Speaker 1: A short time ago, the United States military began major
combat operations in Iran. Our objective is to defend the
American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.
Speaker 2: And non in LoVa and Lodi. His Eminence, Grand Ayatola
Imam Komeni, we send salutations.
Speaker 3: Yesterday we eliminated the tailand Kamene along with him, we
eliminated dozens of senior officials of the oppressive regime.
Speaker 4: Our forces are executing with unmatched skill, and the mission
is advancing decisively. This is the kind of no nonsense,
results driven war fighting that America demands.
Speaker 2: Welcome everybody, it's the Ricochet Podcast number seven hundred and
seventy nine. You can join us at ricochet dot com.
You really can, and you can be part of the
most stimulating conversations and community on the web. I'm James
Lallox in the middle of the country in Minneapolis where
it's very foggy, and I'm joined by Steven Hayward and
Sunny California, and Charles C. W. Cook in Florida, who
knows what the weather is, who cares, and gentlemen. It
seems in retrospect that our first clue should have been
renaming the Department of Defense the Department of War. Here
we are with one of the most astonishing displays we've
seen in a long time. People were goggling over the
snatching of Maduro, and now that appears to be like
walking down to the corner store for a pack of smokes.
This is big. This is something the likes of which
I've never seen in my lifetime. And I've been around
for the Desert, for the Iraqi Wars and the rest.
It feels different too. It feels like weapons free, like unburdened,
like the rules of engagement have changed, like there is
a Marshall spirit breast puffed. Seen it in a long time,
and we can attribute that probably to probably to the
President and to the sec deaf. So here we are.
It's been since February twenty eighth BDA BDA from you guys,
Stephen go first.
Speaker 5: Well, I think not only the Department of War, but
I think a bigger clue is the obvious one, which
is sending so many forces over to the theater. And
you know, when Trump does that, and I think this
was true of Venezuela, you know he's going to use it.
He's not just going to say never mind and withdraw
without some kind of deal, which clearly was not in
the offing. I think that, to me the most significant
facts so far. It's not the scale of it so much,
although that is a big thing, but it was the
sinking of the Iranian warship out in the Indian Ocean
with the torpedo.
Speaker 3: You mean, the war crime, war crime right for the
first time since World War Two.
Speaker 5: And the reason I say that's such a big deal is, well,
it's not exactly the same. But you know, if you
know your early World War two history really well before
we were in it, and it was when the British
sunk the French war fleet in North Africa after Askton
surrender and they refused and you know, Churchill didn't want
to do that, but thought it was necessary because he
didn't want the fleet to fall into German hands. And
that's when Roosevelt and his people said, oh, they really
do mean to see this thing through and to win
it if they'll do that, And that was, you know,
a powerful moral effect, as Churchill put it. And I
think the fact that the order went out, yeah, sink
that ship out in the middle of the ocean rather
than just hobble it or blockade or who knows what,
shows that in fact, Trump and his team are in
it to destroy Iron's capabilities from head to toe.
Speaker 3: Charles.
Speaker 2: Has been a lot of talk from the usual talkers
about that this was a war crime, it was an
unarmed ship, it was in international waters, and so forth,
most of which were wave away by people said no, actually,
it's war, it's worship, it's heading where it shouldn't be.
And yeah, it seems we have the starkest dichotomy we've
had in a long time between those people who believe
still that there is an internet national rules based order
is that simply exists and is enforced by moral persuasion,
and by those who say no, that is a fiction
that is promulgated by people who wanted to bang the
United States and have us all descend into a Brussels
style EU talking shop where nothing ever gets done and
the bad guys get to go away. Is it the
end of the old international order? We exposed it as
just simply something that existed because American strength backstopped it.
Speaker 6: Well, that's what it's always been. That wasn't a war crime.
But I will say that the apologists for the administration
do need to accept that this is a war, which
many of them won't, including the Speaker of the House.
It is a war that was an active war. We
can tell this because if somebody did any of these
things to us, we would describe it as such. We
wouldn't say it was a limited kinetic action. Actually, it
is a war.
Speaker 2: Because it is, as long as no one calls it
a special military operation, right, I load that.
Speaker 6: I think we should own it. Now that doesn't mean
it's wrong. I don't think it is, but we should
own that it's a war. The sinking of that ship
was not a war crime, and in fact, the arguments
that it was are based upon a misreading of the rules.
The rule is that you have to help in so
far as it is possible to help, but you can't
by definition, help with a submarine. Submarines have always been
considered different because they have limited space. You can't just
fill a submarine with one hundred Iranians.
Speaker 2: Well, they can sit on the top and you can
and you can drive the ship home at you know,
without without going down.
Speaker 6: I mean, this is silly, and I've seen some people
on the far left saying and This just proves that
we're worse than the Nazis, because even the Nazis, No,
absolutely not, this was normal within the rules of war.
And I think what it highlights more than that the
United States is wrong in some way is the people
have just forgotten, thankfully, what wars look like, because we've
had a very long piece. Because even that there we
are in one, now we live so far away from
it that, with the exception of higher gas prices, perhaps
it's really not going to affect to many people, especially
those who don't have children in the services. It doesn't
affect them. But the average American doesn't. So the average
American is sitting watching this as if it were a
TV show and thereby fixating on that sort of thing.
But no, this wasn't a war crime.
Speaker 2: But this is a war when you talk about the
realities of it, striking home we have seen ever since
the Gulf War, a series of what are basically bloodless engagements.
We see thermal imaging footage of people running around a
missile launcher and then there's a bloom and then they're
not there anymore. The graphic nature, the horrible nature, the
upfront nature, the mangled nature of it is just doesn't
seem to be is not our screens. But there was
something about the sinking of that vessel that did actually
drive it home to you, because when the torpedo exploded
beneath the bow and cracked the spine, an awful lot
of heat signatures went up in the air, and you
had to look at that and say, those are were
people we don't see, you know, the mangled bodies being
I'm not saying that we should, I'm just saying that
the sort of unreal aspect of this continues to this
very day. Today. I just saw something on Twitter that
said this again, this has to be confirmed that it's
Israeli sorty of a large number of planes dropped a
large number of bombs on what they call the remaining
government figures of the Iranian regime. And you see the
bunker busters, you see the blocks exploding, and it's all
top down from above. And we have no point here
of the to say that you're right, we don't. We
don't see the consequences of our of our action. And
I'm not saying that we should have our noses rubbed
into it. I'm just simply saying that once again we
have this sort of video game aspect to it. I
suppose that's unavoidable in modern conflict. No point, no point
there whatsoever. Will hand it over to Steve to perhaps
find a point in what I was saying.
Speaker 5: Well, I'll just pick up on the international rules based
order you brought up in your last question. Look, I've
always been skeptical of that for a long time. I
think you put your finger on it. It's usually used
as a tool to hobble the United States and its allies.
It only international law only works among nations who can
be expected to abide by it, and of course that
would not be Iran, right, and lots of other regions Russia.
Speaker 3: Uh so are you?
Speaker 5: Throughout the Cold War, James, I would ask people the question,
why don't we need arms control agreements with Britain or France,
or he might add Israel to that, since they have
nuclear weapons. Well, the answer is obvious, right, They're they're
fellow democracy with whom we have good relations, so we
don't need it. We only need those kinds of agreements
with our enemies. And even when you get them, like
we did with the Soviet Union, they're not very good. Okay,
that's point one. Point two is to extend your last comment.
I do understand now in the press that we're flying
a lot of B fifty twos because we've cleared away
the air defenses of Iran and they can fly pretty
much with impunity. And of course those can carry so
much more ordinance than even the B two, let alone
the B one whatever, they always bes right, the B
one and B two the stealth ones, and those can
be used to really reduce a lot of targets to rubble.
And you know, I go back to the end of
the Vietnam War in nineteen seventy two, when Nixon had
had it and the skies were dark over handway with
B fifty twos, a number of whom were shot down.
Back in those days, air defenses were more effective and
we didn't have as many effective countermeasures. But it sobered
up the North Vietnamese that actually, we do have have
to make a deal and ended up being an enforceable one.
Speaker 3: That's a problem for another day.
Speaker 5: And so the big question here is are we really
going to be able to achieve our war aims with
air power?
Speaker 3: And most experts say you can't.
Speaker 5: And what Hegseth has not ruled out boots on the ground,
and when that happens, I think this whole thing goes
pair shaped politically and may or may not succeed. I
don't know, but well, I'll just end with this. Trump
has taken a huge risk. He has met his entire
presidency on this because if our economy wobbles, I agree
with Charlie are we're the most immune from economic consequences
in the near term. But that's not true of our
trading partners and the European economies and Japan, even in
South Korea. They could be having some serious economic troubles
soon and that will spill over to us eventually. So
this is a huge risk on Trump's part, and once
again you've got to kind of admire him and worry
about him.
Speaker 2: Well, the buffs are doing the job is supposed to do,
which is taking out the missiles storage facilities. It doesn't
matter if you can get your launchers out, if you
can't get those and taking out the launchers too. I mean,
there's a very long term, calculated process going on here
which seems to be proceeding correctly. But there's also something
beyond that, which is China and the whole part that
this fits in into an anti China, China containment strategy.
That is what seems to me to be the emerging
reality at the end of the day behind this. I mean, yes,
Iran is off the table as a terrorist force. They're
no longer supporting everybody. That's great, the region stabilizes, But
it seems as if Iran made a bet that their
underground cities full of missiles would be something the United
States could never take out like they did in the
Gulf Wars because they're on the ground, And China made
a bet that by propping up Iran that they would
pin down the US and in the Middle East in
a series of engagements that were inconsequential in the end
and unresolved, and that China would prosper and flourish because
of this. Am I right in saying that, I think
it's easy to say that the Uranian strategy seems not
to have worked out for them in the end. But
am I right in saying that a success here really
does not put g in a good position, and it's
his own fault. Charles.
Speaker 6: I think there's a huge gap between the political performance
of the White House, which I think has been poor
and almost indifferent and the extraordinary performance of the military,
which I assume is being watched around the world, and
not just in this instance, but also in Venezuela, which
was really quite impressive. So as a piece of geopolitical engineering,
I am thrilled that the Chinese and the Russians and
anyone else has watched this and been reminded that the
US is number one and ought not to be messed with.
As a domestic political matter, I think Trump has once
again been his own worst enemy.
Speaker 2: Well I'll expand on that. I mean, we don't want
to sit here in a a Polish tell me you
think that they are domestic political soundings and statements have
been insufficient or have been like a daisicle or what. Well,
if you.
Speaker 6: Look at how this went down. Not that I am
part of the story. I just say this is a preface.
I wrote a column two weeks ago saying we needed
to debate this, and it needed to go through Congress.
This is a thing I write every time under every president,
and I had a line in there saying I don't
want to wake up one morning and be told we're
at war. I would prefer, as a citizen to be
part of this, and of course on Saturday, I woke
up and was told that we were at war because
the President had decided to do it. That's not a
judgment on the merits. It's not a cover for criticism
on the merits. I am agnostic on this question. I'm
totally open to the argument that this was the right
thing to do.
Speaker 2: But yeah, America, you're right, because every Charles C. W.
Cook speech ends with and we must have a congressional
resolution on the destruction of Carthage or whatever the Latin
equivalence would be. Right, You're right, You're consistent, and I
agree with you.
Speaker 6: Anyway, I went to my son's flag football game and
people there who vaguely know what I do came up
to me and said, so, what's this iran thing? And
I do think that's somewhat astonishing in a democratic republic. Now,
if Trump believes this is the right decision, and I'm
open to being persuaded that it is, I think, at
the very least, even if he wasn't going to go
to Congress or have a long debate prior to doing it,
and there are strategic arguments against that, he had to
do more than give a very short speech in a
white baseball hat from his private club and then disappear.
But in the meantime talk to lots of journalists on
the telephone and give them different answers as to what
we were doing. There have been three four different explanations
as to why we're in Iran. It's been a humanitarian case.
It's been that it was an imminent threat against us.
It's been that we was tired after forty six years
and them targeting us. It's been that we were going
after the weapons program, in so on and so forth.
I think that Trump should have come out and said,
ladies and gentlemen, I understand that this is somewhat surprising,
but this country has been a thorn on our side
for forty seven years. It has an institutional animus toward
the United States. It says death to America, death to Israel.
It's been trying to get a nuclear weapon. It's been
killing our people for years, including in Iraq. And we
were presented with a once in a lifetime opportunity to
do something about this. And I Donald Trump, unlike the
feckless presidents who came before me, that's his line, not mine,
have finally pulled the trigger, and then I think he
should have kept to that line for a week and
acknowledged and this is something that Trump, and it's not
just Trump, lots of presidents of the same Biden was
also bad in this regard. Then he should have said
that he could not in good conscience pass up that opportunity,
even though there would be downsides, including domestic ones such
as higher gas prices. I have been arguing for months
in a separate sphere that he should be saying, yes,
there is pain in the economy, because there is pain
in the economy, but he won't. He says we're in
a golden age. And I just worry with this that
this is going to have been the right thing to do,
that it's going to lead to really good outcomes in
the long run geopolitical and in the Middle East, but
that the American public is not going to be sold
and that if he isn't hurt by it, at least
he will have got away with it rather than be
rewarded for it. Perhaps he was never going to be
rewarded for it. Perhaps he had to take a brave
decision and deal with the consequences. But I don't see
him doing a great deal. So I'm drawing a distinction
here between the domestic political question, which matters because we
have elections, and the performance of the US military, which
I think has been stella, and the potential geopolitical ramifications,
which I'm open to being told are solid, including that China,
Russia and other countries are watching this and remembering, oh, yeah,
that's why America is the hedge of them.
Speaker 2: Steve is Charles living in an old world where Martin
Sheen gives us a speech from the Oval Office and
with his hands folded and starts with my fellow Americans
and ends with God bless America. That is that era
just gone. And now it's it's it's you. You announced
to the world what you've done in a vertical video
on TikTok, and then you tweet about it a little
bit later, and this indistinct message, it's just part of
a fractured attention span of the American public today.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, if you go back to the Cuban
missile crisis, when they first got the intelligence and that
the Soviets were putting in missiles, the Hawks wanted to
do an attack right away, just and I forget who
it was and you know, I've read all the books
on this years ago, but I forget who it was.
Somebody around Kennedy, and it might have been Kennedy himself
who said, we don't do surprise attacks. We don't do
Pearl Harbor. Now this isn't quite the same, but it does.
I take Charlie's point that you do it out of
the kind of out of the blue like this, I mean,
when you had the forces there, and we've been talking
about it for a while Trump has, so it's maybe
not out of the blue, but out of the purple.
I don't know what the right color is. The other
thing is, oh, the Oval Office address, James. I mean,
in the old days you and I grew up, that's
the days when the three networks had the roadblock right
the state. The president would always appear on all the networks,
and then the cable ones when they came along, and
so everyone would tune in because you weren't going to
watch anything else while that was happening. Well, of course,
that world was long gone because of cable and five
hundred channels and so forth. And that's why I think
one of the biggest reasons presidents no longer make the
formal Oval office address anymore, which I think is unfortunate.
I think the way CHARTI made it out would be
much to be advised. Trump as usual just improvises every day,
including this morning as we're talking, saying he wants unconditional
surrender from Iran, which is probably a mistake to say
that or and you know, we'll see if he really
means that. But your other question, you know Bridge Colby,
who was a guest on this show two three years ago,
he's been very open about and I think the administration
has gone along with it. They would like to settle
business in the Middle East so we can pivot to
a more robust defense posture against China in the Pacific,
and so a lot of people are saying that is
what's going on. Oh, by the way, I'll add Charlie
that I've been scribbling notes to myself. I do wish
Pete Hegseth would switch to decaf before his briefings. Right,
He's just a little bit too over the top. So
it is kind of a mess. But the last thing
I'll say, and here I agree with Charlie's inclinations on this,
but I think we have a and enfeebled Congress across
the board for years now, and it is an important
project to try and unenfeeble them in so many ways,
and I think the Supreme Court is helping with that
on domestic matters.
Speaker 3: But second, you know, we had Bill barr On.
Speaker 5: Here about just three four or five weeks ago, whatever
it was, and reminded us that before Gulf War one,
President Bush thought he did not need the approval of
Congress to launch that war, but they decided for political
reasons to ask for it anyway. Now, the Senate vote
in that was quite close. I think it was only
fifty three forty seven or fifty four to forty six.
Most Democrats opposed it. And remember we had moved five
hundred thousand troops in the theater and all the pieces
there and while trying to do a negotiated settlement. It's
similar to what we've been through the last you know,
several years with Iran.
Speaker 3: But if that had failed, or if Congress.
Speaker 5: Held a debate here in the last two weeks and
Trump had lost in the House, which I think is
conceivable that he might have lost the resolution in the House,
then he's in a very weak position because I do
think at the end of the day, our constitution has
always been intentional on this, but I think the commander
in chief powers do authorize the president to take us
into into action like this. I think by the way
the war powers act, most presidents, I think all presidents
since then think it's unconstitutional, wanted to challenge it, and
Trump is the one person who will challenge it if
it comes to that.
Speaker 2: I'm like Charles. I agree with all of his positions
about what should be done and the processes that we
have that have served a swell in the past. I
can't just disagree with any of this positions. But at
the same time, I feel as though I've got one
foot on the dock of the twentieth century and the
other on a boat of the twenty first, and they're
drifting apart. And if you've ever been out of the
lakes and found yourself in that situation, you know at
some point you have to make a choice or you're
in the drink. And so I don't I mean, I
put it this way. If we had had and I'm
not saying well, if we'd gone ahead and asked Congress
and done the whole thing by all the rules, I mean,
but if we had, you know, that answer code pink,
everybody would have ramped up the pre printed signs and
the big demonstrations, and there would have been this sort
of faux show of moral superiority in every city in America.
That would give the spineless people in the House in
the Senate reason to say, I'm decide with those who
are protesting, because as we know from the sixties, anybody
who gets out in the street and waves a placard
is indeed themselves on the moral high ground, and that
might have affected what happens. And then at the end
of the day, eventually Iran scoots and scoffs at us
and the Chinese solidification of the solidification, the Chinese tightening
of their own hegemony is unabated. So I mean, that's
not an answer for anything. I'm just saying that I
feel sort of intellectually confused to the point of useless
inaction by what I'm drawn towards and new realities that
seem to be in our politics and society at the moment.
And nobody answered my China question. By the way, somebody
take my China question, did she make the wrong I mean,
it's just open ended softball, But did she make the
wrong back? How does this redound in Chinese politics, especially
since he just killed about two hundred of his top generals.
Speaker 5: Well, look, I mean I think it was a traditional
alliance where you want to make links with the enemy
of your enemy. So the alliance with Iran looked good.
I think the bigger problem for or at least one
of the bigger problems for gi right now is, at
least from what you can read in media sources, which
maybe isn't everything or even correct, but a lot of
the Chinese technology has proved to be ineffective.
Speaker 3: And there's a broader point about that.
Speaker 5: I mean, China is more technologically available and has a
more robust economy than the Soviet Union ever had, and
so we worry about you know, they build more ships
in a year than we have in thirty or something
like that, you know, those figures. But there's also I
know a lot of people who really know their Chinese
history and they say, yeah, they can build submarines and
aircraft carriers, but you know what, they have a really
bad record of fighting wars over the years, unlike the Russians, right,
they're not very good at it, and what they had
a submarine that sank at the dock, what two three
years ago, you know, brand new submarine and somebody didn't
close the screen door or something that sank at the dock.
Speaker 3: So I think there is some doubt.
Speaker 5: That the Chinese military capacities are all that good. But
we're making this Texas now back to run. We are
making the bet and have now at the same bet
we did during the long Cold War of the Soviet
Union that our quality of armaments would overwhelm their quantity.
And okay, that's fine, but we have a lot of
really expensive stuff in the whole new frontier drone wars
we've learned about in the last few years. It means,
you know, we're now shooting down what you know, I'll
just say a five hundred thousand dollars drone with a
five million dollar missile. That doesn't pencil out very well
over time. And I think we're learning a lesson from that,
and we'ren have to figure that out pretty soon because
I think we the old American way of war of
overwhelming them with our wealth and technology has got its vulnerabilities.
Speaker 6: It's interesting on that because we went from World War
Two where we overwhelmed them with our ability to produce
to the Cold War where we overwhelmed them with our
ability to think, and now we're probably going to need both. Yeah,
I agree with Steve. I don't have too much to add.
I think it makes sense for China to ally itself
with other countries that don't like the United States, given
that China wants to become the global hegemon and believes
that it's been embarrassed for a thousand years and that
it is destined to rule the world once more. I
of course oppose China in that aim and hope it loses,
but I don't think it made the wrong bet. I
think it should in this game behave accordingly. I'm just
glad that we were once again able to thwart them,
and I hope that if they are planning on going
into Taiwan next year, this has had an effect on
them and reminded them. As I say that it's not
just theoretical, we can apparently do incredible things. I've been surprised.
I'm not a military expert or a foreign policy expert
by any stretch of the imagination, but I do have
a very rosy conception of America's military capacity in my mind,
and I was surprised that the share brilliance of operations,
So I hope the Chinese were too.
Speaker 2: I just want to say, in reference to what Charlie
said about China and then looking at our technology, yes,
I mean we've seen lasers in this war. Israel has developed,
you know, sort of an iron dome system that doesn't
need actual missile but you know, just can pew pew
pew them down or when you see the laser beams
striking into the sky, you think, well, this is a
different level. And if I were China, I would I
would not be surprised if they massed forces to go
into Taiwan and then looked up into the sky and
there we had a death star, you know, with Peter
Cushing behind the the consoles, you know, making it fully operational.
What do we have in the quiver? Yet still ought
to keep them interested? Three gorgeous damn for example. It's
not a military target, but it sort of puts them
behind the eight ball. Anyway, you're going to say.
Speaker 5: About her own well, are you saying, Marjorie Taylor Green's
right about the Jewish space lasers?
Speaker 3: James?
Speaker 2: Well, boy, I let it out of the bag, didn't
I Yes, the air control the weather. They control the
weather as well. Oh, let me just sell my dreadlugs
are twitching an embarrassing materials. Go.
Speaker 5: Well, that's a quick observation about Iran and we'll see
how this plays out. But it's one thing for them
to shoot missiles at the American bases in the Middle East,
but they seem to have been somewhat indiscriminate about it
and arguably wanting to punish the other Arabs who have
been hosting our bases in are friendly the United States
and hostile to them. And they've done an amazing thing.
They have united most of the Arab world against them.
And the reason this I think this is really significant
is you might remember Independence Day from thirty years ago,
you know, the remake of World of the Worlds, and
there was a scene towards the end after a Jeff
Goldbloom was going to send a virus to the you know,
the motherships where and then the whole world was going
to coordinate by Morse code to attack, and there was
a scene, a scene is maybe ten seconds long, and
it showed Israeli in Arab troops getting together to prepare
their attack. Now that cost a huge controversy, and Arab
Nations wouldn't show the movie unless that scene was removed.
I don't know if you remember this, you know it
made some press at the time. So I mean that's how,
you know, how the politics have fallen out since then.
We've had the Abraham Accords and so forth, and now
you're having Arab nations saying we're going to fight alongside
the United States and Israel against Iran. And I think
this would have been unthinkable even twenty five years ago,
and yet here we are, and you know.
Speaker 3: We'll see I mean, it looks to me like this
is arguably Iran just lashing out.
Speaker 5: If they're going to go down, they're going to go
down and take as many people with them as they can.
And so and by the way, I mean, the other
thing is is what when are we going to see
Kamakazi style nine to eleven attacks on targets in the
Middle East, including you know, the Burj Khalifa, right.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't I wouldn't put that.
Speaker 5: Past the Iranian crazies to do something like that just
to make a statement to all of their neighbors that
you're not putting you're not taking us down without you
having a lot of hurt.
Speaker 6: James, I just move on that. We know that the
Jews can't control the weather, because if they could, there
wouldn't be so many of them moving to Florida. And
if you could control the weather where you live, you'd
stay and do it right, you wouldn't moved down to
Fort Lauderdale.
Speaker 2: Well, that's just the dodge, the cover story, isn't it.
Just though? Yes, well, I mean when it comes to
what Stephen was talking about, are they going to hit
the Birch guy? I think you know, they tried. They
did some stuff beforehand. They it seemed as if they
had their own Samson option, that long rumored story about
if Israel was attacked by a nuke, that they just
simply hid everybody in the neighborhood. And now it turns
out it's Iron doing it. But it is kind of
funny to say, knowing the history, that Iran has done
something quite astonishing. They've united the Arabs in hatred of
the Persians. That's the same time you have the Greeks,
who are you know, dealing with the you know, the ancients.
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Faber responsoring this. The regaget podcast. So the next question
is because I had something else about the Samson option,
I never mind Europe, Ah, how relevant are they to this?
What are the saddest stories? Charles? And I'm sure you
might agree, or you might not think it's sad at all,
you being an expat and come here to be an
American citizen, for which we are always grateful. Is the
sad decline of the British Navy, the inability to put
anything out. It seems to see what once spanned the
globe is, you know, a bunch of rusty buckets, dry dock,
without enough sailors to go on. And it's it's dismaying.
So let's start there and talk about where Europe finds
itself in all of.
Speaker 6: This has no ram, no sorto mean, no last left.
Speaker 3: I was thinking that very thing.
Speaker 6: It's astonishing, isn't. I don't find it sad. I find
it predictable. Perhaps it's sadly predictable, but it's astonishing. The
British have slowly slipped into irrelevance. I was thinking about
this yesterday, back in twenty thirteen, when President Obama announced
that he might like to go into Syria, and I
James said, the thing I always say, which is you
need to go to Congress, and he said, no, I don't,
which was a complete reversal of his promise in two
thousand and eight when he was running, quite explicitly a reversal.
The American public revolted such that he backed down and
said I could do it, but I'm not going to.
And there are a couple of things that happened that
led to that backing down. One was that there was
a bipartisan sentiment against going into Syria. It wasn't just
the Democrats, the Republicans also were hostile to the idea.
And the second thing that happened was the British Parliament
met debated whether they would join the United States in
Syria and said they wouldn't. Now that wasn't just positive,
and it was perhaps less important than the British thought
it was at the time, but it did have an effect.
It made big news in the press, and it was
by all accounts processed by President Obama. And I was
thinking that if that happened today, no one would care
or even report on it. Could you imagine caring whether
the British Parliament was on board with this? Iran adventure
or not. The idea is almost silly. And that was
only thirteen years ago. Forty years ago, it would have
killed any plan. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were close
because they shared a political worldview, but also because they
had to be. Britain really mattered in the nineteen eighties.
It mattered in the nineteen nineties we joined in Kosovo,
and it matted in the early two thousands. Getting Britain
on board with the Afghanistan and Iraq wars was crucial.
Now it's not It's not just that the British don't
have a navy and that their military is weaker than
it should be. But Britain as an economic power is declining.
Britain as a cultural power is declining. Britain as a
member of Europe. I don't mean the European Union solely,
but as a cultural member of Europe is declining. I
take no joy in that, but you're absolutely right, it's true.
And to look at the state of the British military,
which is a choice. All that money, I'm afraid has
gone on welfare. This is not me being a mean
right winger. Just look at the books. They've spent it
all on welfare. They have cut everything except welfare. They
now are at their highest tax rates as a percentage
of GDP since nineteen forty five. That is to say,
the British public is now being taxed more than it
has been since the end of World War II, and
they have this pathetic military to show for it. Why
because all they spend their money on is welfare, and
that has been a choice. It has been a disastrous choice,
and it has led to them being irrelevant to the
point at which now they are less important to world affairs,
not regional affairs, to world affairs than Israel.
Speaker 2: Well, it's gone from a special relationship to a special
ed relationship. Stephen. You have in the background, if I'm
seeing it correctly, way in the corner of your room
there back by the door, I think you have a
poster of and it says, if I recall deserve victory.
I was always I was always caught up by the
phrasing of that. My correct deserve victory be a people
who deserve it and earn it. Are the British public?
They are they still that people?
Speaker 3: Is there still something?
Speaker 2: Is something there that you can blow on the dying
embers and find find the lion's spirit, the bulldog spirit
that got them through the blitz and the rest of it,
because I don't see it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I mean I think the full quote that
that's taken from is Churchill said something like it's not
possible to assure or guarantee victory. It is only possible
to deserve it, which again gets back to the phrase
I used earlier about the destroyer being stun the moral
effect of the people, the moral I mean, you know
that crucial period that's dramatized in you know, the Darkest
Hour movie that came out three four years ago with
Gary Oldman as Churchill. The calculation then was the morale
of the Everything depends on the morale of our fighting force,
which have now evacuating without their weapons from France, right,
and consequently the morale of the people.
Speaker 3: And if we start saying.
Speaker 5: We're going to have backdoor negotiations for a deal with Hitler,
everything will collapse. And yeah, it's hard to see. I mean,
we made jokes about France forever. Well, you know, we
want the French to teach the Iranians how to surrender, right,
but boy.
Speaker 3: This is not good.
Speaker 5: Although Charlie's right, and it's very significant that we can
stand alone without them if need be, it would be
much better to have them. I think, by the way,
I thought you were going to say, Charlie when you
mentioned the Thatcher and Reagan, I am not sure if
Argentina invaded the Falklands again, if Britain could muster the
military might to fight back.
Speaker 3: Absolutely be veryonymous, right, No, of course not.
Speaker 2: I'm convinced their entire culture decided that the Falklands were
was wrong because Elvis Costello wrote a mean song about it.
Speaker 6: Well, she was exceptional even within that era for willing
to do that. I well, No, the idea that this
was a reflexive British response, that the island was consumed
by Churchillian fortitude, It's just not true. The institutional response,
the establishment response, what we would call the swamp today,
said leave it. Because Britain had been through decades of decolonization,
that was its reflexive mode, and the British public initially
and certainly the bureaucracy, thought that this was just another
example of our dismantling the empire. And she said no,
and she was right, of course, she said not literally,
but I'm paraphrasing that there was no meaningful difference between
the Argentinians invading the Falcons and the Argentinians invading London
in that they were British citizens who wanted, almost to
a man, to remain British citizens. It was British territ
and you can't allow it to stand. And this was
regarded in the same way as Ronald Reagan's Evil Empire
speech that we all love was regarded as sort of
the black and white maniche and thinking of a jingoistic roube.
But she won and having one, the public loved her
for it. But I think the point you're making is
the right one, which is not really about the resolve,
but is about the ability to project force, which the
British at that point could still do quite easily. We
sent an ar martyr of sorts down to the Falklands.
We just couldn't do it now. Also, it's not just
the lack of ships and modern weaponry. It's little things.
For example, did you know that the aircraft carries the
British have They don't have the catapults on them, they
don't have any of the stuff that American ones have
had since.
Speaker 2: The atl They have to be vtol the French have catapults.
The Charles de Gaull can show more and it's amazing.
The Brits invented, if I'm correct, the angled airstrip on
the aircraft carrier, but we don't need that anymore.
Speaker 6: American roller coasters have catapults to launch them, but the
British aircraft carriers done well.
Speaker 2: Speaking as a jingoistic rub who believes in Menechean dualism,
I sided with the Thatcher view of the world alas,
but now people are saying that one of the reasons
that Britain seems politically and culturally paralyzed in a leadership level
is because Kirstarmer can't alienate those people who are really
mad that the Molos got pounded. And that's a different
element now than existed back in the Falklands War. That
the idea of British and the idea of monoculture, the
idea of what it means to be English and all
the rest of these things have been defined differently in
different ways without the consent of the people who previously
fit under that definition. So that's our little bit for them. France, however,
seems to be using this opportunity to look muscular Macron
sending thels to gall I believe didn't Macron recently say
that he was going to extend the French nuclear force,
you know, force frape or whatever it is, to England
that he would he would, he would was willing to
include them in the nuclear umbrella. Did I did I
get that correctly? Well?
Speaker 5: I missed that if he did say it. But I mean,
you know, we love to throw a lot of shade
at the French. You know, why do they plant the
trees because the German army likes the margin a shade.
Speaker 3: All those great old jokes.
Speaker 5: But the truth is is, you know it's I think
it's still true today that when the French get their backup,
they're not hesitant to lash out quite effectively. I mean,
my favorite moment, it's now back in the eighties, but
you know, they blew up a green Peace ship that
was trying to interfere with one of their nuclear tests
in the South Pacific.
Speaker 3: I kind of admired that, right, And.
Speaker 5: You know, they they they rummaged around a bit in
the last few years in Africa and some of their
former colonies and some governments that are allied with them now.
Speaker 3: They often had to borrow I think ten years ago.
Speaker 5: As I recall that maybe more, they had to borrow
transport capacity from Russia. So they do lack certain complete capacities.
But you know, when the French want to do it,
they can still do it, which amazing I think. I
like to think Macron has a sense of humor saying
we'll defend England now, which I.
Speaker 3: Can see him doing that just to be mischievous and annoying.
Speaker 2: He did four days ago in Brittany speech in Brittany
saying Macron said, quote, the next fifty years will be
an era of nuclear weapons. I guess we're past the
old days of the freeze and the rest of that stuff. Yeah. Right, so, gentlemen,
if you could talk amongst yourself. I'm seeing a huge
amount of smoke coming from outside my eyes. I just
want to make sure nothing's on foot.
Speaker 3: Oh go ahead, Yeah, Well, good grief.
Speaker 6: Well I saw.
Speaker 5: Well, well, we should ask James about this when he
comes back, if we have time. I just saw some
figures yesterday from a friend of mine. Mark Perry used
to be an economist to the EI, but he's from
Minnesota and he's moved back to the Twin cities. Apparently,
auto thefts are soaring in Minneapolis St.
Speaker 3: Paul right now, eighteen a day on average job this year.
Speaker 5: And that's while crime and auto thefts are falling everywhere
else around the country.
Speaker 3: So what's this about.
Speaker 5: I get the feeling that, I mean, you may know
this that the number of deportations by ICE are much
higher in California and Texas other bigger states, but that's
not what we're seeing the protests in the trouble we're
seeing in Minneapolis Saint Paul. And I don't know, I'm
never going to understand that crazy place. It's sort of
worse off even than Portland, Oregon.
Speaker 3: That's one thing.
Speaker 6: I think There's two things going on there. One is
the lack of enforcement, which is how you stop car thefts,
as the National Guard showed in Washington, d C. I
don't want the National Guide outside of Washington, d C.
Necessarily because Washington, d C is a federal city and
Minneapolis is not. But you do stop this with preventative measures,
and on the immigration front, California, it's very interesting that.
But Texas is explained by the cooperation of the state
with the federal government, because once you have it makes
it very difficult for people to get in the way.
If the state's handing over the people that it wants
to the federal government, it's easy. But that's interesting about California.
I wonder why that is.
Speaker 3: I don't really know.
Speaker 5: I actually drive by every Sunday a anti ICE protests
with maybe one hundred people with signs on highway one
on one outside the county jail and Sheriff's office. So
because I think my local DA is cooperating with ICE,
because he's very concernative, Okay, But I think it varies from.
Speaker 3: Place to place.
Speaker 6: The topic times is why is Minneapolis crazy?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 2: So many reasons, so many reasons. And by the way,
I'm not on fires in the excess of water vapor
coming out of the heating system since we're selling soon,
I'm a little Actually, I would prefer for the place.
I would prefer for the place to go up in
absolute fire and just collect the check and walk away.
But it wasn't that. Why is Manylos?
Speaker 5: Remember Rob Long always said that if you're in California
where you can't afford earthquake insurance, right, I mean, just
it's off the charge to go offer to me every
year and I forget it. And he said, if you
have an earthquake and your house falls over, what you
want to do is send it on fire.
Speaker 3: Because of the fire, insurance will cover it.
Speaker 2: Minneapolis. Minneapolis is crazy because it decided that it had
solved everything and that the thing to do to make
things better was to keep expanding every single instrument of
the state that it thought had solved everything. And there
were a couple of instances where things weren't solved. So
it just spend more. So that's it. So the process
naturally pushed into politics people who believed in strong status intervention. Now,
the thing which is not unusual, but what made Minnesota
unusual was that we had a high Scandinavian northyn European
culture quote, which gave us a lot of social capital.
One of those high trust societies all the people are
always entering about on X. We were that you paid
a lot of taxes, but you got good government, you
got clean streets, you got no potholes. You had expectation
that the corporate leaders were their money as well. The
big companies will pledge to get five percent of their
stuff to charities and whatnot you and it all produces
wonderfully civilized society. Those generous with its benefits. Generous benefits
attract people who do not desire to contribute, and then
that gets more of that, and eventually the social capital decreased,
the trust decreased, and the people who stayed in Minneapolis
in particular were generally, you know, hardliners, I mean just
dead enders. Or there are people who had not changed
their politics at all ever since college and believed these
things with increasing fervor, and it never really examined the
whole intellectual constellation in their head that made them both
the way they did. And so the city sort of
self selects, and it's a smart city, highly educated people,
but it's those highly educated you know, liberals and progressives
who have a moral certainty attached to outmoded, unworkable ideas,
and so that's what gets you crazy and alias and
a lack. So I am going to be moving, but
I'm going to be about twelve blocks from the city limits.
Speaker 6: So I was going to ask you. I was hoping
I might have a new neighbor.
Speaker 2: No, Alast Florida isn't on the table yet, but it wouldn't.
I have sort of a year here where I'm figuring
it out and we will see I you know, the
or Alabama for that matter, I.
Speaker 6: Should be on commission, I think. And my prostizement for Florida.
Speaker 2: I just I want to go to Alabama so I
can lord it over the Canadians. I was thinking of
going to a Winnebeg.
Speaker 6: But you know, but it's Alabama.
Speaker 2: I know, that's the thing. That's a great thing. Well yeah,
I mean, so are we alone in this? I mean
we seem like an outpost of what you take to
be southern California or just California crazy liberals and transplanted here.
I mean des Moines isn't like this, And I wouldn't
say that des Moines is necessarily historically all that different
from from from Minnesota. Iowa was not settled by a
bunch of you know, raging individual lists who like to
do any form of collective I mean, it's the Midwest
is generally sensible settled places.
Speaker 3: Why we are that.
Speaker 2: Shanker of red In or shanker of the well No, no,
shankers don't Why why we're crazy?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 6: But you know what else is interesting about this? James?
And you can tell me if I'm wrong, because I'm
making comments on your state, but if you look at
say the presidential election results in Minnesota, it's really close.
So yeah, you've got a strange phenomenon here where the
Democrats win, and they win most of the time, and
then they're completely crazy as if they were winning in
say Oregon, where they win by twenty points, which is unusual.
And Wisconsin is in some ways a progressive state, but
that is much less so than Minnesota, and it's a
swing state two or it's close to being one. So
there's something about this that really pushes the people who
are in charge to go for it in a way
that they don't seem to in other states that are
divided by five or six points. California is a bit different.
I mean, California is what was it like sixty one
to thirty in the last presidential election. It's not even that,
but I yeah, yeah, they can just they can run
hog wild, as you might say. And now in Florida,
maybe this will change, but I mean the last gubernatorial
election in Florida was decided by twenty points. Of course,
they came back and did constitutional carry in the school
choice and tax cuts and so forth. But I'm just
fascinated by Minnesota because it's actually not that democratic. It's
just that the Democrats who are there are wild.
Speaker 2: It is and it isn't. I mean, you're right, it's
the metro core that is the throbbing blue out state.
It's red and it's purplish as you go out here
and there. But there's also a strong socialist tendency when
you get up north to the Iron Range and places
that were settled by people who said, now we're going
to bond, to get bond together for for union reasons.
For the rest of it, you have that old early
twentieth century sort of leftism that still is part of
the character. And so you know, they may vote this way,
they may vote that way, but they're culturally not on
board with the whole progressive twenty first century agenda, just not.
But they find themselves ruled by a party that is
I mean Peggy Flanagan. You know, the Tenant governor shows
up with a shirt that says protect trans Kids has
got a big knife on it. Who much supposed to stab?
I mean, when they had a trans Day of Visibility
or a trans Day of Remembrance, I can't remember what
it was they had this drag guy queen dancing in
high heels in this sort of demonic costume. And I'm
not saying that lightly. I mean I think he had
horns in a tail on the star which is this
in the rotunda of the Capitol building. There's this beautiful
inlaid star, symbol of the state, and it's roped off
so that nobody walks over it, like the you know,
the flame of the Unknown Soldier to the Unknown Soldier flame.
There he was clopping away at it, and everybody's clapping
away to and you know, the guys out of state
in the Range Farmers sitting there at the VFW Club
looking at this is thinking what a bunch of weirdos.
I had nothing to do with them. But then, but
then you know, coming election time, they may pull the
letter from the lever for the d Yeah, it is.
It is a peculiar place. It it is. But I
don't misunderstand all the things that you hear from Minneapolis
and all the things that you've seen. It is still
a beautiful city and a fantastic city. And I leave
my neighborhood with regret against my will, and the state
itself is beautiful and the people are good, and you know,
it's it's mad in spots, it's deft, but damn, it's
still home.
Speaker 6: You sound like a Californian talking about California.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, it's it's it's it's a Stockholm syndrome.
It really is. Well, gentlemen, we're on the way out here,
just got a few minutes before we come to the
end of our arbitrarily decided to time package here and
he notes, Stephen, anything you'd like to tell us that
we talk about that we haven't mentioned in our in
a basis around the world.
Speaker 5: Well, there's a whole lot. I mean, we could go
on a CHRISTI nom. I'll just say I won't tell
a story because in the time, but I just.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's from South Dakota. Those people are old.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 5: I did see her once, only once up close and
in person, where I formed two impressions.
Speaker 3: One is, wow, she's really pretty in person.
Speaker 5: But second, I came away from what should have been
a slam dunk easy command of the room where she
was very stiff and didn't read the room that was
terribly sympathetic to her, and I came away thinking, you know,
she really hasn't.
Speaker 3: Got it at the high level that she aspires to.
Speaker 5: This is five or six years ago now that she
really has not got the talents and political knows for
the levels that she aspires to, and I think that's
what we've seen over the last year with her.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, because I'm inclined otherwise to want to like.
Speaker 6: Her, she should never have been chosen. And it is
one of the great and possibly fatal flaws in the
MAGA movement that they have this absolutely fervent conviction that
if they don't win on every issue they care about,
many of which are the issues I care about the
country's over and yet they put in positions of administration
people who are simply not up to the task. And
you can see the difference between the results when they
find good people, say Marca Rubio or Scott Besend, than
when they find not good people, say Christynome or well,
we nearly got Matt Gates, which would be the worst
of all, but Pam Bondy, who I was open to,
but it's not up to the job. And I think
that the Trump administration ought to be aware that if
it had filled itself with Edwin Meese types, it would
be further along in its goals, then it is now.
I have nothing particular against Mark qwain Marlin. I think
some of the criticisms of him are deeply unfair. But
the border and scurity in general was Trump's issue. Why
can't they find someone who is boring but unbelievably good
at running an executive department that well, for better or
for worse, be in charge of deportations for the next
three years. I don't understand this. You could get me
going about how the fact that Malon wants to leave
the Senate is an indictment of the state of our legislature,
because no historical senator would be caught dead leaving for
anything other than the Secretary of State. But the Trump
administration just has a problem in this regard. If it
could fill every position with someone excellent, which it could,
I think it would be better off. But it doesn't.
And so yet Christine known of all people at DHS.
Speaker 2: You get the feeling that Mark Graccorreon is checking his
phone settings to make sure the notifications are turned off.
Speaker 6: He should be. That's exactly who they should pay for.
Speaker 2: Someone like that, right, yeah, exactly, or us for that matter,
we who convene here weekly and have all the answers
we'll actually know we don't, but we just like to
talk about the things that we think that we know.
And I hope that you've enjoyed hearing the things that
we've said, because otherwise what's the point. But as ever,
Stephen and Charles, you have been a delight and interesting
and fun to listen to. And I always come away
from this glad I've spent this hour with you, and
you folks at home. If you haven't been a member
of Ricochet yet, what the sam touton hell are you
waiting for? It's cheap And the thing about it is
it's not just one of those websites where people post opinions.
It's about everything, and there's a member site that has
just It has a community and a breadth of topics,
the likes of which you have not seen on the internet.
It will not drive you mad like Facebook. It will
not waste your time like Twitter. It will not be
as a scrolling, endless time suck. It is a place
to sit down and actually expand and be calm. I
get a little head up when somebody says this, but
it's a community waiting for you. The likes of which,
as I said, you haven't found and if you remember,
you get to post, and if you're not, you don't.
And that's why it's a civil, samee place to be.
If you could go to Apple podcast or whatever it's
called these days and give a five stars, we'd really
appreciate that. Somewhere around episode one thousand, I'm gonna stop
saying that, but since it's seven to seventy nine, that
gives me a little how many more On the two
hundred and twenty one we thank fabric Fabric by Gerber,
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And if you've been putting it off, there's absolutely no
reason you should. It's easy, sit down, open up your laptop,
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of mind. Gentlemen, it's been great and we'll see everybody
in the comments, said Ricochet. Four point whatever, Bye bye.
Speaker 3: Bye, Ricochet.
Speaker 2: Peah, join the conversation