https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=RIt4Qv4cFGM
Here’s what one of the nice benefits of being on the ground is you get to see what’s happening, what’s actually happening. So what you see in Iraq when you’re actually on the ground is, for instance, in Ramadi, what you see and what we saw is the Iraqi populace who are a bunch of normal people that want to carry out their lives and raise their kids and run whatever business they’re going to run. That’s what they want to do. They actually want life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is what they want. That’s a normal Iraqi family. When we would go to an Iraqi family’s house, that’s pretty much what you’re dealing with. And amongst those normal people that just want to live their lives in peace, there are insurgents. And the insurgents want power, they want control, and they are willing to do anything to get it. And so when you see fathers beheaded and their heads left in the yard of a family because he had, he was working with a sheikh that had said things against al-Qaeda. And now this guy is beheaded. There was a guy that was skinned alive. There was torture. There was rape. So when you are on the ground and you see this stuff happening and you see the local populace clapping and cheering when you kill insurgents, your strategic vision isn’t quite in focus as much as what you’re seeing right in front of you with your own two eyes. And so therefore, the 20% of you that might be arguing whether this is right or wrong, when you see families slaughtered, you very quickly tell that 20% of your brain that you need to look at what’s happening right here. This is immoral and we need to do what we can to help these people. And do you, did you feel then and then again, now, I mean, it’s a quagmire. It’s an ethical quagmire, the Middle East. And so it seems in some sense that no matter what you do there, it’s wrong. And I’m not trying to convince you of that. Believe me, I’m really curious about this. You felt when you were there that you were on the side that was doing the right things. Do you, and now when you look back, I mean, I don’t know what to make of what happened with the US in the Middle East over the last 15 years. I’m just as happy and perhaps you are as well. There’s less engagement in foreign wars now than there was 10 years ago in the US, right? That seems to have receded to some degree. And that perhaps that’s a good thing. What do you think about America’s involvement in Iraq? What conclusions have you come to? So you talked about this argument that you’re going to have in your own head. Well, you are also going to have that argument on a national level, right? You’re going to have a national level argument of whether this is the right thing or the wrong thing to do. And I think that’s a good argument. So my scale, my measure of this is if you are going to go to war, if you are going to go to war, you have to make sure before you go that you have the proper will, the proper will. And there’s two types of will that you need to have if you’re going to go to war. The first type of will that you need to have if you’re going to go to war is you have to have the will to kill. You have to have the will to kill. And guess what? I am sorry to inform everybody. It is not just the will to kill the enemy. Because when you go to war, you have to have the will to because when you go to war, war is an imperfect, is an imperfect endeavor. And no matter how hard you try to just kill the enemy, you will kill civilians, you will kill women, you will kill children. That is what is going to happen. That is what is going to happen if you go to war. So you have to make sure you have the will to do that. That sometimes you’re going to drop a bomb and it’s going to land and it’s going to kill women and children. That’s what’s going to happen. And anybody that thinks anything different is naive and ignorant. We seem to let our politicians often convince us that that’s possible, but it’s not. So you have to have the will to kill. And then on top of that, obviously, you have to have the will to die. You have to have you have to know and understand that if you embark in a war, your sons and daughters are going to be killed. That is what is going to happen. That is what is going to happen. And anybody that says it’s not going to happen is naive and ignorant. Now, I think before we go to war, oftentimes we rationalize that we can mitigate the risk of killing. We can mitigate the risk of dying. And for some reason, we think we can mitigate those risks down to zero, which is impossible. So if you have the will, if you look at a situation and say we need to do something here for more reasons, for national security reasons, we need to take action. Do you ever read the fine print that appears when you start browsing in incognito mode? It says that your activity might still be visible to your employer, your school, or your Internet service provider. How can they even call it incognito? To really stop people from seeing the sites you visit, you need to do what we do and use ExpressVPN. Think about all the times you’ve used Wi Fi at a coffee shop or a hotel. Without ExpressVPN, every site you visit could be logged by the admin of that network. And that’s still true even when you’re in incognito mode. Your home Internet provider can also see and record your browsing data. And in the US, they’re legally allowed to sell that data to advertisers. 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So, I’m trying to think through what it takes to conjure up the will that you just described, morally speaking, and it’s very difficult to talk about the morality of war, but it’s absolutely necessary, clearly. Do you believe that in the situation in Iraq, do you think that the argument was laid forth? It’s such a… So, there was a terrible attack on New York, 9-11, and the response was focused on Iraq. That’s correct so far. Yes. Focused on Afghanistan immediately, and then thereafter focused on Iraq, yes. All right. It was never obvious to me why the focus shifted to Iraq. Do you have any sense of why that was? I know that there was a lot of thought at the highest levels of the American government prior to 9-11 about Iraq, and so I think that’s why I think that at the highest levels of the American government prior to 9-11 about Iraq. And so, there was a plan that was already, in some sense, in place for Iraq, but it isn’t obvious to me why attention was shifted towards Iraq in the aftermath, apart from the fact that that plan already existed. I think the shift came from… I’m trying to think of some kind of a metaphor here, but you’ve got some rats in the garage, and the rats have gnawed through some of the wiring, and so you go and you try and kill the rats in the garage, and you realize, you know what? This isn’t the only place that these rats seem… could be. There could also be some rats over here in the basement, and we have wires over there too. We better go handle that situation as well.