46:57,559 --> 00:47:01,719
believe he was on the ground for the there's two

658
00:47:01,880 --> 00:47:05,320
parades or on me a condor a legion honestly, like

659
00:47:05,360 --> 00:47:10,800
the the Russian UH military contingent, you know, marched in

660
00:47:11,239 --> 00:47:18,639
Damascus after UH after victory, and I think, uh, I

661
00:47:18,639 --> 00:47:21,039
can't remember if Pudin was made a state visit there

662
00:47:21,119 --> 00:47:23,400
or not, but point being, maybe it was the first

663
00:47:23,480 --> 00:47:30,559
leader of the Russian Federation to visit Syria. Jumping ahead

664
00:47:31,119 --> 00:47:35,239
closer to the present for context, you know that this

665
00:47:35,320 --> 00:47:38,320
is exactly why Syria was targeted for destruction in tart

666
00:47:38,400 --> 00:47:46,320
okayd joined Boshwiti was golf or coalition which was instrumental,

667
00:47:46,800 --> 00:47:52,519
you know, and the Syrians deployed to fight uh Saiddam.

668
00:47:52,960 --> 00:47:56,039
You know, like any anybody remotely reasonable would view assad

669
00:47:56,119 --> 00:47:59,679
As as like you know, somebody who the West wants

670
00:47:59,719 --> 00:48:04,400
on their side. But of course you know he was it. Uh.

671
00:48:04,599 --> 00:48:08,639
There's no like strategic logic to trying to destroy Syria

672
00:48:09,199 --> 00:48:13,199
and utilizing you know, terrorists and ISIS and and these

673
00:48:13,239 --> 00:48:20,960
tech theory lunatics, as is a deadnaz strategy. At the

674
00:48:21,079 --> 00:48:26,920
onset of the Russian intervention in Syria government forces, they

675
00:48:26,960 --> 00:48:29,840
controlled only about twenty six percent of the country. You know,

676
00:48:29,880 --> 00:48:38,360
they're truly beleaguered. The UH. You know, Russia was fighting

677
00:48:38,360 --> 00:48:41,719
the Islamic State, they were fighting the el news for affront,

678
00:48:41,760 --> 00:48:44,440
which is basically al Qaeda. These the guys, like John

679
00:48:44,480 --> 00:48:47,079
McCain said, are like are great guys and are like,

680
00:48:47,239 --> 00:48:50,320
you know, fighting for democracy. He was talking about al Qaeda,

681
00:48:51,239 --> 00:48:53,159
John McKay wine. He said, we need to support al

682
00:48:53,199 --> 00:48:56,199
Qaeda to murder the Asad family. And I guess everybody

683
00:48:56,199 --> 00:48:59,599
else who like al Qaeda doesn't like, you know, great

684
00:48:59,599 --> 00:49:07,800
guy Thatjohn McCain. The UH. Putin and I mean for context,

685
00:49:07,800 --> 00:49:11,360
I mean Putin is constantly cautious, as I think people know,

686
00:49:12,719 --> 00:49:15,079
which is ironic that he's painted as this like mad,

687
00:49:15,199 --> 00:49:20,079
reckless mad man, like he's you know, he really it

688
00:49:20,559 --> 00:49:26,679
really uh disturviced uh to the Russian State that he's

689
00:49:26,880 --> 00:49:34,360
he's he's pissed poor at at decision points. I think, Okay,

690
00:49:34,519 --> 00:49:37,480
so it's not that he's prone to ultimatums. It's not

691
00:49:37,679 --> 00:49:41,239
he's prone to absolute declaration of the matters of war

692
00:49:41,280 --> 00:49:48,280
in peace. But uh, Putin said that the you know,

693
00:49:48,320 --> 00:49:51,360
the Bath regime is absolutely not going to be allowed

694
00:49:51,360 --> 00:49:54,199
to fall, you know, And he said, we don't negotiate

695
00:49:54,199 --> 00:49:58,800
with terrorists. Neither does not neither does you know, President Asad?

696
00:49:59,760 --> 00:50:01,360
And I mean that was the core of the issue too,

697
00:50:01,440 --> 00:50:03,159
Like there was still it was on a tail end

698
00:50:03,159 --> 00:50:05,599
of such things. There was still an America supposedly fighting

699
00:50:05,599 --> 00:50:09,119
the global war on terror. I remember like a Bath

700
00:50:09,199 --> 00:50:12,320
Party spokeswoman who I can't remember her name, which she

701
00:50:12,320 --> 00:50:14,480
was got of this like severe Arab lady of whom

702
00:50:14,519 --> 00:50:19,280
there are many, but uh, she was addressing some British

703
00:50:19,320 --> 00:50:22,719
media contingent and she said, like, we don't negotiate with terrorists.

704
00:50:22,719 --> 00:50:24,760
We're not We're not gonna let We're not gonna let

705
00:50:24,760 --> 00:50:26,679
al Kaita. We're not gonna let Isis. We're not gonna

706
00:50:26,719 --> 00:50:31,519
let some constellation of of jahadas, you know, forced us

707
00:50:31,559 --> 00:50:34,800
to change the government by murdering people, you know. And

708
00:50:34,840 --> 00:50:37,000
I mean there was this they're just kind of like

709
00:50:37,360 --> 00:50:40,440
dummy silence by these media people. Then you know, when

710
00:50:40,440 --> 00:50:42,639
they're like the great chorus of talking about like how

711
00:50:42,719 --> 00:50:46,519
evil Lacade is. But I mean that's really this to

712
00:50:46,599 --> 00:50:49,679
me is really this is when America lost all credibility

713
00:50:49,960 --> 00:50:53,039
in foreign policy. You know, you're like you're literally saying

714
00:50:53,079 --> 00:50:58,440
that you're you're arming and equipping al Qaeda to destroy

715
00:50:58,960 --> 00:51:02,239
a secular regime led by a guy who's an eye

716
00:51:02,280 --> 00:51:06,119
doctor who was raised in London. You know, like it's

717
00:51:06,159 --> 00:51:08,480
I mean, that's it's not this isn't even like a

718
00:51:08,679 --> 00:51:11,800
you can't even raginalize. They hadn't under you know, some

719
00:51:11,920 --> 00:51:15,719
kind of appeal in Machiavellian necessity. It's just like it's

720
00:51:15,719 --> 00:51:19,159
just bizarre. It's it's just like it's just like a

721
00:51:19,199 --> 00:51:25,119
bizarre uh scorched earth position, you know, uh that only

722
00:51:25,119 --> 00:51:29,880
makes sense designs, you know. Yeah.

723
00:51:30,000 --> 00:51:32,079
Speaker 1: A buddy of mine, a buddy of mine used to say,

724
00:51:32,480 --> 00:51:34,480
how do you make excuses for what? Trying to kill

725
00:51:34,559 --> 00:51:36,920
somebody who wakes up and shaves his chin every day?

726
00:51:37,880 --> 00:51:43,199
Speaker 3: That's like it's interestingly back with CNN. I mean, CNN

727
00:51:43,280 --> 00:51:45,280
was always they always had some goofs on their staff,

728
00:51:45,280 --> 00:51:47,239
but they, you know, I'm talking like thirty years ago,

729
00:51:47,280 --> 00:51:49,400
they were like they were like a normal news network.

730
00:51:50,239 --> 00:51:52,840
You know, like they had they had goops like Peter Arnett,

731
00:51:52,920 --> 00:51:55,039
but like there was this they did this big interview

732
00:51:55,039 --> 00:51:57,840
with a Fez Astad who people viewed as a compelling guy,

733
00:51:58,400 --> 00:52:02,800
you know, and he kind of came to dominance, oh

734
00:52:02,880 --> 00:52:06,960
to the Gulf or coalition, you know, and uh, people

735
00:52:07,039 --> 00:52:09,639
seemed grateful for that, you know, and I'm sure like

736
00:52:09,679 --> 00:52:12,800
Baker State Department was. But it's like if you you

737
00:52:12,800 --> 00:52:16,920
know his like we paid back the Asad family by

738
00:52:17,119 --> 00:52:20,360
arming al Qaeda and like calling for you know, Bishah

739
00:52:20,440 --> 00:52:23,239
Asad his family to be murdered. I mean, like like

740
00:52:23,320 --> 00:52:26,760
who does that? You know, Like you can't there's no percentage.

741
00:52:26,800 --> 00:52:30,480
And uh, you know if you if you lay down

742
00:52:30,519 --> 00:52:33,360
with pigs, you're gonna get dirty, you know. And not

743
00:52:33,360 --> 00:52:35,440
not only gonna get dirty by dealing with America, but

744
00:52:35,480 --> 00:52:37,639
they'll they're gonna try and like arbitrarily murder you at

745
00:52:37,639 --> 00:52:40,880
some point, you know what I mean, Like this isn't

746
00:52:41,239 --> 00:52:44,280
that it's aside from like the naked irrationality of it.

747
00:52:44,320 --> 00:52:48,920
I mean, you you can't conduct politics that way.

748
00:52:47,920 --> 00:52:51,239
Speaker 2: You know. I mean that's uh, that's like trying to

749
00:52:52,440 --> 00:52:54,400
that that's like trying to go into business with Jeffrey

750
00:52:54,440 --> 00:52:59,800
Dahmer or something you know, like uh, some some unhit

751
00:53:00,079 --> 00:53:03,239
like a Mary is literally like it's a second unhinde

752
00:53:03,280 --> 00:53:05,840
psychopath that might like randomly trying to murder you, like

753
00:53:06,559 --> 00:53:08,719
you know, but you're supposed to They're supposed to be

754
00:53:08,719 --> 00:53:15,480
something percentage and playing ball with with the with its ambitions.

755
00:53:15,599 --> 00:53:18,519
But we should probably wrap it up because I'm coming

756
00:53:18,599 --> 00:53:22,280
up on an hour and my our dear friend, uh

757
00:53:22,519 --> 00:53:25,960
Jay Burden, I gotta he's hosting me in a minute

758
00:53:26,039 --> 00:53:28,440
on his show. But I'm started to break this up

759
00:53:28,480 --> 00:53:31,519
into two segments if that's not what you had planned.

760
00:53:31,559 --> 00:53:33,079
But there's a lot here. Is that cool?

761
00:53:34,639 --> 00:53:35,119
Speaker 1: Absolutely?

762
00:53:35,159 --> 00:53:38,679
Speaker 2: All right? Yeah? Yeah, let me know when you want

763
00:53:38,679 --> 00:53:41,679
to complete part two and we'll get it done.

764
00:53:42,639 --> 00:53:45,159
Speaker 1: Sure as per normal. Two plugs.

765
00:53:45,400 --> 00:53:48,519
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, for those who don't know, I'm sure everybody

766
00:53:48,559 --> 00:53:51,440
probably does know already. Like I'm back on Twitter. It's

767
00:53:51,440 --> 00:53:54,800
like the same account. It's at Capital r e a

768
00:53:55,000 --> 00:53:59,920
L underscore number seven h on as seven seven seven.

769
00:54:00,119 --> 00:54:04,320
I'm on substack real Thomas seven seven seven at subsec

770
00:54:04,360 --> 00:54:09,199
dot com. I'm on Instagram, I I'm on I'm on Telegram,

771
00:54:09,280 --> 00:54:13,079
I'm I got a website. It's number seven hm S

772
00:54:13,079 --> 00:54:16,519
seven seven seven dot com like finding all those places,

773
00:54:16,559 --> 00:54:20,000
and I got like a merse line that people seem

774
00:54:20,039 --> 00:54:24,280
to like, and I'm very honored by that. Put they

775
00:54:24,519 --> 00:54:27,760
put that in the description line. If you would please.

776
00:54:28,719 --> 00:54:32,719
Speaker 1: Always yeah, some good Eric Craig does some good, good works.

777
00:54:32,760 --> 00:54:34,639
Speaker 2: The man I really owe him a lot, Like he's

778
00:54:34,639 --> 00:54:36,320
a great I mean, he's like he's just a good dude,

779
00:54:36,320 --> 00:54:40,559
but his designs are really a really tremendous man. Yeah, definitely.

780
00:54:41,960 --> 00:54:47,039
Speaker 1: All right, Thomas, thank you very much. I want to

781
00:54:47,039 --> 00:54:51,360
welcome everyone back to the Peca Show. Thomas is back

782
00:54:51,960 --> 00:54:56,639
for more Syria and Russia talk. How are you doing, Thomas, I'm.

783
00:54:56,519 --> 00:55:01,760
Speaker 2: Well, thank you. I'm not It's been a minute since

784
00:55:02,079 --> 00:55:06,920
we recorded. So if I'm repeating myself, please correct me,

785
00:55:06,960 --> 00:55:12,800
because I can't remember exactly where I left off. I

786
00:55:12,840 --> 00:55:17,719
think I think we left off approximately where I was

787
00:55:17,760 --> 00:55:21,719
talking about some of the more recent scholarship on the

788
00:55:21,800 --> 00:55:22,960
nineteen seventy three war.

789
00:55:24,320 --> 00:55:26,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it. That's exactly where it was.

790
00:55:26,079 --> 00:55:29,679
Speaker 2: Yeah, which has something of an outside significance. It's warranted.

791
00:55:29,679 --> 00:55:31,800
I don't I don't mean outsized in the sense that

792
00:55:33,039 --> 00:55:39,800
it's emphasized on duly that really changed the regional security

793
00:55:39,840 --> 00:55:44,159
paradigm in the near ease, exposed a lot of idea

794
00:55:44,199 --> 00:55:47,079
of weaknesses. I mean, don't get me wrong, ideaf on

795
00:55:47,119 --> 00:55:54,440
the Egyptian front, they performed exceedingly well. The Syrians, however,

796
00:55:54,519 --> 00:56:01,280
caught them lacking in some key capacities, you know, and

797
00:56:01,320 --> 00:56:06,440
one of the reasons why Israel is so fixated on Iran. Admittedly,

798
00:56:08,000 --> 00:56:11,000
then Yah was very clumsy in the way he articulates propaganda.

799
00:56:11,039 --> 00:56:12,840
I mean that that's just a fact that I don't

800
00:56:12,880 --> 00:56:16,639
think that can be denied. Ariel Sharon didn't have a

801
00:56:16,639 --> 00:56:21,639
lot of finesse, but Sharon was something of a military

802
00:56:21,719 --> 00:56:26,880
prodigy at these comparative terms. And obviously then Yah, who

803
00:56:26,960 --> 00:56:36,360
doesn't possess that skill set. However, the his blass Syria,

804
00:56:39,360 --> 00:56:44,360
the Syrian ara of army, you know, and in the

805
00:56:44,440 --> 00:56:47,039
art forms of the Russian Federation. You've kind of got

806
00:56:47,079 --> 00:56:54,360
to look at all those actors. It's kind of operationally integrated.

807
00:56:55,519 --> 00:56:59,360
You know, there's nothing conspiratorial there. I mean, these are

808
00:56:59,400 --> 00:57:02,480
these are israel primary ops, okay, And you know, like

809
00:57:02,519 --> 00:57:08,280
we've talked about before, and anybody who is it all

810
00:57:08,320 --> 00:57:15,880
knowledgeable about the conflict paradigm dynamics understands that Israel and

811
00:57:16,280 --> 00:57:21,719
NATO to varying degrees back you know, these Salafi elements. Okay,

812
00:57:23,480 --> 00:57:29,320
that's something of a detonation strategy, you know, because they

813
00:57:29,360 --> 00:57:35,239
identify their their primary ops is is Syria hissbil uh

814
00:57:36,719 --> 00:57:39,440
you know hasibial a slash Iran, I mean in all

815
00:57:39,480 --> 00:57:42,239
but name his as kind of the Iranian foreign legion,

816
00:57:43,480 --> 00:57:47,199
and the Russian Federation is part of that is like

817
00:57:47,199 --> 00:57:50,239
an essential part of the constellation. And this goes way back.

818
00:57:51,519 --> 00:57:56,880
And that's ket understanding the state of war and peace

819
00:57:59,400 --> 00:58:05,000
in and occupied Palestine, and and and and with respect

820
00:58:05,039 --> 00:58:07,880
to the Jewish state, they saidly so they I mean,

821
00:58:08,039 --> 00:58:13,639
Israel essentially has two problems. They've got this internal crisis,

822
00:58:13,880 --> 00:58:19,360
demographic crisis relating to the fact that Israel is a

823
00:58:19,440 --> 00:58:28,920
racial state, you know, and they've got this unmanageable majoritarian population.

824
00:58:29,119 --> 00:58:35,199
It's like super majoritarian population. You know, it's not their

825
00:58:35,239 --> 00:58:41,360
strategic situation is not unlike they're the Republic of South

826
00:58:41,400 --> 00:58:45,800
Africa around the time of Bota, you know, when the

827
00:58:46,119 --> 00:58:49,480
when the kind of permanent emergency set in. You know,

828
00:58:49,679 --> 00:58:53,880
I mean, I'm not I'm not comparing Israel to the

829
00:58:53,920 --> 00:58:57,719
Boer Republic at all, unlike cultural or ideological or ethical

830
00:58:57,760 --> 00:59:00,800
terms or anything like that. But in terms of the

831
00:59:00,800 --> 00:59:07,199
military situation, there's a parallel, you know. And so they've

832
00:59:07,199 --> 00:59:13,360
got this internal, this ongoing internal emergency. They've also got

833
00:59:13,360 --> 00:59:19,559
this geostrategic problem, you know, with respect to what they

834
00:59:19,599 --> 00:59:25,000
call the Shia Crescent, which I mean, she are obviously

835
00:59:25,119 --> 00:59:32,599
very much the minority in darl Islam, but there's there's

836
00:59:32,639 --> 00:59:37,679
a critical kind of like the Shia heartland, you know,

837
00:59:37,880 --> 00:59:43,760
is is I ran in Iraq obviously, and it cuts

838
00:59:43,800 --> 00:59:49,880
across the region in the Webanon, you know, So it

839
00:59:53,400 --> 01:00:01,280
there's a that's that's a very dawn thing. That's a

840
01:00:01,360 --> 01:00:07,000
very daunting arrangement, you know, in a general war. It's

841
01:00:07,039 --> 01:00:09,320
a discussion of another time. But it kind of begs

842
01:00:09,360 --> 01:00:16,599
the question like why exactly Israel maintains nuclear arms. You know,

843
01:00:16,679 --> 01:00:20,599
some people argued it was a prestige and cloud move

844
01:00:21,199 --> 01:00:26,599
during the Cold War. Being Prebaal, he basically suggests it's

845
01:00:26,639 --> 01:00:35,320
like a Samson options sort of thing, whereby people wouldn't

846
01:00:35,360 --> 01:00:39,719
let Tel Aviv fall because there'd be this uncertainty relating

847
01:00:39,760 --> 01:00:42,400
to what they would do with these weapons of mass destruction.

848
01:00:43,440 --> 01:00:46,880
I think that's a bit too imprecise, Like it's not

849
01:00:46,920 --> 01:00:53,519
really a military imperative. That doesn't mean it's impossible. And

850
01:00:53,679 --> 01:00:59,920
Israel is kind of strange in the way they approached

851
01:01:00,079 --> 01:01:06,639
things because they're a totally abnormal state, invokes novelty a

852
01:01:06,679 --> 01:01:12,599
lot and discussions of you know, dialectical processes and things,

853
01:01:12,639 --> 01:01:27,599
and but he was he was kind of reluctant during

854
01:01:27,599 --> 01:01:31,920
the Cold War to like diagnose, like then current strategic matters.

855
01:01:32,960 --> 01:01:35,480
But the exception was kind of the case of Israel,

856
01:01:35,559 --> 01:01:39,519
and he made the point that you know, Israel is

857
01:01:39,559 --> 01:01:42,320
not really Israel's not an anachronism in the way some

858
01:01:43,159 --> 01:01:46,320
people on the left would talk about it and still

859
01:01:46,400 --> 01:01:48,840
do to some degrees. It's not like it's not like

860
01:01:48,920 --> 01:01:53,599
it's a retrograde state like colonial power or something, despite

861
01:01:55,360 --> 01:01:57,920
you know, a lot of the a lot of the

862
01:01:57,960 --> 01:02:02,360
propaganda in the era of that effect that it derived

863
01:02:03,480 --> 01:02:07,760
from the same kind of like dialectical process and like

864
01:02:09,599 --> 01:02:15,960
causal nexus sociologically, historically, ideologically speaking, is the Third Reich

865
01:02:16,039 --> 01:02:18,960
in the Soviet Union, Like that's why it's so strange.

866
01:02:20,440 --> 01:02:25,079
I mean, obviously, Department of State, in the executive branch,

867
01:02:25,840 --> 01:02:29,159
they're constantly claiming it's a liberal democracy, because I mean

868
01:02:29,199 --> 01:02:34,559
that that's just a floating signifier that's suggests moral approval.

869
01:02:35,159 --> 01:02:39,280
But even even where that not the case, it would

870
01:02:39,320 --> 01:02:43,480
be difficult to describe what exactly Israel is, you know,

871
01:02:45,039 --> 01:02:51,559
it just would be because it's it's it's not just

872
01:02:51,559 --> 01:02:58,599
an outlier like North Korea is owing to its to

873
01:02:58,719 --> 01:03:01,480
a strategic situation. And it's not like one of these

874
01:03:01,480 --> 01:03:05,599
emirates or one of these small countries or constellation of

875
01:03:07,880 --> 01:03:10,320
a sovereignties that you know, like rolled by a monarch

876
01:03:10,400 --> 01:03:13,079
or something. It's it's something totally different than that, and

877
01:03:13,119 --> 01:03:16,000
it very much belongs to the twentieth century, the twentieth

878
01:03:16,039 --> 01:03:24,480
century dialectic. But anyway, kind of bring it back. The

879
01:03:24,519 --> 01:03:29,159
consensus these days is essentially that the seventy three war

880
01:03:29,280 --> 01:03:39,360
was a stalemate. Okay. David A. Korn he was a

881
01:03:39,480 --> 01:03:43,880
diplomat back when Department of State was still a trithin

882
01:03:43,960 --> 01:03:48,360
quality people. And he's he's written a lot, he's contributed

883
01:03:48,360 --> 01:03:53,039
to a lot of articles, especially to publications like Foreign Affairs,

884
01:03:54,159 --> 01:03:58,719
you know, things like that. He served he served for

885
01:03:58,840 --> 01:04:03,639
some time until eve as it's called the political officer

886
01:04:04,239 --> 01:04:07,920
and Hansho what's called the political section. That's kind of

887
01:04:07,960 --> 01:04:14,679
like a halfway. If you're in that role, you're kind

888
01:04:14,679 --> 01:04:20,119
of halfway between an intelligence officer and a diplomat, you know.

889
01:04:20,199 --> 01:04:25,400
I mean, everybody who's assigned to a diplomatic posting is

890
01:04:26,679 --> 01:04:32,280
in some ways an intelligence representative under light diplomatic cover,

891
01:04:32,400 --> 01:04:38,079
and everybody knows that. But guys like Coren they deal

892
01:04:38,159 --> 01:04:42,760
more in diagnostic analysis and things, and they're then they're

893
01:04:42,760 --> 01:04:45,039
not just going to cocktail parties and and kind of

894
01:04:45,039 --> 01:04:51,639
trying to dominate, you know, palace intrigues and things that

895
01:04:53,280 --> 01:04:55,599
determine what the true seat of power is. You know,

896
01:04:55,639 --> 01:05:00,679
they they've got a more they got more serious roles

897
01:05:00,719 --> 01:05:10,960
in that. And he made the point pretty consistently that

898
01:05:11,599 --> 01:05:16,440
one of the reasons why the paradigm is so volatile

899
01:05:17,880 --> 01:05:24,000
Israel contra the that Shia Crescent, the states that constitute

900
01:05:24,039 --> 01:05:28,559
that you a strategic concept. One of the reasons that's

901
01:05:28,559 --> 01:05:35,639
so volatile is because you know, there was the outcome

902
01:05:35,760 --> 01:05:37,559
was it's not now it was a no clear victor

903
01:05:37,559 --> 01:05:40,880
on the Syrian front. Is the outcome is poorly understood,

904
01:05:41,880 --> 01:05:45,719
you know, especially in Israel. It was retrospectively deemed a

905
01:05:45,800 --> 01:05:52,199
success because there was some big there, there's some there's

906
01:05:52,239 --> 01:06:00,599
some major kills scored by the idea AP in some

907
01:06:00,639 --> 01:06:03,719
cases where they were pretty seriously outnumbered, like combined arms.

908
01:06:06,039 --> 01:06:10,559
But the fact that they kind of convinced themselves of this,

909
01:06:11,079 --> 01:06:13,960
they led to a false sense of security, especially on

910
01:06:14,000 --> 01:06:19,480
the political side of things. The military IDEAF whatever it's problems,

911
01:06:19,880 --> 01:06:23,679
it's it's military is pretty serious because they have to

912
01:06:23,719 --> 01:06:35,119
be to sustain the status quo, you know, and as

913
01:06:35,119 --> 01:06:39,039
people on the left, they don't so much anymore because

914
01:06:38,760 --> 01:06:43,920
the intellectual left is kind of dead. But during the

915
01:06:44,000 --> 01:06:46,400
Cold War and even beyond the event into the nineties,

916
01:06:46,760 --> 01:06:49,480
they make the point that IDF is I mean, yeah,

917
01:06:49,480 --> 01:06:54,639
they've got a National service law in place. You know,

918
01:06:54,639 --> 01:06:57,920
it's like young people get drafted, but generally they get

919
01:06:58,000 --> 01:07:01,480
drafted into support roles like you're talking about like special operations,

920
01:07:01,519 --> 01:07:05,119
capable elements and like infantry elements. You basically have to

921
01:07:05,159 --> 01:07:09,199
sign up for that, and the guys who do, they're

922
01:07:09,239 --> 01:07:13,280
going to be pretty racialized in the first place. That's

923
01:07:13,280 --> 01:07:16,440
why they want to do that kind of work. And

924
01:07:16,480 --> 01:07:18,880
even if they weren't before, it's going to become that way.

925
01:07:19,599 --> 01:07:22,440
You know, Like they there's no pretension in an army,

926
01:07:22,599 --> 01:07:26,159
like the idef of like, hey, we're a political we

927
01:07:26,159 --> 01:07:29,199
don't you know, take any position. We're just we're just

928
01:07:29,199 --> 01:07:32,559
like loyal to the state. I mean, part of that

929
01:07:32,599 --> 01:07:35,480
is because the fact that this you know, that Israel's

930
01:07:36,760 --> 01:07:40,639
find itself in a ross and creed. But part of

931
01:07:40,679 --> 01:07:45,039
it also is that, you know, again, like Israel's not

932
01:07:47,239 --> 01:07:51,079
it didn't develop organically like a European country did or something,

933
01:07:51,760 --> 01:07:54,440
So there's not there's not this tradition of like an

934
01:07:54,599 --> 01:08:00,000
Israeli state that's you know, they like the post medieval

935
01:08:00,119 --> 01:08:03,800
heritage of the people who live there or something. You know,

936
01:08:06,360 --> 01:08:11,679
Israel is the Jewish state. The way it's configured isn't

937
01:08:11,719 --> 01:08:17,560
really important so long as it is capable of sustaining

938
01:08:18,479 --> 01:08:27,239
that demographic balance and being able to perpetuate its demographic

939
01:08:27,279 --> 01:08:34,239
supremacy despite being massively outnumbered. So you're not gonna have

940
01:08:34,439 --> 01:08:38,920
I mean, even if the just under those conditions like

941
01:08:38,960 --> 01:08:40,920
you can't mean, I guess I'm getting as you can't

942
01:08:40,920 --> 01:08:45,960
extricate those conditions from like ideological and parabise. Okay, So

943
01:08:48,399 --> 01:08:52,720
that's probably a force multiplier in some ways. Like when

944
01:08:52,760 --> 01:08:57,199
IDF actually goes into action, it can also lead to

945
01:08:57,239 --> 01:09:03,800
some bad outcomes because it's the institutions like that, particularly

946
01:09:03,800 --> 01:09:08,319
military institutions. We're having the wrong opinion can be interpreted

947
01:09:08,319 --> 01:09:12,079
as like a breaching doctrine or something. It becomes this

948
01:09:12,199 --> 01:09:18,920
kind of like ideological ghetto, you know. And Ehud Barak,

949
01:09:21,199 --> 01:09:25,079
he's really the Israeli guy I pay attention to. Okay,

950
01:09:25,800 --> 01:09:31,319
he's an interesting guy. He was a military man, you know,

951
01:09:31,399 --> 01:09:38,840
like career idef type, and he's not a particularly charming guy,

952
01:09:38,880 --> 01:09:42,640
but he's really kind of been the only champion oft

953
01:09:42,680 --> 01:09:46,800
jitsuk ra Being's memory, you know, we're being of course,

954
01:09:46,880 --> 01:09:52,239
is unceremoniously murdered in ninety five by this crazy young

955
01:09:52,279 --> 01:09:56,560
guy who's like rotting in prison now. But you know,

956
01:10:00,079 --> 01:10:03,760
I I'm not gonna say there was some conspiracy to

957
01:10:03,800 --> 01:10:07,399
whack Rabine, but a lot of people were happy that

958
01:10:06,960 --> 01:10:11,239
that that that that happened, and from that point forward,

959
01:10:12,159 --> 01:10:15,439
Israel became a one party state, you know, and Rabine

960
01:10:15,479 --> 01:10:21,520
was going to Rabine was was looking to commit to

961
01:10:21,560 --> 01:10:25,720
some way out of the racial war. Okay, I don't

962
01:10:25,720 --> 01:10:28,199
think that would have I don't think you ever would

963
01:10:28,159 --> 01:10:32,960
have seen any kind of like formal equality between the populations.

964
01:10:33,800 --> 01:10:36,399
Nor was Rabine just gonna throw his hands up and

965
01:10:37,600 --> 01:10:41,880
be forced into the position that the clerk was in

966
01:10:41,920 --> 01:10:45,520
South Africa and just say, okay, we're you know, any

967
01:10:45,880 --> 01:10:49,520
any any any man or woman of majority within Israel Palestine,

968
01:10:49,720 --> 01:10:52,560
or we're just gonna have you know where, We're gonna

969
01:10:52,560 --> 01:10:55,399
give them the ballot and and see where the ships follow.

970
01:10:55,439 --> 01:10:59,920
That wouldn't have happened, but some kind of extra case

971
01:11:00,079 --> 01:11:09,359
and from grant apartheide would have happened. Okay, But Barack, Ehud, Barack,

972
01:11:11,279 --> 01:11:14,399
he's the guy who made the point as well, that

973
01:11:17,079 --> 01:11:22,319
really was keeping that Nyahu alive politically. It's the fact

974
01:11:22,319 --> 01:11:27,239
that swapping out the civilian executive or kind of like

975
01:11:27,279 --> 01:11:31,359
rendering it headless, like if you Dona was removed by

976
01:11:31,359 --> 01:11:33,800
no confidence or if he was indicted, which you may

977
01:11:33,920 --> 01:11:39,199
very well be if and when this war results. But

978
01:11:40,199 --> 01:11:44,199
just perverse incentives that kind of pursue like bad strategy

979
01:11:44,319 --> 01:11:47,000
is what I'm getting at, okay, and and what Barack

980
01:11:47,159 --> 01:11:55,039
is getting it. You know, people turn around, I know

981
01:11:55,119 --> 01:11:58,159
what I hear from them, and they say, like, well,

982
01:11:58,880 --> 01:12:01,279
how does real performing so well? If what you say

983
01:12:01,359 --> 01:12:05,840
is true? Well, two things, like I said We're talking

984
01:12:05,840 --> 01:12:12,920
about basically two totally different conflicts that are related and

985
01:12:13,279 --> 01:12:17,880
increasingly is she and soon you are breaching the sectarian

986
01:12:17,960 --> 01:12:26,000
divide to tentatively cooperate against the common Zionist enemy. But

987
01:12:27,439 --> 01:12:31,039
the gods of situation and in the situation in the

988
01:12:31,119 --> 01:12:35,680
Levant and syria Is are two different things. I don't

989
01:12:35,720 --> 01:12:38,520
feel comfortable going as far as to say that they're

990
01:12:38,520 --> 01:12:41,880
just like two fronts of the same conflict. I mean,

991
01:12:41,880 --> 01:12:47,520
there's like a common nexus and causes, but it's more

992
01:12:47,560 --> 01:12:53,199
complicated than that. However, you know, idea got caught lacking

993
01:12:53,319 --> 01:12:57,680
when Hamas assaulted. I think I covered this on a pod,

994
01:12:58,079 --> 01:13:05,039
so if I'm repeating myself, forgive me. You know, on

995
01:13:05,119 --> 01:13:12,359
October seventh, Price it's almost been a year. But when

996
01:13:12,399 --> 01:13:19,920
Hamas breached the barrier fence, they assumed that the lead

997
01:13:20,000 --> 01:13:23,399
element was gonna get wiped out, you know, basically like

998
01:13:23,439 --> 01:13:26,439
a company sized element like storm to the mainline of resistance.

999
01:13:26,920 --> 01:13:31,680
But when they did that, there was nobody there, you know,

1000
01:13:31,760 --> 01:13:34,960
like these Raelis were. It was like a skeleton crew

1001
01:13:36,359 --> 01:13:42,840
that was not abiding any kind of alert deployment at all,

1002
01:13:43,159 --> 01:13:46,079
Like some of them were literally sleeping, and Hamas just

1003
01:13:46,239 --> 01:13:50,279
like waxed them, and then when they broke through, immediately

1004
01:13:50,960 --> 01:13:53,800
Hamas like immediately started storming the breach with like as

1005
01:13:53,840 --> 01:13:56,640
many men as they could get through as possible. You know.

1006
01:13:57,800 --> 01:13:59,960
Then ID have like swarm drones on him and combine

1007
01:14:00,079 --> 01:14:02,359
garb and sort of like hosing them with fire. But

1008
01:14:02,399 --> 01:14:04,680
my point is that shouldn't have happened in the first place.

1009
01:14:05,359 --> 01:14:08,960
You know that feel like if when that'd be like

1010
01:14:09,000 --> 01:14:10,720
I point, it became clear the Russians were going to

1011
01:14:10,800 --> 01:14:16,479
like assault you know, don Bass to like relieve they're

1012
01:14:16,560 --> 01:14:20,920
people who were under pressure there from these guys who

1013
01:14:20,920 --> 01:14:24,079
were like supposedly like irregulars like Azo, but were very

1014
01:14:24,079 --> 01:14:33,319
obviously you know, very obviously like acting as official you know,

1015
01:14:33,359 --> 01:14:35,880
and in the service of the Kya regime. That'd be

1016
01:14:35,960 --> 01:14:37,800
like a point. It became clear like Russia was going

1017
01:14:37,840 --> 01:14:42,199
to assault these like as of guys, and uh, the

1018
01:14:42,279 --> 01:14:47,279
Ukrainian armed forces like preemptively like assaulted them then like

1019
01:14:47,359 --> 01:14:50,720
broke through the Russian mainline resistance like ended up in Russia.

1020
01:14:50,880 --> 01:14:54,359
Then like the Russians had to reconstitute like bring up

1021
01:14:54,359 --> 01:14:58,720
their bring up bring their firepower to bear on them,

1022
01:14:58,760 --> 01:15:00,399
like in the form of like armor, and you know,

1023
01:15:01,239 --> 01:15:05,560
like hyperbard artillery and stuff like get the situation under control.

1024
01:15:05,760 --> 01:15:08,520
Like if that had happened, like Putin would have been gone.

1025
01:15:09,600 --> 01:15:13,039
You know that that's that's that's a catastrophic fuck up.

1026
01:15:14,199 --> 01:15:17,960
So you know, I'm not I'm not saying like, oh,

1027
01:15:18,039 --> 01:15:22,039
IDF is like a shit force, because they're not. But

1028
01:15:24,279 --> 01:15:27,319
there's real problems there, okay, And this isn't just like

1029
01:15:27,359 --> 01:15:29,199
some like intelligence failure or something.

1030
01:15:30,800 --> 01:15:38,000
Speaker 1: But moving on, there were, like immediately immediately after that,

1031
01:15:38,079 --> 01:15:41,199
there were I was tracking people in the State Department

1032
01:15:41,239 --> 01:15:45,039
who are retiring, and there was one specifically, I can't

1033
01:15:45,039 --> 01:15:48,119
remember his name, but I did an episode with someone

1034
01:15:48,199 --> 01:15:53,439
else talking about it. Was that he retired because he

1035
01:15:53,600 --> 01:15:56,880
was in charge of getting the IDF and getting foreign

1036
01:15:56,960 --> 01:16:02,119
militaries are weapons and he said that there were divisions

1037
01:16:02,119 --> 01:16:05,319
in the IDF that he was not comfortable with arming.

1038
01:16:06,840 --> 01:16:10,800
Speaker 2: Yeah. I I'm sure that's true, and they've got real problems,

1039
01:16:11,319 --> 01:16:14,279
you know. Like I I'm not some expert. I know

1040
01:16:14,359 --> 01:16:18,600
something about Judaism, like the like the faith. I know

1041
01:16:18,680 --> 01:16:21,279
something about their heritages of people. I mean I do.

1042
01:16:22,920 --> 01:16:26,119
I am not some expert on the internal situation in Israel,

1043
01:16:26,279 --> 01:16:33,279
but I do know that hard line Zionus of the

1044
01:16:33,359 --> 01:16:38,880
kind who like sustain the military apparatus. Those people are

1045
01:16:38,960 --> 01:16:40,760
aging and there's not a lot of young people to

1046
01:16:40,840 --> 01:16:44,000
replace them, Like there is a hard line Jewish right,

1047
01:16:45,000 --> 01:16:50,159
but more and more it's that's kind to be constituted

1048
01:16:50,199 --> 01:16:53,760
by the people who are called correctly or incorrectly in

1049
01:16:53,760 --> 01:16:57,520
clogial terms like the ultra Orthodox. And they have a

1050
01:16:57,560 --> 01:17:01,720
strange they have a strange and somewhat contentious relationship with

1051
01:17:01,760 --> 01:17:05,920
the military. I mean, Israel's got real problems, you know.

1052
01:17:06,039 --> 01:17:10,840
I mean they that they can't be denied. So I

1053
01:17:11,239 --> 01:17:15,239
don't doubt that guy's testimony for a minute, But I mean,

1054
01:17:15,279 --> 01:17:17,279
like why would he lie about that. That doesn't if

1055
01:17:17,279 --> 01:17:19,199
he was going to try and make if he was

1056
01:17:19,239 --> 01:17:21,000
going to drop some kind of cap to try and

1057
01:17:21,159 --> 01:17:23,640
make the situation seem less severe than it was, or

1058
01:17:23,680 --> 01:17:25,800
to try and make Israel look like more cable with

1059
01:17:25,880 --> 01:17:30,680
your role. Like you wouldn't say that, but you know

1060
01:17:30,840 --> 01:17:36,800
the degree of which two you know, Israel had to

1061
01:17:36,920 --> 01:17:41,279
kind of Israel kind of had to win in Syria, Okay,

1062
01:17:41,439 --> 01:17:43,479
if they could have like knocked out a sod and

1063
01:17:43,560 --> 01:17:47,159
like crushed the string era of army. And also like

1064
01:17:47,479 --> 01:17:52,359
hit Hesiblah and like really really hard because the idea's

1065
01:17:52,359 --> 01:17:55,680
been smarting from from their fight with HESBLA in two

1066
01:17:55,680 --> 01:18:00,439
thousand and six for almost like twenty years now. You know,

1067
01:18:01,319 --> 01:18:03,600
they really kind of needed to make a statement like that.

1068
01:18:03,760 --> 01:18:07,800
And if if it's if Damasks had gone down in

1069
01:18:07,920 --> 01:18:15,079
flames and Syria kind of became partitioned, they the would

1070
01:18:15,079 --> 01:18:18,199
have been totally fine with like these lunatic killers, like

1071
01:18:18,319 --> 01:18:22,039
isis controlling like some chunk of it. You know. Then

1072
01:18:22,079 --> 01:18:24,319
they wanted to like basically like you know, create some

1073
01:18:24,439 --> 01:18:27,399
like fake like Kurdistan like through like you know, a

1074
01:18:27,439 --> 01:18:30,560
swath of Iraq and like assimilate part of Syria into that,

1075
01:18:31,319 --> 01:18:35,119
and then probably like have some some zone that was

1076
01:18:35,159 --> 01:18:37,960
like occupied by America but it was technically like you know,

1077
01:18:38,640 --> 01:18:40,600
the a d m Z or something or some kind

1078
01:18:40,600 --> 01:18:43,239
of like free zone. So it's like okay, then like

1079
01:18:44,840 --> 01:18:48,920
basically like they've sown up, They've sown up their problem.

1080
01:18:49,399 --> 01:18:52,079
And also too then like the Russians can't like access

1081
01:18:52,119 --> 01:18:54,800
like their key port there, like the Russian Our Federation

1082
01:18:54,920 --> 01:18:58,119
can't deploy there. That would have solved the like basically

1083
01:18:58,199 --> 01:19:01,600
like that that would have solved like one half of

1084
01:19:01,640 --> 01:19:05,079
the equation, you know, and then they could have brought

1085
01:19:05,119 --> 01:19:10,239
like full firepower to bear and you know, one hundred

1086
01:19:10,239 --> 01:19:13,319
percent of forces and being like to bear like on Gaza,

1087
01:19:14,239 --> 01:19:17,039
and there's really nothing anybody could do about it. So

1088
01:19:17,079 --> 01:19:20,560
the Russian the Russians really food barred their program. Like

1089
01:19:20,680 --> 01:19:23,520
the degree of which they did, like can't be overstated.

1090
01:19:24,640 --> 01:19:26,479
That's why like when I say to people, like when

1091
01:19:26,479 --> 01:19:29,840
I point out to them the fact that you know,

1092
01:19:29,880 --> 01:19:33,359
like the Ukrainian War is literally like a secondary front.

1093
01:19:33,840 --> 01:19:35,720
I mean, it's not secondary to people there. It's a

1094
01:19:35,760 --> 01:19:38,560
disaster and it's scale, it's it's it's just like a

1095
01:19:39,319 --> 01:19:46,279
they're is suffering and death is staggering. But I'm saying,

1096
01:19:46,359 --> 01:19:50,319
like to Israel, that's like a secondary front where they

1097
01:19:50,319 --> 01:19:53,039
can bring pressure to bear on Russia. And the fact

1098
01:19:53,079 --> 01:19:55,520
that when I raise that to people, they look at

1099
01:19:55,520 --> 01:19:57,399
me like why would you say that, It's like you

1100
01:19:57,439 --> 01:20:01,319
really don't understand that Russian Israel are like hate each other.

1101
01:20:02,479 --> 01:20:05,640
You know, they're like literally like mortal enemies. You know.

1102
01:20:07,239 --> 01:20:10,960
It's like the fact that Putin doesn't like call them

1103
01:20:10,960 --> 01:20:12,920
the K word and like shake his fist in the

1104
01:20:12,920 --> 01:20:17,680
ear and call for them to be destroyed, like you know,

1105
01:20:17,720 --> 01:20:19,920
like you sound like Arab strong man or something. I

1106
01:20:21,319 --> 01:20:23,800
guess people are so literally minded they can't like compute

1107
01:20:23,800 --> 01:20:27,039
this or something. But the fact that like you know,

1108
01:20:27,079 --> 01:20:29,680
likeever Offen going around like calling for some like pogram

1109
01:20:29,760 --> 01:20:33,119
of like Ukrainian jewelry or something like. I don't know,

1110
01:20:33,159 --> 01:20:40,239
I don't know how people can't discern this. But that's

1111
01:20:40,279 --> 01:20:42,960
really what's so dangerous about this situation. And that's also

1112
01:20:43,039 --> 01:20:47,600
why it's also like NATO's being so reckless. You know,

1113
01:20:47,640 --> 01:20:49,479
if it was just a question of we want to

1114
01:20:49,560 --> 01:20:55,319
murk the Russians and moving forward, you know, we want

1115
01:20:55,359 --> 01:21:01,880
to ford deployment where we can. That's like farther east

1116
01:21:02,199 --> 01:21:06,560
and central these are the you know, the central Asian

1117
01:21:06,640 --> 01:21:12,359
land mass. You know, then then Germany is that America

1118
01:21:12,399 --> 01:21:14,159
wouldn't be going about it. And it's kind of like

1119
01:21:14,600 --> 01:21:19,159
just like catastrophically reckless way. It's because it's you know it,

1120
01:21:19,319 --> 01:21:23,800
this is this is a this is like a key

1121
01:21:23,840 --> 01:21:27,960
front of basically of of Israel's war to survive and

1122
01:21:28,079 --> 01:21:31,239
perpetuate it as like the Jewish racial state. You know,

1123
01:21:33,119 --> 01:21:35,079
that's also what it likes the Lenski's in there like

1124
01:21:35,199 --> 01:21:40,159
outfront like that that's not good optics at all. And

1125
01:21:40,199 --> 01:21:42,720
it's not just that the Ukraineism and Alibi like, oh no,

1126
01:21:42,800 --> 01:21:47,680
we're not you know that this isn't some criminal psychotic regime.

1127
01:21:47,760 --> 01:21:50,479
Look we've got we've got the Jewish guy out fronto.

1128
01:21:51,680 --> 01:21:54,479
You know, it's involved in the entertainment business, and you

1129
01:21:54,520 --> 01:21:57,159
know we're a normal country. Like that's not why they're

1130
01:21:57,199 --> 01:22:04,000
doing it. It's because, uh, there's no way, uh, there's

1131
01:22:04,000 --> 01:22:06,399
no way some like boyish front man would would be

1132
01:22:06,439 --> 01:22:09,479
trusted there because I at any minute, like he could flip,

1133
01:22:10,439 --> 01:22:13,520
even if he wasn't intending to that, he could find

1134
01:22:13,600 --> 01:22:17,079
himself in a Melosovitch situation. We're suddenly like a bunch

1135
01:22:17,079 --> 01:22:19,039
of band right, So like, look, we're like tired of this,

1136
01:22:19,479 --> 01:22:22,319
you know, like we were not gonna like we're gonna

1137
01:22:22,399 --> 01:22:24,520
keep killing the Ivans, but we're not. We're not taking

1138
01:22:24,600 --> 01:22:31,079
orders from from his zid they call them. But that's

1139
01:22:34,119 --> 01:22:37,760
you know, that's and Syria is an important country and

1140
01:22:37,800 --> 01:22:42,840
it's got an outsized significance. There was I know that

1141
01:22:42,840 --> 01:22:48,560
your friend he was asking forgive me for being a

1142
01:22:48,560 --> 01:22:52,520
little scared, or he was asking about why there's panthers

1143
01:22:52,560 --> 01:22:56,119
in Syria and Lebanon. One of the reasons why part

1144
01:22:56,119 --> 01:22:58,520
of it is because of the peculiar dynamics of the

1145
01:22:58,600 --> 01:23:01,960
Lebanese Civil War that went on for decades, and then

1146
01:23:02,079 --> 01:23:04,039
the French were kind of backing all sides in that

1147
01:23:04,119 --> 01:23:06,359
war depending on like who had the upper hand, that's

1148
01:23:06,359 --> 01:23:09,760
what the French do, and the French like shove some

1149
01:23:09,840 --> 01:23:18,279
panthers into the breach on on the Arab side. But

1150
01:23:19,960 --> 01:23:25,279
there were a few dozen Vermacht officers who serving the

1151
01:23:25,279 --> 01:23:32,000
Court of Nasa as well as in Syria both before

1152
01:23:32,039 --> 01:23:38,159
and after, you know, the Syrian Bath conquered the political

1153
01:23:38,199 --> 01:23:46,079
culture and the Czechs the Skoda Arms Works, which is

1154
01:23:46,159 --> 01:23:49,439
kind of like the Czechs make great weapons. They're like

1155
01:23:49,479 --> 01:23:53,039
the Transylvanian Saxons historically, and like the Skoda Arms Works,

1156
01:23:53,560 --> 01:23:57,600
that's kind of like the Czech counterpart to Krupp that

1157
01:23:57,800 --> 01:24:01,800
during a comunist Czechoslovakia there are so many panzers and

1158
01:24:01,920 --> 01:24:06,399
like various like warsaw packed armies and adjacent armies. They

1159
01:24:06,439 --> 01:24:11,079
started like manufacturing replacing parts for panders and also too

1160
01:24:11,119 --> 01:24:15,199
obviously that's what that that's that's what these Vermachs guys

1161
01:24:15,199 --> 01:24:17,920
were familiar with. You know, and that's then that's why

1162
01:24:18,399 --> 01:24:22,039
that's the armor they knew how to fight in and

1163
01:24:22,079 --> 01:24:25,079
habituating yourself to a new tank model that you can

1164
01:24:25,119 --> 01:24:29,840
do it if you're a skilled tanker, but it's hard.

1165
01:24:31,600 --> 01:24:37,439
Franco Spain in nineteen forty three, they got about twenty

1166
01:24:37,520 --> 01:24:42,239
panzers like Mark four panzers that they'd ordered and Serrano Sooner,

1167
01:24:43,199 --> 01:24:45,920
who's a great man. I'm like Franco, and he was

1168
01:24:45,960 --> 01:24:49,920
like a diehard national socialist. He was constantly looking for

1169
01:24:50,000 --> 01:24:53,439
a way to get Spain into the war against the

1170
01:24:53,520 --> 01:24:59,800
UK in an official capacity. And after negotiations it broke

1171
01:24:59,840 --> 01:25:02,239
down because like Franco was like a ludicrous demands that

1172
01:25:02,319 --> 01:25:07,399
were you know, purposely that personally sabotaged any agreement between

1173
01:25:08,720 --> 01:25:13,000
you know, the the Reich and Madrid. There was still

1174
01:25:13,079 --> 01:25:17,199
hope and the Pandras that arrived like towards that end

1175
01:25:17,279 --> 01:25:20,520
because people thought so highly a Sooner and I mean

1176
01:25:20,640 --> 01:25:24,520
German counter legion had like spilled blood on Spain. I

1177
01:25:24,560 --> 01:25:27,239
mean that was sacred. You know. These Mark four as

1178
01:25:27,279 --> 01:25:29,000
they got were like the same ones that like the

1179
01:25:29,079 --> 01:25:31,600
pans are arm used. They weren't these they were they

1180
01:25:31,600 --> 01:25:34,680
weren't the like off brand like knockoffs, you know, they

1181
01:25:34,680 --> 01:25:37,119
were real pantheras and like most of them had never

1182
01:25:37,239 --> 01:25:41,800
like been deployed anywhere. So the Syrians got they the

1183
01:25:41,800 --> 01:25:43,920
Syrians got like a bunch of like brand spanking new

1184
01:25:44,039 --> 01:25:46,560
like mark for panders, and they also got some like yeah,

1185
01:25:46,680 --> 01:25:49,000
they also got some yag coons are like tank killers

1186
01:25:49,000 --> 01:25:52,720
like what was called assault guns in those days. So yeah,

1187
01:25:52,760 --> 01:25:55,119
like in sixty seven and seventy three, like there was

1188
01:25:55,159 --> 01:25:59,960
a there were panthers like assaulting idea, which is pretty

1189
01:26:00,159 --> 01:26:01,039
pretty cool.

1190
01:26:01,680 --> 01:26:05,319
Speaker 1: And there's a certain level of irony there that's not exact,

1191
01:26:05,439 --> 01:26:07,520
but still.

1192
01:26:11,079 --> 01:26:18,399
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm people like me, I you know, I'm

1193
01:26:18,520 --> 01:26:22,079
very much like an anglophone person. I mean, I'm I

1194
01:26:22,199 --> 01:26:27,760
uh I realized, uh, I realized proper Englishman. And Scott's

1195
01:26:27,760 --> 01:26:29,760
like Peter Brimlow, who's like an awesome guy and he

1196
01:26:29,840 --> 01:26:31,880
was like very cool to us at either. But I

1197
01:26:31,880 --> 01:26:33,880
can tell you things. I can tell you things that

1198
01:26:33,920 --> 01:26:36,399
I'm like, I can tell you things that I'm kind

1199
01:26:36,399 --> 01:26:38,920
of like a little ulster bastard and like that's not wrong,

1200
01:26:39,479 --> 01:26:42,239
but uh, I'm like a very Anglophone person. So I've

1201
01:26:42,279 --> 01:26:47,720
got I think every I think every angle Saxon is

1202
01:26:47,760 --> 01:26:54,279
something of like a an orientalist. So I find I

1203
01:26:54,319 --> 01:26:58,039
find Eastern people is very interesting for various reasons, you know,

1204
01:26:58,079 --> 01:27:00,359
as did guys like Johann Van and Lee and a

1205
01:27:00,359 --> 01:27:03,720
lot of these National socialist guys who ended up in

1206
01:27:03,760 --> 01:27:07,159
these Arab states. It was twofold. On the one hand,

1207
01:27:07,199 --> 01:27:11,800
they're like, okay, well, we've got to accept Cold War realities,

1208
01:27:11,840 --> 01:27:17,560
but there's room to there's proverbial room to breathe and

1209
01:27:18,119 --> 01:27:20,760
ideological and cultural terms in some of these places in

1210
01:27:20,840 --> 01:27:24,800
Latin America and the Near East, and there's people or

1211
01:27:24,960 --> 01:27:29,000
remain receptive to our ideas and kind of want to

1212
01:27:29,039 --> 01:27:33,079
be shaped by our ways. And uh they were also

1213
01:27:33,159 --> 01:27:37,840
kind of like the shock troops contra Zionism, you know,

1214
01:27:39,880 --> 01:27:43,039
So there wasn't ideological component to it. There's like incredibly

1215
01:27:43,079 --> 01:27:46,800
silly propaganda and cap like put out by guys you

1216
01:27:46,840 --> 01:27:51,560
know about oh, like you know, Islamism is is just uh,

1217
01:27:52,039 --> 01:27:56,119
it's just this sort of anti Semitic, you know, Nazi conspiracy.

1218
01:27:56,159 --> 01:27:59,000
I mean, there's like very stupid stuff that affects. But

1219
01:28:00,199 --> 01:28:03,159
there was an is ideological affinity between people like the

1220
01:28:03,159 --> 01:28:08,840
Syrian bath and and and national socialists. That's not the

1221
01:28:08,880 --> 01:28:10,880
reason why. Like I mean, I like the Syrian people.

1222
01:28:10,920 --> 01:28:12,439
I know a lot of Syrians, and I hold in

1223
01:28:12,479 --> 01:28:14,960
a highest scheme. I think I think they're interesting in

1224
01:28:15,039 --> 01:28:19,199
like a cultured people. But they also you know, if

1225
01:28:19,199 --> 01:28:24,199
you if you there's some of these are are are

1226
01:28:24,199 --> 01:28:27,239
with the Third Reich and what it stood for, you know,

1227
01:28:27,399 --> 01:28:31,239
the obviously like a like like I think too too much.

1228
01:28:31,319 --> 01:28:34,800
Croatia was the only it was the only true like

1229
01:28:34,880 --> 01:28:37,399
national social estate that existed at the day to feed.

1230
01:28:38,119 --> 01:28:42,239
But like an adjacent political culture is like is like

1231
01:28:42,319 --> 01:28:46,960
bath is Syria? Like absolutely so yeah, I mean that's

1232
01:28:47,000 --> 01:28:51,079
not to your point, Like it's not it's not totally

1233
01:28:51,079 --> 01:28:54,119
all base or anything. But I'll i'll movie ahead. I

1234
01:28:54,359 --> 01:28:59,279
realized I'm getting tangential. But the you know, in the

1235
01:28:59,279 --> 01:29:02,479
the Russians cultivated. I can't remember how much we got

1236
01:29:02,479 --> 01:29:05,560
into this. I should have reviewed our earlier episode before,

1237
01:29:06,479 --> 01:29:08,680
like like yesterday this morning, So forgive me again if

1238
01:29:08,680 --> 01:29:13,000
I'm repeating myself, please call me on it. But you know,

1239
01:29:13,119 --> 01:29:21,760
the the Soviet leadership, they really they really cultivated and

1240
01:29:21,840 --> 01:29:26,880
like vice versa. You know, like I the naval basic tartis,

1241
01:29:28,640 --> 01:29:32,680
which is essential, it's the soul it's the sole Mediterranean

1242
01:29:33,119 --> 01:29:36,720
base for the for the Russian Navy's Black Sea Fleet

1243
01:29:37,119 --> 01:29:41,000
to this day, that was a big deal after if

1244
01:29:41,079 --> 01:29:44,920
the Suy Union went down the assade and the Russian

1245
01:29:44,960 --> 01:29:47,560
Federation worked out that this is like like the so

1246
01:29:47,840 --> 01:29:51,239
is that like permanent rights, like the Tartist Naval base.

1247
01:29:54,319 --> 01:29:59,239
You know, it's uh and it was it was. It

1248
01:29:59,279 --> 01:30:02,800
was a sad. I mean, it takes nothing away obviously

1249
01:30:02,840 --> 01:30:06,319
from the game. That's the Syrian Air of army and

1250
01:30:06,319 --> 01:30:12,880
and and their toughness and there and they desire to

1251
01:30:12,920 --> 01:30:16,520
win and things like that. But during the seventy three war,

1252
01:30:17,520 --> 01:30:20,640
you know, which which males is called the Ramadan War,

1253
01:30:24,439 --> 01:30:28,640
Alo Whites and Christians call it a couple of different things,

1254
01:30:28,880 --> 01:30:31,800
or just the nineteen seventy three war. The Israelis call

1255
01:30:31,840 --> 01:30:34,279
it the yan Kapoor War. But you know, like we

1256
01:30:34,399 --> 01:30:41,520
like we talked about, there was thousands of advisors, technicians there,

1257
01:30:41,520 --> 01:30:45,359
there were there were special operations type Soviet true, it's

1258
01:30:45,399 --> 01:30:49,039
about twenty of whom died in action in seventy three,

1259
01:30:52,159 --> 01:30:54,800
you know, and over close to four thousand tons of

1260
01:30:54,880 --> 01:31:00,439
aid you know ammo uh like ration packs, you medical

1261
01:31:00,479 --> 01:31:05,359
supplies like you name it by the by the conclusion

1262
01:31:06,039 --> 01:31:09,000
by the end of October, you know, it's a station

1263
01:31:09,079 --> 01:31:13,760
about still is immediately beyond the Soviet Navy. They'd see

1264
01:31:13,760 --> 01:31:19,680
lifted over sixty thousand tons of gear like weapons again

1265
01:31:19,760 --> 01:31:29,159
like weapons, AMMO, food stuffs, agricultural commodities to Syria or

1266
01:31:29,199 --> 01:31:33,960
replace its losses. I mean, that's that that's a huge effort,

1267
01:31:34,119 --> 01:31:40,760
you know. And as as we talked about, there was

1268
01:31:40,800 --> 01:31:47,079
some tension from about seventy five to seventy seven, I

1269
01:31:47,079 --> 01:31:51,199
guess the Syrians directly intervened in a webinon. There was

1270
01:31:51,239 --> 01:31:55,000
this kind of tense minuet because you know, the PLO,

1271
01:31:57,159 --> 01:32:03,039
the PLO, despite its, despite his like declared secularism, was

1272
01:32:03,079 --> 01:32:08,600
always you know, like a like a Sunni outfit, and

1273
01:32:08,600 --> 01:32:14,600
the Soviets were really concerned about, you know, active hostilities

1274
01:32:14,600 --> 01:32:16,920
breaking out between the Syrian Ara of Army and and

1275
01:32:17,000 --> 01:32:23,680
the plofes. Asad was able to smooth that over with

1276
01:32:24,039 --> 01:32:31,359
skillful diplomacy. But what really what really kind of solidified

1277
01:32:31,479 --> 01:32:37,359
their relationship even in the midst of some of these

1278
01:32:37,439 --> 01:32:44,039
like interscene conflicts between Soviet Allied elements, was Asad Asad

1279
01:32:44,479 --> 01:32:48,479
unconditionally backed like the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, and he

1280
01:32:48,560 --> 01:32:50,760
made a lot of people really upset by doing that,

1281
01:32:51,960 --> 01:32:54,560
you know, like within his own within Darla Islam, you know,

1282
01:32:56,439 --> 01:33:01,279
but it was it was the right play considering the circumstances.

1283
01:33:02,279 --> 01:33:06,920
And it was also essential, I mean building during the

1284
01:33:06,960 --> 01:33:14,039
Cold War like that, that kind of consensus building across

1285
01:33:14,119 --> 01:33:18,159
a national frontiers was essential, you know, And it was, uh,

1286
01:33:19,800 --> 01:33:26,319
the kind of last hurrah of that sort of war

1287
01:33:26,399 --> 01:33:30,520
in peace diplomacy was Bush forty one's like quorum that

1288
01:33:30,600 --> 01:33:34,239
he gathered to wage the Gulf War, which was an

1289
01:33:34,239 --> 01:33:38,359
incredible which was a master stroke, you know, but that

1290
01:33:38,560 --> 01:33:40,039
was I think of that as kind of the book

1291
01:33:40,159 --> 01:33:44,359
end of the Cold War and the entire prodige and

1292
01:33:44,359 --> 01:33:47,560
of course the Physicsade you know, the syiener have already deployed,

1293
01:33:48,600 --> 01:33:53,479
you know, to back to back US forces and of

1294
01:33:53,520 --> 01:33:56,039
course America. How is America like pay that back by

1295
01:33:56,119 --> 01:33:59,560
like trying to murder the Assade family. It's it's it's unconstable,

1296
01:34:00,359 --> 01:34:03,079
like it's it's a vile I mean, aside in the

1297
01:34:03,199 --> 01:34:06,159
fact it's it's totally irrational, but it's just it's just vile,

1298
01:34:06,279 --> 01:34:13,560
Like you don't do that. April seventy seven as Asade,

1299
01:34:13,600 --> 01:34:17,520
he made a state visit to Moscow and he got

1300
01:34:17,560 --> 01:34:21,000
an audience in the president himself as well as Alexi

1301
01:34:22,399 --> 01:34:27,720
proceedon Kaseigan, you know who were I mean basically got

1302
01:34:27,720 --> 01:34:29,720
to meet the old Control Group of the Soviet Union.

1303
01:34:29,800 --> 01:34:34,439
I mean for for a small, you know, underdeveloped country,

1304
01:34:34,520 --> 01:34:40,600
that's that's pretty remarkable. And they signed h they put

1305
01:34:40,640 --> 01:34:42,600
pen to paper on what was called the Treaty of

1306
01:34:42,640 --> 01:34:45,279
Friendship in nineteen eighty, you know, less than a year

1307
01:34:45,319 --> 01:34:49,399
after the Soviets assaulted Afghanistan. And that was that was

1308
01:34:49,439 --> 01:34:52,159
not a that was not coincidental. That was very much

1309
01:34:52,479 --> 01:34:57,600
Taylor to send a message to the world. And subsequently

1310
01:34:58,680 --> 01:35:04,600
there became a permanent gar sin in Syria of Soviet troops.

1311
01:35:06,560 --> 01:35:10,119
You know, not only were the balk Assyrian weapons you know,

1312
01:35:10,199 --> 01:35:13,039
coming from Warsaw Pact, you know, the Soviet Union itself,

1313
01:35:13,399 --> 01:35:19,000
the d d R, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, what have you, but

1314
01:35:19,079 --> 01:35:23,479
also like North Korea, you know, like Syria, because there

1315
01:35:23,560 --> 01:35:28,960
wasn't the only uh, the only Marxist Leninist Arab state

1316
01:35:29,159 --> 01:35:36,239
was South Yemen, you know, so having having an ally

1317
01:35:38,279 --> 01:35:43,079
in the Arab world, which again Syria had and has

1318
01:35:43,079 --> 01:35:49,640
something about outside profile and conceptual terms, this is this

1319
01:35:49,760 --> 01:35:53,319
is a big win for the for the communist world,

1320
01:35:53,800 --> 01:36:00,600
even even though the Syrian Bath was not particularly empathetic

1321
01:36:00,640 --> 01:36:07,880
to doctrinal Marcis Lentinism, but that, you know, that's the

1322
01:36:07,960 --> 01:36:12,319
degree to which the Soviets became tolerant increasingly of what

1323
01:36:12,920 --> 01:36:14,439
a lot of people would have viewed as kind of

1324
01:36:14,439 --> 01:36:18,239
like a third position as tendency. That's very that's highly significant.

1325
01:36:18,319 --> 01:36:21,079
And of course that's kind of stuff that guys like

1326
01:36:21,079 --> 01:36:24,640
Otto Riemer and and George Switzer, Vierick and Ah Thompson

1327
01:36:24,680 --> 01:36:29,840
and Francis Yaqui. I mean, that was their whole that

1328
01:36:29,880 --> 01:36:36,079
that was their whole kind of diagnostic prediction, you know,

1329
01:36:36,119 --> 01:36:40,159
and that's one of the reasons why they did this.

1330
01:36:40,439 --> 01:36:45,680
Incredibly ignorant people who they like to bandy that there's

1331
01:36:45,680 --> 01:36:48,119
some kind of third worldism. I don't even know what

1332
01:36:48,159 --> 01:36:52,880
that means, but it, you know, within the X time,

1333
01:36:53,039 --> 01:36:57,479
within the extent paradigm of the Cold War, this made

1334
01:36:57,520 --> 01:37:02,399
absolute sense for you know, anybody who was on the

1335
01:37:03,399 --> 01:37:05,800
you know, on the national socialist or fascist side of things.

1336
01:37:06,319 --> 01:37:13,800
You know, it's it absolutely tracks. And Carrie Bolton, he's

1337
01:37:13,800 --> 01:37:17,279
one of the only he's one of the only kind

1338
01:37:17,279 --> 01:37:20,800
of contemporary I mean, he's an old guy now, but

1339
01:37:21,560 --> 01:37:25,159
when I take an temporary, I mean like somebody is active.

1340
01:37:25,439 --> 01:37:29,560
He's the only sort of like to like dissident, like

1341
01:37:29,560 --> 01:37:35,880
like national socialists, like academic writers. I take really seriously

1342
01:37:36,039 --> 01:37:39,920
like he's great, you know, and I he's kind of

1343
01:37:39,920 --> 01:37:43,319
an eccentric guy. He's some of his interests are kind

1344
01:37:43,319 --> 01:37:48,239
of eccentric, but I you know, he's his his viewpoint

1345
01:37:48,399 --> 01:37:53,239
is closest to mine own out of anybody. He's kind

1346
01:37:53,239 --> 01:37:57,880
of active in writing about you know, political theory and

1347
01:37:58,079 --> 01:38:05,439
national socialism and stuff. In twenty ten, Medgetev became he

1348
01:38:05,520 --> 01:38:08,600
became the first president of the Russian Federation to reciprocate

1349
01:38:08,640 --> 01:38:11,119
and visit Syria. I think, like I said before, I

1350
01:38:11,159 --> 01:38:18,279
can't I cannot remember if when the Russians after at

1351
01:38:18,279 --> 01:38:25,520
the Syria of Army routed isis you know, there was

1352
01:38:25,600 --> 01:38:29,680
a there was this parade for the Russian contingent there

1353
01:38:30,000 --> 01:38:32,720
there reminded me of the Conor Legion parade. It was

1354
01:38:32,760 --> 01:38:37,720
I thought it was really cool. I was. I watched

1355
01:38:37,760 --> 01:38:41,279
it on there's a YouTube stream that came through live

1356
01:38:41,319 --> 01:38:46,159
at like three am. And I can't remember if Putin

1357
01:38:46,279 --> 01:38:52,560
was there or not, but regardless it was you know,

1358
01:38:53,199 --> 01:38:57,159
the first state visit by a Russian Federation executive. It

1359
01:38:57,199 --> 01:39:03,880
was mitigative and that was ah, that was a big

1360
01:39:03,920 --> 01:39:06,199
deal too. And obviously in twenty ten, like less than

1361
01:39:06,239 --> 01:39:09,520
a year later, you know, the civil war kicked off

1362
01:39:09,560 --> 01:39:16,119
and that that wasn't that that wasn't uh, that wasn't accidental.

1363
01:39:16,760 --> 01:39:22,840
You know, ever conducts I can't remember we got into

1364
01:39:22,840 --> 01:39:31,800
this or not, but the did it to understand the

1365
01:39:31,840 --> 01:39:36,039
situation in Syria with Isis al Qaeda on news refront

1366
01:39:36,359 --> 01:39:43,760
the the Salafi terrorist elements who were assaulting the government.

1367
01:39:46,800 --> 01:39:50,800
These guys were these guys were rapidly successful. You know,

1368
01:39:50,880 --> 01:39:59,199
like obviously they had deep support you know, above border

1369
01:39:59,239 --> 01:40:04,000
or not from from Washington and Tel Aviv. You know,

1370
01:40:04,119 --> 01:40:11,159
they the Syrian government by the time of Russian intervention,

1371
01:40:12,680 --> 01:40:14,760
they could be set in control only about twenty six

1372
01:40:14,800 --> 01:40:18,079
percent of the country. I mean, they had Damascus and

1373
01:40:18,119 --> 01:40:20,159
they had most of the built up areas that but

1374
01:40:20,199 --> 01:40:29,159
that didn't matter. You know, when the integrating between Damascus

1375
01:40:29,319 --> 01:40:33,640
and these kind of like outlying territories that were held

1376
01:40:33,680 --> 01:40:40,520
by government forces and and UH and adjacent allies, it

1377
01:40:40,560 --> 01:40:44,119
was they couldn't operationally integrate with the forces and being

1378
01:40:44,800 --> 01:40:46,800
that they had. That's one of the things that the

1379
01:40:46,920 --> 01:40:54,079
Russian Federation brought to the table, you know. Russia also

1380
01:40:54,520 --> 01:41:00,880
they showed absolutely no mercy to these to these Salafi Islamis,

1381
01:41:00,920 --> 01:41:07,520
you know, the they were practicing a scorched earth campaign

1382
01:41:07,600 --> 01:41:11,359
against them. But that's what so the most horrifying modern

1383
01:41:11,399 --> 01:41:15,920
more footage I've seen is when Isis they assaulted, they

1384
01:41:15,960 --> 01:41:21,359
assaulted the suburb of Aleppo, and they beheaded all the males,

1385
01:41:21,680 --> 01:41:24,760
you know, from like little kids to like military age,

1386
01:41:24,960 --> 01:41:29,960
like teenage boys, to like old men. And it was

1387
01:41:30,000 --> 01:41:34,239
like this forest of like heads like impaled on these steaks,

1388
01:41:35,319 --> 01:41:44,600
and these Isis guys, Uh, they were doing their they

1389
01:41:44,600 --> 01:41:49,560
were doing one of their afternoon prayers and you know,

1390
01:41:49,600 --> 01:41:54,239
they were on their prayer mats. Like it's probably like

1391
01:41:54,239 --> 01:41:59,399
a whole platoon of them, and there was just these heads,

1392
01:42:00,760 --> 01:42:04,000
you know, like it's it's like something out of a

1393
01:42:04,039 --> 01:42:08,800
horror movie, you know, I mean, that's those are the

1394
01:42:08,880 --> 01:42:15,199
kinds of animals that American Israel returning it loose on

1395
01:42:15,199 --> 01:42:18,439
on Syria as a dead nation strategy, you know, and

1396
01:42:20,439 --> 01:42:23,560
to the Russians, I mean, God bless the Russians for

1397
01:42:23,680 --> 01:42:29,439
like blasting those guys to help. But you know, the

1398
01:42:32,760 --> 01:42:40,680
that that's probably the greatest victory, like battlefield victory. The

1399
01:42:41,399 --> 01:42:46,479
anybody like who should be you should view as like

1400
01:42:46,520 --> 01:42:52,079
an adjacent element if you're right wing. That that's really

1401
01:42:52,119 --> 01:42:56,359
like what the what the Syrina of r and the

1402
01:42:56,399 --> 01:42:59,960
Russian Federation and his block accomplished there other than operations

1403
01:43:00,039 --> 01:43:02,399
storm like when the Cross routed the chet Nicks and

1404
01:43:02,479 --> 01:43:06,800
like liberated the crying, that's like the only thing in

1405
01:43:06,800 --> 01:43:11,760
my lifetime that was comparable. So when these like demento

1406
01:43:11,920 --> 01:43:14,760
internet guys like don't go outside or something instead of

1407
01:43:14,760 --> 01:43:17,159
talking about, say love Ukraine, it's I realize like how

1408
01:43:17,239 --> 01:43:21,359
sick these fucking people are, and like I'm just like delusional,

1409
01:43:21,760 --> 01:43:25,800
you know, like they don't they they're they're like they're

1410
01:43:25,840 --> 01:43:28,960
either like ops or like masquerading as being like right wing,

1411
01:43:29,039 --> 01:43:31,760
or they're or they're just like or they just like

1412
01:43:31,840 --> 01:43:34,239
think that ship's like video games or something. I don't know,

1413
01:43:34,520 --> 01:43:37,640
but you know, I make the point again and again

1414
01:43:37,720 --> 01:43:41,680
if you don't if you don't understand that, like the

1415
01:43:41,760 --> 01:43:45,520
Syrians are like your allies and and this this is

1416
01:43:45,560 --> 01:43:48,520
an international struggle you can't isolate it and say, like

1417
01:43:48,520 --> 01:43:50,800
I don't care what happens outside of America. Like that's

1418
01:43:50,840 --> 01:43:54,680
this that the basic bitch like white and words stuff.

1419
01:43:54,720 --> 01:43:57,399
But it's also like you're not in the game if

1420
01:43:57,439 --> 01:44:00,560
you think these things occur in isolation. You know, whether

1421
01:44:00,560 --> 01:44:03,239
you like like globalism or not, it doesn't matter. Like

1422
01:44:03,279 --> 01:44:06,439
it's you can't ignore gravity, you know, it's it's the

1423
01:44:06,479 --> 01:44:11,640
same thing. Globalism is like gravity. The power playable paradigm

1424
01:44:11,640 --> 01:44:13,840
you live under is like the weather. You can't change it.

1425
01:44:14,880 --> 01:44:16,760
I mean, I mean, you can change it, but if

1426
01:44:16,760 --> 01:44:18,840
you got to like work within its parameters, you know,

1427
01:44:18,960 --> 01:44:24,039
like saying you're a you're you're gonna like you're gonna

1428
01:44:24,039 --> 01:44:27,239
take some like non position owing owing to some like

1429
01:44:27,319 --> 01:44:31,880
ethical orientation that you know, you convince yourself like means

1430
01:44:31,920 --> 01:44:36,880
you like rechecked like the prevailing the prevailing order that

1431
01:44:36,920 --> 01:44:41,119
I mean, that's that's that's that's meaningless and in playable terms.

1432
01:44:41,439 --> 01:44:46,560
But you know the UH plus too, that's when the

1433
01:44:46,600 --> 01:44:50,600
Russian Federation like finally drew a line in the sand,

1434
01:44:50,720 --> 01:44:55,399
you know, and I had they not, I I think

1435
01:44:55,479 --> 01:44:57,800
Russia would be an even worse shape today than than

1436
01:44:58,119 --> 01:45:01,960
than it is. Okay, I'm not saying bad things aret

1437
01:45:02,000 --> 01:45:04,560
Russian people. I mean, the Russians are in a desperate situation.

1438
01:45:06,359 --> 01:45:09,760
Putin said that like demand like like like I said,

1439
01:45:09,920 --> 01:45:12,319
is not going down. He said, the bad regime is

1440
01:45:12,359 --> 01:45:18,880
going to remain at all costs, and that and and

1441
01:45:18,960 --> 01:45:21,720
he and he delivered on it. You know. That's that's

1442
01:45:21,720 --> 01:45:26,920
that's what's kept Russia alive, is in in Warranty's terms,

1443
01:45:27,159 --> 01:45:29,279
you know, like, had had the Russians just allowed Seria

1444
01:45:29,319 --> 01:45:33,560
to go down like they they would have had a

1445
01:45:33,600 --> 01:45:42,680
cascading effect of of of catastrophes. You know, you've he

1446
01:45:42,760 --> 01:45:50,479
developed certain instincts for identifying what events are gonna have

1447
01:45:50,600 --> 01:45:54,359
those sort of seismic kinetic effects. And you better believe

1448
01:45:54,439 --> 01:45:56,520
if Damasius had fallen, that would have been one of

1449
01:45:56,560 --> 01:46:04,359
those events. Uh. It's also it was executed pretty splendidly, man.

1450
01:46:05,680 --> 01:46:10,520
You know, I'm We've talked a lot in various capacities,

1451
01:46:11,159 --> 01:46:14,640
and I recommend you know, super off. He's most known

1452
01:46:14,640 --> 01:46:21,399
for Icebreaker, but his book Inside the Red Army, you know,

1453
01:46:21,439 --> 01:46:24,119
it's about the state of it's about the state of

1454
01:46:24,159 --> 01:46:28,079
the Soviet Army, you know, basically in the in the

1455
01:46:28,239 --> 01:46:33,159
in the later bresident of the era and something that

1456
01:46:34,960 --> 01:46:39,840
remains this day and something that preceded the Bolshek Revolution.

1457
01:46:41,520 --> 01:46:44,880
You know, the Russians big thing, the big military science

1458
01:46:44,880 --> 01:46:52,039
imperative is to do everything possible to like overcome fog

1459
01:46:52,079 --> 01:47:03,640
of war issues, you know, situational awareness issues within the

1460
01:47:03,680 --> 01:47:09,720
battle space, you know, by eradicating and certainties. So they

1461
01:47:09,760 --> 01:47:12,840
treat they treat battle doctor and almost like a Western

1462
01:47:12,920 --> 01:47:15,600
army or like or like the US Army would treat regulation.

1463
01:47:16,920 --> 01:47:22,119
It's highly inflexible, okay, but for what they rush. By

1464
01:47:22,159 --> 01:47:29,119
the way the Russians fight, it does work. And the

1465
01:47:29,199 --> 01:47:34,279
combined arms the Russians brought to bear against isis like

1466
01:47:34,520 --> 01:47:40,399
cut them to pieces, you know. And it was absolutely

1467
01:47:43,319 --> 01:47:45,319
you know, like a like like the Russians isn't just

1468
01:47:45,319 --> 01:47:49,520
like rashally deployed. Like I remember, I can't remember his

1469
01:47:49,640 --> 01:47:53,600
name he was. He said black guy on I don't

1470
01:47:53,600 --> 01:47:57,000
even think he's on TV anymore. But he was kind

1471
01:47:57,039 --> 01:47:59,159
of like he was kind of like mini me Lester

1472
01:47:59,319 --> 01:48:01,079
Holt or something. He was. I mean, not that Lester

1473
01:48:01,199 --> 01:48:04,560
Hal's any great shakes, but this guy was like he

1474
01:48:04,640 --> 01:48:06,359
was kind of like the bush Ley Lester Halt, and

1475
01:48:06,399 --> 01:48:11,399
he was he was talking to he saw its like

1476
01:48:11,520 --> 01:48:16,439
uber Zionists, like like Nato Schill, like idiot who was

1477
01:48:16,439 --> 01:48:18,800
like a light current, like a retired like light colonel

1478
01:48:18,880 --> 01:48:22,159
or something. And this guy was dropping Cavaboll like, well

1479
01:48:22,199 --> 01:48:25,039
we saw him, Chuch, beyond ninety four. The Russians can't fight.

1480
01:48:25,119 --> 01:48:28,119
It's like, first of all, those you know twenty years ago,

1481
01:48:28,199 --> 01:48:37,199
you fool. Secondly, it you know, if if that was

1482
01:48:37,199 --> 01:48:38,880
a state of the arm front of the Russian Federation,

1483
01:48:38,960 --> 01:48:41,159
frankly wouldn't be able to deploy a scale the Syria

1484
01:48:41,199 --> 01:48:43,800
at all. You know. It's it's not like he would

1485
01:48:43,800 --> 01:48:48,359
have been able to like arrive in the battlespace, you know,

1486
01:48:48,479 --> 01:48:51,239
deploy in depth and then and then and then completely

1487
01:48:51,239 --> 01:48:53,479
food bar the operation. I mean, they definitely could have

1488
01:48:53,600 --> 01:48:59,560
lost it. But and I'm not going to suggest that

1489
01:48:59,600 --> 01:49:02,800
the rush An Army deploying the Syria as like something

1490
01:49:02,840 --> 01:49:09,279
on order of the British accomplishing that kind of logistic

1491
01:49:09,319 --> 01:49:11,199
what mirrorable they did at the falk Whens maybe two

1492
01:49:11,399 --> 01:49:14,159
or something, but it was was pretty damn impressive, okay.

1493
01:49:14,199 --> 01:49:19,640
And once they were able to essentially like immediately drop

1494
01:49:19,800 --> 01:49:21,920
like you know, five thousand boots on the ground and

1495
01:49:23,239 --> 01:49:30,600
a whole gang a mid twenty nines and some kind

1496
01:49:30,600 --> 01:49:33,600
of sex stuff like thermobar re artillery and things like that.

1497
01:49:34,239 --> 01:49:37,600
It's like, okay, I mean, i it appears as if

1498
01:49:38,199 --> 01:49:41,720
like the Russian army's back. I mean, the Roginary performed

1499
01:49:41,720 --> 01:49:46,319
pretty well in Georgia in two thousand and eight, but

1500
01:49:46,359 --> 01:49:49,600
there were still there were still problems. I mean, there's

1501
01:49:49,640 --> 01:49:57,159
problems today. But the you know, I nobody who's not

1502
01:49:57,720 --> 01:50:03,439
resorting the kind of callow propaganda, very deliberate sword is

1503
01:50:03,520 --> 01:50:05,199
is going to say that, you know, the Russian operation

1504
01:50:05,279 --> 01:50:12,079
in Syria wasn't impressive or something. You know, it's but uh,

1505
01:50:13,640 --> 01:50:26,720
moving on, Yeah, it's uh. The Russian the chief of

1506
01:50:26,800 --> 01:50:39,239
Staff of the Russian Air Force grass him of, he

1507
01:50:39,359 --> 01:50:43,039
stated in twenty seventeen. In twenty seventeen, like in twenty sixteen,

1508
01:50:43,079 --> 01:50:45,680
like twenty seventeen, there's kind of like this big like

1509
01:50:45,760 --> 01:50:49,920
retrospective on the Syrian operation, and part of it was,

1510
01:50:50,000 --> 01:50:52,119
you know, like a Russian flex like hey, this is

1511
01:50:52,119 --> 01:50:55,000
what we did. Like you know, rah rah, we're back.

1512
01:50:55,079 --> 01:50:59,640
We you know, we we're a serious you know, we're

1513
01:50:59,720 --> 01:51:06,239
we're we're serious military power again. But they carried out.

1514
01:51:06,960 --> 01:51:10,720
They carried out around twenty thousand sorties, like like yeah,

1515
01:51:10,760 --> 01:51:15,399
between like eighteen and twenty thousand sorties and there was

1516
01:51:15,479 --> 01:51:21,239
over seventy thousand strikes on what Grass them off called

1517
01:51:21,359 --> 01:51:26,720
quote the infrastructure of terrorism, which what I take that

1518
01:51:26,800 --> 01:51:28,920
to me is like a lot of ground assault type

1519
01:51:28,960 --> 01:51:31,439
stuff like basically like it has blood on the Seria

1520
01:51:32,399 --> 01:51:37,279
Army going into action, probably backed up by some Russian

1521
01:51:37,399 --> 01:51:41,920
armor and artillery, and then like basically like the Russians

1522
01:51:41,920 --> 01:51:46,159
that uh, they like pound the hell out of Isis

1523
01:51:46,199 --> 01:51:49,960
positions from the air, you know, like in immediate advance

1524
01:51:50,039 --> 01:51:54,840
of that combined ground and element you know, which would

1525
01:51:54,840 --> 01:52:00,960
then like encircle these positions with kind of like textbook

1526
01:52:01,039 --> 01:52:06,760
like Warsaw Pag deep battle just like smaller scale you know,

1527
01:52:06,880 --> 01:52:13,479
and basically treat basically treat the operation as as like

1528
01:52:13,640 --> 01:52:16,359
you know, the advance of fire wherever possible, you know,

1529
01:52:16,359 --> 01:52:22,239
like lay as much fire as possible on the opposing

1530
01:52:22,239 --> 01:52:28,279
force to kill it, you know, and even overkill it.

1531
01:52:29,159 --> 01:52:30,720
You know. It's not exactly a lot of places to

1532
01:52:30,800 --> 01:52:35,199
hide in the in the battle space and the uh

1533
01:52:36,279 --> 01:52:39,840
there are some very serious fighting in Damascus, but I

1534
01:52:39,920 --> 01:52:43,520
believe by the time there are friends of the Russian

1535
01:52:43,560 --> 01:52:50,439
Federation arrived on the ground. I believe that it basically resolved,

1536
01:52:50,800 --> 01:52:54,800
you know, the had the Russians had to route Isis

1537
01:52:54,840 --> 01:53:00,000
from demand. I mean, I it might be an improper

1538
01:53:00,119 --> 01:53:03,840
counterfactual because like if Isis was holding Damascus, it's like

1539
01:53:03,840 --> 01:53:06,199
what I mean that would indicate the war was over.

1540
01:53:06,680 --> 01:53:10,479
But it the point being, you know, they that would

1541
01:53:10,520 --> 01:53:16,319
have changed things, if that would have changed things, if

1542
01:53:16,399 --> 01:53:19,640
like his Blah was charged basically it was like liberating Damascus.

1543
01:53:19,720 --> 01:53:21,680
I mean, like what do you that would have kind

1544
01:53:21,680 --> 01:53:25,800
of neutralized Russian firepower too, unless they were playing on

1545
01:53:25,840 --> 01:53:31,079
like leveling the city without regard to without regard to

1546
01:53:32,399 --> 01:53:48,439
you know, friendly attrition and things. But yeah, it's uh yeah,

1547
01:53:48,520 --> 01:53:53,840
I I guess we went on an hour. Yeah, I'm sorry,

1548
01:53:53,880 --> 01:53:56,680
those two like heavy on the military side of things.

1549
01:53:57,239 --> 01:54:02,199
I'd like to I realize we still get a grip

1550
01:54:02,319 --> 01:54:09,119
of our Gladio series. There's if you want to do

1551
01:54:09,199 --> 01:54:10,720
like an epilogue in this, I mean, it's totally up

1552
01:54:10,760 --> 01:54:15,520
to you, obviously, it's just so literally there's something to

1553
01:54:15,520 --> 01:54:20,840
be said for like the the Jackson Vanic amendments and

1554
01:54:20,880 --> 01:54:27,439
what led to its passing and the whole kind of

1555
01:54:27,520 --> 01:54:33,560
narrative of Soviet Jewurry being like under threat and you know,

1556
01:54:33,640 --> 01:54:37,560
the g r U and the kg D quite literally

1557
01:54:37,720 --> 01:54:42,159
uh establishing a directorate to monitor Zionism. I mean this,

1558
01:54:42,159 --> 01:54:46,079
this is part of the equation. I mean there's a

1559
01:54:46,079 --> 01:54:49,279
lot to the Russian Syrian relationship and and just kind

1560
01:54:49,279 --> 01:54:55,159
of like the Russian you know, Russian enmity with with Israel.

1561
01:54:55,840 --> 01:54:57,720
And we could definitely go like another hour on that

1562
01:54:57,760 --> 01:55:00,760
if you want, but it's totally up to you. Just

1563
01:55:00,880 --> 01:55:02,439
let me know what you want to do next.

1564
01:55:03,960 --> 01:55:07,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's finish since we're on this, let's finish this

1565
01:55:08,039 --> 01:55:10,319
up and then we'll come back into a wrap up

1566
01:55:10,359 --> 01:55:12,720
episode on Gladio and then figure out where you want

1567
01:55:12,720 --> 01:55:17,560
to go from there. Yeah that's great, man, all right,

1568
01:55:17,920 --> 01:55:20,560
So just tell everybody where they can find your stuff

1569
01:55:20,600 --> 01:55:22,640
and uhpe.

1570
01:55:22,840 --> 01:55:29,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, you can find me on substick. This for

1571
01:55:29,800 --> 01:55:34,479
my podcast content is it's real Thomas seven seven seven.

1572
01:55:34,560 --> 01:55:39,319
That's substick dot com. I'm doing some by week we

1573
01:55:40,720 --> 01:55:44,800
pods with Jay Burden. He's like my homeboy. He's great,

1574
01:55:45,039 --> 01:55:49,079
like he really is. We're putting that up on gum

1575
01:55:49,159 --> 01:55:51,359
Road and having Burden do it like I might be

1576
01:55:51,359 --> 01:55:54,800
a total retard. I literally found gum Road like fucking unusable.

1577
01:55:55,359 --> 01:55:57,920
I spent like four hours of that fucking platform.

1578
01:55:59,039 --> 01:55:59,880
Speaker 1: It's not easy.

1579
01:56:00,079 --> 01:56:04,760
Speaker 2: It's it's it's like always there's always like there's always

1580
01:56:04,760 --> 01:56:07,560
like redundant buttons that don't do anything, and it's like

1581
01:56:08,479 --> 01:56:12,920
it's like some fucking uh yeah, it's it's like some

1582
01:56:13,000 --> 01:56:17,000
crazy person or like some like the bottomized page like

1583
01:56:17,079 --> 01:56:20,479
programmed or something. So I after like four hours this garbage,

1584
01:56:20,479 --> 01:56:22,479
I'm like, what the am I doing. I'm like, I'm

1585
01:56:22,479 --> 01:56:25,560
not gonna I'm like, it's I'd rather have a root

1586
01:56:25,560 --> 01:56:26,199
canal than like.

1587
01:56:27,479 --> 01:56:30,520
Speaker 1: Just like burden do it. He's young exactly.

1588
01:56:31,319 --> 01:56:33,560
Speaker 2: To do it. And the main thing is I love

1589
01:56:33,640 --> 01:56:37,479
substack because it's literally simple as like point and click

1590
01:56:37,600 --> 01:56:41,399
or like drag and populate, but they make it difficult.

1591
01:56:41,680 --> 01:56:44,960
You can like add collaborators on substack, but it doesn't

1592
01:56:45,000 --> 01:56:52,199
just like automatically like split revenue. Right, it's uh.

1593
01:56:52,119 --> 01:56:53,359
Speaker 1: Now we're getting inside baseball.

1594
01:56:54,159 --> 01:56:59,880
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, check out check out Burn's action on gum Road.

1595
01:57:00,000 --> 01:57:03,479
It's radio free Chicago. And I shouted out when we

1596
01:57:03,520 --> 01:57:06,479
record new stuff, like on my substick, I like post

1597
01:57:06,479 --> 01:57:07,239
a link and stuff.

1598
01:57:07,279 --> 01:57:09,520
Speaker 1: As well as I'll pick up a link to it

1599
01:57:09,600 --> 01:57:10,479
and add it in.

1600
01:57:10,840 --> 01:57:13,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, and yeah, I mean obviously I'm on

1601
01:57:14,399 --> 01:57:18,680
I'm on X formerly bird app. You know, I'm at

1602
01:57:18,960 --> 01:57:23,560
Capital R E A L underscore number seven h on

1603
01:57:23,640 --> 01:57:27,840
A S seven seven seven. Here Kreig has been. He's

1604
01:57:27,880 --> 01:57:32,119
been busily making some new swag for like our merchandise,

1605
01:57:32,600 --> 01:57:35,479
which I think is pretty cool. Man, Like I legit,

1606
01:57:35,640 --> 01:57:37,880
like I stand by it because I think it's cool

1607
01:57:38,520 --> 01:57:42,199
and people seem to like it. So yeah, if you

1608
01:57:42,199 --> 01:57:44,680
could like drop a link to the merse stuff in

1609
01:57:44,760 --> 01:57:48,960
the description, that would probably be cool. But that's otherwise. Man.

1610
01:57:49,039 --> 01:57:55,119
I'm I'm I'm trying to get a jump on my

1611
01:57:55,920 --> 01:58:00,359
I make progress on my my manuscript stuff, my long

1612
01:58:00,439 --> 01:58:04,600
form written stuff, especially causin I'm gonna have to travel

1613
01:58:04,640 --> 01:58:07,239
a bunch this winter, which I didn't, which is is fine.

1614
01:58:07,319 --> 01:58:13,600
I am blessed people enjoy my company and want me

1615
01:58:13,680 --> 01:58:17,439
to go places where they're hosting things, but I didn't.

1616
01:58:17,880 --> 01:58:19,680
I didn't think i'd be like hitting the road again

1617
01:58:19,760 --> 01:58:24,039
until like springtime. So I'm gonna try, and you know,

1618
01:58:24,079 --> 01:58:26,319
like the next month, I'm I'm hoping I can have

1619
01:58:26,359 --> 01:58:31,279
like a workable manuscript. It just takes time, especially when

1620
01:58:31,279 --> 01:58:34,399
you got to properly like cite you know, your data

1621
01:58:34,479 --> 01:58:36,560
on things. But that's what I've been up on.

1622
01:58:38,800 --> 01:58:42,159
Speaker 1: Awesome though. All Right, till the next time, we'll wrap

1623
01:58:42,199 --> 01:58:45,159
this and wrap up Gladio and figure out where to

1624
01:58:45,239 --> 01:58:45,760
go from there.

1625
01:58:46,199 --> 01:58:47,119
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, that's great.

1626
01:58:47,760 --> 01:58:51,079
Speaker 1: Take care, Thomas, thank you. I want to welcome everyone

1627
01:58:51,119 --> 01:58:54,960
back to the Pecananas Show. Thomas, how have you been?

1628
01:58:55,520 --> 01:58:59,159
I'm right, let's uh, let's finish this up talking about

1629
01:58:59,239 --> 01:59:02,239
Russian series and I think, uh, I think I know

1630
01:59:02,279 --> 01:59:06,039
where you're gonna go with this one, so just let loose.

1631
01:59:07,760 --> 01:59:10,479
Speaker 2: Yeah, sort of thing. You know. Obviously we're coming up

1632
01:59:10,520 --> 01:59:13,560
to in the in the University of the Ramadan war

1633
01:59:13,960 --> 01:59:18,720
you or they're the Yan Kapoor war is, which interestingly

1634
01:59:18,840 --> 01:59:22,199
doesn't get it doesn't appear a lot in media these days.

1635
01:59:25,399 --> 01:59:28,399
Some of the fellows that made the point in our

1636
01:59:28,439 --> 01:59:34,880
discussions that you know, historical events don't really occur anymore.

1637
01:59:34,920 --> 01:59:39,119
I mean that, like you know, like Zazec makes that

1638
01:59:39,159 --> 01:59:41,039
point a lot, and and so does some of these

1639
01:59:41,039 --> 01:59:44,720
other guys who are kind of trying to salvage what

1640
01:59:45,000 --> 01:59:48,199
remains a condo philosophy. I mean there's something that's that's

1641
01:59:48,239 --> 01:59:51,720
a deeply psychological mechanism, you know, and there's like sociological

1642
01:59:51,840 --> 01:59:55,319
locations to it too, but in more kind of prosaic terms.

1643
01:59:55,760 --> 01:59:58,359
That that's an important point because I'm always emphasizing to

1644
01:59:58,439 --> 02:00:02,800
the fellas who don't remember because they weren't born yet,

1645
02:00:02,960 --> 02:00:07,600
that media narratives like however corrupt they were corrupted they

1646
02:00:07,600 --> 02:00:10,800
were by ideology and like conceptual biases, they did in

1647
02:00:10,840 --> 02:00:15,119
fact build on a continuing foundation of historical time, you know.

1648
02:00:15,159 --> 02:00:17,520
I make the point even really up until two thousand,

1649
02:00:18,800 --> 02:00:20,880
kind of like the last instance of this in this

1650
02:00:22,239 --> 02:00:25,600
in the spring or it was like summer or fall

1651
02:00:25,600 --> 02:00:28,119
of two thousand. I remember this vivid lead because I

1652
02:00:28,159 --> 02:00:31,399
made my dad really upset, and he went in this

1653
02:00:31,439 --> 02:00:35,760
local radio show to talk about it, the show Beyond

1654
02:00:35,760 --> 02:00:38,720
the Beltway that used to be like based here in Chicago,

1655
02:00:39,119 --> 02:00:43,279
and me and like my then girlfriend, we went down

1656
02:00:43,279 --> 02:00:45,159
to the studio to meet him, like in the loop.

1657
02:00:45,239 --> 02:00:48,239
And the subject that my dad was on this panel

1658
02:00:48,239 --> 02:00:50,680
with this like foreign navy seal guy and this kind

1659
02:00:50,720 --> 02:00:53,960
of crusty older dude was a civilian, but he'd been

1660
02:00:54,000 --> 02:00:58,960
on William Odom's staff in some capacity but Peter Arnett,

1661
02:00:59,000 --> 02:01:00,439
and this is one of the things that kind of

1662
02:01:00,439 --> 02:01:03,000
crushed his career. I mean, he was getting old up

1663
02:01:03,039 --> 02:01:07,960
there in years anyway, but he broke this story where

1664
02:01:07,960 --> 02:01:11,159
this guy claimed that. First of all, guy claimed that

1665
02:01:11,439 --> 02:01:13,640
he was a deserter in the Vietnam War, and he

1666
02:01:13,680 --> 02:01:16,920
claimed he ended up in Laos, Okay, and he said

1667
02:01:16,920 --> 02:01:20,560
there was this village like full of like you know,

1668
02:01:20,720 --> 02:01:24,239
like young white men who were like married to Indigenous women.

1669
02:01:24,600 --> 02:01:26,439
And he's like, what's happening here? And they're like, oh,

1670
02:01:26,439 --> 02:01:29,000
we're all deserters. This is like our commune where we're

1671
02:01:29,039 --> 02:01:32,279
like escaping the war. And if anybody who knows the

1672
02:01:32,319 --> 02:01:35,720
history of the conflict, that's preposterous on his own terms. Okay,

1673
02:01:36,279 --> 02:01:38,640
there's no way that happened. But he was or that

1674
02:01:38,800 --> 02:01:40,920
was taking what this guy said is fact. So our

1675
02:01:41,000 --> 02:01:43,359
nets like, well, like what happened. There's no record of

1676
02:01:43,399 --> 02:01:47,159
this place. So this guy's like, well, you know, he's

1677
02:01:47,159 --> 02:01:50,239
like Army special forces arrived one day after they bombarded

1678
02:01:50,279 --> 02:01:53,279
us with nerve gas and everybody died, but I was

1679
02:01:53,319 --> 02:01:55,720
out in the fields that day or the rice patties,

1680
02:01:55,960 --> 02:02:01,199
so I escaped. And he's like it was called Operation Tailwind,

1681
02:02:02,119 --> 02:02:05,000
you know, and my Dad's like, this is outrageous. This

1682
02:02:05,079 --> 02:02:08,600
is outrageous is being reported as news, And how dare

1683
02:02:08,640 --> 02:02:13,680
this guy like defame uh these Special Forces operators? But

1684
02:02:13,760 --> 02:02:16,359
did it takes that real? Seriously? You know, he was

1685
02:02:16,399 --> 02:02:18,079
a civilian, but he got to know a lot of

1686
02:02:18,079 --> 02:02:22,039
these guys very well, you know, and he takes he

1687
02:02:22,079 --> 02:02:26,319
takes the honor of such people seriously, you know. And

1688
02:02:26,359 --> 02:02:28,399
I mean for me, I mean, it was just I mean,

1689
02:02:28,439 --> 02:02:29,880
aside from that, it was like, I mean, our NETT

1690
02:02:29,960 --> 02:02:33,039
was just like lying, like it's if you're a serious journalist,

1691
02:02:33,039 --> 02:02:35,560
this guy's story was preposterous. You know. Like I said,

1692
02:02:36,159 --> 02:02:38,960
I was, I was like twenty four to twenty five

1693
02:02:39,039 --> 02:02:41,199
years old, and I was just kind of like a

1694
02:02:41,239 --> 02:02:43,199
student of the Vietnam War, and I'm like, there's no

1695
02:02:43,239 --> 02:02:45,359
way that happened. And of course it broke that this

1696
02:02:45,399 --> 02:02:48,199
guy with some crazy liars, that our net kind of disappeared.

1697
02:02:48,239 --> 02:02:52,399
But it was a big deal, man, because you know,

1698
02:02:53,119 --> 02:02:58,479
even twenty five years after Saigon went to put you know,

1699
02:02:58,600 --> 02:03:01,319
Vietnam was still on people's mind man, you know, in

1700
02:03:01,399 --> 02:03:03,479
conceptual terms, it was one of their main kind of

1701
02:03:03,560 --> 02:03:09,199
like pull stars of historical events, so that it doesn't

1702
02:03:09,239 --> 02:03:11,520
really that's it's just like not the case anymore. And

1703
02:03:11,560 --> 02:03:14,000
part of it's deliberate. It's like a deliberate sort of

1704
02:03:14,039 --> 02:03:17,560
like whitewashing of the collective memory. They're not so much

1705
02:03:17,840 --> 02:03:20,399
just kind of like erasing the collective memory of historical time.

1706
02:03:21,359 --> 02:03:25,079
But it's also these narratives increasingly are just kind of

1707
02:03:25,119 --> 02:03:28,119
generated out of nothing, you know, They're they draw upon

1708
02:03:28,199 --> 02:03:29,840
these kinds of like endure it this kind of like

1709
02:03:29,920 --> 02:03:38,039
enduring phraseology that regime information or propaganda. Oh, let's disseminate,

1710
02:03:38,600 --> 02:03:40,880
you know. So there's a certain structure to it, there's

1711
02:03:40,880 --> 02:03:44,600
a certain conceptual structure, but it's very much like it

1712
02:03:44,760 --> 02:03:46,920
kind of like every every aspect of it's just kind

1713
02:03:46,920 --> 02:03:50,279
of like autonomously situated in a psychological terms. It's really weird.

1714
02:03:50,960 --> 02:03:56,640
But in any event, even uh, even to the late nineties,

1715
02:03:57,479 --> 02:04:02,039
they when when there was when when when any kind

1716
02:04:02,039 --> 02:04:04,680
of crisis was an emergent between like Israel and it's

1717
02:04:04,760 --> 02:04:11,199
and its enemies, they there there'd be contextual references to

1718
02:04:11,319 --> 02:04:13,840
the Ramanan War, which they called the yan Kapor War,

1719
02:04:14,239 --> 02:04:16,880
in the nineteen sixty seven Six Day War, which was

1720
02:04:16,960 --> 02:04:22,880
Israel's greatest victory. That's not just cap that Israel had.

1721
02:04:23,039 --> 02:04:28,399
They were unusually larded with military talent at operational level

1722
02:04:28,479 --> 02:04:32,479
for various reasons. And I mean that was so that

1723
02:04:32,560 --> 02:04:34,119
was a big deal. And that's kind of what the

1724
02:04:34,119 --> 02:04:37,920
myth of Israeli military supremacy like was emergent, because in

1725
02:04:37,960 --> 02:04:40,079
sixty seven it wasn't a myth. I mean, on the

1726
02:04:40,119 --> 02:04:43,560
one hand, like modern combat resolves rapidly. That's why I

1727
02:04:43,600 --> 02:04:47,720
was trying to beside the people. You know, they people

1728
02:04:47,720 --> 02:04:50,720
get a corrupted view of this because pretty much like

1729
02:04:51,199 --> 02:04:56,399
the only like the only wars in living memory involve uh,

1730
02:04:56,560 --> 02:05:00,439
these kinds of nonsensical paradigms were like you know, some

1731
02:05:00,600 --> 02:05:07,159
Pentagon guy or some State department spokesman or woman is suggesting, well,

1732
02:05:07,159 --> 02:05:09,840
we're making incremental progress, you know, like the he's kind

1733
02:05:09,840 --> 02:05:12,680
of like endless deployments that don't resolve anything. Like people

1734
02:05:12,720 --> 02:05:17,039
think that that's normal, Like they don't understand that even

1735
02:05:17,119 --> 02:05:20,279
on condition, even under conditions, they're relative parody, you know,

1736
02:05:20,279 --> 02:05:24,079
like modern combined arms war. It's battles are usually massively

1737
02:05:24,119 --> 02:05:27,600
one sided, it's usually your route, it usually resolves like

1738
02:05:27,760 --> 02:05:34,920
within days, you know, but just the same uh, the

1739
02:05:35,000 --> 02:05:39,319
idea's performance in sixty seven was unusually strong. But all

1740
02:05:39,359 --> 02:05:43,000
of that, all that basically came to an end in

1741
02:05:43,039 --> 02:05:46,920
the seventy three war. And it's significant to us. I

1742
02:05:46,920 --> 02:05:50,079
mean even people who aren't particularly invested in Israel Palestine.

1743
02:05:50,760 --> 02:05:55,399
I don't think that's a correct disposition because if you know,

1744
02:05:56,319 --> 02:05:59,520
within the current paradigm, you you can't just kind of

1745
02:05:59,560 --> 02:06:02,000
like select, we choose what you quote care about that

1746
02:06:02,159 --> 02:06:04,840
wasn't of caring about it either, Like everything is impactful.

1747
02:06:05,399 --> 02:06:10,239
You know anywhere that anywhere that the US forces are

1748
02:06:10,279 --> 02:06:13,479
deployed under roscas a NATO or the ADF has deployed

1749
02:06:14,319 --> 02:06:16,760
you know, with the full with the full faith and

1750
02:06:16,800 --> 02:06:20,359
blessing and operational integration with an other the United States.

1751
02:06:20,600 --> 02:06:24,680
You know that this has this has implications for everything

1752
02:06:24,720 --> 02:06:30,880
that occurs in clinical nature. But you know, in seventy three,

1753
02:06:31,479 --> 02:06:38,239
I I believe that that was a more dangerous crisis

1754
02:06:38,359 --> 02:06:44,439
uh modality than the Cuban missile crisis, like the cubansical prizes,

1755
02:06:44,479 --> 02:06:47,439
the way it was unfolding in real time and the

1756
02:06:47,760 --> 02:06:52,600
way these Soviet naval vessels were approaching Cuba and there's

1757
02:06:52,600 --> 02:06:54,720
a question like will they run the blockade or not,

1758
02:06:55,680 --> 02:06:58,600
or like how will this resolve? Like and and as

1759
02:06:58,640 --> 02:07:03,800
like the days and hours were away in Kennedy's war room.

1760
02:07:04,319 --> 02:07:07,760
You know, people got the perception that this was especially critical,

1761
02:07:07,960 --> 02:07:13,000
and it was don't get me wrong. However, there was

1762
02:07:13,039 --> 02:07:17,560
nothing approaching strategic parody. Then in nineteen seventy three, there

1763
02:07:17,560 --> 02:07:22,000
absolutely was, like the stories didn't officially accomplish like strategic

1764
02:07:22,079 --> 02:07:24,960
parody in terms of forces and being you know that

1765
02:07:25,279 --> 02:07:30,399
were in fact deployed until seventy six or seventy seven.

1766
02:07:30,600 --> 02:07:35,720
By seventy three, that they they had the capability to

1767
02:07:35,760 --> 02:07:39,239
absolutely devastate Western Europe and the connell the United States,

1768
02:07:39,600 --> 02:07:45,199
you know, and uh owing to command and control duances

1769
02:07:46,119 --> 02:07:50,359
and the shrinking of the window where human decision makers

1770
02:07:50,359 --> 02:07:56,079
are capable of reacting, you know, that window of opportunity

1771
02:07:56,159 --> 02:08:03,399
to render decision had had shrunk dramatic from a decade previous,

1772
02:08:03,439 --> 02:08:07,399
you know, And so I maintaining that nineteen seventy three

1773
02:08:08,960 --> 02:08:11,560
when America went to deaf Con three, and it's the

1774
02:08:11,560 --> 02:08:16,079
only time that's ever happened, you know. And for context,

1775
02:08:16,680 --> 02:08:18,600
it's not like during the early years the War on

1776
02:08:18,720 --> 02:08:21,520
Terror with those like goofy, like color coded alerts, like

1777
02:08:21,520 --> 02:08:23,640
today you look at terror thread as purple, so like

1778
02:08:23,760 --> 02:08:26,000
chovid drubel up your rest or whatever, like you're supposed

1779
02:08:26,039 --> 02:08:30,319
to do. It wasn't like that, Like, it was quite serious.

1780
02:08:30,359 --> 02:08:36,880
And at deaf Con three, you know, basically that means

1781
02:08:36,920 --> 02:08:42,039
America shifted to a war footing and missileers in their silos.

1782
02:08:42,079 --> 02:08:44,920
They strapped into their siege to prepare for deep impact

1783
02:08:45,680 --> 02:08:48,520
and awaited launch orders and like the little doors like

1784
02:08:48,520 --> 02:08:52,880
atop the silo went like you know, which is kind

1785
02:08:52,880 --> 02:09:02,159
of horrifying. But and Brezhnev he mobilized the Soviet Union operationally.

1786
02:09:02,199 --> 02:09:04,960
In some ways they mirrored the NATI or order of battle,

1787
02:09:05,239 --> 02:09:08,000
but in other ways they were totally different. But they

1788
02:09:08,079 --> 02:09:11,800
had you know, America's kind of America's kind of rapid

1789
02:09:11,840 --> 02:09:15,600
reaction force during the Cold War was uh, it was

1790
02:09:15,600 --> 02:09:22,680
the eighty second Airborne Division. The Soviets mirrored that, like

1791
02:09:22,760 --> 02:09:24,960
the Soviet airborne troops and at that point were like

1792
02:09:24,960 --> 02:09:31,640
an air assault element. They they went on high alert

1793
02:09:32,239 --> 02:09:36,199
and they were preparing to deploy to the Middle East

1794
02:09:36,239 --> 02:09:40,399
to relieve the Egyptian Army. You know, so this was

1795
02:09:40,439 --> 02:09:44,800
this was really really bad. But that it's interesting that

1796
02:09:44,800 --> 02:09:48,000
that's been conspicuously absent. I mean it's to somebody in

1797
02:09:48,039 --> 02:09:51,359
my age, the absence is conspicuous. I haven't read one

1798
02:09:51,439 --> 02:09:58,039
reference to it. And since the IDF assaulted that Russian target,

1799
02:09:58,960 --> 02:10:01,960
which don't get me wrong, happened many times before, okay,

1800
02:10:02,000 --> 02:10:05,840
but it does constitute, if only in the court of

1801
02:10:08,399 --> 02:10:12,399
public opinion, and public opinion in wartime takes on and

1802
02:10:12,479 --> 02:10:16,199
outside significance, it does represent a kind of escalation that,

1803
02:10:16,359 --> 02:10:19,840
you know, the idea of is flagrantly assaulting Russian targets.

1804
02:10:20,000 --> 02:10:21,399
And it was one thing to do that during the

1805
02:10:21,439 --> 02:10:25,239
Serian Civil Wars. Nothing to do that now, But I

1806
02:10:25,279 --> 02:10:31,560
would think that any newsman or lady would, you know,

1807
02:10:31,680 --> 02:10:35,199
kind of like invoke the seventy three war as the

1808
02:10:35,279 --> 02:10:39,520
direct precedent to conteptualize what's happening, you know, and they're

1809
02:10:39,560 --> 02:10:43,800
not doing that at all. So that's just something that

1810
02:10:43,960 --> 02:10:45,920
sort of jumped out of me. But like moving on

1811
02:10:46,039 --> 02:10:50,239
to you know, the topic of the day. You know,

1812
02:10:50,319 --> 02:10:53,239
once again, I as I indicated, I don't want to

1813
02:10:53,279 --> 02:10:56,960
sound like some crazy old person, but if I'm repeating myself,

1814
02:10:57,039 --> 02:10:59,199
let me know, because I do forget sometimes where we

1815
02:10:59,319 --> 02:11:02,000
left off, and I try to refresh my recollection from

1816
02:11:02,000 --> 02:11:03,960
the last episode, but it always I don't always have

1817
02:11:04,000 --> 02:11:06,520
time to like totally go through it. So I'm not

1818
02:11:06,520 --> 02:11:08,960
gonna be offended if if you stop me and say,

1819
02:11:08,960 --> 02:11:12,119
like we're already covered that. But I think where we ended,

1820
02:11:13,039 --> 02:11:18,119
we were talking about, you know, the Russian Federation in Syria,

1821
02:11:18,279 --> 02:11:21,720
and how one of the major, one of the major

1822
02:11:21,760 --> 02:11:27,239
foreign policy moves, even even in the Yeltsin era, was

1823
02:11:27,239 --> 02:11:31,880
to absolutely you know, guarantee that you know, the Soviet

1824
02:11:32,319 --> 02:11:35,840
Mediterranean Fleet could still base in Syria, and the Syrians

1825
02:11:35,840 --> 02:11:40,079
were still obviously very much amenable to that. But you know,

1826
02:11:40,159 --> 02:11:45,199
despite even even Jelson's either you know, apathy or gross

1827
02:11:45,199 --> 02:11:49,880
in confidence or combination of both on parapelitical matters. You know,

1828
02:11:49,920 --> 02:11:51,920
it wasn't just him obviously either. It was you know,

1829
02:11:52,000 --> 02:11:55,199
the the the equivalent of the General Staff and the

1830
02:11:55,279 --> 02:11:59,399
enforced the Russian Federation and and in the Foreign Ministry

1831
02:11:59,399 --> 02:12:02,439
and other things. But they even when they were not

1832
02:12:02,560 --> 02:12:05,600
at all in a position to you know, be pursuing

1833
02:12:05,680 --> 02:12:13,520
a true kind of world velt politique strategy, you know,

1834
02:12:13,560 --> 02:12:17,760
they made sure they locked in a continuation of of

1835
02:12:17,800 --> 02:12:24,319
good offices with Syria. You know, and this is the

1836
02:12:24,399 --> 02:12:28,239
nineteen seventy one Naval Treaty that was signed with Halfes

1837
02:12:28,279 --> 02:12:35,119
al Asad. It granted the Soviet Union. He basically understriged

1838
02:12:35,119 --> 02:12:37,760
the access to the naval basic artists that it had

1839
02:12:37,760 --> 02:12:43,760
built and they continue to this day, you know. And

1840
02:12:44,960 --> 02:12:47,600
if the treaty runs for twenty years and there's automatic

1841
02:12:47,640 --> 02:12:51,479
five year extensions and it's one of the parties oppsiturnity agreement,

1842
02:12:52,199 --> 02:12:54,439
but it but it's it's a rubber stamp sort of thing,

1843
02:12:55,239 --> 02:12:58,640
you know. And the the Syrian state, Hauf as Asad,

1844
02:12:58,960 --> 02:13:04,600
who passed away in two thousand, he was one of

1845
02:13:04,600 --> 02:13:09,279
the first uh heads of state to recognize the Russian Federation.

1846
02:13:09,800 --> 02:13:11,920
You know, basically immediately as a Soviet Union became the

1847
02:13:11,960 --> 02:13:17,600
Russian Federation, he recognized it and made clear that the

1848
02:13:17,600 --> 02:13:22,600
Syrian government was going to abide any and any military agreements,

1849
02:13:22,600 --> 02:13:28,800
and specifically the the naval treaty regarding tartists. But you know,

1850
02:13:28,880 --> 02:13:31,079
and the UH I can remember got into this or not.

1851
02:13:31,119 --> 02:13:35,000
We were talking about the Continuity War between sixty seven

1852
02:13:35,039 --> 02:13:38,720
and seventy three and how the the Israeli air force,

1853
02:13:38,880 --> 02:13:40,760
you know, they fought this pitch there was this pitched

1854
02:13:40,800 --> 02:13:45,680
air battle you know, between the Israeli Air Force and

1855
02:13:45,680 --> 02:13:50,319
and and Soviet megs. But during the during the the

1856
02:13:50,439 --> 02:13:54,439
Ramedan War, Jogapor War itself, Uh, you know, there's thousands

1857
02:13:54,479 --> 02:13:57,720
of Soviet advisors on the ground as well as you know,

1858
02:13:58,000 --> 02:14:02,760
direct action military elements, you know, technicians, know, a veritable

1859
02:14:02,920 --> 02:14:07,079
battalion and technicians to assist the Syrian Arab army and

1860
02:14:08,359 --> 02:14:13,880
you know, to maintain their equipment and their armored platforms,

1861
02:14:13,920 --> 02:14:19,479
their aircraft, all of that. And at least twenty of

1862
02:14:19,520 --> 02:14:22,920
them died the Russians, So at least twenty kia and

1863
02:14:23,000 --> 02:14:26,039
probably more. I mean, that's just what the Kremline acknowledged.

1864
02:14:26,079 --> 02:14:30,359
But there was a during the war. There was over

1865
02:14:30,479 --> 02:14:35,640
thirty seven hundred tons of aid airlifted to the battlespace

1866
02:14:37,039 --> 02:14:41,800
by the end of October ninety seventy three. By sea,

1867
02:14:41,960 --> 02:14:47,720
the Soviet Union that transported sixty three thousand tons to

1868
02:14:47,840 --> 02:14:52,720
Steea or replaced it's military and infrastructural losses. That's a

1869
02:14:52,760 --> 02:14:56,800
massive commitment in relative and absolute terms. I'm not sure

1870
02:14:56,960 --> 02:15:01,520
people recognize that because you know, America throw his money

1871
02:15:01,560 --> 02:15:07,239
around like water, and it's constantly just like dumping these

1872
02:15:07,279 --> 02:15:10,199
like aid packages and secondary theaters that this was a

1873
02:15:10,199 --> 02:15:16,279
big deal. Okay, I think I got into the fact

1874
02:15:16,279 --> 02:15:20,279
that there was some tension in seventy six seventy seven

1875
02:15:20,600 --> 02:15:25,439
between Damascus and Moscow. The Syrian Arab Army deployed to

1876
02:15:25,560 --> 02:15:30,399
the Lebanese battle space, which put them directly opposite the PLO,

1877
02:15:31,039 --> 02:15:33,199
and you know the PLO the Popular Front and the

1878
02:15:33,239 --> 02:15:38,520
Popular Front Delivery of Palestine. They were very warshaw packed adjacent.

1879
02:15:38,720 --> 02:15:40,680
There's a big concern in the Soviet camp that this

1880
02:15:40,720 --> 02:15:45,399
would upset the kind of delicate balance that was in

1881
02:15:45,479 --> 02:15:49,760
place in the Arab Cold War as it's called. This

1882
02:15:49,920 --> 02:15:55,039
was remedied basically one hundred and ten percent when the

1883
02:15:55,279 --> 02:15:58,520
when the sovietwents were in Afghanistan. Because I can't remember

1884
02:15:58,520 --> 02:16:01,399
if I mentioned this or not, either, I guess aside

1885
02:16:01,560 --> 02:16:05,680
immediately like declared like solidarity with the Soviet Union in

1886
02:16:05,680 --> 02:16:09,359
in the war from in Afghanistan, and obviously I put

1887
02:16:09,399 --> 02:16:12,880
him at odds with basically every other Arab government, you know,

1888
02:16:14,159 --> 02:16:18,840
and that that and that's huge, it's and it's always

1889
02:16:18,840 --> 02:16:22,560
it's significant too. I mean, because the there's obvious and

1890
02:16:22,640 --> 02:16:27,439
inherent tensions between the Soviet between there were between the

1891
02:16:27,439 --> 02:16:29,039
Soviet Union and I ran and there out a day

1892
02:16:29,039 --> 02:16:31,600
between the Russian Federation and Iran. Some of these a

1893
02:16:31,640 --> 02:16:36,799
sectarian and religious theological. Some of these are ethnic. You know,

1894
02:16:36,840 --> 02:16:40,360
I that the persons in the Russians aren't aren't particularly cozy.

1895
02:16:40,959 --> 02:16:44,840
But there's there's a very large Azeri minority in Iran,

1896
02:16:45,120 --> 02:16:50,840
you know, Amadina Jods and ethnic Asiari. There's there, there's

1897
02:16:50,879 --> 02:16:54,680
there's some bad blood there, you know, aside from the

1898
02:16:54,760 --> 02:16:58,600
intrinsic value with Syria in absolute geo strategic terms to

1899
02:16:58,639 --> 02:17:02,159
the Russian Federation, it's it's also very much like a

1900
02:17:02,239 --> 02:17:07,079
con it represents kind of like it facilitates concord between

1901
02:17:07,120 --> 02:17:11,440
the Russians and in Tehran in a real way. You

1902
02:17:11,479 --> 02:17:26,879
know the UH I'm sorry one second, oh, and it's

1903
02:17:26,920 --> 02:17:30,000
in UH in April of seventy seven, like it has

1904
02:17:30,040 --> 02:17:36,879
this kind of Lebanon situation was developing as he had.

1905
02:17:37,000 --> 02:17:39,719
He traveled the Moscow and there's some interesting sort of

1906
02:17:39,959 --> 02:17:44,760
like cool footage that the Russians shot, and there's there's

1907
02:17:44,799 --> 02:17:48,760
also some there's also some British UH media guy in

1908
02:17:48,799 --> 02:17:52,719
the ground. The British were very well, very well indexed

1909
02:17:52,959 --> 02:17:55,520
with the Soviet Union and in terms of media for

1910
02:17:55,520 --> 02:17:58,360
whatever reason. So a lot of this, but there's this

1911
02:17:58,360 --> 02:18:03,360
this footage of Hafesisa arriving in Moscow and receiving you know,

1912
02:18:03,440 --> 02:18:08,319
like great honors. You know, it's really it's really interesting,

1913
02:18:08,360 --> 02:18:13,440
and especially for a small country. You know, it's Syria

1914
02:18:13,479 --> 02:18:21,440
has a very outsized relevance for this reason. But it's

1915
02:18:21,559 --> 02:18:26,079
uh he he got a side gottage an audience with Bresnan,

1916
02:18:27,000 --> 02:18:35,000
but uh with Alexei Pasigan, who uh was uh he.

1917
02:18:35,159 --> 02:18:36,319
The way to think of him is he he was

1918
02:18:36,399 --> 02:18:39,239
kind of in the role that Lavrov is today. You know,

1919
02:18:39,239 --> 02:18:44,200
it's an imperfect analogy, but for foreign policy purposes and

1920
02:18:44,280 --> 02:18:47,280
Warren peace terms, especially like if he's a via the

1921
02:18:47,280 --> 02:18:52,680
Arab world, it tracks and you know it's not that's

1922
02:18:52,680 --> 02:18:56,079
that's no small thing and it's not you know, that's

1923
02:18:56,079 --> 02:18:58,360
why when people when people talk about the assad family

1924
02:18:58,440 --> 02:19:01,959
like they're they're like you know, like like they're like

1925
02:19:02,000 --> 02:19:05,040
Saddam and his clan, they're there not at all. You know,

1926
02:19:05,040 --> 02:19:09,799
they're they're facade was anything but just some like tinpot dictator.

1927
02:19:10,719 --> 02:19:15,159
You know, I mean I I I think they're I

1928
02:19:15,159 --> 02:19:18,600
think the Syrians are a noble people generally and I

1929
02:19:18,680 --> 02:19:21,760
find the ASSAD is particularly impressive, but that that's not

1930
02:19:22,760 --> 02:19:26,600
that's not just that, that's not just cap I mean

1931
02:19:26,600 --> 02:19:32,159
a conceptual bias or something. You know. Fesisade visited at

1932
02:19:32,200 --> 02:19:38,200
Moscow again in early spring eighty seven April nineteen eighty seven,

1933
02:19:39,280 --> 02:19:44,600
and he traveled there with the then serving Defense minister

1934
02:19:45,559 --> 02:19:54,040
Mustafa class and he has to require the this advanced

1935
02:19:54,600 --> 02:19:59,959
service to air missile system it UH and Gorbachev denied it,

1936
02:20:00,520 --> 02:20:04,920
which is really interesting. And this was during a time

1937
02:20:04,959 --> 02:20:09,280
when it's a critical period when when when avionics were

1938
02:20:09,280 --> 02:20:16,879
becoming hyper advanced. You know, obviously the stealth but like

1939
02:20:16,920 --> 02:20:20,440
the beef stealth bomber. It was a very different kind

1940
02:20:20,440 --> 02:20:24,559
of plaid for him than those that the these missile

1941
02:20:24,559 --> 02:20:28,319
systems that the Syrians wanted to acquire were tailored the

1942
02:20:29,280 --> 02:20:32,959
as a counter measure for But that that entire sort

1943
02:20:32,959 --> 02:20:38,040
of like skunk Works series of projects that was the

1944
02:20:38,040 --> 02:20:41,159
emergent from this, that this kind of culture of high

1945
02:20:41,200 --> 02:20:45,879
tech adeonics. Okay, so you know the Syrians were asking

1946
02:20:46,280 --> 02:20:49,840
were requesting this for a reason, you know, they they

1947
02:20:49,920 --> 02:20:59,120
need they desperately needed countermeasures because Israel, uh Israel and

1948
02:20:59,120 --> 02:21:02,040
in Western Germanian the Cold War they were getting America's

1949
02:21:02,040 --> 02:21:03,959
best equipment. I mean the Germans and their own right,

1950
02:21:04,000 --> 02:21:06,760
I think the I think the Leopard tank is the best,

1951
02:21:07,000 --> 02:21:11,319
like modern bail tank, like hands down, but the but

1952
02:21:12,799 --> 02:21:16,280
they the West Germans and Israel I mean in the

1953
02:21:16,399 --> 02:21:17,959
in the in the former case that you know what,

1954
02:21:18,159 --> 02:21:21,719
obviously cold residencies, the latter was ideological and the ladder

1955
02:21:21,719 --> 02:21:23,360
obviously still this is the case in terms of what

1956
02:21:23,399 --> 02:21:26,719
they received. But they weren't getting like, they weren't getting

1957
02:21:27,360 --> 02:21:31,200
like knockoff versions of of American aircraft. They were getting

1958
02:21:31,200 --> 02:21:36,680
the real thing, you know. And this obviously decides to

1959
02:21:36,760 --> 02:21:40,680
give the Syrians pause because even before even before UH,

1960
02:21:41,120 --> 02:21:46,239
stealth technology became the norm, you know, long before it

1961
02:21:47,559 --> 02:21:51,879
advanced avionics were making it increasingly difficult really to but

1962
02:21:52,040 --> 02:21:54,600
he developed any counter, any counter versions at all, and

1963
02:21:56,000 --> 02:21:59,200
the Soviets UH. One of the things the worstaw packed

1964
02:21:59,360 --> 02:22:05,239
did very very well was aircraft countermagers. Okay, particularly service

1965
02:22:05,280 --> 02:22:07,840
the air missiles, like you know, the old the old

1966
02:22:07,879 --> 02:22:10,159
book and film Flag of the Intruder. It's it's a

1967
02:22:10,239 --> 02:22:12,959
dumb movie, but it's a pretty good book. If you're

1968
02:22:13,280 --> 02:22:13,959
in the air where.

1969
02:22:13,799 --> 02:22:16,280
Speaker 1: I read, I read the book and saw the movie. Yeah,

1970
02:22:16,319 --> 02:22:17,239
the book is a lot better.

1971
02:22:17,719 --> 02:22:21,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's and Stephen koons Is is kind of

1972
02:22:21,000 --> 02:22:23,959
a he's kind of a strange guy, but he he

1973
02:22:24,040 --> 02:22:31,239
flew ay sixes over Vietnam and the part where the

1974
02:22:31,239 --> 02:22:34,760
the the kind of the kind of John Wayne type

1975
02:22:34,879 --> 02:22:38,799
aviator Jake Rafton, you know, his new his new uh

1976
02:22:39,319 --> 02:22:42,280
radar intercept of officer, his new ra O is is

1977
02:22:42,319 --> 02:22:47,040
this kind of like wild guy. But even he, like

1978
02:22:48,319 --> 02:22:51,440
fu sorties were downtown Hanoi is like a terrifying prospect

1979
02:22:51,520 --> 02:22:54,399
for American aviators because other other than Moscow, like it

1980
02:22:54,440 --> 02:22:56,680
was like the most hardened like target on this planet.

1981
02:22:57,200 --> 02:23:00,520
Like that. That's not that wasn't creative license. That was

1982
02:23:00,520 --> 02:23:03,719
including the book or something. And that owed the fact that,

1983
02:23:03,760 --> 02:23:05,680
I mean the Soviets built it up to make it

1984
02:23:05,680 --> 02:23:09,879
that way. You know, it wasn't it obviously there was

1985
02:23:09,920 --> 02:23:12,680
you know, they the Vietnamese are and industrious people, but

1986
02:23:12,799 --> 02:23:16,319
they they had nothing approaching that kind of technology. And

1987
02:23:17,520 --> 02:23:21,079
you know, they the Soviets knew that. I mean that

1988
02:23:21,159 --> 02:23:25,799
was before the sound of Soviets split. But you know,

1989
02:23:25,840 --> 02:23:29,159
the like like the Chinese had nothing remotely honorable, you know,

1990
02:23:29,239 --> 02:23:33,520
like the the chadac On equivalent was junk. But in

1991
02:23:33,600 --> 02:23:36,879
any event, so this was, uh, that was kind of

1992
02:23:38,319 --> 02:23:41,440
a turning point obviously in eighty seven when Garbasheff refused

1993
02:23:41,520 --> 02:23:48,000
basically the kind of honor the good offices that had

1994
02:23:48,040 --> 02:23:50,639
been sustained with serious really since day one, at least,

1995
02:23:50,799 --> 02:23:54,319
you know, in as regards military necessities and exigencies. But

1996
02:23:55,079 --> 02:23:59,959
you know, that was the what what garbage off was

1997
02:24:00,120 --> 02:24:03,879
attempting to accomplish. I was writing something about this the

1998
02:24:03,920 --> 02:24:07,319
other day, but that's kind of a subject for another episode.

1999
02:24:07,319 --> 02:24:08,959
I know, if if we go off on that tangent

2000
02:24:09,079 --> 02:24:13,399
like we'll be here all night. But it is uh

2001
02:24:13,959 --> 02:24:16,440
that that that was definitely like a novelist though, you know,

2002
02:24:16,520 --> 02:24:21,079
like I said, it even even even under Yel since tenure,

2003
02:24:21,200 --> 02:24:25,399
the you know, the Moscow never made any indication that

2004
02:24:25,840 --> 02:24:31,479
they did any intention of abandoning Syria. But moving forward,

2005
02:24:31,600 --> 02:24:35,079
what's I mean obviously it was most relevant to the

2006
02:24:35,120 --> 02:24:38,040
president is you know, the Serian Civil War, you know,

2007
02:24:38,079 --> 02:24:43,959
and I it's it's hard to diminate really what's what

2008
02:24:44,000 --> 02:24:47,920
people are thinking in Washington because you don't have a

2009
02:24:47,959 --> 02:24:50,959
serious foreign policy establishment, and you haven't since you know,

2010
02:24:51,040 --> 02:24:55,280
nineteen ninety two. But when Obama's people, when they were

2011
02:24:55,360 --> 02:25:00,079
saying that Damascus is imminiately going to fall, that that

2012
02:25:00,079 --> 02:25:05,040
that was that was in fact accurate at the outset

2013
02:25:05,079 --> 02:25:08,559
of the intervention, the Russian intervention, and there's another case

2014
02:25:08,559 --> 02:25:11,079
of pot putin waited far too long intervene. I mean

2015
02:25:11,079 --> 02:25:14,760
it it's a credit to the Syrian people, you know,

2016
02:25:14,760 --> 02:25:17,520
those loyal to Asad and the Hezebla and those Russian

2017
02:25:18,840 --> 02:25:24,600
forces were deployed. That they won, but it was becoming critical.

2018
02:25:25,000 --> 02:25:30,200
You know, the the Syrian government they officially only controlled

2019
02:25:30,239 --> 02:25:33,840
about a quarter of the country. You know, the statistics

2020
02:25:33,799 --> 02:25:36,799
separated is like twenty six percent of overall like territory.

2021
02:25:37,200 --> 02:25:39,440
And how how much that territory you can deploy in

2022
02:25:39,520 --> 02:25:43,879
depth or defend it. I mean they had they they

2023
02:25:43,920 --> 02:25:47,440
had the built up areas buying large but you know

2024
02:25:47,479 --> 02:25:49,920
they were they were essentially there was this there was

2025
02:25:49,920 --> 02:25:54,040
this garrison. Demaskus was like becoming a frontline city, you know.

2026
02:25:54,120 --> 02:25:59,159
And assad Uh Asad sends his wife away, and he

2027
02:25:59,280 --> 02:26:06,159
sent his Asad away, and you know he I developed

2028
02:26:06,200 --> 02:26:11,600
huge respect for Bashar the son because he said, I'm

2029
02:26:11,600 --> 02:26:13,559
not leaving Damascus if I have to well die here

2030
02:26:13,879 --> 02:26:16,239
and that's you know, I'm like, Okay, this guy's a

2031
02:26:16,319 --> 02:26:18,239
real man, and he's a real president. You know, he's

2032
02:26:18,319 --> 02:26:22,440
he's a real leader of he's a real worldlord now,

2033
02:26:22,719 --> 02:26:24,600
you know, because that's the way it has to be.

2034
02:26:25,920 --> 02:26:30,799
But you know, when the Russians did arrive, you know,

2035
02:26:30,799 --> 02:26:34,440
they rapidly integrated with you know, a lot of the

2036
02:26:34,440 --> 02:26:39,600
Syrian Arab Army defected. You know, I think a lot

2037
02:26:39,639 --> 02:26:44,200
of that the degree to which that Sunny Bath elements

2038
02:26:44,319 --> 02:26:47,319
and the Iraqi Bath and the Syrian Bath Party are

2039
02:26:47,399 --> 02:26:51,719
very different animals, but there is like a common ideological

2040
02:26:51,840 --> 02:26:55,799
core and there's and there's a common sociological rationale to

2041
02:26:55,840 --> 02:26:59,159
like the men who were in our heavily index with

2042
02:26:59,159 --> 02:27:04,680
the party, and you know, a bunch of Saddams officers

2043
02:27:06,600 --> 02:27:08,840
who were you know, part of the Sunni minority in Iraq,

2044
02:27:09,120 --> 02:27:11,920
like they clipped they clipped up with ices basically immediately,

2045
02:27:12,040 --> 02:27:13,319
not all of them, but a lot of them did.

2046
02:27:13,600 --> 02:27:16,520
And they were accepted by these guys, which is really interesting.

2047
02:27:17,319 --> 02:27:21,280
And some of the same thing happened in Syria, you know.

2048
02:27:21,799 --> 02:27:28,920
And the uh, the Syrian Bath Party even like at

2049
02:27:28,959 --> 02:27:33,920
the top, is more ecumenical than they're credited but it

2050
02:27:34,000 --> 02:27:35,959
still is. I mean, it's it's basically, you know, like

2051
02:27:36,000 --> 02:27:43,159
an an Alley white like minority rule situation. But and

2052
02:27:43,200 --> 02:27:47,959
it's it's interesting. And in May twenty ten, like before

2053
02:27:48,040 --> 02:27:53,559
the formal on set of hostilities, Medvedev had visited Syria

2054
02:27:54,239 --> 02:28:01,440
and that mid Medviedev's like brief ten, you're as the

2055
02:28:01,479 --> 02:28:06,200
president is interesting, man, and it's interesting how we became.

2056
02:28:06,319 --> 02:28:10,000
It was like out bad with Putin subsequently. But it's

2057
02:28:10,000 --> 02:28:19,399
pretty obvious that NATO Israel and I'm sure their proxies

2058
02:28:19,879 --> 02:28:23,760
in these isis types as well, because those guys weren't stupid.

2059
02:28:24,760 --> 02:28:28,280
They realize, you know, look, the time to move, you know,

2060
02:28:28,319 --> 02:28:31,159
the time to truly escalate is when the Russians are

2061
02:28:31,239 --> 02:28:34,120
are having some kind of crisis of leadership, you know,

2062
02:28:35,280 --> 02:28:37,239
or if not not, if not so much a crisis

2063
02:28:37,280 --> 02:28:39,719
and a literal like you know, war in the Kremlin,

2064
02:28:39,799 --> 02:28:42,479
like happened after a drop off died. You know, you

2065
02:28:44,680 --> 02:28:49,440
when the civilian executive is kind of headless, that that

2066
02:28:49,559 --> 02:28:54,360
causes problems. You know, it causes problems in terms of

2067
02:28:54,399 --> 02:28:57,239
like grand schemes, peated decision making, it all the way

2068
02:28:57,239 --> 02:28:59,959
down to the operational level. That's That's when I really

2069
02:29:00,079 --> 02:29:05,360
when Yahoo was secure. Unfortunately, because even people who despise them,

2070
02:29:05,600 --> 02:29:10,120
you know, they're playing musical chairs with with the civilian executive.

2071
02:29:10,200 --> 02:29:13,040
Is not what you want to do at war. But

2072
02:29:14,120 --> 02:29:21,559
because it may. When the Russians did deploy, they immediately integrated,

2073
02:29:21,719 --> 02:29:23,520
you know, with Heslo and the Serenira of army and

2074
02:29:23,559 --> 02:29:26,879
comand control capacities, you know, like like deeply and this

2075
02:29:28,600 --> 02:29:31,239
how this you know, there were the Russians no like

2076
02:29:31,319 --> 02:29:34,360
wartime diplomacy, man, I mean that during the Cold War,

2077
02:29:35,360 --> 02:29:38,600
I'd say the key ways I mean NATO had them

2078
02:29:38,600 --> 02:29:43,239
beat in all kinds of capacities like material, political and otherwise.

2079
02:29:43,319 --> 02:29:45,840
But you know what the Russians head was. I mean

2080
02:29:45,840 --> 02:29:49,719
they had firepower, obviously, they had a very tough and

2081
02:29:49,799 --> 02:29:54,639
game population in the Russian people, but they were very

2082
02:29:54,719 --> 02:29:57,520
they weren't aren't very adept at like war and peace

2083
02:29:57,600 --> 02:30:03,239
politics and that uh that that that's how they were

2084
02:30:03,239 --> 02:30:06,520
able to accomplish that, you know because like I I

2085
02:30:06,520 --> 02:30:11,600
mean obviously especially considering the the tactical situation on the

2086
02:30:11,600 --> 02:30:14,559
ground in Syria. I mean, Habla wasn't about to say,

2087
02:30:14,639 --> 02:30:18,479
like we won't index with the Russian. The Russian federation.

2088
02:30:18,920 --> 02:30:22,280
But there's always tensions in trying to integrate a command

2089
02:30:22,280 --> 02:30:27,520
and control structure, you know. And this was accomplished seamlessly essentially.

2090
02:30:29,479 --> 02:30:33,479
But the well, you know, the Russians, they the Russians

2091
02:30:33,479 --> 02:30:37,680
brought in like real firepower to bear. You know. The

2092
02:30:37,760 --> 02:30:41,440
Russians can't do high tech like America can. But the

2093
02:30:41,600 --> 02:30:44,159
war tech as during the Cold War is now was

2094
02:30:44,239 --> 02:30:49,319
good enough. And the Syrian intervention and the way they

2095
02:30:50,280 --> 02:30:53,559
you know, they they pursued it truly scorched earth policy

2096
02:30:54,000 --> 02:30:56,360
in the on the in the battle space, like against

2097
02:30:56,399 --> 02:31:00,399
their against the up for and it paid off, you know,

2098
02:31:00,840 --> 02:31:04,920
the and and Putin declared in knowing certain terms that

2099
02:31:05,920 --> 02:31:08,920
you know, the the like the Asad government is not

2100
02:31:08,959 --> 02:31:12,079
going to be allowed to fall. There is some momentum

2101
02:31:12,120 --> 02:31:18,559
behind Syria two in the quart of world opinion. It's

2102
02:31:18,600 --> 02:31:22,719
like we talked about, I'm not successful to propaganda, and

2103
02:31:22,760 --> 02:31:26,120
I mean I I'm not some young naive person. I

2104
02:31:26,159 --> 02:31:29,760
was legitimately horrified by those scenes from you know, like

2105
02:31:29,799 --> 02:31:32,680
the subbers of a Lepo over these these Isis barbarians.

2106
02:31:33,600 --> 02:31:38,600
You know, we're beheading people and putting heads on steaks.

2107
02:31:39,760 --> 02:31:41,479
You know, like I said, I saw the video of them,

2108
02:31:41,760 --> 02:31:44,479
you know, they were doing their afternoon prayers and their

2109
02:31:44,520 --> 02:31:47,559
prayer mats and uh, there's like a forest of hits.

2110
02:31:48,079 --> 02:31:51,680
You know, it's it's like a horror movie. But you

2111
02:31:51,719 --> 02:31:56,639
know people were seeing that kind of thing. And I

2112
02:31:56,680 --> 02:32:00,399
remember a Bath Party spokeswoman in knowing certain terms, telling

2113
02:32:00,440 --> 02:32:04,920
some European media type like, look, we're not we do

2114
02:32:05,000 --> 02:32:07,920
not negotiate with people who we will not negotiate with.

2115
02:32:07,959 --> 02:32:10,040
We're not going to change our government because terrorists are

2116
02:32:10,239 --> 02:32:13,959
are bombing us and killing people and beheading people. Like

2117
02:32:13,959 --> 02:32:17,879
what that's you can't ever allow that, you know this

2118
02:32:17,959 --> 02:32:21,040
is and you know this was also too when the

2119
02:32:21,079 --> 02:32:25,079
War on Terror was still on. It's like, so you

2120
02:32:25,159 --> 02:32:27,879
America is telling us and telling the world like, you know,

2121
02:32:27,920 --> 02:32:30,639
we're waging the war on terror, yet you're you're trying

2122
02:32:30,639 --> 02:32:36,040
to bring down a secularist eye doctor who it's got

2123
02:32:36,120 --> 02:32:38,159
like a pretty wife who looks kind of like any

2124
02:32:38,200 --> 02:32:41,040
white woman in the United States, and you're saying that

2125
02:32:41,120 --> 02:32:43,559
like isis are the good guys? Like that's that's really

2126
02:32:43,600 --> 02:32:46,879
when America lost all credibility, you know, like even more so,

2127
02:32:47,000 --> 02:32:50,360
I think than the Iraq fiasco, because that was just

2128
02:32:50,360 --> 02:32:52,879
like laid there. You know, it's like we will burn

2129
02:32:53,000 --> 02:32:57,959
down civilization and hand it to barbarians. You know that

2130
02:32:58,079 --> 02:33:00,760
basically a cow is what we want, and that's the

2131
02:33:00,799 --> 02:33:05,239
opposite of civilization, you know, the same nothing of the

2132
02:33:05,280 --> 02:33:10,120
fact that that's I mean nine eleven should never happen,

2133
02:33:10,799 --> 02:33:14,360
but it did happen, and it's like okay, so okay,

2134
02:33:14,399 --> 02:33:18,879
decades on, you know, a mere decade subsequent like now, now,

2135
02:33:19,040 --> 02:33:20,719
now you're willing to like accept that as you know,

2136
02:33:20,799 --> 02:33:23,360
just kind of like the verbial costs of going business.

2137
02:33:23,520 --> 02:33:30,200
It's like, that's that's unconstable. It scoresesque, but you know,

2138
02:33:30,200 --> 02:33:34,120
and then Putin clarified in twenty fifteen. It's really interesting

2139
02:33:34,159 --> 02:33:38,799
too because when speaking of the Medvita situation for three

2140
02:33:38,920 --> 02:33:44,959
four years, when when Putin, you know, he's kind of

2141
02:33:45,000 --> 02:33:49,600
like second uh permanent tenure as President of Russian Federation,

2142
02:33:50,959 --> 02:33:53,159
there's this kind of window where we're speaking very candle

2143
02:33:53,280 --> 02:33:56,079
I think I think Putin quotes himself pretty well generally,

2144
02:33:56,600 --> 02:33:59,360
but he plays up post of the chest and issues

2145
02:33:59,360 --> 02:34:02,799
he's like non answers that policy questions. There's like this

2146
02:34:02,920 --> 02:34:05,200
brief period of a few years where he was he

2147
02:34:05,239 --> 02:34:06,920
was kind of trying to like humanize his image. I

2148
02:34:07,000 --> 02:34:10,559
think I remember in October twenty fifteen. Yeah, it was

2149
02:34:10,559 --> 02:34:13,520
like it was like October November twenty fifteen. He gives

2150
02:34:13,600 --> 02:34:16,079
us an interview and he's like, look, he's like this,

2151
02:34:16,639 --> 02:34:19,600
He's like, you know, our the Syrian intervention was prepared

2152
02:34:19,600 --> 02:34:22,440
well in advance. Despite what made have appeared, we weren't

2153
02:34:22,479 --> 02:34:24,639
just responding to an emergency situation on the ground. We

2154
02:34:24,680 --> 02:34:27,479
knew that America and Israel wanted to bring down the

2155
02:34:27,559 --> 02:34:31,159
bath regime. We consider this unacceptable. We still do. It

2156
02:34:31,239 --> 02:34:33,760
was really interesting things like he'd never think. He just

2157
02:34:33,760 --> 02:34:36,120
doesn't talk that way anymore, you know. And one of

2158
02:34:36,200 --> 02:34:39,440
the things people criticize him for is is this kind

2159
02:34:39,440 --> 02:34:43,000
of like ambiguous language about Ukraine. You know, oh no,

2160
02:34:43,040 --> 02:34:45,639
this this is a special military operation, and you know,

2161
02:34:46,479 --> 02:34:50,159
not not being clear about objectives and things. It's it's

2162
02:34:50,239 --> 02:34:55,120
very different, but I think it's relevant, you know it,

2163
02:34:57,280 --> 02:35:02,879
I know it is. But uh, the uh in Putin's

2164
02:35:03,000 --> 02:35:08,239
terms and uh Russian speakers I'm sure will suggest and

2165
02:35:08,319 --> 02:35:15,040
suggest correctly. This is an imprecise, imprecise translation, but it's

2166
02:35:15,239 --> 02:35:19,680
the most coherent when I found, Like, in the same interview,

2167
02:35:19,680 --> 02:35:24,440
he said quote that that the objective wasn't remains quote

2168
02:35:24,479 --> 02:35:28,399
stabilizing the legitimate power in Syria and creating conditions for

2169
02:35:28,520 --> 02:35:35,120
political compromise. And that's very much a Putinism. Putin's always

2170
02:35:35,120 --> 02:35:40,159
resorting the you know, the rules based international order that

2171
02:35:40,239 --> 02:35:43,319
purportedly exists, and like, I understand why he does that,

2172
02:35:43,440 --> 02:35:46,440
but I think the time has passed for that those

2173
02:35:46,479 --> 02:35:50,959
sorts of appeals, But it's just it's just interesting, the

2174
02:35:51,159 --> 02:35:54,559
uh and if I can't remember, we dropped the brass tax,

2175
02:35:54,760 --> 02:35:58,680
like the like the literal numbers of what this operation

2176
02:35:58,840 --> 02:36:05,040
constituted in Syria. In some ways, especially considering a lot

2177
02:36:05,079 --> 02:36:08,840
of the discussion about the deterioration of Russian capabilities, in

2178
02:36:08,879 --> 02:36:13,079
some ways, this was as much a coup in world

2179
02:36:13,079 --> 02:36:18,239
opinion terms as the UK's effort in the fault Ones,

2180
02:36:19,120 --> 02:36:23,959
you know, because people were, I mean, Washington's always suggesting

2181
02:36:23,959 --> 02:36:30,319
that Russians can't do anything right in military terms, but

2182
02:36:31,280 --> 02:36:34,600
even relatively serious people were prone to talking that way.

2183
02:36:36,399 --> 02:36:40,680
But the Russian Air Force, it carried out over nineteen

2184
02:36:40,760 --> 02:36:46,120
thousand sorties, seventy one thousand direct strikes on what they

2185
02:36:46,159 --> 02:36:51,520
called the quote infrastructure of terrorists. You know, I interpret

2186
02:36:51,520 --> 02:36:55,239
that in like real human language, not military language, as

2187
02:36:54,920 --> 02:37:01,719
a combination of you know, ground support, attack missions, you know,

2188
02:37:01,760 --> 02:37:07,440
as well as uh you know, as well as bonding

2189
02:37:07,440 --> 02:37:14,360
of any positions and things. But i uh, close air

2190
02:37:14,440 --> 02:37:19,959
support and direct support of ground element forces is what

2191
02:37:20,079 --> 02:37:24,239
really carried the day. And again, the Russians they've always

2192
02:37:24,319 --> 02:37:27,799
viewed warfare as as kind of the advance of fire.

2193
02:37:28,559 --> 02:37:30,479
You know, they're very clouds of woodsy and they're like

2194
02:37:30,559 --> 02:37:34,120
literally clouds of wits end in their perspectives. You know.

2195
02:37:34,200 --> 02:37:36,840
That's who train them to fight modern war. You know.

2196
02:37:36,920 --> 02:37:43,000
It was uh clouds with himself and officers and there

2197
02:37:43,520 --> 02:37:46,479
are for the Russian Federation on parade they still you know,

2198
02:37:46,600 --> 02:37:51,000
perform the goose stuff. This you know, not a coincidence

2199
02:37:51,159 --> 02:37:54,479
because they they think it looks really sharp, which it does,

2200
02:37:54,680 --> 02:37:59,959
but it's because that's how they learned drill, you know.

2201
02:38:00,159 --> 02:38:04,639
And this, this, this solidified Russia as a as a

2202
02:38:04,680 --> 02:38:09,120
real military power on the world stage once again, you know.

2203
02:38:09,200 --> 02:38:14,200
And that's why it's there's it's not as like a

2204
02:38:14,799 --> 02:38:18,200
conceptual bias or like a categorical ignorance, when it's both

2205
02:38:18,239 --> 02:38:20,920
those things too. What you know, like the honest of

2206
02:38:20,959 --> 02:38:24,239
facilities in Ukraine. Like however mismanaged that war has been

2207
02:38:24,319 --> 02:38:26,079
and it's kind of like grossing is managed on on

2208
02:38:26,120 --> 02:38:30,120
the Russian side. Okay, But this idea that like Russia

2209
02:38:30,280 --> 02:38:33,760
lacks the capability to deploy its scale, It's like, what

2210
02:38:34,000 --> 02:38:36,360
are you talking about? I mean that that's that's at

2211
02:38:36,360 --> 02:38:42,319
odds of reality, you know. And if you're gonna if

2212
02:38:42,319 --> 02:38:45,120
you're gonna fight the uh, you're gonna fight the arm

2213
02:38:45,159 --> 02:38:48,000
force of the Russian Federation like literally on their own frontier,

2214
02:38:49,719 --> 02:38:52,440
you know, the the direct precedent that cons that bear

2215
02:38:52,559 --> 02:38:56,120
as well what happened in Syria. You know, I not

2216
02:38:56,120 --> 02:38:59,399
not make a mistake. I there is no like military

2217
02:38:59,399 --> 02:39:02,840
objective on you know that that Ukraine is pursuing because

2218
02:39:02,840 --> 02:39:05,879
there's no there's no path in victory in military terms.

2219
02:39:05,879 --> 02:39:10,120
And it's but if you accept that, you know, US, NATO,

2220
02:39:10,479 --> 02:39:13,639
Israel their only interest is you know, and it is

2221
02:39:14,000 --> 02:39:20,280
in creating attrition. You know, it's uh, it makes perfect sense.

2222
02:39:20,319 --> 02:39:24,360
But this idea that these these it's not as these

2223
02:39:24,360 --> 02:39:29,360
fools like blinking either, like as you know, there's this people.

2224
02:39:29,360 --> 02:39:30,920
I don't think there's any serious people in the foreign

2225
02:39:30,920 --> 02:39:34,799
policies stay asman, but even people less kind of you know,

2226
02:39:34,840 --> 02:39:37,280
out of it than he is. You know, they were

2227
02:39:37,319 --> 02:39:40,120
talking like, well, yeah, you know, the the Russian mainline

2228
02:39:40,159 --> 02:39:42,399
resistance is just going to collapse. You know, the moment

2229
02:39:43,479 --> 02:39:46,920
basically we start popping off combined arms and you know

2230
02:39:47,200 --> 02:39:50,000
from a borough communitions or whatever, and and then like

2231
02:39:50,040 --> 02:39:51,959
the you know, the the United Russia is just going

2232
02:39:52,040 --> 02:39:55,600
to collapse. It's like what are you smoking? Crack Like

2233
02:39:55,680 --> 02:40:00,440
that's you know, the one thing, the one thing the

2234
02:40:00,520 --> 02:40:04,319
Russians have going for them again is the fact that

2235
02:40:05,280 --> 02:40:08,079
they can bring firepower to bear. They've got a very

2236
02:40:08,159 --> 02:40:13,760
game population, and I as long as as long as

2237
02:40:13,840 --> 02:40:16,760
Putin is alive and relatively healthy, like United Russia is

2238
02:40:16,760 --> 02:40:20,079
like never been stronger, like they're Their problem is that

2239
02:40:20,399 --> 02:40:24,879
apparently they can't achieve consensus on who on a man

2240
02:40:24,920 --> 02:40:30,079
to take his place. But this idea that butth of

2241
02:40:30,120 --> 02:40:33,760
Russians literally took twenty five million dead. You know, if

2242
02:40:33,760 --> 02:40:37,040
you lose one in seven of your population to the

2243
02:40:37,120 --> 02:40:40,559
Wehrmacht in four years, and not only do you not

2244
02:40:40,680 --> 02:40:47,159
fall apart, you you can reconstitute into a superpower, albeit

2245
02:40:47,200 --> 02:40:51,840
a crippled one, immediately subsequent There's nothing sort of incredible,

2246
02:40:52,479 --> 02:40:55,840
and I think I think it's basically unprecedented, you know,

2247
02:40:55,959 --> 02:41:01,479
like some some sort of comparable scenario or a state

2248
02:41:01,600 --> 02:41:06,840
endoors that level of devastation and is able to you know,

2249
02:41:08,239 --> 02:41:13,040
it's not profit from it to uh, you know, immediately

2250
02:41:13,079 --> 02:41:21,360
reconstitute and project power in a way theretofore unthinkable even

2251
02:41:21,399 --> 02:41:29,079
prior to the onset of hostilities. But you know, the uh,

2252
02:41:29,440 --> 02:41:33,680
that's one of the reasons why I mean the the

2253
02:41:34,040 --> 02:41:36,680
You've got to understand the Ukraine War as as literally

2254
02:41:36,719 --> 02:41:41,239
like another a secondary front, a secondary theater of the

2255
02:41:41,360 --> 02:41:47,079
same conflict as was underway in Syria. And one of

2256
02:41:47,079 --> 02:41:52,000
the things facility Russian facilitated by Russian victory there was

2257
02:41:52,079 --> 02:41:55,399
not just clout in the national stage, but uh, it

2258
02:41:55,479 --> 02:41:59,600
basically guaranteed them access to the Eastern Mediterranean, you know,

2259
02:41:59,680 --> 02:42:02,959
and uh uh from there you can stage you can

2260
02:42:03,000 --> 02:42:09,959
stage comment operations like fear wide basically, you know, including

2261
02:42:09,959 --> 02:42:13,000
in places like Libya that for reasons, some of which

2262
02:42:13,000 --> 02:42:18,440
are within the bound rationality of ah, you know, NATO

2263
02:42:18,520 --> 02:42:21,879
decision making, and for some reasons they have it Libya

2264
02:42:21,959 --> 02:42:26,000
that makes sense. There's some that don't. But like point being,

2265
02:42:26,879 --> 02:42:29,959
Russia absolutely can deploy their in depth if they're not

2266
02:42:30,040 --> 02:42:33,319
tied down in their own frontier viause of Ukraine, and

2267
02:42:33,360 --> 02:42:36,079
that's really the key to understanding what is underway there

2268
02:42:37,280 --> 02:42:41,079
in in in in like hard material terms, I mean.

2269
02:42:42,120 --> 02:42:56,120
But the Aside himself apparently on the h on the

2270
02:42:56,159 --> 02:43:01,959
eve of Russian intervention, he I assume this came from

2271
02:43:02,040 --> 02:43:05,879
his general staff, and I the Seriennery of Army. I know,

2272
02:43:05,959 --> 02:43:09,719
people claim that they're shit, like the Egyptian Army or something.

2273
02:43:09,760 --> 02:43:11,799
I don't accept that. I don't accept that because of

2274
02:43:11,799 --> 02:43:14,559
the nineteen seventy three war. And like I said, the

2275
02:43:14,600 --> 02:43:17,360
issue with the Syriennery of Army, it wasn't that like

2276
02:43:17,440 --> 02:43:21,360
they were getting mauled in the field. It's that basically

2277
02:43:21,440 --> 02:43:24,920
like this soon he said, like we're not gonna fight

2278
02:43:25,000 --> 02:43:34,399
this war, you know. But Asad again I'm certain through

2279
02:43:34,479 --> 02:43:38,319
like his general staff or its equivalent, they issued this

2280
02:43:39,040 --> 02:43:42,719
series of reports to Moscow saying like this is the

2281
02:43:42,920 --> 02:43:46,760
this is the tactical situation, this is what we absolutely need,

2282
02:43:47,319 --> 02:43:49,799
this is what needs to be brought to bear. You know,

2283
02:43:49,959 --> 02:43:53,079
they basically like identified and characterized up for and like

2284
02:43:53,159 --> 02:43:57,319
how it was hurting them, and in a very concise

2285
02:43:57,360 --> 02:44:01,280
and clearheaded way said like this is why we're going

2286
02:44:01,319 --> 02:44:04,879
to lose this war unless you're able to deploy and

2287
02:44:04,879 --> 02:44:08,840
guarantee A, B and C, you know, and that that

2288
02:44:08,959 --> 02:44:12,440
events is like a remarkable level of trust because like

2289
02:44:12,479 --> 02:44:16,200
among other things, if you invite a great power and

2290
02:44:16,239 --> 02:44:18,760
in very reduced terms, Russia still is a great power

2291
02:44:18,760 --> 02:44:22,159
in relative terms, although like nothing you know, like a superpower.

2292
02:44:22,680 --> 02:44:24,719
You know, you invite the Russians to deploy in depth

2293
02:44:24,760 --> 02:44:28,840
and in hand your command control mechanism over to them,

2294
02:44:28,879 --> 02:44:31,000
they may will just decide that like now serious part

2295
02:44:31,000 --> 02:44:33,360
of Russia for all practical purposes like that that's not

2296
02:44:33,399 --> 02:44:35,479
just cap like when people like you know who's going

2297
02:44:35,520 --> 02:44:39,040
to attack one, Like it's it's no small measure inviting

2298
02:44:39,159 --> 02:44:41,760
like five or eight thousand like armed Russians and their

2299
02:44:41,799 --> 02:44:45,360
common aircraft and guys in their general staff like into

2300
02:44:45,360 --> 02:44:47,600
your country and saying like okay, fellas, like you know,

2301
02:44:47,639 --> 02:44:53,440
do do you do best? Then implement like death at

2302
02:44:53,479 --> 02:44:55,600
scale among like those people, but then like kind of

2303
02:44:55,600 --> 02:44:59,239
politely bow out when it's done. I mean, it's it's

2304
02:44:59,280 --> 02:45:03,000
a rare case, like real kind of like respect and

2305
02:45:03,040 --> 02:45:09,360
reciprocity at like cultural level as well as practical levels

2306
02:45:10,319 --> 02:45:13,840
but yeah, and that's why, uh you know, like I said,

2307
02:45:13,840 --> 02:45:18,959
if I could, if I can meet the when I

2308
02:45:19,040 --> 02:45:20,639
go I head to state, like I found a little

2309
02:45:20,639 --> 02:45:25,280
interesting as Bashar al Assade, like you know, he's uh,

2310
02:45:26,280 --> 02:45:28,959
he's a fascinating dude, and I find it highly relatable.

2311
02:45:34,879 --> 02:45:41,959
But yeah, the I think that's uh, yeah, I was

2312
02:45:42,000 --> 02:45:46,920
gonna get at some point. And we covered some of

2313
02:45:47,000 --> 02:45:49,959
this in earlier, I mean in like a different series.

2314
02:45:50,040 --> 02:45:55,959
I mean we were talking about, you know, the the

2315
02:45:56,120 --> 02:45:59,159
Jackson Vanic Amendment and what prompted it, which wasn't a

2316
02:45:59,239 --> 02:46:04,280
large measure, you know, the the public bro and the

2317
02:46:04,319 --> 02:46:08,280
Supreme Soviet moving moving to literally like outlaws of Zionism,

2318
02:46:08,520 --> 02:46:12,559
like it became it became a political crime against the

2319
02:46:12,639 --> 02:46:15,719
state to you know, like advocate for Zionism, you know,

2320
02:46:15,799 --> 02:46:19,879
and there's a party official in in April eighty three,

2321
02:46:22,399 --> 02:46:28,040
they're like this full page this full page ad titled

2322
02:46:28,559 --> 02:46:35,399
quote from the Soviet leadership laying out the case against

2323
02:46:35,639 --> 02:46:40,479
Zionism as as as viewed from Moscow, which is fascinating,

2324
02:46:41,399 --> 02:46:46,559
you know, and this and then subsequently, you know, that's

2325
02:46:46,719 --> 02:46:49,639
when you started hearing in media this narrative like like

2326
02:46:49,680 --> 02:46:52,879
a Soviet Jews the right risk of annihilation. You know,

2327
02:46:52,920 --> 02:46:55,719
the Soviet Union is this you know, anti Semitic country.

2328
02:46:56,120 --> 02:46:58,399
I mean they've been at war for decades already, but

2329
02:46:58,680 --> 02:47:05,280
it's it. Uh, it took on like an over the

2330
02:47:05,959 --> 02:47:13,879
you know, an above board like character, you know, and this, uh,

2331
02:47:14,200 --> 02:47:17,239
the the you know, the purported plate of Soviet jewelry.

2332
02:47:17,399 --> 02:47:21,200
It it was something that was endlessly bandied about by

2333
02:47:22,440 --> 02:47:26,559
not just NGOs and sympathetic media people, by the Reagan

2334
02:47:26,559 --> 02:47:31,319
administration like it's really it's really wild. And you know,

2335
02:47:31,360 --> 02:47:34,200
speaking of cold war movies or cold war theme movies,

2336
02:47:35,040 --> 02:47:39,600
then we Firefox is a really good movie. This if

2337
02:47:39,639 --> 02:47:41,399
you can, I mean you've got to look like the propaganda.

2338
02:47:41,440 --> 02:47:42,760
But I when I was like a little kid, my

2339
02:47:42,840 --> 02:47:44,239
mom and dad, I want to see it with them,

2340
02:47:44,280 --> 02:47:47,280
and it like blew my mind. But uh, you know,

2341
02:47:47,479 --> 02:47:50,520
one of the subtexts of it is that you know

2342
02:47:50,600 --> 02:47:54,479
that Clint Eastwood is like the Russo American like non

2343
02:47:54,680 --> 02:47:58,600
era combat pilot. You know, he uh he goes hit

2344
02:47:58,680 --> 02:48:02,920
his mission is like steal uh what the then fictional

2345
02:48:03,000 --> 02:48:05,600
mid thirty one, Like there is an actual mid thirty one.

2346
02:48:05,680 --> 02:48:09,040
It's it's call signs his Fox bat But it didn't

2347
02:48:09,079 --> 02:48:13,000
exist when Firebox came out, but the the med thirty one,

2348
02:48:13,079 --> 02:48:19,040
Firefox is like the super plane and it directly interfaces

2349
02:48:19,079 --> 02:48:21,840
with the pilot's brain waves, so like if you so

2350
02:48:21,959 --> 02:48:26,120
you think commands to the central processing unit and then

2351
02:48:26,200 --> 02:48:30,399
it responds. And because Eastwood in the film, his character

2352
02:48:30,559 --> 02:48:33,600
is this Russian guy Russian to he he speaks Russian,

2353
02:48:34,600 --> 02:48:37,159
you know, so it's so he can think in Russian

2354
02:48:37,280 --> 02:48:42,360
to manipulate the avionics. But any event, like a subplot

2355
02:48:42,520 --> 02:48:48,040
is there's this Jewish avi ONYX engineer and the Soviets

2356
02:48:48,040 --> 02:48:51,040
are basically they're like threatening to like waste his family

2357
02:48:51,159 --> 02:48:56,360
if he doesn't build the Firefox, and like uh, at

2358
02:48:56,399 --> 02:49:00,239
one point, like Queneatwood's character makes conted with him and

2359
02:49:00,319 --> 02:49:02,959
he's like, yeah, you know, like the the Soviets are,

2360
02:49:03,239 --> 02:49:05,719
you know, they're they're as bad as like the German Reich.

2361
02:49:05,799 --> 02:49:09,040
And that's kind of like obvious propaganda insinuated, you know,

2362
02:49:09,120 --> 02:49:12,600
But that he like he even that wasn't just like

2363
02:49:12,719 --> 02:49:16,040
Hollywood stuff like that's that was the narrative being presented,

2364
02:49:16,200 --> 02:49:22,079
but that that's kind of a tangential when it's a

2365
02:49:22,200 --> 02:49:27,479
long topic. But yeah, I think, uh, I think we're

2366
02:49:27,520 --> 02:49:32,920
coming up in the hour. Yeah, no, that's uh, that's

2367
02:49:32,959 --> 02:49:36,360
about all I got for this series. I don't I

2368
02:49:36,399 --> 02:49:41,399
don't want to break off another like subtopic. Man, And

2369
02:49:41,520 --> 02:49:44,079
forgive me if I repeated myself, but uh, yeah, I

2370
02:49:44,159 --> 02:49:49,799
think uh unless uh and unless I'm I got a

2371
02:49:49,879 --> 02:49:52,479
real gap and uh my recollection, I think we I

2372
02:49:52,520 --> 02:49:56,360
think we covered quite a bit of the of uh

2373
02:49:56,559 --> 02:49:59,239
what's relevant you know over these past few sessions.

2374
02:50:01,120 --> 02:50:04,479
Speaker 1: Can I hit you with one question from yeah, what

2375
02:50:04,680 --> 02:50:08,479
was your what was your take on the the Iranian

2376
02:50:08,680 --> 02:50:12,399
uh missile offensive?

2377
02:50:13,920 --> 02:50:16,479
Speaker 2: The Iranians had to do something, I mean, yes, like

2378
02:50:16,760 --> 02:50:19,440
his blase is for all practical purposes, you know, like

2379
02:50:19,520 --> 02:50:23,760
the foreign the Iranian foreign legion. But there's a plausible

2380
02:50:23,799 --> 02:50:28,079
deniability that the Iranians like very sort of jealously guard there,

2381
02:50:28,680 --> 02:50:32,000
but also just in in in terms of in terms

2382
02:50:32,000 --> 02:50:34,879
of poopolitical terms as well as for domestic consumption as

2383
02:50:34,920 --> 02:50:37,440
well as in the court of world opinion, like I

2384
02:50:37,799 --> 02:50:41,360
Ran had to respond somehow. And this this is basically identical.

2385
02:50:41,799 --> 02:50:45,120
It is basically a reducs of when when SOLMANI was

2386
02:50:46,000 --> 02:50:47,120
you know, it was the same thing. It was just

2387
02:50:47,239 --> 02:50:51,200
like it was just like very very controlled response. You know,

2388
02:50:51,879 --> 02:50:55,120
the target the areas targeted were like exclusively counter value.

2389
02:50:56,079 --> 02:50:59,159
You know, it was announced that this was going to happen,

2390
02:51:00,280 --> 02:51:02,799
So that's the way I read it. And it's more

2391
02:51:02,879 --> 02:51:06,120
for the benefit of like they were in regime despite

2392
02:51:06,680 --> 02:51:08,559
the time about media says this, it's not like the

2393
02:51:08,719 --> 02:51:12,280
Taliban or something, and it's it's also like it's already

2394
02:51:13,600 --> 02:51:15,920
they actually hold election as and I ran all the time,

2395
02:51:16,799 --> 02:51:21,159
and like the regime does have like certain credibility problems,

2396
02:51:21,200 --> 02:51:24,920
but like I'm a Dana Jod. You know, he was

2397
02:51:24,959 --> 02:51:26,719
not only in a Zeri, but the reason he's were

2398
02:51:26,799 --> 02:51:29,079
that like members only jacket. I remember, like media people

2399
02:51:29,120 --> 02:51:31,399
that make fun of him, but it's like the dude

2400
02:51:31,479 --> 02:51:33,479
work he was like an he was he was he

2401
02:51:33,600 --> 02:51:35,639
was like an oil rig worker or like a pipeline

2402
02:51:35,840 --> 02:51:39,319
like a like a foreman, and like that's why he

2403
02:51:39,360 --> 02:51:40,719
was trying to look the part of like you know,

2404
02:51:40,840 --> 02:51:43,280
mister like a Zeri working man. He was like this

2405
02:51:43,399 --> 02:51:46,799
big like socialist kind of like labor leader like Rabel Rouser,

2406
02:51:47,479 --> 02:51:50,159
and like the religious authorities didn't like him at all,

2407
02:51:50,760 --> 02:51:54,639
Like they basically allowed him they into the top job

2408
02:51:54,680 --> 02:51:57,559
because they had to, you know, and so talking about

2409
02:51:57,920 --> 02:51:59,840
something is alamist. It's like this most like you like

2410
02:52:00,079 --> 02:52:04,799
looking crack if you think that. But point being Iran's

2411
02:52:05,799 --> 02:52:10,079
it just gets it's a complicated situation domestically and the

2412
02:52:10,200 --> 02:52:14,879
regime there. They do have to cater to public opinion

2413
02:52:14,959 --> 02:52:19,840
more than people acknowledge in the West, and especially if

2414
02:52:19,879 --> 02:52:22,040
it looks like I mean, even if even if these

2415
02:52:22,120 --> 02:52:25,840
like retaliatory strikes like don't mean anything, it doesn't matter.

2416
02:52:26,159 --> 02:52:30,600
It's for domestic consumption anyway, you know, like Iran's Iran's

2417
02:52:30,639 --> 02:52:36,639
ground element in real terms is hepla. That's my interversation.

2418
02:52:38,000 --> 02:52:41,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it seems like with some of the incursions

2419
02:52:41,840 --> 02:52:44,559
that I've been monitoring over the past twenty four to

2420
02:52:44,639 --> 02:52:48,440
thirty six hours, was doing a pretty damn good job

2421
02:52:48,559 --> 02:52:51,799
on the ground there. Yeah, it seems like it seems

2422
02:52:51,840 --> 02:52:55,440
like Israel they're only they can only do anything from

2423
02:52:55,479 --> 02:52:56,079
the air right now.

2424
02:52:56,920 --> 02:52:58,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, they don't want Well it's also too what are

2425
02:52:58,600 --> 02:53:01,280
they gonna do? Are they gonna assault Evanon? Like it's

2426
02:53:01,399 --> 02:53:04,840
some the eighties early nineties. You were in two thousand

2427
02:53:04,840 --> 02:53:06,879
and six and they tried that you're not You're not

2428
02:53:06,920 --> 02:53:09,000
gonna they don't have the forces they don't have the

2429
02:53:09,120 --> 02:53:13,079
force structure or the political will to assault Beirut and

2430
02:53:13,200 --> 02:53:16,920
try and like route Hesibla from the Shia urban heartland.

2431
02:53:17,239 --> 02:53:19,879
You're gonna fight house to house against HESBLAF the next

2432
02:53:20,280 --> 02:53:24,000
five years and you know and take like twenty thousand

2433
02:53:24,079 --> 02:53:25,959
dead in a few months. Like, no, you're not gonna

2434
02:53:26,000 --> 02:53:29,479
do that. No, his was They're they're no joke, man,

2435
02:53:29,520 --> 02:53:34,200
They're they're definitely the most capable ground element other than

2436
02:53:34,280 --> 02:53:35,520
IDF in the region.

2437
02:53:38,760 --> 02:53:41,920
Speaker 1: Cool, well, do your plugs. We'll get out of here,

2438
02:53:42,000 --> 02:53:44,120
and I guess the next uh, next time we get

2439
02:53:44,159 --> 02:53:46,840
together will finish up the gladiol and then move on

2440
02:53:46,959 --> 02:53:47,799
to something after that.

2441
02:53:48,639 --> 02:53:53,559
Speaker 2: That's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah man. You can find me

2442
02:53:53,680 --> 02:53:58,159
on Subspect. It's real Thomas seven seven seven of subspect

2443
02:53:58,200 --> 02:54:02,719
dot com. That's where the pod is at, and as

2444
02:54:02,719 --> 02:54:05,520
well as like longer form stuff and just like various things.

2445
02:54:06,559 --> 02:54:11,319
I uh, I'm on social media at Capital R E

2446
02:54:11,559 --> 02:54:16,399
A L Underscore number seven h O M A S

2447
02:54:16,879 --> 02:54:20,440
seven seven seven. I'm on Instagram, I'm on t Gram.

2448
02:54:20,959 --> 02:54:23,959
I got my own website. It's Thomas seven seven seven

2449
02:54:24,040 --> 02:54:27,319
dot com number seven h O M A S seven

2450
02:54:27,440 --> 02:54:33,600
seven seven dot com And I got uh, I got

2451
02:54:33,760 --> 02:54:37,959
like merse that I sell because owing to popular demand.

2452
02:54:38,040 --> 02:54:40,239
I'm not trying to be corny like that's literally why

2453
02:54:40,399 --> 02:54:45,399
like I started doing it with my friend and partner

2454
02:54:45,479 --> 02:54:48,639
in crime, Hair Cree. But if you would include a

2455
02:54:48,719 --> 02:54:51,120
link to that in the description, that would be a

2456
02:54:51,200 --> 02:54:53,239
great help so people can find it.

2457
02:54:54,840 --> 02:54:58,319
Speaker 1: Yep, dah, last time it'll be it'll be there this time.

2458
02:54:58,520 --> 02:54:58,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you.

2459
02:54:59,079 --> 02:55:01,200
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. Thomas, It's all the next time. Thank you.

2460
02:55:01,360 --> 02:55:01,600
Speaker 2: Boys,