Oct 2, 2024
Bret Stephens Argues For MASSIVE War
Bret Stephens wrote in an Op-Ed for The New York Times that Israel should escalate the war against Iran.
- 18 minutes
Brett Stevens has recently published
a new op ed in The New York Times
with the title, quote,
we absolutely need to escalate in Iran.
He wants the hot war with Iran.
He thinks it's a great idea.
[00:00:15]
He thinks now is the time.
And if you're wondering,
well, is he like a teenager?
Does he not remember what happened
in the aftermath of nine over 11
when we invaded countries
and it was a complete and utter disaster?
Does he not remember any of that stuff?
I guess not, I guess not, but we'll
remind him as we talk about this first.
[00:00:34]
A few excerpts from his piece.
Now, he says that the possibility,
of Iran causing real harm to Israel,
is no longer a far off thought.
[00:00:51]
Okay.
He says, I thought of Nasrallah's words on
Tuesday while watching images of Iranian
ballistic missiles raining down on Israel,
fortunately causing only slight damage
thanks mainly to Israel
and American air defenses.
[00:01:06]
I should also note again that Israel's
air defenses are multi-layered.
Okay, there's the Iron Dome.
There's, you know, David Sling.
And then on top of that, okay, there's, I
forget the name of it, but there's a third
[00:01:24]
layer of defense capability that shoots
down long range and intercontinental
intercontinental missiles.
And, like so, the sophisticated defense
capabilities, along with the fact that
[00:01:40]
Israel is backed by a military superpower
like the United States,
should maybe play into this equation about
starting or escalating a war with Iran.
But it doesn't seem like Bret Stephens
has done any of that in his equation here.
[00:01:58]
So he says, what if one of those missiles,
one of Iran's missiles,
had tipped with a nuclear warhead?
Because, you know,
Israel does have nuclear weapons.
You know, Israel is is a real victim
in the region, okay, because they
have nuclear weapons, like, okay.
[00:02:14]
Like when you remember
that they have nuclear weapons,
it makes the argument that people don't
want Israel to exist and they want
to wipe it off the face of the earth.
Even more clownish.
It doesn't matter if people want that.
It's never going to happen, okay?
[00:02:29]
It's a nuclear power.
But okay, let me continue
with the Brett Stevens argument here
with a ridiculous hypothetical.
But what if one of those missiles had been
tipped with a nuclear warhead, a warhead
whose construction Western intelligence
agencies, even Mossad, had somehow missed?
[00:02:46]
If nothing else, it would have fulfilled
Nasrallah's prophecy of his fondest hopes.
Okay, so, based on the thought experiment
and scenario
that Bret Stephens has laid out.
Yeah, definitely.
We should definitely engage
in a hot war with Iran.
[00:03:01]
Sounds like a great idea.
He says that possibility
is no no longer far off.
This year, Secretary of State Anthony
Blinken warned that Iran was within a week
or two of being able to produce enough
weapons grade uranium for a nuclear bomb.
[00:03:16]
That is fascinating, John, isn't that
so interesting that we're so concerned
with Iran developing a nuclear bomb?
You know, if I recall correctly,
Obama signed something during his term.
It was called the Iran nuclear deal.
[00:03:32]
It had a different name that was
more technical, but everyone refers to it
as the Iran nuclear deal.
Other Western allies
were involved in the negotiation process.
They signed on to the deal,
and it ensured that Iran would not be able
to develop nuclear weapons,
[00:03:47]
and it provided the ability of our allies
to do the necessary oversight,
go into Iran and ensure that they're
not developing nuclear weapons.
Donald Trump took that. He's like, oh, oh.
Iran nuclear deal.
I rip it up because my daddy,
Benjamin Netanyahu, he doesn't like it
[00:04:08]
because he wants war with Iran.
Okay. Yeah.
He wants the excuse
to go to war with Iran.
And when I say he wants to go
to war with Iran,
what I really mean is he wants Americans
to fight that war on behalf of Israel.
You you think Israel is going
to fight that war?
[00:04:26]
I mean, come on. This is madness.
And by the way, you're going to wipe out
the current government or regime in Iran.
And then what? What happens on day two?
What happens on day two?
You're going to install like,
a puppet government.
[00:04:44]
That worked out real well
and has done that right.
Yeah. I mean, America has done that.
In Iran, by the way, but.
That that's a good point.
And how did that work out?
How did that work out?
When America gets involved
in regime change,
does it typically work out well for us
and for the international community?
[00:05:03]
Well, I mean, Stevens is one
of the dumbest people on the planet
for urging this to happen.
Yeah. Okay.
And a lot of innocent people
are going to die if it does happen.
He's sick. Okay.
He's a sick person with a sick mind.
And he somehow thinks like
this is the moral thing to do.
[00:05:21]
There's always going
to be people getting paid
to express, you know, this point of view.
There were, you know, in during
the invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq,
the years after, there was always
David Frum and a number of others.
And they'll write their books
and they'll make a whole bunch of money.
They'll give their speeches advocating
for other people to fight and die.
[00:05:38]
But when you ask,
how has that worked out for us?
You have to define us because, like,
you know, from our perspective
of the American national interest,
it certainly didn't work out
for the American soldiers that have died.
It certainly didn't work out.
But if you were a defense contractor
or had stock in a defense contractor
[00:05:54]
that got paid hundreds of millions
or billions of dollars over that time,
I think it worked out fine.
Not a lot of, you know, Raytheon
executives died on the ground in Iraq.
That's not how that works.
Like, they tend to do pretty well.
And so, yeah, no,
it's utter madness, by the way.
[00:06:10]
Like, if they're going to do
this thought experiment.
And I understand that when analyzing
foreign policy, let alone foreign policy
hypotheticals, we're supposed to be
wildly hypocritical about how we evaluate
the morality of actions.
But if the idea is that Israel's actions,
what they're doing, and even what they
[00:06:27]
might do totally justified
because Iran could have a nuclear weapon,
even though there's no reason
for us to believe that they do.
Okay, well,
Israel does have nuclear weapons.
So here's the thought experiment.
What if there was an Iranian,
Bret Stephens writing, you know,
[00:06:44]
in the Persian Times?
Well, what if an Israeli missile tipped
with a nuclear weapon landed in Tehran?
Arun, I guess that justifies anything
that they might want to do.
And that's far less of a hypothetical,
because Israel actually has those weapons.
Like we can play these games.
How about we stop invading people?
[00:07:01]
How about we stop starting wars?
And the issue is, so long as these leaders
are not the ones that are going to be
fighting them, and in fact, their domestic
political futures might be better secured
by the presence of a conflict.
The incentives are all effed up,
and Netanyahu knows that.
[00:07:18]
That's how he's been governing
for a long time.
One more excerpt from this op ed.
He, you know, argues, you know, diplomacy.
We tried it and it hasn't worked.
Let me read it word for word.
[00:07:35]
For nearly four years,
the administration's
diplomatic outreach to Tehran,
along with its finely calibrated
responses to Iranian aggression,
has done nothing to deter it from striking
us and our Allies striking us.
[00:07:52]
Striking us. Iran struck us.
When did Iran strike us?
And I'm under the impression that in
this current round of war in the Middle
East involving Israel, Israel decided
to do bombings in a sovereign country.
[00:08:13]
Iran and Iran retaliated with,
like a fake attack.
Okay.
When you really want to attack a country,
you don't hit them up hours ahead of time
and let them know, hey,
we are going to send drones
to areas of Israel where it's not really
[00:08:30]
going to hit anything, you know, just
to show our people that we're retaliating.
But we're warning you so no one gets hurt
and everything gets intercepted.
I mean, like, come on.
Iran has said over and over again,
they don't want to go to war because they
understand going to war with Israel
means going to war with the United States,
[00:08:48]
and who knows how long
that war goes on for.
But Netanyahu keeps poking and poking
and poking and poking and poking.
He doesn't stop because he would
rather do literally anything, anything,
than just allow Palestinians
[00:09:06]
to have their own state.
That's the root of all of this, literally.
That is the root of all of this.
And by the way, the last time
we took advice from this piece of crap,
it's 22 years ago.
Let's listen to what he had to say
to members of Congress 22 years ago
[00:09:24]
about the possibility of invading Iraq.
Let's watch.
If you take out Saddam, Saddam's regime,
I guarantee you that it will have enormous
positive reverberations on the region.
And I think that people sitting right next
door in Iran, young people and many others
[00:09:42]
will say the time of such regimes
of such despots is gone.
There is a new age,
something new is happening and the.
Speculation on your part,
or you have some evidence to that effect.
You know, I was I was asked
the same question in in 1986.
[00:09:57]
I had written a book
in which I had said that the way
to deal with terrorist regimes well,
with terror was to deal with
the terrorist regimes and the way
to deal with the terrorist regimes,
among other things, was to apply
[00:10:15]
military force against them the way.
We did in Afghanistan.
The way, for example,
I want to answer your question.
I guess I'm running out of time.
So I quickly was trying to get
and we've done, I think, what you propose
in Afghanistan yet I haven't seen
that sort of neighborhood effect.
Well, I think I think there's been
an enormous effect.
[00:10:31]
The effect was we were told
that there would be a contrary effect.
First of all, people said that there
would be tens of thousands of people
streaming into Afghanistan, zealots
who would be outraged by America's action.
And this would produce
a counter-reaction in the Arab world.
But I think.
What happens is that when you
take an action like we did in Afghanistan,
[00:10:48]
we're going to see
all the other countries just fold.
No, what we saw is something else.
First of all, we saw everybody
streaming out of Afghanistan.
The second thing we saw is all the Arab
countries and many Muslim countries
trying to side with America,
trying to make to be okay with America.
The application of power
is the most important thing
[00:11:05]
in winning the war on terrorism.
If I had to say, what are the three
principles of winning the war on terror?
It's like, what are the three principles
of real estate?
The three L's.
Location, location, location.
The three principles of winning
the War on Terror are the three W's
winning, winning and winning.
The more victories you amass,
the easier the next victory becomes.
[00:11:24]
The first victory in Afghanistan makes
a second victory in Iraq that much easier.
The second victory in Iraq will make
the third victory that much easier to.
But it may change the nature
of achieving that victory.
It may be possible to have
implosions taking place.
[00:11:40]
I don't guarantee it,
but I think it makes it more likely.
He doesn't guarantee it.
It's good that he didn't guarantee it
because the Taliban is, you know, back in
charge in Afghanistan, a war that we spent
20 freaking years fighting and paying for.
[00:11:58]
For what end? What was the result?
And by the way,
we invaded Iraq on behalf of Israel.
Let's keep it 100.
That's a big no.
No. You're not supposed to say it.
It was all about the oil.
It wasn't all about the oil.
Okay, we know what the reality is.
It's just it's so infuriating
how many Americans have to die
[00:12:17]
for this lunatic who doesn't give a damn
about just doing the right thing,
following international law and allowing
Palestinians to just have their own state
without Israelis occupying them.
He just can't have it
because it's never enough.
[00:12:34]
I mean, what they have the land,
it's never enough.
It's insane to me.
It's just absolutely insane to me.
And Brett Bret Stephens.
He's the kind of person with the kind
of mindset that enables some of the worst
people on the planet, like Netanyahu and
other extremists in the Israeli regime.
[00:12:51]
Yeah.
It's infuriating, John,
like we're going to go to war with Iran.
Like that's where we're headed right now.
This is so similar to the kind of we are.
It's the kind of garbage that we.
Yeah, I know exactly.
It's going to get worse.
[00:13:07]
I mean, and it's just wild to feel
the things and see the things that I did
when I was in high school,
right before the preemptive strike
in Iraq, I remember we were reading
[00:13:22]
The Glass Menagerie in class,
and I'm like, this is boring as fuck.
So I was reading The New York Times,
and I remember reading quotes
from Bill Kristol, similar to garbage
that we're now reading from Bret Stephens,
and I was ripping my hair out of my head.
Yeah.
Yeah, people, when you hear a politician
make an argument people don't often
[00:13:41]
enough ask, does he care if he's wrong?
Like if he says no, go invade, invade,
invade and great things will happen.
What happens to him if that long term
stuff doesn't turn out the way he says?
[00:13:59]
Is his career ruined?
Is it? No. He's fine.
He'll be fine. When?
When politicians are like, let's do
this tax cut and trillions to billionaires
and, you know, it'll trickle down.
Do they care if that doesn't happen?
They already got their money.
Their money is automatic.
[00:14:15]
That's guaranteed. The second order stuff.
If it doesn't happen,
are there going to be ramifications
they never have in past rounds?
Like people just need to interrogate.
Like,
what if it doesn't work out that way?
Does this mfer care at all?
And very rarely do they.
That's how they word things.
[00:14:31]
That's the strategy.
We have to get money out of politics, man.
Like these Politicians
are such greedy pieces of.
All right.
So desperate for the campaign donations,
so scared of AIPAC to the point
[00:14:48]
where they sacrifice Americans
for wars they should not be fighting.
It is gross. It is so gross.
Anyway, I'm going to end on this.
Nancy Pelosi was asked
about a potential war with Iran.
[00:15:03]
I didn't love her answer,
but it was certainly better
than the crap we got from Bret Stephens.
So let's take a look.
Sounds like you're saying
that Israel should be cautious
about going after Iran's nuclear program.
Or maybe or not.
[00:15:18]
I mean, tell me exactly
what you what you believe.
And then even extend that
to the question of its oil fields.
Well, it's up to Israel
to decide about their security.
But the fact the fact is, we are, as you
said earlier, and I repeat it again,
[00:15:34]
we are trying to avoid a wider War.
And would that
would that cause a wider war?
Avoid a wider war? It may.
You know, again, there has to be
a weighing of opportunities or weighing
of possibilities in the region.
[00:15:51]
I'm not I'm not going to come on this show
and say Israel should attack
the nuclear facilities in Iran.
I've never really been for that.
I was for a diplomatic solution,
which President Obama successfully
put forth to reduce the nuclear capability
and possibilities of Iran.
[00:16:12]
And I think as much as we can do
diplomatically, we we should,
Madam Speaker, avoid a wider war.
I thought, okay, fine. Pelosi was okay.
She's trying to urge caution.
But like John, kind of the question
[00:16:32]
from Dana Bash, like she seemed.
So you're wait, I need to understand.
Are you saying that Israel
should proceed with caution?
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, I don't understand.
I really don't understand. People like.
[00:16:47]
I feel like I live on a completely
different planet from these people.
Do they not understand
the severity of the situation?
Do they not care about
how many people have already died?
How many people will die
as this escalates?
[00:17:03]
I mean, maybe because
it's on a different continent.
People like Dana Bash and Bret Stephens,
they're totally detached from it.
So they don't understand what the US is
enabling right now and how in the long
run, it's going to cause a lot of damage.
[00:17:19]
I mean, a few days ago,
the New York Police Department was taking
extra measures because of the possibility
that what's happening right now
in the Middle East could lead
to terror attacks on the United States.
[00:17:36]
- What are we doing?
- I don't think that's likely to happen.
I mean, each win you have makes the next
win easier, and there's no consequences.
And winning a whole bunch
doesn't inspire terrorists.
Instead, they're scared of you.
And they would like people
who are willing to literally blow
[00:17:54]
themselves up to accomplish a goal.
They'd never go
up against a scary military.
No, I mean, these are these are massive,
corrupt liars.
That's what they are.
They're corrupt liars lying to us.
They don't believe
the things they're saying.
[00:18:09]
Whether they're in elected office.
They could be prime ministers.
They could be whatever.
They could be.
Columnist for the New York Times.
They get paid either way.
They're not going to suffer
the consequences of this violence.
You know, when we cover stories.
[00:18:25]
If I advocated for something that turned
out to not be great, like, I feel so awful
about it, like I just I don't again,
I just don't understand these people.
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