Debate Analysis

Dave Smith vs. Coleman Hughes Debate: Israel and U.S. Foreign Policy

Primary speakers:Coleman HughesDave Smith

Coleman Hughes: There is no human toll in Gaza high enough for Hamas to be deterred.

Dave Smith: You can't just keep your boot on these people's neck forever. Israel has an enormous moral obligation to end the destruction of Gaza and end the occupations of Gaza and the West Bank.

Coleman Hughes: Hamas is absolutely committed to rejecting the only solution that could bring an end to this conflict.

Dave Smith: Okay, we're gonna put ourselves in the Israeli shoes. Like, okay, I'm fine to do that. Let's do that. Can we also attempt to do that to the other side here?

Coleman Hughes: Easily. I'll do it right now. I'll do it right now. Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman. My guest today is Dave Smith. Dave has been my most requested guest over the past year or so. He is a comedian and political commentator who focuses on American and Israeli foreign policy. Many of you will be familiar with him from his appearances on Joe Rogan, Lex Friedman, and Pierce Morgan. He also has a podcast called Part of the Problem. This conversation is the longest I have ever recorded. And when we finished, both Dave and I had the strange experience of thinking we had spoken for 90 minutes and suddenly realizing it had been three and a half hours. And still, there was a lot we didn't get to cover. It's not an exaggeration to say that Dave and I disagree about almost everything. But I think we were still able to have a productive debate with no ad hominems, no nastiness, and no cable newsy shouting, which is exactly what I try to do here on this show. And I'm thankful today for being the kind of interlocutor that can actually do that without needing a moderator. In this episode, we talk about why Dave loves Ron Paul. We talk about the relationship between military spending and the economy. We talk about the roots of jihadist terror. We talk about whether Israel got us into the war in Iraq. We talk about whether Israel's fundamental goal is peace with its neighbors or territorial expansion. We talk about the creation of the state of Israel. We talk about the ethics of the occupation of the West Bank. We talk about the barriers to a two-state solution. And finally, we talk about Iran's nuclear ambitions and the 12-day war. So without further ado, Dave Smith. Music Music

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Coleman Hughes: Music

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Coleman Hughes: Okay, Dave Smith. Thanks so much for coming on my show.

Dave Smith: Thank you for having me, Coleman. I've been looking forward to this.

Coleman Hughes: Yeah, so you are one of the most, maybe the most requested guest I've had over the past six months to a year. You have made a name for yourself as a very effective debater on Joe Rogan, on Pierce Morgan, Lex Friedman. You've been on as a critic of U.S. foreign policy and also Israeli, the war in Israel. So I want to get to all these topics. And I want to say first that I think a lot of your conversations have devolved into sort of for rendoms on you as a person which to me is totally uninteresting. And I think my audience knows what my MO is and what I'm about. I'm about talking about the substantive issues that both of our audiences care about. Like we in the grand scheme of history, our egos as people don't matter all that much. So I want to say that and I hope that we can model that kind of conversation so I expect us to disagree about many issues if not most. Sound fair? Yeah, absolutely.

Dave Smith: And that's kind of why I was looking forward to doing this because you know, not that we don't really know each other that well, but I've watched some of your stuff. And I've always kind of gotten that vibe from you that that was how you would approach this conversation. And despite the fact that I have been in my fair share of like mud slinging competitions, I generally do not prefer to do it that way and I completely agree with you. I think it's like one of the challenges of doing what we do is that you are on a show and you're a public person and the tendency to focus on oneself or to make oneself the story or for others to focus on the individual is very easy to fall into. And we all should remind ourselves no matter where we fall on the issues that there's actually people dying right now. There's actually a conflict going on. There's huge implications to all of this and that's actually much more important than any of that other stuff. And so I am completely on board with that.

Coleman Hughes: Okay, so let's before we get into the issues, I imagine many people in my audience might be familiar with you enough to know your origin story, but you're a comedian that's found a second career as a political commentator. And so walk me through that. What inspired you to get into all of these issues?

Dave Smith: Well, I started stand-up comedy first and I wasn't political really at all. I grew up in New York City. I was in New York City on 9-11. I was a liberal, a left liberal for most of my life, but without being very well informed or anything. That was kind of the standard starting point for a Jewish kid raised by a single mom in Brooklyn. And so after 9-11, I did grow to really dislike George W. Bush. The 9-11 and the war in Iraq were very much kind of the my coming of age time. So I was really against the war and I was really against George W. Bush. I knew enough to get that. And then it was just in 2007, I just happened to be watching the Republican primary debate. And I saw there was this what's now been become kind of like a viral famous moment where Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani like go at it arguing over what causes terrorism and what led to 9-11. And I don't know, just the moment to me was really fascinating. And it's still, I think no matter what your politics are, very fascinating moment. Because like at the time Rudy Giuliani was polling number one. He was leading the pack. And Ron Paul is a completely unknown. Like just a congressman from Texas who's never has no national presence. And Rudy Giuliani in terms of the crowd reaction dominates him in this exchange. But Ron Paul is just dropping wisdom. And then from that what you know it created this huge movement. And to this day is still something that people like I'll see posted all the time. Granted my algorithm might be a little bias on that. And then I just fell down the rabbit hole. Like I was just so interested in that guy. So I went and got his book. And then I loved it. The book was a revolution. That was the first Ron Paul book that I ever read. And then I just started falling down the rabbit hole. And reading everything I could get my hands on about libertarianism and foreign policy. And you know just political theory in general history economics. And then I just I don't know. I was just for a while there. I was just a stand up comedian. I was I was making like around this period of time like 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010. I was kind of like just eking out a living. Like some some bigger comedians would bring me on the road with them. And so I was just like I didn't have a day job. I could do just I was doing just good enough to be dead broke without having a day job. And then so then essentially right I just had to work at nights. I had to go to nightclubs and tell jokes. But I have my whole days for free. And I was married at the time. I didn't have kids at the time. And I just got obsessed with all of this stuff. And so I was just that guy was the guy you know just being weird and reading all this stuff. And then going to nightclubs and and doing stand up. And this is all really before like the podcast revolution. And then once the you know podcasting just became so big. I just it was just like the next logical progression was like oh start talking about this on shows. And then years of doing that. I think I started in 2011 or 2012 podcasting. And then over the years it just you know little by little kind of picked up. And becoming friends with Joe Rogan is really helpful in this business I've found.

Coleman Hughes: So it sounds like Ron Paul was very important to your your your evolution. What do you think are the most important things that Ron Paul got right?

Dave Smith: So I guess the big the big one right like in the the Giuliani moment was really him tearing down the lie. The propaganda which which dominated you know like right after 9-11 which was the idea that the terrorists hate us for our freedom. And they hate our goodness and our wonderfulness or something like that I you know like they would they would never like really exactly spell out what it was about our freedom but like you're supposed to imagine that they're all motivated by like I don't know women in many skirts or something like that or or right to free speech. And he was like well look like that there is a whole other huge element to this here that actually drives this conflict and that's that they hate us for what we're doing over there and that there are real grievances they have with America's foreign policy and here they are. And let's really examine those and you know think about what is this worth it is this the right thing to be doing is this you know productive for America is this moral. And I think that by it like you have to almost like put yourself back in 2007 like this is still during the George W Bush administration and there with for someone like me you know I had heard say like liberals who were against the war. But I had never really heard anyone break it down like that and there was something about it that kind of like it's almost like a portal where it allowed you to access a perspective from outside of the American empire. And I you know I remember there was something about that that was really I thought like profound to me that you're like oh okay yeah there's a there's another perspective about the American empire from outside it and they've got some real problems with this thing and that I just I found that to be very interesting. The other big thing was he really introduced the topic of the federal reserve almost nobody else was talking about I really like I don't think I knew what the federal reserve was until I heard Ron Paul talking about it I think if you had asked me I would have been like I guess they have some money put away somewhere and like the federal government keeps reserves of something I don't think I even knew. And once I started like reading about how the federal reserve actually works it's like it was just blowing away that how how did no one ever tell me that's how was this never like taught to me in school how you know and so that I thought was very interesting and then I think aside from that just being like the the truest public champion of free market economics generally speaking. I mean Ron Paul was so hardcore free market that like he made you know like he made Milton Friedman look like a socialist like he was just and he really I think was was like the only where the most prominent public advocate of true like peace and laissez-faire free markets and he was it seemed to me to be the only one who really had the courage of his convictions as far as those ideas were concerned.

Coleman Hughes: So let's take both of those one is the sort of why they hate us question and and the second one is the the federal reserve question because I think I'm going to try to follow rap report rules say where I agree first and then tell you where I disagree and why disagree. So when it comes to why say al-Qaeda hated us I agree they didn't hate us because of our freedom right that is online that does very well with Americans in a political context because we love freedom. But it's also not true that they hate us because of foreign policy grievances that would make sense to say to it in a secular context. In other words when al-Qaeda writes it's declaration of war in the United States for occupying the you know the holy land. What it's complaining about it's main grievance it's it's main grievance as evidenced by the fact that it's in the title and dominates the text as you know is that we had troops in Saudi Arabia that were there at the invitation of the Saudi government and stayed there for several years with permission from the Saudi government because they were afraid that Saddam might invade. Saudi Arabia now the only way that this is a legitimate grievance is if you add the special ingredient of radical salafi Islam which says that Christian crusader troops can't be near the holy sites and and by analogy you imagine a situation like South Korea where we were invited to put our troops over there during the Korean war we fought a war we've kept tens of thousands of troops there for much longer than Saudi Arabia. But there's no South Korean group flying planes into our buildings because they don't have that extra ingredient necessary which is there's no Korean religion which says American troops can't be in soul. So this would be my core critique of the idea that they hate us for for as Sam Harris would say terrestrial grievances.

Dave Smith: Yeah I mean so a couple things on that I mean number one like the the comparison say to like South Korea is just it's really not a one-to-one comparison I mean there's there's a difference between having like having a military presence but as we do in Germany or in in South Korea or in Japan or something like that where you have these are democracies these are Western countries that at. Like again I'm not like defending modern nation states or democracy or anything like that but there is at least somewhat of a somewhat of a free market somewhat of a democratic situation the people like participate to some degree in their government I don't exactly believe that but at least that's that's the way the thing is sold. What you're talking about in Saudi Arabia was using military bases the purpose of the military bases there was for the bombing and blockade campaign against Iraq and bin Laden in that letter that you're talking about laid this out very clearly now I'm certainly not arguing with you that there is like no effect that. Islam has on the way that say bin Laden or his men were thinking about these things but if you're talking about and there's been many books written on this but if you're talking about like what actually gets people to sign up to give their life and go kill other people it's almost always almost always the result of where like it almost always comes from a situation where you're recruiting stick. If you're bin Laden trying to get suicide bombers is to point at all the innocent people who have been killed by this group that you're going after in fact even our own FBI when they do these sting slash entrapment organize runs where they've done dozens of since 9 11 that's always what they go to them with aren't you pissed off about American foreign policy aren't don't you have all these grievances about what they do over there and so yes of course these were radical Islamists and so everything is filtered through. That world view and I have no like desire to absolve Islam of any problems that it has certainly not radical Islam but look at the end of all of that what you're still left with is that they do not want our troops in the Arabian peninsula they do not want our bases in Saudi Arabia and it's a fair enough question even if you're going to say it's some combination of the two to say well why exactly do we need to have those bases there. Why is that is that worth the price of of dealing with this this terrorism issue and and you know even if Saudi Arabia was concerned that Saddam Hussein was going to invade the country or there are other ways that we could give Saudi Arabia some security guarantees are there other ways do we really need to be slaughtering Iraqis in a non war period so again look there's and by the way it's not just the military bases there's a long list of grievances. That they have some that are completely incoherent and and just not justified but yeah I don't know I mean the the element of it's the element of American domination over the region that I think is pretty predictably very going to lead to resistance.

Coleman Hughes: So a few things one I would say you drew a distinction between a democracy on one hand like a democracy we have our troops and and a non democracy South Korea wasn't a democracy for a very long time so I would just point that out fair enough what I'm giving up any more right yeah well what what I'm arguing is more than that this gets filtered through Islamism I think the equation if we were to make a recipe of what makes a terrorist group like al-Qaeda tick it has to have all the ingredients it has to have these these grievances but it also has to have a jihadi ideology that we are not responsible for. Because otherwise it just that not otherwise the behavior just doesn't make any sense right like another one of their grievances was that we allowed Bosnian Muslims to die for too long in in the 90s right i.e. that we didn't intervene soon enough now all over the world we don't intervene soon enough we didn't intervene in in Rwanda soon enough we didn't intervene in Liberia soon enough we could have saved in many of these cases tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of lives but we don't want to have Rwandan terrorists flying planes into our buildings we don't have Liberians blowing up embassies and so there has to be this additional variable that that is the lens through which they interpret all of these foreign policy decisions.

Dave Smith: So are you saying that okay so like as I had already mentioned yes I don't think all of the grievances are legitimate that certainly was one that isn't legitimate but there were there were several other that is that I think are but is what exactly when you're saying they need to have this Muslim this Muslim element to it as well in order for what like in order to do terrorism yeah to justify killing civilians on the basis of these other things in other words I mean I don't know there's been

Coleman Hughes: there were Irish terrorists there were Jewish terrorists of course as you know in the lead up to the creation of the state of Israel I just there's been there's been terrorists those were local ethnic disputes between the Irish and the British between the Jewish and the Palestinians what justifies going abroad flying planes into building thousands of miles away except for the fact that they interpret all of these foreign policy actions that we do everywhere we station groups station troops in South Korea they don't fly into our

Dave Smith: buildings right yeah yeah it doesn't really prove anything like if you were going to say if there's let's say there was like a husband he comes home his wife is in bed with another man he pulls out his gun he murders both of them and you were to say I think the motivating factor here is that she was having an affair cheating on him and then you were to say well I know another situation where a guy was being cheated on and he didn't murder both of them like okay that still doesn't prove that that's not the motivating factor here and it doesn't even prove that there's any a needed extra element other than sometimes it goes this way and sometimes it doesn't but the idea of like I mean if we're just playing out this hypothetical if you put the shoe on the other foot and you imagine that China no let's just say like China had overthrown our government and propped up a dictator and then started you know occupying us or putting military bases in America I think there'd be some Americans who would be grabbing their guns and they would become terrorists in the eyes of this new ruling regime and they I bet they'd be screaming about Jesus while they did it so I don't actually think that's that's right the Irish became terrorists against the British because they were the ones who they had a beef with now if you're saying well why do they come halfway around the world as if that's some some huge different factor it's like oh because I guess America is the world empire and we are really the final sovereign we're all of this area and there are airplanes now so I don't think there's anything like again I'm not trying to absolve Islam of any responsibility that they might have we're losing have I think we're losing contact with the with these analogies because we're talking about a situation where mostly Saudis flew planes into our buildings and we had the permission of the Saudi government to be there right so we're not talking about a situation where we over through the regime in Saudi Arabia

Coleman Hughes: and now the Saudis are pissed we're talking about a situation where we had every right and the invitation of the Saudi regime and there is this terrorist veto and I guess one of my questions to you is that if we live in a system of nation states if the whole you know liberal international order is to work it has to mean that we can't take the veto of a terrorist organization within the a country to mean more than the word of the head of state that says actually we have an agreement they want us to be here the king of your country wants us to be here we have his permission you don't get to veto us being here by killing civilians

Dave Smith: yeah okay so just just to be clear you're right I probably were mixing up things here a little bit yeah no I'm not claiming that America overthrew the government of Saudi Arabia I guess it's just the point I'm making is we're getting into like whether radical Islam how much of a necessary ingredient that really is and so I was just saying like imagine some far away power over through our government but yet we did overthrow the government of Iran Iraq Libya Syria Somalia Yemen you know we've done quite a bit of overthrowing governments in that portion of the region it many in the last few decades and so look I mean to say that you have like I don't exactly know like where like at least the claim like I'm a radical libertarian here man so I really don't believe in much of government being legitimate at all but the idea that like I think the the general view of things is that we view the legitimacy of government as being derived from the people that I don't think actually makes any sense but that's kind of the the belief in the western world I don't know what the invitation of the Saudi government means in terms of legitimacy so we have a right to be there yes the dictatorship that we prop up and keep in power allowed us to be there so I guess that's true no I'm not suggesting that terrorists should get a veto if we are doing something that is moral that is correct and that is within the interest of the United States of America and that comes with the price that terrorists are going to be mad at us and want to attack us well then I don't think we should just allow them to bully us out of doing that in other words if the terrorists actually had a problem with the fact that America is just such a darn free place and wanted to attack us for that well then we got to fight them like screw that we're not going to allow a terrorist to have veto power over what we do the point I think is that if you recognize that this policy comes with the cost of these people hating you so much maybe we should reexamine this policy and we can sit here and say look like in the same sense that if you you know like all the the propaganda of that Joseph Stalin used to put out about how racist America was know which he loved that and he would put out all his propaganda about how horrible black people were treated in the South in America and you know that now any of us could look at this would be like okay what a the biggest hypocrite of the world Joseph Stalin like you care about human rights or something like that but that at the same time that doesn't mean you don't go you know what it is actually pretty messed up the way we're treating black people in America like maybe we ought to examine that that's not me giving Stalin veto power over American policy is just pointing out that number one like if you were in the Cold War space you're giving them a giant propaganda talking point here and it's also a bad policy it's wrong what you're doing so yeah you should stop that I've heard it argued by by some I'm not exactly sure if this is true but that that actually had a big like that was a big part of the civil rights movement and getting like the national security apparatus on board with it because they wanted to plug up that hole in the uh in the propaganda war I'm not sure if that's right or not but the point is that no I'm not saying the terrorists get a veto over I think that's right I think that's a very minor factor in my yeah that that might be right I'm really honestly not not sure about it I've heard I've heard it argued before but regardless there certainly were people who wanted to plug up that hole in the propaganda war not saying that that's what what percentage you know that had to do with it actually going through but I would say that I like I'm not suggesting Ben Laden get to dictate our policy I'm saying that when Ben Laden states his list of grievances and they are you have your military bases in our in our holy land you prop up Israel at who mistreats the Palestinians you've been slaughtering children in Iraq uh for for the last I guess a decade at that point um and uh whatever go through we you prop up brutal dictators in the region we didn't intervene soon

Coleman Hughes: enough in Bosnia great I'm saying I don't want to get into this military intervention they just want it specifically prescribed in there there yes but I'm not I'm not a Ben Laden night I'm not coming on here to tell you that I think he was no but I'm saying I'm not saying he was right

Dave Smith: about everything and I'm not claiming that Ben Laden was a non interventionist libertarian like myself I'm saying I as an American who cares about this country remaining free and prosperous and safe. I can look at this list of grievances and say, yeah, Coleman, that one about us not intervening enough is complete nonsense. The one about us killing a whole bunch of Iraqi kids, he's got a point on that. So the one about us propping up. Is it what I say, Dave, one second? And let me just like real quickly, just and this very quickly, is this is kind of the whole spirit of George Washington's farewell speech. That it's like, look, you get involved in all these entangling alliances and it causes nothing but disaster for your own country. So yes, I think it's reasonable to look at some of those grievances and go, we should have no part in any of this.

Coleman Hughes: So a few things. And then I want to move on to Ron Paul's other big. Sure. You said the big awakening for you was this Ron Paul thing of why they hate us. And I'm really addressing myself to that point. Very simply, if Al Qaeda did not believe in a solid fist extreme, it's Islamist ideology, which is the most radical corner of Sunni Islam. I'm not saying it's all of Islam, not even most of it. Take away that one ingredient, we could do everything else the same in the Middle East as we had done. Overthrowing, back in the overthrow of Iran, the tough sanctions on Saddam Hussein, which caused a humanitarian crisis, putting our troops in Saudi Arabia and they would not have flown planes into our buildings. That is my claim. That's my claim. And I'm addressing myself to this question of why they hate us. I agree with you, it's not they hate us for our freedoms. It's that they hate us because they have a very powerful ideology, which makes them prejudge any actions by what they consider to be non-Muslim Christian crusader, et cetera. And to me, it's crucial to understand if this issue of why they hate us in fact is important. And I'm not sure, I don't think that we can live with, I don't think the world, I don't just mean America, I don't think the world can live with a foreign policy that factors in the worst, most destabilizing elements of other societies, right? Because the Saudi regime complain about their human rights all you want and obviously one can write a book and books have been written on that. They have a much better chance of ruling Saudi Arabia and ruling it in a way so that the people flourish than the bin Ladenites. And if it were the case that in Korea with our troops there, if there was some Korean terrorist group that said, we can't have these Americans on sacred Korean soil anymore, it would not make sense to listen to that terror group over the Korean government and risk taking away our deterrence and make our foreign policy a basis on that decision when the Korean government is trying to get rid of these groups anyway in order to create flourishing societies. So I think we have to be on the side of the elements in these societies, these developing societies that are trying to haltingly and with many foibles bring their countries forward and make their countries, make their countries prosperous. Last word and then let's get to the other pillar.

Dave Smith: Yeah, I guess I just, I'm fundamentally unconvinced by this assertion that Islam is this necessary ingredient. I mean, there's been radical salafi Islam.

Coleman Hughes: I just want to be very precise.

Dave Smith: Well, I don't know. The Iranians seem to have a lot of resentment toward us for overthrown their government. By the way, I'm sorry.

Coleman Hughes: Just to clarify, I'm sorry and interrupting. Would I mean any ideology which many ideologies could fit this whole? It's not only Sunni radical Sunni Islam.

Dave Smith: I don't think it's only Islam to be honest. I mean, violence is used all the time and groups who have oppressed violently often use violence in retaliation. We had slave revolts in this country that were incredibly violent. There's been all types of violence used by every major religion, maybe not every minor one, but every major religion for sure. I just don't agree with that at all. I think that the obvious element that when missing, this none of this would happen, is America's domination and killing of innocent people in this part of the world. You know, when the King Crane Commission went to Syria after World War I, and they had this huge polling apparatus that tens of thousands of people were interviewed, and they overwhelmingly voted that they wanted America to rule over Syria in a League of Nations mandate. And it's really the opposite of what the George W. Bush administration said, it's not, they don't pay us for our freedom. They actually kind of loved us for our freedom. They viewed America as the good guys. America were the ones the city on the hill who were all about liberty. They hated the British and they hated the French. Why is that? Well, because they were dominating them, it's like the most natural human tendency on earth to hate the people who dominate you and violently oppress you. And it's quite often the case that people embrace violence in response. I don't think that's unique to Islam. I think that's more of a thing that brings us all together. That is, I don't mean to be such an egalitarian on your show here, I assure you, I'm not one. But I think that is one of the things that humans have in common. So I just don't see it as, you know, violence, I think that violence, we like to distinguish between terrorism and counter-terrorism, but that's really usually not much of a distinction, or at least there's usually not a very objective definition for it, Israel is quite comfortable using lots of violence right now. They're quite comfortable killing a building full of innocent people to get a guy that they don't like. And you know, this is, there's been acts of terrorism. I mean, some argue Israel introduced terrorism into the pre-Israeli Zionist settlers introduced terrorism into the region. I don't think it's something that's unique to Islam. And I don't think, yeah, like, okay, I essentially do agree with your point that most of these dictators in the Middle East are preferable to the Ben Ladenite, you know, head shoppers. I agree with you. And in fact, I've been very critical of our foreign policy for siding with the Ben Ladenite head shoppers in Libya, Syria, Yemen, and I guess not in Iraq, but next-door in Syria. So yeah, I certainly don't think we should be back in the Ben Ladenites either, but it's not a choice between, do we prop up brutal dictators or do we back the Ben Ladenites who oppose them, which seems to be the binary choice that the American foreign policy establishment has been working within. But there is a third option there, which is that we don't have to do any of this. It's not in our national interest. It leads to horrific outcomes. We get nothing out of it. And it was never, and it's also just completely unconstitutional. It's not at all what our government was formed to be. We're not supposed to be the world empire. We're supposed to be a limited constitutional republic. And the people never got a vote on this. There was never a referendum on, do we want to become a world empire? And in fact, if you look down the track list of American elections, the anti-war candidate seems to win just about every single time. Or if you run back the presidential elections, who was the more anti-war? Was it Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, or at least was perceived as more anti-war? It was Donald Trump. He wins. Hammer Hillary Clinton, Trump. He wins. Obama destroys McCain. You know, George W. Bush in the year 2000 ran on a humble foreign policy, no nation building. And it's like, I don't think the American people want this. And I think if we ever actually, and I don't think it's good for the country. So I'll wrap on that.

Coleman Hughes: Okay, so let's move on. So this other idea of Ron Paul's is that the economy and the military are linked, right? The economic problems that we experience the inflation, the debt, and so forth is linked to military spending. Now, my question here is, you know, obviously that story was true of World War II and Vietnam. And you can just look at the numbers, look at the inflation that happens as a direct result of money printing for wars. But in the past 40, 50 years, right? Reagan, he expands the military budget and inflation goes down. We fight these wars in the Middle East, starting in 2001 through the financial crisis. Inflation is in normal rates. It's at, you know, between one and three percent. This story that I think you believe and Ron Paul certainly believes seems like a true critique that is 50 years out of date. And I don't blame Ron Paul for that because he's of the age where he would have opinions that are 50 years out of date. But what do you find compelling about this idea?

Dave Smith: Well, I don't think that it's out of date at all. I think it completely applies. It probably applies even better to the last 20 years. You know, there's a real problem with measuring inflation by the CPI. And I think like even today, I'm pretty sure I'm right about this, but like if you were taking like a, if you were trying to get like your Series 7 or your Series 63 license to go sell stocks and bonds and they asked you on the test for your license, you know, like is inflation? The, you know, it was like a multiple choice and they were like inflation is rising prices. You will get that wrong. That's not what inflation is. Inflation is an increase in the money supply. It's more money chasing fewer goods. And so if you want to measure say the price is going up, the problem with that is that there's just like with anything else, there's a lot of factors going into it. So like for example, if you, if you raise the minimum wage in a state and unemployment goes down, that doesn't prove that raising the minimum wage lowers unemployment because it might be that three new factories came and opened up in your state. And that's why employment went down. So there's lots of factors leading into why prices go up or prices go down. But the point is it's still inflationary. So like in other words, right, if let's say you had an economy where you were about to go through a steep, steep recession and prices were going to drop by 50%. There was going to be a massive deflationary event. And then the government just like doubled or tripled the money supply. And so prices didn't change at all. You could sit there and say the CPI didn't change at all. I get that it's not the guzzle. But that infusion of cash still created a huge amount of inflation there. So no, it's not a theory that war spending, you know, drives the debt. It's a fact for spending trillions and trillions of dollars

Coleman Hughes: in this whole thing. How important can that fact be if America with all of its excess massive military spending compared to say Europe has the same long run inflation rates as all these European countries and pretty much the same debt to GDP ratio. It doesn't, it's not a one-to-one correlation. Obviously all of these economies are complicated. But it does undermine the idea that the military is the difference between Western Europe spending 1.5 of GDP on their military and America spending 4% of GDP on our military is showing up at the grocery store in any way that a person could actually detect.

Dave Smith: No, again, that's just not right. I mean, it's not the case that like if you're getting drunk and getting behind the wheel of your car and you go, oh, but my neighbors shooting up heroin and getting behind the wheel of his car, it seems like we have the same out.

Coleman Hughes: Why do we have the same long run inflation rates as all these European countries that they'll have empires?

Dave Smith: Typically speaking, they've embraced more generous welfare states than we have. They have big government of a different variety and that also requires money printing and we also kind of act at least to some degree in uniform. I mean, the central banks of Europe and the United States of America do coordinate quite a bit together. But yes, you're right, it is absolutely the case that America has embraced more of the militaristic big government, whereas the European countries have embraced more expensive-

Coleman Hughes: And even in the case of America, our spending is one part military, three, four, five part welfare states. So- 100%. So it's, you know, a-

Dave Smith: Yeah, they're all huge, they're all huge drivers of this. But like, look, and I'm as against the welfare state as anybody you've ever talked to, Coleman, like I can assure you that. Like, but there is a difference between-

Coleman Hughes: So you could reduce, we could reduce, like we could reduce military spending to zero tomorrow and we would still, every year, be increasing the debt to GDP ratio in this country. So to me, the idea of focusing on it is like a firefly to the sun if we're talking about it. No, I mean, she's like in inflation and the debt.

Dave Smith: No, I mean, look, it's not a firefly to the sun. I mean, yes. I'm exaggerating slightly. I'm exaggerating. No, but not even slightly. No, it is. No, it's no, I mean, it's kind of like, like a third of the sun to the sun. So yes, there are other sections that the entitlement programs are slightly bigger, but that's it. After that, it's the, well, I guess interest on the debt now might be overtaken it, but then it's the military. We've spent something like $20 trillion since the collapse of the Soviet Union. And that's, yeah, no, that's a huge driver of the 37 trillion, but you are absolutely right. That with the-

Coleman Hughes: It's not too soon. When you don't include the biggest GDP in the world and the denominator.

Dave Smith: Yeah, no, it sounds like a lot of money for the government to be spending, which is currently $37 trillion in debt. It's not the GDP isn't spending money on defense, right? It's not, it's the government spending this,

Coleman Hughes: and they do not bring in numbers only have meaning in comparison to the denominator. No, I don't know if I- No, I don't know if I- Yeah, yeah, it's true. Okay. So do you want to move office? Do you want the last word? No, go ahead, let's move office. Okay. So I'm curious, do you support, I don't think I've ever heard an example of a military intervention that you support, and I'm curious, in your anti-war philosophy, I know that you're okay with, you know, if for some reason Mexico invaded us, you'd be okay with us pushing them out. You're not- Everyone supports a purely defensive- I'm pure- Yes, absolutely. So is that the limit of the wars that you support, or is there any war in the past 100 years that America has fought, that was not, or let me just say any military intervention that was not purely defensive that you support?

Dave Smith: No, I mean, I think in American history, right, the revolution in the war of 1812 were purely defensive wars. And that's, you know, leaving aside any of the stuff about how conspiratorial the founding fathers were about what the British were about to do. None of that really matters to me. They sent an invading army, and I think people have a right to declare their independence, so that's a legitimate war. In terms of a war that I could support, I, you know, I can't think of an example of one. I think that there's, like if you're, I, like just talking in theory here, right? I do think that if you're attacked, and you, you know, if you have reason to believe that you can't stop attacks from continuing to come, and that the only way to save your people is to God forbid kill some innocent people on the other side. I could see there being like a horrible consequentialist argument for it, but I don't, you know, I don't, no, I don't support any of the wars that America's been in in my lifetime for sure.

Coleman Hughes: Okay, so I, well, I can give you two examples of wars. I, I definitely support one is Korea. If we had an intervening in Korea, there would be no South Korea. It would be the whole peninsula would be ruled by the Kim family, and every humanitarian consequence that's come as a result of that in the past 70 years, including all the famines and the repression and the purges. And, and, and so to me, it's easy to make a consequentialist argument that our intervention in Korea, though it did increase deaths from, from what would have resulted, was in the long run a good choice. And then I can also easily support the military intervention in Liberia in 2003, where this country's been at civil war, hundreds of thousands of deaths, people slaughtering each other left and right for 12 years. Clinton does nothing. George Bush shows up since 2000 Marines, within a week the civil war is done, and the country's been at peace for 20 years, and they fly American flags there. And these seem to me both examples where your philosophy of war would not allow us to go, do things like that, where as mine would.

Dave Smith: Yeah, so I guess like the Liberia ones certainly did work out fairly well. Korea, you know, like, you know, I don't, honestly, I support Liberia. No, I said it worked out fairly well. But you don't support it, you know, worked out well. This is the point that I'm getting to, right? Is that, so no, I wouldn't have supported the policy, but it did work out a lot better than the other catastrophes. But if you want to sit here and say that like my philosophy wouldn't allow Liberia to have happened, like, okay, fair enough. But your philosophy won't prevent a rack, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. And I'll take that trade.

Coleman Hughes: I wouldn't say my philosophy is pro-Rak. I wasn't pro-Theirak war.

Dave Smith: No, it's not a matter, but you're saying my philosophy of not getting into these entanglements will not allow us to have the success of Liberia. That's correct, right? So then, right, yes, sure. But then the flip side of that is that then you also have to credit that my philosophy would not allow the catastrophe is that I just rattled off. So it's a trade off?

Coleman Hughes: Forget your point. Your philosophy is, as every philosophy is.

Dave Smith: Everything is trade-offs, yeah. Everything in life is trade-off, sure.

Coleman Hughes: But like, yeah, that's a deep insight. That's a deep insight. I mean, that's not something to gloss over. It's a trade-off and human lives on both sides.

Dave Smith: 100%, but, well, yes, it's a trade-off, I suppose it. Yes, it can be. Everything is a trade-off, but also the thing is that giving the government power to do something is not something that you can then always have control over than how it's going to be used. And so, yes, in a sense, it is a trade-off, like everything in life is trade-offs. But I think the trade-off is way on my side. And if you're saying that of the last 19 military interventions, 19 military interventions, we got two who didn't turn out to be complete catastrophes. That's like, oh, yeah, I would still rather err on the side of the trade-off that didn't allow for all of the catastrophes to happen.

Coleman Hughes: I would say there are more than two. You could probably add the NATO bombing in the 1990s and you could probably add getting Saddam out of Kuwait. Which NATO bombing in the 1990s? Serbia, are you talking about? Both, 95 and 99.

Dave Smith: Well, no, all right. I mean, you know, there's, there's, there's more.

Coleman Hughes: I'll grant you those are more arguable cases. Those aren't shut and dry, like, like, Liberia.

Dave Smith: No, I mean, I think, I think, honestly, like, like, you know, I know a lot more,

Coleman Hughes: I know more of the experts would argue that we halted a genocide in progress.

Dave Smith: No, no expert, no expert has any evidence that we halted a genocide in progress. This is what they said, this is what they said leading into the war, right? Bill Clinton said that like 100,000 people or something like that had already been killed. And the FBI went over there and investigated afterward and they just didn't find anything to back up those claims. And, and Milosevic had absolutely committed war crimes. And he, you know, he had killed some soldiers and he had done some bad things and there were people who got massacred. But even, he never even got convicted of the genocide charge in the international criminal court. He got convicted of war crimes and I think some other lesser charge. But no, I think that thing was sold on lies just like all the other wars in my lifetime have been.

Coleman Hughes: Okay, so I want to talk to you a little more about your anti-war philosophy because I've heard, you know, one of the arguments on the other side of you is that the world is basically a competition of great powers or if not great powers than regional powers. And if America were to adopt your favorite stance of isolationism and purely defensive wars, we're not fighting a war until there's a bomb dropped, you know, on American soil and then we're gonna fight a purely defensive war to eliminate the threat and that's it. What would happen is all of the other powers in the world from Russia to China to Iran would simply fill in the void, right? And so you have examples like, you know, we pull our military bases out of the Philippines and it's not two years before China has created an artificial island and plopped a military base right off the coast of the Philippines. We, and then there's the additional point which I want to get your response to, which is that we feel many critiques of our military industrial complex, the fact that we have this revolving door where you can predict with like half like coin flip accuracy that the current secretary of defense is gonna end up at a weapons company in some way, shape or form. Yeah. And there's a revolving door. And in the aggregate, it wouldn't require a genius in human psychology to think that perhaps this pushes the whole system to be a little more war happy than it otherwise would. And I think I would probably disagree with you. I think I would certainly disagree with you about the power of that effect. But what would you say to the critique that Russia and China also have their own military industrial complexes? It's not even a revolving door in the case of Russia because they're in the same room. It's like the 49% owner of Kalashnikov became the deputy secretary of defense in 2018 in Russia. And he didn't even have to get rid of his shares in Kalashnikov, right? So they're not revolving in and out. They're just in the same room. They're the same people. In China, it all works with, it all works through bribery because everything is state owned but they've had massive bribery scandals in the past 10 years where the weapons companies are bribing the people that decide whether to secure their contracts to give them higher prices who are bribing the people above them to make decisions that were down to the benefit of ultimately financial motives. So if America pulls back from the world, what is to stop the military industrial complexes of all the other countries in the world from simply filling the space now that they're undeterred?

Dave Smith: Sure. Well, I mean, I think, yes, I've certainly heard this argument before. I would kind of point out that it does seem to me that the more pro-war position almost always seems to rely on like an unfulsive, viable counterfactual of how things would be way worse if we didn't do this. And whereas the anti-war position tends to more rely on the actual catastrophes that have happened. And so just to be clear, which I'll defend my philosophical views or whatever, but the idea of like, oh, the problem with the non-interventionist libertarians is that if we completely withdrew from the world, then China comes and totally takes over the world in our absence. It's like, okay, but like just first, I will say just on a practical level, like without embracing pure Ron Paulianism or something, which is probably not gonna happen tomorrow. Like our criminal government in DC could have just not lied through their teeth to sell the war in Iraq. Like that would have just been a lot better. A million people would still be alive. And trillions of dollars wouldn't have been wasted in tens of thousands of our bravest young boys wouldn't have committed suicide in the aftermath of it. And so like we didn't need to fight all of these disastrous wars even if you think on top of that, you can't completely pull back from the world. But I don't know. I fundamentally reject the idea that there will be one power who takes over the world. You know, part of the life.

Coleman Hughes: There would have to be one. Each regional power projects fills the vacuum of its own area that we leave. It's not a hypothetical based on nothing. It's based on, can you point to a single time period in the past 5,000 years of human civilization where the regional powers have not expanded using their militaries to the best of their ability given the accounting for the blowback they will get? Can you point to any time? So it's not.

Dave Smith: No, I'm not, okay, but I'm not suggesting that like that no regional powers will exert influence over their realm of their sphere of influence, like of course not. But I'm also seeing that right now, Vladimir Putin is limping through his third year in a war with Ukraine. I don't see him as being a threat to dominate Europe anytime soon. The rest of Europe is all against him and much wealthier and much stronger than him. China is more empowered.

Coleman Hughes: Even in that argument, you can see implicitly that if they were less strong, for instance, if they didn't have it all the backing of the United States, that he could expand. And that that would be the natural tendency throughout all of human history.

Dave Smith: I'm not conceding that that's necessarily the natural tendency, but sure, if Ukraine was weaker, he would be able to have defeated the country quicker. I'll certainly grant that. I'll be the natural tendency.

Coleman Hughes: So you don't agree with me or Shimer guys that believe great powers have a default tendency to expand up to the limit of the resistance against them.

Dave Smith: Well, listen, certainly, I think every organization has a desire to expand. I mean, this is true in general of businesses, of countries. So they're always trying to expand not necessarily territorial, territorially. And I do think that a country like China who is kind of known for playing the long game even in their kind of crazy central controlled method. No, I don't think that they're watching America going bankrupt, fighting all of these wars and saying, oh, we gotta get it on all that action. I think that, so essentially, yeah, I would probably agree with much of what John Meersheimer says in the sense that it is the way of the world that great powers will have their realm of influence. I do think that's true, but looking at the world right now, I mean, I find this to be kind of a silly thing where we become the world empire, we bully the entire world, and then we sit there being worried that someone else is gonna start doing this, whereas China has adversaries all around it. China has to contend with Japan and South Korea. It's not, it's not so obvious that they just take over the world. And no, I just, essentially, no, I'm so, I'm a George Washingtonian, Washingtonian on this. I think that America, we struggle enough with just doing liberty right here. That should be our focus. And no, I don't think, like I think you can trade with the world and be friends with the world. And yes, there will, it will suck to be a little country next to a bigger, much stronger country. That's already true. That's true with America. We're more guilty of making it suck for little countries than any of them are. So I just don't, I don't find any of this stuff compelling.

Coleman Hughes: Okay, let's move on because there are other topics I wanna get to. One of your big arguments and you've made this on Rogan and elsewhere is that Iraq, Israel got us into the Iraq war or more specifically pro-Israeli interests where a key factor, a key influence that pushed America into the war in Iraq. So I wanna give you the floor to make your case here.

Dave Smith: Yeah, well, I mean, if, you know, for John Meersheim or Boots, you were just mentioning him. So I just was at the top of my mind, but he wrote a book called The Israel Lobby where he really details this pretty, like extensively with all the footnotes and citations that you need.

Coleman Hughes: I've read it. I've read it. I find it totally unconvincing,

Dave Smith: but I mean, I don't even know how, how do you find it unconvincing? I mean, obviously.

Coleman Hughes: I'll tell you. I'll tell you. Okay, so I'll tell you why I find it.

Dave Smith: I'll lay out the case if you want first, but no, no.

Coleman Hughes: Okay, well, if we're talking about Meersheimer, let's talk about that and then you can lay out whatever other elements of the case you think are compelling. So the idea that domestic Israel lobby is big enough or powerful enough to get America to fight an entire war that we would not otherwise have fought is to me ridiculous. And now I'll give you a few touch points. During the entire George W. Bush administration, the Israel lobby spent $17 million lobbying Congress. Now that might sound like a lot to me or you. It is absolute chum change on the scale of domestic lobbying to put it in perspective. The tobacco lobby spent $200 million. So more than 10 times that amount over the same time period. And they couldn't even stop Congress from passing a federal tax hike on cigarettes in 2009. Now during the Obama era, the Israel lobby spent $30 million. And they were outspent by the dentists. The dentists lobby spent $32 million. This is all according to opensecrets.org, which is usually the standard source people go to for such figures. This is, again, not to repeat my favorite phrase, but like a firefly to the Sun when compared to the $2 billion, for instance, that Wall Street spent lobbying Congress and they couldn't even prevent Dodd-Frank from being passed. So the idea that the domestic Israel lobby could get us to fight an entire war that we wouldn't otherwise have fought at the same price as the dentists are paying Congress is too much for me.

Dave Smith: Right. Oh, this is a topic for another show but the bankers love Dodd-Frank. And I think they were quite happy with that bill be again. But that's a topic for another show.

Coleman Hughes: They tried to, they tried to prevent it from being passed. And only once they failed, did they try to mold it as a plan B to their own image. So, yeah, I mean, look, I get, don't start the movie in the middle. They failed with $2 billion to prevent it being passed.

Dave Smith: I think, I think you're the one who's missing the firefly for the Sun or whatever your analogy was in that case with the big banks. It's like, look, man, you can talk about these people who like get, you know, contribute tons of money to candidates in Washington DC and then point out the one area where they didn't get the policy that they wanted or they didn't get their A plan and only got their B plan. Okay, but yeah, but then if you zoom out, you can look at how the whole system is rigged in their favor. They get free money and then lend it out to the American people. I think it seems to be working out pretty good for them rigging the system. But onto the Israel lobby thing, I mean, look, the, again, this isn't refuting any of what Miersheimer said. Miersheimer simply claimed that because you're talking about A-PAC and he's talking about the entire lobby.

Coleman Hughes: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, those numbers I gave were the entire pro-Israel lobby of which A-PAC is something like half.

Dave Smith: Okay, fine, but okay, so fine, but you're talking A-PAC and the American Enterprise Institute and the Washington...

Coleman Hughes: I'm talking about every organization that's listed under the pro-Israel lobby on open screen.

Dave Smith: But what he's talking about for most of the book, which is really what Am always hammering down, I mean, look, there's no question like A-PAC supported the war and some of these other, or the American Enterprise Institute, they all supported the war and they threw money toward that and they lobbied for it. But this was a neo-conservative war. I mean, the neo-conservative... I don't think there's any chance. It looked the Iraq war was highly debated. It was contested. It was contested in Congress. There were people who were against it. There were uniform military people who were against it. There were people at the State Department who were for it. And the neo-cons were the ones who really pushed it through. And look, I mean, Coleman, you look at who the neo-cons were, okay? In their own words, they have deep loyalty to Israel. Every last one of them has said in their own words that they have a deep commitment toward Israel. They're writing all of their policy papers through the 1990s on how we have to overthrow the government in Iraq as part of this clean break strategy on behalf of Israel. And then they get, they are all of George W. Bush's men. Literally once the towers come down, George W. Bush is in the White House. It's a project for a new American century all down his staff, death from his defense secretary, his vice president, and all of their men. They're the State Department, the Defense Department. And so it is not going out on a limb to say, yet this word doesn't happen without the neo-conservatives. And I think John Meersheimer very reasonably puts them as part of the Israel lobby. They, all you have to do is read their own words. It's not like I'm putting together some conspiracy. By the way, I love that Meersheimer points out in that book because I do think there's a real interesting point to make that he's not saying it was a Jewish war. It's like the Jewish people in America actually oppose the war in Iraq much more so than just about any other group. I think the polling data was they were like, they were way out of head against the war in Iraq. I forget the exact number. Yes, that's it. But yeah, there's no question that call it whatever you want to. I mean, like they would basically through the 90s self-identify as the American version of the LaCoudnec party. But whatever, whatever you want to call it, these group of people who have in their own words admitted, they have like profound loyalty and connection to Israel pushed for this war. And they had written in their own words that a huge part of it was because this was the strategy for it to help Israel.

Coleman Hughes: None of this is true, Dave. Okay, so let's look at it.

Dave Smith: It's all true.

Coleman Hughes: Let's look at their own words. Project for a new American century is founded in 1998. If you go to their archive online, you can find the earliest thing written about Iraq by a member. The earliest thing is written by John Bolton in 1997. Here's the first sentence of the earliest thing written on the Panac archive. You might think the United Nations would want to punish Saddam Hussein for disrupting and nearly killing the UN's own efforts to eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Instead, the UN Security Council effectively rewarded him. The next year when the Panac is actually founded, as you know, they write a letter to Bill Clinton. Now, this is the first time that Panac, the Neocons, call for the Alster of Saddam Hussein, right, publicly.

Dave Smith: You know, this is the first time the project for a new American century called form. It's not the first time the Neocons were called form, right? But it's not, no, you said the Neocons. It's not the first time the Neocons had called for it publicly.

Coleman Hughes: Correct, we'll get to that, apologies. So the first time Panac calls for the Alster of Saddam Hussein in 98, they write a letter to Bill Clinton. The entire letter is about the fact that Saddam has WMDs or is pursuing WMD and we can't let it happen. And this is how the letter ends. We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the US or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept it, blah, blah, blah, blah, okay. So Israel is mentioned once in that letter and it's grouped in with all of our other allies in the region. It's like they say also this will be good for Israel and Jordan and our other allies in the region. So Panac, this idea that the project for a new American century that you and I both agree is a good bell weather for the Neocons was not using the WMD argument. It was their main argument. It was almost their only argument long before Iraq. Now let's get to this.

Dave Smith: No, no, but this is just, we hold on, but, but Coleman, this is just not right. I mean, you, you've read a clean break a new strategy for securing the realm and coping with crumbling states.

Coleman Hughes: That wasn't about US foreign policy. That was a recommendation for Israeli foreign policy.

Dave Smith: Yes, okay. Okay, but you're just saying they talk openly about wanting to overthrow Saddam who's saying for the clean break strategy. Like, so, okay, like, yes, in the letter to Bill Clinton, they didn't say that, but they had written openly about this. No, it's the entire strategy that they laid out and we also have a four-star general who's on record saying that he saw these plans that they were going to go overthrow all of these governments.

Coleman Hughes: Let's deal with one at a time. The clean break memo written by Richard Pearl, Douglas Faith, all these Neocons. David Worms, or David Worms, or in 1996. It is a recommendation to Israel, to the Lecude, to Benjamin Netanyahu to say, here are some things we think that Israel should prioritize. It is not a recommendation about what American foreign policy should prioritize. That's the first thing to note. The second thing to note is that when that paper advocates overthrowing Saddam, the point of overthrowing Saddam was to replace him with a Hashemite monarch that would be friendly to Israel, like Jordan is friendly to Israel. That's the whole point. The point of deposing Saddam was not to replace it with a democracy. That is nowhere in the clean break memo. The question for you, if the clean break memo was some kind of blueprint, why didn't we even make an attempt to replace Saddam with a Hashemite monarchy? Oh, yeah.

Dave Smith: I mean, that's a good point. I think the whole thing fell apart, right? I mean, like, you know, we never even contemplated it.

Coleman Hughes: We never even floated the idea. So how could it be that, therefore, true that the clean break memo was some kind of blueprint?

Dave Smith: Well, Chalabee was like Judith Miller's big source on the whole thing, right? I think that a lot of the Neocons seem to really believe that that was going to be what happened, and that's not what happened after they invaded the country. But Coleman, I mean, like, you're sitting here saying, like, okay, so these people are, like, they're writing to Benjamin Netanyahu saying, here's the strategy for a clean break to get away from the peace process so you don't have to give up a Palestinian state, and you can keep the status quo going. And so what we think you ought to do for that is overthrow this guy, Saddam Hussein, and then you have them advocating for overthrowing Saddam Hussein for years more after that. Then they actually get into power, and they do the thing, and we're supposed to pretend like that there's no connection there. I'm not like connecting wild dots. I'm saying like they said, this is what their interest was. This is why they wanted it done, and then they did the thing. No.

Coleman Hughes: No, that's not true. I mean, as it's not true, because Richard Pearl was not saying what America should do. He was saying what he thought Israel should do. What we ended up doing was not what was in the clean break memo. Their whole argument is that what we ended up doing was what was in this memo. It's not true. We deposed Saddam, and we know where in the clean break memo does it say make Iraq a democracy. No Israeli-licued member would think you can make Iraq a democracy. They thought that notion was ridiculous. So what we ended up doing had nothing to do with what Richard Pearl recommended, and everything to do with what George Bush thought would make sense. You could be totally clear. Well, it's a mix of all of that. But you cannot argue that what we did, we did the clean break memo. That's just factually incorrect. No, and then everything else Penaq is saying their entire argument is WMD, WMD, WMD, WMD.

Dave Smith: This is fine. This is real there. Coleman, this is like if I point to General Wesley Clark saying we're going to overthrow seven governments in the next five years, and that decision's being made. And then you say, yeah, dude, but we didn't overthrow. It took us like 15, 20 years to do that. Like, yes, of course, obviously George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and you know, Condoleez of Reiser, Colin Powell at the time, obviously all these guys had influence on this too. And so I'm not claiming that the piece of paper came to life and everything that was on it magically happened after that is still a pretty important paper to look at. And this was written by people who were in positions of substantial power when the time came due. Yes, you're right. The spreading democracy to Iraq, which seemed to at least in George W. Bush's estimation be an essential selling point to the war. You're right. That wasn't in the paper. And that got added later.

Coleman Hughes: But I think it's still kind of relevant. That's kind of half the enchilada. Let's talk about this. No, I don't see. Okay. Let's talk about this, this Wesley Clark memo that he never saw. Okay. He never saw it. He never saw it. Yeah, he says so. And this he's been interview. You don't remember this. He's talking about it. He says, he's got. Yeah. He says, I'm talking to the joint.

Dave Smith: He says, he handed him the paper and he was like, I don't want to show this to me.

Coleman Hughes: I don't want to be on the hook for seeing classified info.

Dave Smith: Yeah, I think it was. You're talking about the interview with Amy Goodman on democracy now, right?

Coleman Hughes: Yeah. Yes. Yes. So the memo that Wesley Clark never saw. Okay. It said, according to his hearsay, and it would be dismissed in accordance hearsay, that we're going to overthrow seven countries in five years as Iraq, then Syria, then Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Iran. So the first thing I want to say about this is that Pentagon memos in the Bush White House were called snowflakes because they came so often and they piled up on your desk. And let me read to you from the Washington Post at the time. Rumsfeld, who sometimes abrasive approach, often alienated other cabinet members, produced 20 to 60 snowflakes, these memos snowflakes a day, 20 to 60 a day, regularly poured out his thoughts in writing as the basis for developing policy and and hit Rumsfeld's aid, Rumsfeld's aid, Keith Urban, which is funny name, estimated that he wrote 20,000 memos during his time in the George W. Bush White House. And then we have from national security counterterrorism advisor, Richard Clark, who is in the room, he was close with Condoleezza Rice, national security. He says, from time to time, Condoleezza Rice would show Clark notes sent by the defense secretary, these snowflake memos, all telling her to stay off his turf. The first time she got one of them, she thought, hmm, what do I do with this? This says Clark, who adds she was advised to ignore them. Every once in a while, one of these ranting Rumsfeld notes to Condi would come. You can almost hear the eye roll, like this dude Rumsfeld is drowning us in his little thoughts and his stupid memos. He sent 20 yesterday, I get 20 emails from someone I'm like, dude, what the fuck? Send me one important one. So then this guy, four star general, Wesley Clark comes along, doesn't see the memo, here's about one memo, isn't privy to it because he's not allowed to see it. Also isn't privy to the other 20 memos that day, isn't privy to the memos next week that might cancel out the strategy that was laid out. Do you have any evidence that this memo was actually important as opposed to one snowflake in a shifting strategy of 60,000?

Dave Smith: Well, I think, okay, so first of all, Wesley Clark is actually clarified a bunch of this up more recently, but he did talk about how he had actually seen the plans originally a decade earlier in 1991 that they came separate Israeli study.

Coleman Hughes: He said, right? Yeah.

Dave Smith: Well, it was kind of, it was a little bit clunky the way he said it. He said it came from Paul Wolfowitz's desk and that he had brought it to Brent Scowcroft, I think, who had said, let's look at that after the, yeah, he said it was, it was resurrected in an Israeli study later and it wasn't exactly clear what he was referring to there. But again, we got a four star general, right? And he was not saying, like, because this was kind of weird when I, I remember Douglas Murray kind of taking a similar line with this when I had my conversation with him, but he wasn't saying like, oh, there's a memo or there's just like something, like what Wesley Clark is saying and you're right, it is him saying what he heard from someone else. But he was saying, and a four star general felt comfortable enough to like say this on national television that he went to the defense department and was told that the decision had been made, that we were not only going through Iraq, if the way he tells the story is, he came in and he found out they had decided they were going to invade Iraq. Then he comes back a couple months later, this is late 2001 and the guy goes, dude, it's so much worse than just Iraq. We're going to topple seven countries in the next five years. Now he said he goes to show him this and Wesley Clark's like, I shouldn't really be looking at that document there. And this might be a crime for you to be showing this. But okay, so what we have is a four star general saying he's, he knew of these plans a decade later. The same group of people is now back in power after being kicked out, you know, for the Clinton years. They're now back in power. He's saying the decision's been made that we're going to want with all the ones who he knows.

Coleman Hughes: Hold on one second. He didn't even, he was even allowed to see them.

Dave Smith: Let me just finish the point. Okay. Then you can respond to this. He's saying, you're right. You didn't see the memo. Just a four star general saying that somebody at the Defense Department told them the decisions to be made. And then in the following years, we didn't overthrow five seven countries in five years. But we did overthrow a bunch of the ones on the list or target a bunch of the ones on the list. And so Coleman, my argument here isn't that again. I'm not saying that memo came to life and exactly what was written down on that. It's happened. Of course, there were more memos. Of course, there were more decisions that were added in afterward. But isn't it kind of hard to, don't you find it to be a little bit of a coincidence that general Clark tells you the decision was made in 2001 that we were going to overthrow Gaddafi and Assad? Just think about that. That was a wild claim in 2001 to be made. And then we did just that. You don't find that. That doesn't make your eyebrows poke up a little bit.

Coleman Hughes: That doesn't make you go like, oh, I'll tell you why, I'll tell you why. So it doesn't make my eyebrows raised for the following reasons. First of all, the people that actually saw the memo like Condoleezza Rice would say, oh, okay, another fucking 20 memos from Don put that in the special filing cabinet for my memos from Don, which is the trash bin. There is no evidence that this was some grand strategy, right? And the only evidence you have is the general who never saw the memo. So then you actually look at, is there any set of facts that were persuaded you that this wasn't a plan? Because we didn't, three of the countries on the, on out of seven, almost half the countries have not done regime change, let alone within five years, let alone in the specific order prescribed by the memo. And so, and not to mention, we had, we did do regime change in countries not on the memo at all, like Liberia. So there's actually no variable from the memo that actually matches our foreign policy. And so my question to you is like, is there any possible set of facts of U.S. foreign policy from the last four years that were persuaded you that this memo was not important?

Dave Smith: Again, it's not, it's not the memo that you keep saying. It's that Wesley Clark says the decisions been made that were going to tell, how would he know? He didn't even read the memo. He's saying that his source at the Defense Department, and again, keep it up.

Coleman Hughes: So is it your argument that no one at the DOD would ever exaggerate our lie because if that's what you're saying, then who are you and what have you done with Dave Smith?

Dave Smith: Okay. Well, certainly Coleman, that's a blatant straw man and not at all what I'm saying. So no, I have not said nobody would ever exaggerate sure, but I'm sure lots of people are exaggerating. The point is that the supreme leader of the allied of the NATO allies, okay, he's selling that his guy at the Defense Department said the decisions been made. My guess is that he's talking to people at the Defense Department who are in the know on this and the point is, look, obviously Coleman, the plan didn't go exactly according to plan. There's just no question about that. All of this is, we're talking, this is late 2001 here. This is still over a year, almost a year and a half until we invade Iraq. They all believed the height. They all thought it was going to be a cakewalk. And in fact, that's another interesting thing that John Mearsheim recovers a bit there, right? Is that essentially this was Sharon's initial beef with invading Iraq. Because he was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, like he wanted, he's like, hey, I want Saddam Hussein overthrown, but we got to overthrow the mullahs in Iran first because he wanted Saddam

Coleman Hughes: Hussein. Where does he, what's your source on that? That Sharon said he wants, sorry, this, I mean, it's, it's, it's the envoy of Sean. He warned Bush not to invade Iraq, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned Bush not to invade Iraq in February 2002, which is confirmed by the Israeli ambassador at the time, confirmed by A, who brocks former senior advisor, again, by Lawrence Wilkerson, that then chief, chief, chief of staff to Colin Powell. The Prime Minister of Israel told Bush, do not invade Iraq, it's not going to work. And anyway, Iraq is weak, Iran is the real threat. Yes, right. This is a massive glaring hole in your story. No, it's not at all.

Dave Smith: That Israel pushed us into Iraq. Go ahead. Okay. If you let me finish the sentence, then it's not a glaring hole in my story at all. What got them on board, ultimately, the Israelis were that they were persuaded that Iran was going to be next, and they thought, all of them thought Iraq was going to be a cake walk. Now, Iraq turned out to be a catastrophe. And so, of course, the plan didn't go exactly according to plan. But again, you don't find it interesting, like, honestly, just on a human level. You got a four-star general saying the decisions been made to overthrow the governments in Libya and Syria, and then we went and did it years later. You don't find that to be, that's kind of interesting to me.

Coleman Hughes: Yeah. No, because he never saw, the guy who never saw the memo heard about a memo, and no one else who's ever seen the memo has come out.

Dave Smith: Forget the memo. He was told the decisions been made, and we're doing this. But how would he know? How would this guy know? How would the guy at the Defense Department know? Yes. Because he's at the Defense Department.

Coleman Hughes: But he's not the one making the decision. Yes, he's the one making the decision.

Dave Smith: He said the decisions been made. By who? By Bush? Bush didn't want to imagine the top of the defense department. I don't know. Runsfeld, Bush. I don't know if it was going to make the decision to get a lot more of this information, but we have what we have.

Coleman Hughes: Okay. Instead of trusting the four-star general that didn't even read the memo because he wasn't allowed to, let's trust the people that were actually in the room, Condoleezza Rice, talking to Bush every single day of the entire administration, says that the decision was made to go into Iraq for sure on September 7th, 2002. If you have better information than that from other people that were in the room, I'd love to hear it, but in the absence of that, I'm not going to listen to a four-star general that never read the memo that he's talking about.

Dave Smith: Okay. Again, it's not the memo. I don't know. I don't know. We're going to go in a story. In circles here. Okay. Yeah. You got a four-star general telling you the plan has been made that we're going to go fight all of these wars.

Coleman Hughes: They didn't even have enough classification to read Pentagon memos. I'm supposed to listen to him over the national security adviser that was reading all of these memos and talking to Bush every day and talking to him. Yeah.

Dave Smith: It was also a member of the regime who was selling this war. So yeah.

Coleman Hughes: I mean. It was your rice? No. She was not a rump. She had a horrible relationship with rump with rump's fellow.

Dave Smith: No. I said she was a member of the regime who was selling the war and that's exactly what she was.

Coleman Hughes: But why would that make her less of an authority on what the plans were?

Dave Smith: It's not a matter of making her less of an authority. It makes her less trustworthy and he's not more of an authority or more trustworthy. The fact is that much of what he said came true and that's what makes it interesting. If we had never invaded Libya, never invaded Syria, never taken any of the actions that we took in the war on terrorism, then yeah, I would be much less relevant that a general said he saw that the decision had been made in 2001.

Coleman Hughes: Okay. Well, everyone else in the room does not say the decision had been made. And he was not in these rooms making these decisions with the Secretary of Defense and the national security adviser and George Bush.

Dave Smith: So it's just a common coincidence that we went over through those regimes that we have

Coleman Hughes: planned. We have contingency plans for all kinds of things. Again, there's not a contingency plan, when you're the Pentagon writing, when you're the Pentagon writing 60 memos a day, I guarantee you, you will troll those memos and find information and plans for every possible contingency in the world. The burden on you, this is not talking about one out of the 60,000 and say that this was important.

Dave Smith: But can you get to Sherone? But that's just not what you're doing. It's just not what I'm doing. I'm not saying there was a memo once that said something. I'm saying that a four star general said the decision had been made, that he had sources and based on one department, the memo, the defense department, who was basing it on what? The memo. Okay, fine. But even if it was, it's not, but the issue isn't that there's a memo, the issue is whether that decision has been made here. There might be lots of memos that go out every day, but the memo that says we're going to fight. We're going to topple seven countries in the next five years, a pretty big memo. That's not just one of the regular memos, that's a point.

Coleman Hughes: Once it was a big memo, your only evidence is the guy who never read it. You realize how ridiculous this is? If you were a historian writing a book, you'd have to cut this out of the book because you're relying on the hearsay of someone that never even read the document. Much less, you or I have never read the document. Then we know that they were writing 60 documents a day that Condoleezza Rice was putting in the trash. It's a ridiculously low bar of evidence you'd have to have to consider this memo and everything implied by it important.

Dave Smith: I mean, I don't know how to say this, dude. This just feels so nutty to me. I guess we'll just leave this up to people. Can we talk about the role now? One second, I'll just say, I guess we'll leave it up to the audience to decide. I think having the head of the NATO Allied Forces and a four star general saying he was informed that the decision has been made to fight all of these wars and then we went on and fought a whole bunch of them. I think that's a pretty relevant detail and I'm not a historian writing a book. I'm a guy talking about these issues to the American people, so I don't know. You can decide whether you find that to be a pretty interesting story or not.

Coleman Hughes: Okay. Let's go on to Sharon because this is the core of the issue. You said earlier, I mentioned and you agree that Sharon weren't Bush in February 22 not to go into Iraq and that Iran was the big threat. But then you said the Israelis got on board when they were guaranteed that Iran would be after Iraq. Yes. Is that right? How does that amount to you? It really is my life's source on this. Okay. But I'm not following your logic because how does that all add up to the Israelis pushed us into Iraq because they're still that he warned us. That sounds more like we pulled that sounds more like we pulled them into Iraq. That's your argument.

Dave Smith: Well, no. I mean, look, it's not again, my argument isn't either of those things exactly.

Coleman Hughes: You said we had to persuade them by putting out Iran as a chip and we had to loop them into it. Yeah.

Dave Smith: Yeah, but they're not monoliths here, right? So essentially you have different factions within all of these groups, right? So you have the neo conservatives who were always more closely aligned with the Likud guys and Benjamin Netanyahu as Sharon, I think was a Likud at one point and then split with the party and formed his own thing like he had his own weird falling outs with Benjamin Netanyahu over the years.

Coleman Hughes: Here's Likud at the time of the Iraq war decision. He was the leader of the Likud party.

Dave Smith: He was still a Likud at that point, sure, but there's still different factions. It's not Benjamin Netanyahu, it was Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu a few years later quit the government over some of Sharon's policies, I believe. I think it was what, sorry, I'm just getting confused in my own head here. There was the withdrawal in 2005 as when Netanyahu quit the government. But so you had the neo conservatives and Benjamin Netanyahu, who at that wing, they were pushing for Iraq first, the Sharon's envoy, at least according to, at least the first envoy that he sent over, right? He goes, well, no, we should go after Iran first and that was like their issue. And they were, essentially, that group won and they persuaded the other group that they would do Iran next, which also lines up with General Wesley's clerks' statement about how Iran would be the final regime. That was overthrown.

Coleman Hughes: I also didn't come true, by the way. So, so let me just nail down what you're arguing. You're arguing, you're arguing that there's a split in the Lecude Party between the pro-Iraq and the anti-Iraq invasion. And within the Lecude Party, the pro-Iraq invasion element persuaded the anti-Iraq evasion, Sharon elements. Is that just your argument?

Dave Smith: No, I mean, the argument is really that the neo conservatives drove the war and that they agreed with Benjamin Netanyahu, who also, as you know, came over that year and testified that we should go overthrow.

Coleman Hughes: That was after the decision had already been made. I was on September 12th, according to Condoleezza Rice, they had a big meeting on September 7th and they agreed on the war in Iraq. The fact that Netanyahu testified to Congress five days later after the decision has been made, I mean, if you're saying Joe is the reason I moved to New York, but I didn't talk to Joe until after I moved to, I made the decision, then this is totally irrelevant. What matters is what was happening during the time that the U.S. security established on just debating Iraq, which was winter of 22, to summer of 22. And during this time, we have multiple sources, including Lawrence Wilkerson, who is no fan of the Neocons. He's a Serbic about the Neocons and a Serbic about the Israel lobby, which he says is too powerful. This is Colin Powell's chief of staff. He hates the Israel lobby. Nevertheless, he said, well, let me quote you from him, actually. He said in the newer public, he goes, hold on, let me find it. He confirms the basic picture. Hold on, let me find it really fast. Okay, so he says Lawrence Wilkerson, who hates the Israel lobby, says, the Israelis were telling us Iraq is not the enemy. Iran is the enemy. The Israelis tried their best to persuade us that we were focused on the wrong enemy. But once they understood that we were going to war, come hell or high water, they weren't going to get on the wrong side of the president of the United States. That's Lauren Wilkerson, who hates the Israel lobby, chief of staff to the Secretary of State during these years in the newer public. So everyone that is in the room says that basically what the Israelis did. Sharon is the leader of the party and leader of the country. Tells Bush, this Iraq idea is stupid, it's not going to work. Democracy doesn't work in the Middle East anyway. Iran is the threat. You should be focused on them. Bush tells them to f off, we're going into Iraq. And then Sharon says, okay, well, we didn't convince them. We might as well support our biggest allies, because we don't want to, we never want to be on the wrong side of America. That's actually what happened. And then once the decision is made, after that point Netanyahu testifies to Congress, saying, oh, we love the war in Iraq, testifies as a citizen, not as a leader of the party. And everyone in the room corroborates this story.

Dave Smith: Okay. Look, I would just say, I highly recommend people read Mir Shimer's book, The Israel Lobby. The guy, this world renowned scholar wrote a book about the most controversial topic in the world. So he just went out of his way to back up everything he says in the book. But the whole point is that, yes, initially there were people in Shrones camp who didn't want to over, I mean, they all wanted to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Let's get real. They were worried about doing it first before you, I mean, we signed the Iraq Liberation

Coleman Hughes: Act in 98. So it was bipartisan policy. Lots of people didn't push. Right.

Dave Smith: Okay. Right. So that kind of helps my point. So let me just finish the point I'm making. Right. Exactly. So that totally backs up what I was just saying. Not that Israel was behind it.

Coleman Hughes: Okay. I'm sorry.

Dave Smith: All right, man. Okay. Yeah. You're right. Israel was totally against the war in Iraq. The whole year, APEC and the Neocons and the Israel government were not pushing for the war in Iraq. I mean, anyway, I'd highly recommend people go read the book. It's all backed up in there. There's tons of evidence on it. APEC was bragging, by the way, about how their influence over the thing.

Coleman Hughes: They bought the Iraq war for dentist money.

Dave Smith: Yeah. No, I didn't say that actually. It's just a lot of straw manning, man. How about just like, if I don't say it, don't just like make that my argument for me. Anyway, yeah, the fact that the longest serving prime minister in Israeli history comes to America in 2002 and advocates to Congress, whether or not the decision I've been made at the executive branch, advocates to Congress that we are going to, that you ought to overthrow the regime in Iraq, also overthrow the Mullahs in Iran, also overthrow Gaddafi in Libya. That is relevant, man.

Coleman Hughes: And the fact is, at the time he had been prime minister for three years, he wasn't the longest serving anything of anything. He was testified.

Dave Smith: Did I say that? Did I say that he was?

Coleman Hughes: No, but it's relevant to the impact he would have had at the time. No, but it's also relevant that he went on to be the, and he testified after the Iraq war decision had already been finalized by the White House. What is it matter what he said after the decision was made?

Dave Smith: Because he's talking to Congress and trying to persuade them to support it. I don't know, man. I mean, it does seem like you're bending over backward to cover for a foreign country. It's just a little bit strange. The longest serving prime minister in Israel's history comes over here and advocates that we fight multiple wars on his behalf. And that's nothing to you because the decision to fight one of them had already been made. Like, I don't know what to say. The neo-conservatives drove us into the war in Iraq. They were all publicly admitting this at the time. This wasn't a secret.

Coleman Hughes: No conspiracy of Israel's sake, but not for Israel's sake. I agree on that.

Dave Smith: Nothing to do with Israel. I agree on that. Nothing to do with Israel. They all called the neo-cons just happened to, you know, right about how much they love Israel all the time.

Coleman Hughes: All right. Okay. So, what's your theory of Tony Blair? Because in my view, Tony Blair is the second most important architect of the war in Iraq. He put 40,000 troops towards the invasion. MI6 was responsible for some of the bogus intelligence about Saddam being able to deploy chemical biological weapons within 45 minutes or whatever it was, it turned out not to be true. And he was also the primary international salesman for the war in Iraq. He gave all these speeches all around the world trying to persuade. He put really his entire shoulder to the wheel of this war. Yeah. He's the same Tony Blair that in 2009 said that Gaza was an open air prison. So it seems to me, if he was somehow compromised by Israeli interests, those same Israeli interests would have been strong enough to get him not to say that about Gaza, because Israelis don't like that very much. And so what's your theory of why of him?

Dave Smith: Oh, I mean, I don't know that I have much of a theory of other than I agree with everything that you just said there. I mean, yeah, I think he was a main driver of the war. He got on board with it for his reasons, and I'm not sure exactly what they are. But there, yeah, no question about it. He was a main driver of it. I mean, there's a lot of this, I've never made the claim that any of this stuff is like black and white or that like Israel is the only actor or the only reason why anyone supported the war in Iraq was because they were bought off or threatened or influenced by Israel somehow. They're like, yeah, we thought we fought a whole war in Afghanistan too. I think that really had nothing to do with the Israel lobby. I don't think the war in Yemen, despite the tensions with the Houthis and the Israelis over the last couple of years, I don't think that back in the Saudi war in Yemen had anything to do with Israel. So I don't, yeah, I think he got on board for his own reasons. He probably, my suspicion would be that in the wake of 9-11, he thought it was the best political move for him to make would be to be absolute best friends with George W. Bush and get on board with whatever he was saying. And you're absolutely right, that British intelligence was amongst the worst offenders of pumping out all types of garbage lies to get us into that war.

Coleman Hughes: So I, yeah, I think, presumably if he was motivated, I would say I'm sure political calculation is never 0% of the story in these cases. It was not a very good political calculation for him. And whenever he justified it, he had this liberal interventionist philosophy that the armies of modern Western societies have a duty to overthrow terrible dictators. That's how he made the case, basically. Yeah, and I think, and that's true, that presumably, presumably a lot of his contemporaries in America were awash in the same ideas. And if you understand the point I'm making, that that's, it's not like Tony Blair was plucked out of the head of Zeus and had his own philosophy. He was sharing a sort of worldview with a certain kind of Western leader at the time of which George Bush was in that crowd. And this hadn't for them, it had nothing to do with Israel, but had to do with this other

Dave Smith: motive. Oh, yeah, no question there. There's lots of things going on in the world, Coleman. It's a complicated place. Sure. And I think also a thing that's important that I think just being my age, I guess, I remember this, well, even though I was a little kid at the time. But Joe Biden was, he was opposed the, the George H. W. Bush's war in Iraq. And then after that, he never opposed another war again, like publicly like that, because it was, the thing was viewed at the time as this overwhelming success. And you look totally, you totally looked like an idiot. If you had been the one who was opposing it, at least in the short run, and not at all in the long run. But so I think there was a feeling like that it was still very much, you know, this was only 10 years earlier that we had got nine years earlier, that we had gone into Iraq and had, you know, this, this kind of what was looked at as a real easy, you know, military victory with no losses on our side, and nothing but parades. And, you know, it's great. And I think a lot of people thought that's what we were gearing up for again. You know, if you remember at the beginning, they were going in under Rumsfeld's lightfoot print strategy, you know, it was going to be like a war on the cheap. And I don't think my guess would just be that like, yeah, probably a lot of people, especially people in power. I think it's very easy and very intoxicating for them to be like, yeah, we'll remove Saddam Hussein. And then everything will be better. And that'll be, you know, we'll go down as we did this really great, big thing together. And that'll be cool. And I don't think that many of them thought the Civil War in Iraq would go as bad as it did. I mean, I think honestly, even of the people who were anti-war, I think it would have been hard to predict how terrible that you blame us.

Coleman Hughes: Do you blame, blame America 100% for those deaths? Even though it was Sunni's and she is slaughtering each other?

Dave Smith: Well, I mean, I guess the word 100% or it would be a little bit tricky there. But yeah, I mean, there's no question that like that's, you start a war that turns into, and it's not as if it's not like we, we did a thing and then there was a Civil War and then we were just like a non-active, you know, participant in the whole thing. Like we broke the country, a Civil War broke out and then we sided with one side of the Civil War and fought it brutally for years. So yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, of course, I mean, if you lead a war of aggression based off lies, you have a large degree of responsibility for the catastrophe that ensues after.

Coleman Hughes: Even if that's not actually Americans. I think, so my view is, so my view is there's partial blame to the extent that it's foreseeable. To the extent that it's foreseeable, that's the extent to which we are to blame for it. And so it was a known risk that the country could collapse. It was not, not everyone predicted it. Some people predicted it.

Dave Smith: But I wanted to ask you, analogously, I would just say it was easy enough to be predicted that Dick Cheney before he went and lost Haliburton a bunch of money. Dick Cheney was able to describe exactly what was going to happen if you were, if you would have removed Saddam Hussein when he was talking about the first war there. I'm sure you've seen that, that clip of him. And so I think that basically takes away even the plausible deniability that you might have there. If you're, if your vice president was already a, like he didn't, not only did he see this as a possibility, he precisely said what would happen if Saddam was removed. So I don't know. I think I think it really removes all that. No, I mean, I think whether, whether you can foresee it or not, I think like in the same, almost in the same way that like if you kidnap someone and keep them in your basement and they die down there, yeah, you're, you're going down for murder now, man, you're not just going down for kidnapping anymore. So I do looking at like that. I think absolutely. And that's not to remove any of the responsibility from like the, the Sunnis and Shiites who are fighting over there. But yeah. And again, like I said, it's not like America was a not, not an active participant in that civil war. So, so yes, I think we have a lot of responsibility or DC has a lot of responsibility.

Coleman Hughes: In the Vietnam War, many people argue that if we pulled out Cambodia and Laos and other countries would go communist and that this would lead to what had happened in every other communist country, which is widespread slaughter. And that's what happened. The Cambodian genocide killed two, two million people. Do you rest any of the blame for those consequences for seeing to some extent at the anti-Vietnam War factions feet? Now, I think it's a, you know, look, there's a not a similar case in terms of, you know, knowing that our foreign policies carry a risk of group B killing group C, even though we're not pulling the trigger and we do it anyway, knowing that it's risk.

Dave Smith: Yeah, it's much, much murkier and much more complicated, I think, to make that, to draw that line. Like if I go, you know, if there's something going on at my neighbor's house and I grab my gun and run over there and I shoot in the window and I end up killing somebody inside, like I'm responsible for that in some way. If I, if there's a schizophrenic person in the house and I hand them a loaded gun and they go kill someone, I'm responsible for that in a very direct way. If I just stay in my house and something real bad happens in my neighbor's house, I'm not responsible in the, in the same type of direct way. And so, you know, yes, millions of people died after we left Vietnam. Millions of people also died while we were fighting a war in Vietnam. I, I think that's a much tougher, like, straight lines that are being guilt on behalf of people advocating that we stop bomb in the place.

Coleman Hughes: But it was predicted. I mean, Domino Firi was mainstream at the time and people knew there was a risk and sure enough it happened. Okay, let's move on. I want, oh, I wanted to, you mentioned Rumsfeld earlier. So what, what is your view of, do you have a view of what was motivating Rumsfeld in, in his Iraq war decisions in general? Do you think he was, he was acting out of pro-Israel belief or military industrial complex belief or neither?

Dave Smith: You know, I, I probably don't know enough about Rumsfeld personally. You know, I know, like, you know, I, I know the press conferences that he used to give. I know he was a signature on the project for a new American century, I believe, right? So like, I think he, I think he was a big business guy, kind of like a crony capitalist type guy. And I think he ran with that crowd and he went with the, you know, like, he was on board with it. I also think he had that, as I said, isn't that what they called the light footprint? I think was what they called his strategy, right? And so he had this idea that he was like, like, I think he was, my perception of him was always that he was like drunk on his own idea of, like, applying this business concept to the military and going, like, we're going to fight a war on the cheap and we're going to show that this is the new way to fight war and the new way to win. That was always my view of him was that that was kind of, you know, what, what I thought it as view was. But I don't know.

Coleman Hughes: So you don't consider him like an evil, uh, neocon with, with, with bad intentions and acting in bad faith.

Dave Smith: You know, I don't know the, no, I guess, I guess I don't know what enough about him to, like, have a strong opinion on what his psychological state of mind was. Um, I think that there's, I think that a lot of the, I don't know that I would call a lot of the neocons. I don't know if they were acting in bad faith exactly. I mean, many of them did act in bad faith at moments. Um, but I think many of them believed in their, uh, in their worldview, believe that this was going to, you know, like, be better for the world that I think I do think that they like, I think for the most part, they thought what they were doing was ensuring of the next century for American dominance.

Coleman Hughes: Um, what is your theory of Donald Trump because measured by his actions? He may go down as the most pro-Israel president in history. We're talking about moving the embassy to Jerusalem. Um, we're talking about recognizing, uh, uh, Israeli sovereignty over the goal on heights, which I find it an interesting fact to contemplate that the Israel lobby, as powerful as you think it is, couldn't get any president to do that for 36 years, even though it just takes a single stroke of a pen, but they could get us into a whole war. Um, but again, that's not exactly what I'm saying, but all right, well, it's implied. It's implied. I mean, if they could get us into a whole war, why can they get a single president for 36 years to recognize the goal on heights? It's a much lower lift for us, right? Condoleezza Rice talks about, in her memoir, she talks about a story where, remember, President Bush gave this Palestine speech in 2002 and he said there's going to be, we're going to push for a two-state solution and we're going to call the Arab state, we're going to call it Palestine. So she tells a story that the Israelis were freaking out and they called Condoleezza Rice and they said, you absolutely cannot call it Palestine because that, because it's called Judea and Sumeria. That's our, you know, that's historically. And Condoleezza Rice said, uh, basically screw you where we're not rewriting our speech for you at all. And he said, oh, hold on, let me talk to Sharon, call Sharon, okay, can you just add the word new, just add one word to the speech, call it new Palestine instead of Palestine. And Condoleezza Rice says, absolutely not, it's written, basically fuck off and don't try to lobby Congress either because it's not going to work. So the idea is like the same Israelis that can't get President Bush to add one little teeny word to a speech could somehow get us into a 10-year war billions of dollars.

Dave Smith: I think this is like the logic, like, comment, the logic of this is like, if you had one, like anecdote about like, um, like I asked my wife for a sip of coffee and she wouldn't share it with me. And then you were like, so we're supposed to believe that you couldn't get this woman to share a sip of coffee with you, but you could get her to marry you and have kids with you and do all of it. Like, yeah, okay.

Coleman Hughes: I'm like, I've never, I've never, I've never, who's wife wouldn't share a sip of coffee with them. Huh? Who's wife wouldn't share a sip of coffee with them? I don't know. It's actually a good analogy.

Dave Smith: I mean, if there's one little thing that your wife wouldn't do for you or something like that, yeah, you're right. You should probably share a sip of coffee. I don't know. I'm just saying, like, it doesn't prove the point. It doesn't follow from that. I've never been one of these conspiracy cooks. I'm not claiming Israel controls everything that ever happens. Well, you think it was a key variable, though. You think it was a key variable? Yes. I think Israel has a lot of influence on this country and they obviously do. I mean, like, I don't even know how this is, this is a debatable. Um, and anyway, that being said, like, yeah, you're right. But what all of the sum total of what Israel has gotten out of the United States of America is like undying loyal support, hundreds of billions of dollars, backing them in war, protecting them, bribing off their neighbors to help them. But yeah, they didn't get every single little thing that they ever wanted. So I certainly agree with that. I think just recently, I think that Netanyahu didn't get everything he wanted out of Trump in Iran just now. And, you know, even like you said, he's Donald Trump, who knows if this is true, but he went on record and said that he would not stand for Israel annexing the West Bank or today in Samaria as you like to call it. No, no, no. Sorry. I wasn't calling it that. I don't care what it's called. I don't care what it's called. I don't care about the religious. To be honest, um, but, uh, but yeah, so anyway, back to your question of my gauge of Donald Trump, um, you know, my gauge of Donald Trump in general is always just, you know, I think like, I think one of the things that's interesting about Donald Trump is that like left wingers and right wingers always project this thing on to him that I don't think exists like, you know, like the left wingers are like, he's literally Hitler for years and then the right wingers seem as like this champion of patriotic Americans. And I've always just seen him as Donald Trump, like just what he is, like I don't know. I think he's, I think he's a guy who's never read a book about anything, like I think he's, I think everything he knows comes from a show that he saw, like that's, that's essentially where Donald Trump's at. He'll watch Hannity and then form an opinion on a complicated topic or watch morning Joe.

Coleman Hughes: Yeah. I agree with this. I agree with this. My question though about Trump is what accounts for his pro Israeli, like pro Israeli poll, maybe not perfectly consistently, but compared to other US presidents. Well, I mentioned all those examples bombing around what accounts for this. Is it that he, how do you think he's influenced by Israel or do you think he's coming to these decisions on his own base because he thinks they're good decisions as an American president?

Dave Smith: That's an interesting question and, you know, we're kind of into the territory of speculating. I mean, like, I'm sure he's influenced by some, to some degree, like, yes, I'm sure that like the hundreds of millions of dollars that he got from Miriam Adelson made, you know, I'm sure that has some influence on him, like I would say that about any politician with a donation, that size, I didn't have another election to worry about. Yeah, but he does have a midterm and that's a pretty big deal, whether she could fund a whole bunch of, you know what I mean, and also just on the human level, when someone's done that much for you, you, I do think tend to feel like, you know, I'm one, but not Donald Trump. I don't think that I think John, you know, you are, maybe, you might be right about that, but you know, I know that he does have a midterm election and that's a big deal to him in his legacy, whether or not these Republicans maintain like the Congress. So, but I will say I do remember, and I'm not like, I'm really not speculating here or making any more of this than it is. And this is a little bit vague in my mind that you might remember this better than me. But there was some, when Donald Trump was running in 2016, he at one point, um, pissed off, uh, the, the pissed off APEC at like the, the Zionist in general, because he said, he said something like about like, uh, like I think someone asked him what his take, you know, remember when Donald Trump was first running for president, and they would ask him about issues that he clearly had never even like, you know, like, like, is it Chris Matthews goes, like, are you a pro life or pro choice? He goes, I'm extremely pro life the most pro life, and then they go, so should women go to jail? He's like, yeah, they got to go to jail. And then the next day, he was like, I don't know, I just never thought of that before. Like, I, you know, it's not like, he's not a traditional politician in that sense. And so he just said, like they asked him a question, like, where do you stand on Israel Palestine? And I think he just said America should stay out and be neutral, because that just seemed to him, like, oh, yeah, that's what I'm running on. I'm running on like, damn, you know, stay out of the Middle East and let's not waste money on that. And then people, you know, like as you don't, you know, to, to, uh, to a hardcore Zionist, saying America should just stay out and be neutral is basically saying we should be eight off Hitler. I mean, they were just like, furious about it. And I remember this was, so this was very at the beginning of when Donald Trump was running for president. And the reason why I just remember this is because for me, it was the first moment that it was the first time I ever took Donald Trump seriously as a politician, like up until then he was leading in the polls, but I was kind of like, this is like a joke candidate. You know, he's going to, he's going to drop out and go write a book or something like that. I didn't really think he was, was going to be a contender. And then he went and spoke at APEC and he, there was like this tension because he had just made this comment and then he opened it by railing against what, uh, he opened it by talking about how the around deal was the worst deal that's ever been made in the history of the world and that he is the art of the deal guy and Obama so bad at deals at all of this. And he had the place like on their feet, like they just loved him. And I remember it was the first time that I thought like, oh, oh, he's not just like moving red state Americans. I'm like, yeah, we're going to build a wall, but he can go in and like move APEC, like I remember thinking, oh, maybe this guy might be a legit contender. But so anyway, I'm not like even drawn any conclusion from that, but I do know that like early on, he said something, there was kind of like a horn, it's nest reaction. And then he went like, well, I'm going to go way hardcore over the top. And my guess would be that Donald Trump's, I think kind of his, like the Abraham Accords type shit, the, um, I'm sorry, I don't know if we're not supposed to curse now, he can curse. Okay. But the Abraham Accord stuff, um, this stuff about talking about turning Gaza into, um, into beautiful, you know, beachfront property. I do think that's the type of stuff that kind of makes Donald Trump tick. And I think that he thinks being all in pro Israel is like the best way to accomplish that. This is kind of my sense. I don't know. I'm actually curious, like, what do you think it is? What do you think it is that he's so pro Israel?

Coleman Hughes: I'll tell you what I think, um, I think, first of all, I think it's, it's a, it's a little bit of a problem for the argument about Israeli influence that the most pro Israeli president ever doesn't seem to be acting out of this influence. And I'll tell you why I think that is because one, he's independently wealthy, he's in his second term. Yeah. You, you make a good point that he has midterm story about, but there's also just the longstanding fact that the Israel lobby mostly contributes to Democrats anyway. Um, he's famous for firing anyone that's trying to push him to do shit. He doesn't want to do. That's why he's gotten rid of all his, you got, gets rid of his advisor so often. And so the idea of him sort of being pushed in a pro Israel direction, I'm not saying you're saying this, you're saying, uh, you're agnostic on the question. But the idea that he might be pushed in this direction seems implausible to me. So what, what I'm left with is that he basically tends to agree with Israel in most of its conflicts with its neighbors. He tends to view Iran certainly as, as an enemy. He's been very steadfast on that and, and, and therefore views Israel as, as, as, as basically a friend. And his, I agree with you, he's not very ideological. He's neither an isolationist nor a neoconservative interventionist. He's kind of like a case by case basis. Yeah. Who are my enemies? Who are my friends? And I think he has a basic understanding that the Israelis are our friends. And, uh, they're, most of their enemies are our enemies. And so on balance, he's going to side with the Israelis. That's my theory of view.

Dave Smith: Yeah. I don't, I, I think that's quite possibly right. I think, um, you know, I, I will say the, I, I've heard a lot of people, like at this point in, in my career, I've just like, I've gotten to know a lot of people who are like more inside than me, like, I, you know, I'm not, and it's, I'm just like a, uh, shit talking comedian who, you know, like, does a podcast and then does stand up shows, like I don't, but now I like know a lot, and almost everyone to a man who's like really close to the administration or has like been really close into politics, they all say, and it's all kind of vague, but they were, they go, dude, when you get to the top, the top, the levels of control would blow your mind. And like there is, it is the fact that the case that like people are blackmailing each other left and right and people have stuff that's on your phone and they know what you did and what you looked at and who you cheated with and all that. And of course, we do know, you know, through examples of history, like that are, that are not controversial now, but like, you know, we, we know that the FBI was blackmailing, uh, uh, uh, presidents and all types of people and, and popular leaders. I will say this. I'm not saying anything like that's going on with Donald Trump and, and by the way, I just gave you a, uh, another, I guess, Wesley Clark example, but I'm not a four star general. So I'm just telling you what I heard from other people. I never saw the memo on this one either where there wasn't even a memo, but it, it is a little strange to me that even when Benjamin Netanyahu pisses off Trump, and there are these examples where it's very obvious that Donald Trump is pissed off. He never gets the Trump wrath that any other leader would get in that situation, including Zalinsky, including any European leader, including Kim Jong Un, including Vladimir Putin, no matter who it is, like he just doesn't, even when he's furious, he can see that he's

Coleman Hughes: angry. He dropped that, he dropped the F bomb talking about Netanyahu.

Dave Smith: Right. And what did he say? He said, don't know the fuck they're doing. Both of them don't know what the fuck that Netanyahu is included in that conjunction with both of them. And that's the, and that's the angriest he's ever gotten. And then the next day he was right back to the, he dropped F bombs on all these other

Coleman Hughes: leaders.

Dave Smith: I mean, a bunch of them, he's called him every name in the book, if an F bomb is nothing to Donald Trump. I don't remember Trump ever saying the F word. Yeah, but then F, that's not, well, he said the F word a bunch of times. Okay. Yeah. I've said, he says it in stump speeches and stuff like that. But no, I'm just saying, no, it's a little different though. He's never done what he did. So Zalinsky to, to Netanyahu.

Coleman Hughes: And I do think that, although that was JD Vance's fault, that was in Trump's fault. That's a whole nother conversation. That was Zalinsky's fault. More than anyone else. Yeah, it was, yeah, I agree. Zalinsky and Vance. Trump was actually very kind for 45 minutes of that.

Dave Smith: What happened is then Zalinsky took the bait of JD Vance, but then Zalinsky crossed the line and you can't do that in front of Donald Trump, because then it's an alpha competition.

Coleman Hughes: Yeah, then it's a fissing contest, but Trump didn't want it to become that we, we're getting off topic. I want to hit these other topics that we disagree about because I'm sure there's stuff we agree about, but it's more interesting to explore disagreements. So I believe I've heard you make the argument that Israel's foreign policy is motivated at a deep level by this greater Israel ambition and not by fundamentally a desire for peace. And I think this is a deep disagreement between us. So give me your view on whether Israel's main motivation is peace or put it in your own

Dave Smith: words. Well, I mean, again, I think it's always a little bit problematic when we say this like Israel's main motivation because again, it's like there's different people and there's different factions. And I really am an individualist at my core and like there is no will of the Israelis. In fact, for, you know, at least for a period of time, the will of the Israelis, if there is such a thing, was for a two-state solution, I think at least up until the second in Tifada, I think that, look, I mean Netanyahu said something about the greater Israel project being very close and near and dear to his heart or something like that. I think that essentially my view of it is that Netanyahu has had to coalition with hard, hard right wing Israeli politicians for a couple clicks to the right of Benjamin Netanyahu who is the right winger himself. I think many of them are openly motivated by the greater idea of the greater Israel and that the idea that the land was given to them by God. And when you really fundamentally believe that from a religious perspective, as many religious Jews do, that's really tough to argue with that, you know, once the land was given to you by God, well, then whatever we got to do in order to get it is kind of justified because it was God's will. So I think that is, there's a portion of Israel who are motivated by that. I've always thought that the center of Netanyahu's motivation of his life's ambition, his career, has been a thwart of Palestinian state. Now, what exactly, I mean, I think it's pretty open about that. It's not like I'm, you know, reading minds or something here, but I think that, you know, why exactly? You know, I don't know enough, well, you know, I'm not in Israeli and even as an American, it's hard to tell what are the true motivations of some of our politicians are. I don't know exactly what, you know, like is that because he thinks that's what's best for Israel long term? Is that because he thinks that greater Israel will ultimately be achieved through the process of building settlements in the West Bank and things like that? I don't know, but it certainly seems to be the thwarting of a Palestinian state driving a lot of his ideology.

Coleman Hughes: So I would say a few things, points of agreement. I agree that Israel wanted a two-state solution up until the second intifada changed everything. And I'm happy to hear you agree with that. I think that as you say Israel's a democracy, it has factions like we do. Netanyahu is the mainstream right-wing faction. And when he won the Prime Minister's office, in the most recent time, the centrist parties refused to go into coalition with him. This is what forced him to partner with the crazies, with the bang veer and with the smote rich. And this is absolutely a tragedy for Israeli politics, for Palestinians, for the region. And I think it's many people were critical of the centrist party not partnering with him at the time. I think in retrospect, it is not talked about enough how bad a calculation was that that was for everyone involved. However, you can sort of judge a democracy by the output of its policies put into context. So not only did Israel offer a two-state solution, land for peace in 2000, the whole way that they came under possession of the West Bank in the Six-Day War was in the context of a defensive war, not a war of expansion. They left Gaza in 2005. And you add these things up and you get a picture of what is the actual output of Israeli policies taking as a rounding error the obvious factional differences within the society. And it's clear to me, whenever the choice has been between greater Israel ambitions and peace such as in negotiations with Egypt, but they give back the Sinai, they're at war with Egypt for decades and decades and decades. They give back the Sinai in exchange for peace because peace is more important to most Israelis. And Israeli society swings to the right when people become convinced as a result of Palestinian and transrogens, Palestinian terror, that the leadership is not actually currently capable of making a peace deal and therefore we might as well just batten down the hatches. So that's my basic view.

Dave Smith: Okay. So I disagree with the lot there. I don't disagree with all of it. I mean, I think it's like kind of the most charitable interpretation you could possibly give the Israelis. And there's a lot of different ways to look at this. And I also think there's a lot, you know, get to get to the details of the negotiations. I don't think it's exactly right that they offer the Palestinians a state. I would say, okay, so let's start with Camp David, number one, not Camp David 2000, Camp David in the 70s. You're talking about the deal with the Egyptians, right? Like the other way to look at that though, which is true, right? And I like, I give, and like, look, I don't like essentially what came out of that agreement was that we would forever give foreign aid to Israel and Egypt. That was a big part of making the agreement happen. And I'm not the biggest fan of foreign aid, but I kind of give everybody involved some credit for this. But the other way to look at it from the way you're saying, right, is you could number one, you could say, if you want to just be charitable to the Israelis, you say what you said. Hey, look, they have the opportunity to give up land for peace. They were happy to do that. But the flip side to that is that they got peace for it. They gave up the land and they got peace. They went to war with Egypt. It was at four times in 25 years and they haven't been to war with them since then. It's been quite a while. We're going on, you know, 50 years. So that's the flip side to it. And now in terms of like the negotiations, look, even even Shlomo Ben-Ami said that he would have turned down the Camp David deal too. So I think.

Coleman Hughes: He said he would have turned down Camp David and accepted the Clinton parameters. That was a second half of itself.

Dave Smith: Yeah, fair enough. But I'm just saying what everyone says the Camp David deal was like such a great offer. I'm just saying the even the foreign minister or the acting foreign minister at the time of Israel has a different view of it.

Coleman Hughes: And then they made a better offer. And the same guy said it was a tragedy. They didn't take this.

Dave Smith: Yes. Yes.

Coleman Hughes: No, I agree. But that's important context.

Dave Smith: It is. It is important context. But you know, I agree. It's a fair point. But at the same time like there is something like, okay, like in a court of law, if the guy who's on trial denied committing the murder 10 times and then he confessed, the one confession means a lot more than the 10 denials. And so the point is that even the foreign minister, who you would expect to be saying like taking the pro-Israel side on this, even he admitted that one of the deals that is flouted, you have to admit, is constantly talked about in the context of this debate as being this amazing offer that Israel gave to the Palestinians. He said he would have turned it down. That's pretty interesting piece of information and much more interesting than him saying, oh, but the other deal was really fair. Of course, we also have Netanyahu referring to Hebron now, not, you know, but-

Coleman Hughes: Well, hold on. If you're going to say Shlomo Benami had his head on, screwed on straight among Israeli voices, then you also have to put a lot of weight on him saying, we made them a much better offer in the Clinton parameters and they were crazy to say no. No, he's either, you don't, you don't have to say that they are poor because- So he has his had his screwed on straight when he's saying Camp David was a bad offer.

Dave Smith: No, it's not, it's not, it's not about being credible or not credible or has had being screwed on differently. It's a more interesting and relevant detail when the, the acting foreign minister at the time admits that this wasn't a great deal than him saying, oh, and at this point, I think we did do the right thing and offer a good deal here, and they said no, and they still said no. Oh, look, and by the way, I'm not taking the position that the Arabs shouldn't have taken that deal. I mean, like I, I think perhaps we'd be living in a much better world if they had. I, you know, there's been many mistakes made on both sides of this, including embracing

Coleman Hughes: violence. Benami said the effort to get Arifat to accept the Clinton parameters was probably the greatest effort of diplomatic pressure the world has ever seen on a leader of any people. I'm almost quoting him directly.

Dave Smith: Let me, okay. Sure, sure. Okay. I think there's, there's a real problem that you have here going, that even like leaving aside the negotiations, I mean, we could talk more about it if you want to, but leaving aside that, I was going to make the point that we have Benjamin Netanyahu on tape bragging about the poison pill. He doesn't know he's on tape, but he's bragging about the poison pills that he was able to put in the negotiation process. And so it's, it's a lot more complicated than this, but I think this is a real problem you have when you zoom out.

Coleman Hughes: Can I respond to the poison pill thing?

Dave Smith: Sure.

Coleman Hughes: I agree with you that the poison pill thing is, is, is, is terrible, but how did Israeli society react? They got Benjamin Netanyahu out of office because they're a democracy and they voted in a hood baroque. Partly, one of the many reasons people are unsatisfied with Netanyahu is because he was not taking the negotiations seriously. And this goes to show when the Israelis feel like there is a chance for peace, society tends to swing to the left in a democracy.

Dave Smith: Uh, okay, perhaps it's an interesting, uh, theory, I, you know, okay, I'll give the Israelis credit for Netanyahu out that one time, but then they got to take the blame for him being their longest serving, uh, their longest, uh, serving prime minister in Israeli history. Um, I think that, uh, also, I, I just want another point of detail. I mean, you know, I, I don't know the, the 67 war or the six day war calling it a defensive war is a little bit debatable, but regardless of that, um, I don't think it is.

Coleman Hughes: I think it's an open in shot case.

Dave Smith: All right. I mean, even, again, even though he defended the war, uh, Menachem Begum himself called it a war of choice. And it was a preemptive strike on Egypt, um, that, that kicked the whole thing off. They had, they had to mask some troops and they're certainly, they're, there were provocations on the Israeli side on the, uh, Egyptian side. So, but, but regardless, they weren't attacked by Palestinians. They fought a war with Egyptians and Jordanians. And then they took, oh, they took control at the end of this of a territory that had millions of people living in it. And I think the major problem you got, Coleman, and I think this is a big part of the reason why just like broadly speaking, Israel is losing this debate so badly right now in the eye of the public. And I think one of the major problems here is that like, if you just zoom, look, even saying we offer, like, let's say they offered them 100% statehood five times, which is not true. But let's just say for the sake of argument that we're true. So what? Prick, it's, it's on the level of just being like, because it's the only way the conflict

Coleman Hughes: will end is when there's a part, obviously, I wasn't done with that.

Dave Smith: Go ahead. So I'm obviously about to say the so what? Yeah, dude, if you, if you had a, like, an institution of slavery or something like that, and you go, well, we offered them their freedom five times and they didn't take it. It's like, who cares, stop enslaving them? That is nothing to do with anything. It's like, look, dude, you don't need a partner to just stop the occupation. It's statehood, nobody in the enlightenment world views statehood as a gift to be chosen from one people to give to another people. I mean, what is going on here? Is Israel have a right to the West Bank and Tagaza? Is that theirs? If it's theirs, the millions of people who live there do not have citizenship or voting rights or any natural rights under Israeli law. So if that, if that is Israel, then they're not a democracy. They're an apartheid regime. And if it's not Israel, well, then what, what right do they have to be the ones who decide whether these people get a state or not? This is like, they're, I just don't find any other example where any modernization acts this way, and this is acceptable.

Coleman Hughes: What you're recommending is what Israel did with Gaza in 2005. They left unilaterally without getting a piece deal in return.

Dave Smith: Okay. So let's get into the withdrawal from Gaza. I mean, like, as you know, right, like Sharon's top advisor, the formaldehyde, I'm sorry, what's his name again? Dove Weisglas. Dove Weisglas. Go read Dove Weisglas' quote on what the whole deal was there.

Coleman Hughes: I'll read it to you right now, Dave. Okay. I'll read it to you because I've heard you quote this before, and actually, I had you Seth Manayer, a Palestinian activist on my podcast, and he said, what I think you're about to say, which is that Dove Weisglas in a hard interview in 2004 said, the point of the Gaza withdrawal was to put the piece process in formaldehyde.

Dave Smith: Yeah. And he said, everything that the entire deal was in the state, not just adding to the

Coleman Hughes: quote. This was what he said, but sure. Go ahead. Okay. Because I have never seen someone on your side of this argument quote the full context of his interview, honestly, and in full context. So this is what he said just before the idea of putting the piece process in formaldehyde. This is him. He goes, when we enter the Prime Minister's office, he means 2002, Sharon still believed he would be able to achieve, achieve a very long term interim agreement, an agreement of 25 or 20 or 15 or 10 or five years, a truce. But very quickly, we discovered that we were up against a stone wall, that when you get to the decision-making center, nothing happens. We reached that conclusion after years of thinking otherwise, after years of attempts at dialogue. But when Arifat undermined Abu Mazen at the end of the summer of 2003, we reached the sad conclusion that there was no one to talk to, no one to negotiate, hence the disengagement plan. So in context, what he is saying is that when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was elected in 2002, his plan A was to get a 25 year piece truce with the Palestinians. When he realized that they didn't want that or that Arifat didn't want that and wouldn't let Abbas go for it, only then did he pivot to say, okay, our next best option is just to get out of Gaza unilaterally. Now I think that is very important in context if you're going to quote the Doug Weiss class interview in the future because it speaks to this whole argument we're having is what were Israel's intentions leaving the Gaza Strip. And it's highly relevant that the age you're quoting said, plan A was to get a truce. And the hope is that if you get 25 years of a truce, well then people get used to not fighting. I'm waxing now. They didn't say this, but my guess is-

Dave Smith: Right, right.

Coleman Hughes: I get your point. I mean, I don't know. I don't think there's anything dishonest about leaving. And then- Sorry, if you don't mind, just 30 more seconds and then just say whatever you want. After the Gaza disengagement plan, also a few settlements in the West Bank were also nobody talks about that, but also taken out. What does Ariel Sharon do? Oh, he just starts a new party. He starts a new party called Kadima. The platform of Kadima is to eventually withdraw unilaterally from the West Bank. Then he gets a stroke, and his number two, Omar, runs on the platform of leaving the West Bank the convergence plan, and he wins. So that also is important context in addressing what Sharon was trying to get at with the Gaza

Dave Smith: plan. Well, go ahead. Look, yeah, it's important context, and it's also important context that, you know, like that the Israeli people were on board with, you know, or at least voted for someone running on that platform. I agree with you. I don't think there's anything dishonest though about leaving that out. The point is that we're talking about the disengagement in 2005, and you have the senior advisor for the prime minister overseeing it, telling you that what that was about was putting the peace process in formaldehyde, making it impossible for the Palestinian state to ever be achieved. That that was their goal. Now, you could say they came up with that as a second best option, okay, fine, but the point is that so many of the Israel defenders, they describe it as if, in fact, Douglas Murray, when we debated said that was the Palestinian state, that was a two-state solution. And this is just like, that's what's intensely dishonest is to leave this out. Now, about the settlements, I think you're pretty sure, I'd have to go back and double check this, but I think the number of settlements in the West Bank drastically increased in the following couple of years after 2005.

Coleman Hughes: Again, this really, what I said is that the Gaza disengagement also, there was like four West Bank settlements that were added, that were also evacuated at the same time. Yeah, okay, it's actually not, it's not important. What I wanted to address myself.

Dave Smith: I built up a lot more settlements though over the years, on net, there were more settlements in the West Bank, and there's many more settlements in the West Bank than there were back then.

Coleman Hughes: So, so the point I'm making is not just it was Plan A and Plan B, it's actually deeper than that. The reason they switched to Plan B is because they came to the belief based on Arafat's behavior, that Arafat actually did not want the political process to lead to a true peace. Right? So, if you believe that the peace process would, would essentially be a gift box with peace on the label, and then the moment you open it up, you get terrorism, if you come to that belief based on the behavior of your negotiating partner, that they intend to take whatever they can get out of the negotiations and then launch terror. Then thwarting the peace process is not thwarting a peaceful, a situation like American Canada. You're not thwarting a true two-state solution. You believe based on the behavior of your negotiating partner, that you're thwarting what would essentially be a situation where terrorists take over parts of the West Bank. Oh, this is the other part of the interview that is crucial to this point. Is that Sharon came to believe that a Palestinian state would be two-week to control its violent minority. I.E., the fatah would not be strong enough, would not have the state capacity to prevent Hamas, to prevent it from coming basically another Lebanon, a Lebanon where half the country is controlled by a terrorist group. And then you're as a leader of Israel, you're basically telling people, well, if we really come to believe in good faith that this guy is not a partner for peace, and we've got to wait till we get a real partner for peace, giving him two states will essentially mean that we're going to be in a situation where terrorist control, strategic high ground, a place from which they can much more easily launch rockets and missiles and smuggle anything over the border with Jordan, which would be very easy to do. And you're essentially telling your people, I'm going to put you in much more jeopardy than you're already in. So this is the trade off Israel faces.

Dave Smith: Yeah, you know, it's like, which I know I've quoted before when talking about this, but is that that old Thomas Jefferson quote about slavery, or he's like, we have the wolf by the ear and can neither afford to hold onto it nor safely let it go. And you know, like it's like, I just call them and they've been occupying them since 1967. Are they concerned about what might happen if they take their boot off their neck? Okay. But they still don't get to do that to people. We got a real problem with black crime in this country, Coleman. But if I said, let's reinstitute slavery and that will take care of the problem with black crime, I think you'd go, yeah, you don't have a right to do that. If not having slavery means that it's a little bit more dangerous and some areas tough deal with that. You don't Israel. Look, dude, this is just so obvious. It's bananas to me that anybody who lives in a first world country on this side of the enlightenment can just not say, look, Israel's got two options here. Your options, if you want to be a moral country or whatever your options are, you can say, we can't give them their own state and so we're just annexing all of this land and giving citizenship to all the Palestinians and we will all live under one state together or you can stop occupying them militarily and let them have their own, you know, autonomy. Those are the options. You can't just keep your boot on these people's neck forever because you're worried about what might happen, even if it's a legitimate worry about what might happen if you take your boot off and the idea that on the other side of this, the Palestinians are just supposed to accept you live in subjugation for perpetuity forever because some of your leaders made bad decisions and then, you know, you can say like, I mean, look, you could have made this argument about Egypt. I don't think they had a strong enough state to control their radicals or something like that. Now, we could get into a whole separate argument like which is that I, and I think there's a very strong argument that actually Israel is going to face much more of a terrorist threat while they're occupying these areas than they would if they were to give them their own state. And I think there's lots of good reasons to suspect that. But just purely on a principled ground, this is just totally indefensible. And there's no other country, no other country that we would call a democracy who behaves this way. It's like this is, I don't know, I just find this whole thing to be so goofy. Like either this is Israel, either you're saying Israel has a legitimate claim to Gaza and the West Bank or you're saying they do not. And if they do not, then they have to stop occupying them. And if they do, then they have to give citizenship to the people that they control. So really fundamental, Western civilization stuff.

Coleman Hughes: So the analogy to slavery is a bad one for many reasons. But first, yes, Jefferson and Southerners in general, they feared partly based on Haiti and other examples that if they gave slaves freedom, it would result in a race war. And this was highly motivating for Southerners. It turned out to be completely wrong. Now there was a lot of evidence at the time that this wouldn't happen, namely the fact that you had black people living very peacefully all over the North with no problem. You even had free blacks in the South with no problem. And so you would have had to cherry pick massively to look at the Nat Turner revolt, say, erase all the other evidence of peaceful coexistence between whites and blacks and say, we can't let these people have freedom because look at Nat Turner. Not only that, there was no any time there was black leadership. The most famous black leader, the most important black leader in the aftermath of the Civil War was Booker T. Washington, right? You can make the same argument about the civil rights movement, right? We can't give them voting rights because then they're going to make decisions that are going to be terrible, it's going to be a race war, they're going to destroy us, they're going to whatever slaughter us. Every single popular black leader, Booker T. Washington, utterly peaceful, had the total faith and devotion of the black community. He was the most beloved figure and he was fundamentally nonviolent. Luther King, absolutely the most beloved figure within the black community, much more so than Malcolm X at the time. And even Malcolm X in his most radical mood, you know, never... It wasn't a terrorist, yeah, it wasn't a terrorist. So there was an enormous amount of evidence in the case of African Americans in the United States that the likely result of loosening the chains was not going to be a race war. It's just that people ignored that evidence. Okay, now when you translate that to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they leave Gaza. They leave Gaza two different countries impose a harsh blockade in response to rockets against Israel. And one of those two countries gets October 7th and not the other. So one question I have for you is like, why doesn't Hamas attack Egypt? Why can't they spare a single rocket for Egypt if it's all about the blockade and occupation?

Dave Smith: No, I mean, obviously because they're hatred of Israel is on a whole different level. And also like, yeah, I don't know, like there's...

Coleman Hughes: So then it's not all about the blockade and the...

Dave Smith: No, it's not all. A lot of it's about the creation of the state of Israel. A lot of it's about the fact that they view that as they are land that a lot of them did get kicked out of. Of course, all of this stuff is involved. But anyway, back to your point though, but like, so say there was a higher risk. And again, I wasn't saying, again, I wasn't saying a lot of times when people make logical analogies. People say, well, that's a bad analogy because the situations aren't the same. But there's a difference between equating two different things and making a logical analogy. The claim isn't that they're the same. But let's say there was going to be a real increase in crime or let's say there was that some of the black leaders were more radical and were... Hold on, let me just finish. And we're advocating violence. Is the answer then continue the institution of slavery? I mean, the thing is no, right? It's obviously... And look, the thing about this is with all of this stuff, with all of this. I just feel like to be a defender of Israel requires you to not be like fair-minded to both groups here. It requires you to think of like, oh, but think about the danger that the Israelis might have to deal with if they were to give these people a state. It's like, yeah, think about the danger that the Palestinians are in being militarily occupied. Like how are you gonna sit here and tell these people that you guys have to embrace nonviolence? Your leaders all have to be nonviolent leaders. All these Israeli leaders can be as horrifically violent as they want to. You know, you call Hezbollah a terrorist organization. You call Hamas a terrorist organization. And like fair enough, I don't really object to that categorization. I don't exactly see why the IDF wouldn't also be categorized as a terrorist organization. So it's like...

Coleman Hughes: Here's the crucial difference. The crucial difference is that Israeli society, as we've discussed in this conversation, if they feel they have a partner for peace, are capable of offering, of negotiating in good faith and making an offer, because they don't want to serve in the army for the rest of time. They don't want to send their boys to fight these wars. Hamas rejects the two-state solution, period. But we just talked about it without without without... Yeah, okay, but no, but Israel is a democracy, and they will vote Netanyahu out of power if they feel that the other side is capable and interested in a permanent conflict.

Dave Smith: But they made their long, disturbing prime minister in their country's history. So like, they're not voting him out of power that much.

Coleman Hughes: Hold on, hold on. This happened as you yourself admitted, not even reluctantly, I don't mean to phrase it that way. The second intifada, Israel offered a two-state end of conflict, period. It was rejected by the Palestinians, and then the second intifada was launched. This was, you know, mothers sending their kids on two different buses to schools because a bus was getting blown up every three days, right? Which was traumatizing for a country the size of New Jersey. I can't imagine how I would react to having grown up in New Jersey if there was two bombs going off a week just in my state. Yeah, absolutely. I would demand of my government to do to absolutely do what it had to do to make us safe. But only that, the fact that this came right after an offer of peace, and what Shlomo Ben-Ami called the biggest effort ever to pressure an international leader on any issue to end this conflict, because the world, my God, we have to see this conflict end at some point. It's so heartbreaking. The problem with this is that Israeli society can move because it's a democracy, Hamas can't move. Hamas is absolutely committed to rejecting the only solution that could bring an end to this conflict. So Hamas is like a rock, whereas Israel, object as much as you want to Netanyahu, I'm not going to defend him. I'm not going to defend Smotrich. I'm not going to defend Bangvier. Israel is a democracy that can move to the left if the opportunity came, sign a peace treaty that will be inked for all time. How the hell do we get that with Hamas running the Gaza Strip when every single time they are asked? We reject any alternative for all time, for all time, except between the river and the sea.

Dave Smith: Yeah. There actually have been different periods of time where Hamas leaders have said they would accept 67 borders, but they have also a lot of time said they wouldn't and so on. Including over and over and over again recently and in their charter. I'm not, I'm not even like arguing with you on that detail, but you know, it's always like when you say like, first of all, I actually disagree with fundamentally with your premise that democracy is like have this ability to move. I think actually one of the kind of counterintuitive, strange realities is that often democracies get very stuck. For example, like the political system in the United States of America really has not like fundamentally changed nearly as much as the political system in China has over say like the last 40 years and they did it through a one party dictatorship. They still call themselves the, because the one party says business is good now and then all of a sudden it's a drastically different thing than it was before. But regardless of that, yeah, but like you can say there's a lot of things Hamas could do that would be a lot better than the things that Hamas has done and could do now that would be better than the things they're doing. Israel also can end the war. It's not true that only one side could do the things that would end the war and I don't even know if you can call it a war, but this war, but but but but Hamas is just going

Coleman Hughes: to restart the war. It's not even a real war, man.

Dave Smith: Like a war you kind of think of as like two governments with militaries battling. It's a cat.

Coleman Hughes: Hamas has people 20,000, 30,000 people that's not a war, Hamas has 30,000 fighters or whatever

Dave Smith: it is. Yeah, no, it's a captive people who have been held stateless without a military of their own being like annihilated, it'd be like, yeah, no, I don't think war is exactly the right word. But regardless of that, Israel also has the opportunity. Israel could simply say we're going to stop militarily occupying the West Bank. We're going to pull those and we're going to live in 67 borders and you do what you want to do. But if you attack us, we're responding. They could do that too and they have not done that. Yeah. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Every time I debate or have a discussion like this about the topic, I'm just always struck by the fact that you have like, we're halfway around the world. There is a long standing conflict that's going on between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But yet when you talk about this again, which by the way, I'm with you on, I think we should think about like, what would it be like to live in a state the size of New Jersey where there's school buses being blown up every day. Listen, I live in the state of New Jersey and I have little kids like when you say that, I'm listening and I'm like, genuinely trying to put myself in that position. And by the way, I am not saying I'm like a very good person. I think I would go to a pretty bad place pretty quickly if I thought one of my kids were threatened. However, in this conflict, Gaza is a substantially smaller place than Israel and has way more bombings going off, way more innocent people being killed. And so I just always find it interesting that like, okay, we're going to put ourselves in the Israeli shoes. Like, okay, I'm fine to do that. Let's do that. Can we also attempt to do that to the other side here? Easily. I'll do it right now. I'll do it right now. I'll do it right now.

Coleman Hughes: I'll do it right now. I'll do it right now. Dave, this is the point I tried to make before, but I don't think I made it precisely enough. Let's put ourselves in the shoes of Palestinians for a moment. Now we know from the history of the 20th century, whether it is the partition of Indian Pakistan or the partition of Sudan and South Sudan more recently, that when you have a situation like this, a gruesome situation where two peoples can't get along. And they're slaughtering on both sides. It seems like pretty much the best formula we have is something like a partition along roughly ethnic lines. It's not a perfect solution by any means, but Sudan and South Sudan are fighting with each other estates a lot less than they did when it was one state for 50 years of brutal civil war. So if I'm a Palestinian in Gaza right now, purely looking from my own perspective, sure I would absolutely want Israel to end the war, to alleviate my immediate suffering. But I would also like to think that I would understand the regime that rules Gaza right now is committed to a forever war against Israel, which means if Israel withdraws, ends the war right now, leaves Hamas in power, I am, Gaza is again on borrowed time until the next time that Hamas is able to find a crack in the armor, which always happens. And so in addition to wanting Israel to end the war, I would really want to see some massive international effort to get rid of Hamas. And I don't know how you do that because Hamas embeds itself in this a million population and uses them as a shield. But I would understand just purely from the point of view of me wanting, I would, I'd love to live in a situation like South Sudan and Sudan. We don't have to love each other, but we're not at each other's throats. We could be like, we could be a frozen conflict like North and South Korea. We could, we can hate each other. The only way you get to a frozen conflict is with a ruling entity in Gaza that could actually agree to a frozen conflict because it's what they want. So how do you get that without getting rid of Hamas? This is from the Palestinian perspective.

Dave Smith: Yeah, I guess it kind of is. I don't really think it's a very reasonable way to look at it from my family perspective.

Coleman Hughes: I think that videos of Palestinians protesting Hamas, what's their point of view? Their point of view is exactly what I just said.

Dave Smith: There were some videos of people protesting Hamas. There's been some protests of the Israeli government in Israel too. One could argue not nearly enough on both sides or whatever, but like, yeah, no, I think that like, I think that if you, if your story was, okay, and, and keep in mind with these things that, you know, often when people talk about war, people talk about the conflict like this side started it. This side was guilty. This side did it when really what's going on is that there are people in positions of power who are making decisions. And then there's a whole bunch of innocent people just caught up in the situation. The entire project of Israel, the entire project of a bunch of Eastern Europeans deciding that they wanted to go create a state in land where Arabs were already living when it came into fruition resulted in hundreds of thousands of them being expelled from where they were living, or not allowed to return.

Coleman Hughes: After the six day war, they were occupying, that's an intellectually honest way of describing the birth of Israel.

Dave Smith: I think it was a factually correct way of describing it.

Coleman Hughes: It's very easy to paint a dishonest picture by leaving out a lot of facts. Okay. This is why we have to phrase liable mission. Sure, but I wasn't claiming to have been telling the totality of everything that ever

Dave Smith: happened there.

Coleman Hughes: No, no, no, no, but crucial facts like a bunch of Eastern Europeans deciding to go to Palestine. That framing ignores the fact that Eastern European refugees, basically their plan A was all, and I think you know, to flood into New York and Canada and other places and escape the pogroms and the slaughtering of the Russian Civil War and do what any human being would do and get the hell away from the violence against your family. Then the entire West closes doors. American closes doors, essentially in 1921, 24, Canada closes doors, Australia closes doors, Latin America closes doors, and only then do you see Eastern European Jews saying, okay, this place, Palestine, I guess we can't get into New York, I guess we'll start going there. I mean, it was trickles before that happened, and so it was a refugee state. They weren't ideological Zionists for the most part, and I don't think anyone could go back without 2020 hindsight and tell them that they shouldn't have gone there. So I think that's very important content, and it's also important content if you just start the story at the ending and say, and as you did, as the end result, 750,000 Palestinians were pushed out, well, what happened? Palestinians started a civil war in Mandate, Palestine, and then five Arab countries all at once invaded Israel in a war of aggression. Those decisions didn't need to be made, they're pretty relevant context, you don't really understand the last scene of the movie without the first, so I think that's important.

Dave Smith: Yeah, I guess again, it's all just irrelevant to the point that I was trying to make, and again, you're back to just harping on the perspective of the Jews and then the Zionists and then the Israelis. The point I was making is that there's another perspective here too, and all of that might is true, essentially, what you said. I mean, not exactly, I mean, like the King Crane Commission also pretty accurately predicted what the future of this struggle was going to look like when they were looking at it in 1919, or whatever year it was, the 1920, when they went over there, they went, man, you're going to try to create a Jewish state here, this is just going to be permanent struggle, it's going to require permanent force because this is just something that, like, obviously, the people who live here are going to resist. I'm saying from the perspective of the Palestinian person who didn't start that war or didn't do that, and just happened to be one of the people caught up in there and got kicked out of their land, then you're occupied for 60 years, the Israeli project, whether you, I'm not saying this is the entirety of everything, I'm not, yes, there are, there are things being omitted here just like every time both of us speak, we're not telling the entire story of all of history, the experiment of Israel, like the experiment of Europeans trying to create a Jewish state on land where Arabs lived, like, that is what they did, there might have been reasons for that, but that's what ended up happening. The result of that was 750 Arabs being expelled from where they lived and not allowed back in. They're for the period between 1948 and 1967, they're living as refugees in different places, and from 1967, all the way up till today, they're militarily occupied by a foreign power, and now it's culminating in what scholars will debate whether it's a genocide or not, okay, or whatever the hell you want to call this, I don't want to get caught up in semantics here. That, all of that happened too, and then after all of that, you sit here, Coleman, and you go, why are they attacking Israel and not Egypt? It's like, you know, because there's like a long history here, man, and they're really pissed off about this. Hold on.

Coleman Hughes: I think this is worth actually dwelling on this, because what you didn't emphasize in your story is that Egypt obviously occupied Gaza for 19 years, did not, did not give them a state. That's true. Could have given them a state, did not, and Egypt has every single bit of harsh blockades since 2007, Egypt copy-paste absolutely. In fact, worse, because when they discovered smuggling tunnels underneath the Gaza border, they pumped them with poison gas and sewage and killed Palestinians as a result. Now, if Israel had done that, that would be exhibits A through Z on why Hamas is fighting Israel for legitimate understandable reasons, and yet, Egypt does all of that, and Hamas can't spare a single rocket, and this is practically a science experiment for understanding what Hamas actually cares about. I think you're very quick to see pretenses in American foreign policy, and very slow to see them in other groups around the world. No, I don't think so, man, I'm not, but again, this is practically a science experiment. It's practically a science experiment to see actually what does Hamas care about? It is entirely about the humiliation of having a Jewish state on that land, not about the occupation, not about not having a country. For them, it's not about the settlements in the West Bank. For them, Tel Aviv is the same as a settlement in the West Bank. It's all one phenomenon of a Jewish state that needs to be expired from the river to the sea.

Dave Smith: Well, look, I mean, I think, again, it's not, when you say that, oh, I could see, this is what I think is kind of bizarre about this, right? Is that you'll say, oh, you could see all the corruption in like the American war party or the Israeli war party or something like that, but you can't see obviously here with Hamas too. But that's just not right. I'm not sitting here defending Hamas. Hamas has just been horrible. They're like a death cult.

Coleman Hughes: I didn't say corruption. I said false pretence. It's just not.

Dave Smith: Sure, the false pretence. Whatever you want to, whatever.

Coleman Hughes: Do you agree with that? So you agree with that? Hamas is concerned about blockade and occupation and not having a, this is, you agree this is a false pretence, and that is actually about the humiliation of a Jewish state.

Dave Smith: I think that we are so many decades into this thing that it's devolved to the tragic level where Hamas is basically a death cult. And yeah, it's a grudge. They're trying to get back at the Israelis in any way they can for the most part. Yeah, that's like, yes, essentially, like I do think that's right. And I also would say that like what I think everybody should kind of accept here in the same way that like we're not giving the land back to the Native Americans, man. And like it's, it's horrible the way states rise to be. I mean, I'm a, I'm a radical libertarian. My fundamental view is essentially that states are gangs who took over and are in some sense perceived as legitimate. But that's essentially what they are, the ruling gang in a geographic territory. And so yeah, lots of them are created in real messy, immoral circumstances, but generations later, you know, you'd be doing the same thing over to a whole new group of innocent people if you were to kick all the Israelis out of Israel and make it from the river to the sea, all Palestinian or something like that. I think that that's why almost every adult in the room, when there's been real negotiations or when there's been real talks of ever getting close to a peace process, have always started talking about 67 borders, right? But so the dynamic is this. I essentially think as horrible as the Nakba was and as horrible as the 1948 war was and as horrible as all of that is, yeah, I do think that eventually people can get over that and move on. It's very, very painful.

Coleman Hughes: So not only that, but everyone else in an analysis situation from the 1940s has moved

Dave Smith: on. Yeah. But the other factor they are Coleman is that they occupied them militarily for 60 years,

Coleman Hughes: the longest military occupation in the world, this we have to talk about the 67 world. Why did that happen? Israel did not choose that war. I mean, I know you have this big end quote, but saying that Israel chose or or or you're not exactly saying this, but saying that because Egypt fired first, that therefore Israel caused the 67 war is as intellectually dishonest as saying that because Mexico fired first, Mexico caused the Mexican-American war. Now we all know that America wanted that war, that we put our troops in that territory that was contested and Texas said was theirs. Specifically, Ulysses S. Grant said exactly the plan was to get them to fire, and it was essential that they fire first, but we all know what the plan was. We wanted territory, okay? So you have everyone in the room from the Egyptian side, from the Jordanian side saying that Nasser knew if he closed the strait of Tehran that it was war. This is from Sadat's memoir, from Sadat who was in the room, his memoir.

Dave Smith: He goes familiar.

Coleman Hughes: Yeah, Nasser convened a meeting, the Supreme Executive Council. He said, now with our troops in the Sinai, the chances of war are 50-50. But if we close the strait, war will be a 100% certainty. Then he says to his general, are the forces ready, okay? And the king, King Hussain said he knew the same thing. So Israel was freaking out about this war. They didn't want this war. And on top of that, they gave Jordan every opportunity not to join in and even let them fire for a little bit, hoping that they would make a show of attacking from the West Bank and then save their pride. So that's how the West Bank came under Israeli occupation. And then immediately, Israelis proposed going into negotiations for land for peace. And what do the Arab countries do, the three knows of cartoon, no peace, no negotiation, no recognition. Yeah. That's all right. Okay, so then that is very important context for, first of all, how the occupation came to be. It was not by Israeli design. Israelis didn't want it. But some religious minorities wanted it, but-

Dave Smith: Yeah, but the difference here, Coleman, is that like, yeah, I can gladly concede all of that. Can I address my lead or your point? It's tragic. It's tragic how much this was all mishandled and what a devastation it was. And obviously, in hindsight, what a horrific decision for the Egyptians to begin provoking that war.

Coleman Hughes: Very great. Yeah. So, but you said earlier, basically, like you don't get to occupy people for, for this many years. And I get that, I get that. And my point is that, as I said earlier, Omar ran on a campaign of withdrawing from the West Bank out of this very, this exact impulse, this sense that we, we've got to give it a try, right? We've given, and he won. And then what undermined his ultimate plan to withdraw from the West Bank was the fact that right after he's elected, two things happened. There's a cross-border raid from Gaza, and Galad Shalik gets taken, and some other people get killed. And then there's a cross-border raid from Lebanon, where the Israelis had, had pulled out unilaterally just a few years ago. So what happened is that they have this twin example of a place that we've occupied, and a place that we've pulled out of. And we just got attacked from both of, both of the places that we unilaterally pulled out of. Now, can you understand how an Israeli voter would say, seeing this say, okay, you know, I was for the idea of pulling out of the West Bank, it kind of made sense to me, and just batting down the hatches, trying to play perfect defense. And then we pulled out of Gaza, and we pulled out of Lebanon, and instantly we get, not instantly, but in the same year, we get cross-border raids, we get rockets, and we have to go into bomb shelters. I don't think this unilateral withdrawal, withdrawal strategy works. I think we have to have a peace deal, and withdraw only in that context. You can sympathize with the, within an Israeli voter, with a family, living, who wants peace, but says, I'm not going to sign on to peace, unless it's going to be a real peace.

Dave Smith: Yeah. I can sympathize with them, but again, it's the only one side who you ever make an attempt to like-

Coleman Hughes: No, I already gave you a whole answer about what I would think- No, but Palestine.

Dave Smith: Yeah, but it's kind of nonsense. It's like, yeah, but when you sympathize with the Palestinians, you go, oh, man, I think if I were a Palestinian, I would really feel like my government really should do a better job, or my government, that Hamas should really do a better job, instead of just going like- No, I would be for a partition on either side. If I was- Dude, if I, if someone, I got, I have little kids. If someone had the value of life over my little kids, the way that all of you guys who support what Israel has been doing to Gaza for the last two years-

Coleman Hughes: I told you, Dave, I told you what I would say from a Palestinian perspective, and you are totally mischaracterizing what I said. What I said is that I would want Israel to end the war now, and then I would also want there to be some kind of massive effort to get rid of Hamas, because I would understand that my family would not have long-term peace until our regime was done with the forever war against Israel. Okay. That's what I said. Now, if you want to say that's disingenuous, a disingenuous version of a Palestinian, I don't think that's crazy.

Dave Smith: Okay. Let me just- I just gotta say- I'm listening to like everything you say. I feel like you're cutting me off every time I talk, so-

Coleman Hughes: I only did that because you mischaracterized what I said.

Dave Smith: Okay. No, I mean, I feel like every time, so anyway, but okay. I have little kids, if little kids are being killed the way little kids in Gaza are being killed right now, and that was just like acceptable. That's just what we have to do. I think I would probably join up with the most radical group I could find and try to kill as many Israelis as I could. Also, if I was in Israel, and one of those terrorists came over and killed one of my little kids, I think I would probably be supporting the destruction of the whole entire place. So yes, I can put myself in the situation of either one, and totally simple- and by the way, I mean, this is just also born out by opinion polls and stuff like that. Of course, we only talked about it from the Israeli side when we were saying that after the Second Intifada public support for a two-state solution really, really tanked, but also, you can go look at how, when the peace process fell apart, support for terrorists rose amongst the Palestinians, like when the peace process was on the table, Hamas had much less support, and when it fell apart, they got more support. The point is that there is this, listen, there was a plan with this movement of Zionism to create a Jewish state in the historic Palestine. It has always involved an enormous amount of force in order for the thing to be created. There has been Israel and the Palestinians essentially have been at war since 1947. I mean, there's flare-ups and there's times that are worse right now. It's the worst it's ever been. But that also really says something at the end of this project. We are Americans sitting halfway around the world. And I think that obviously our role here should be to say like, hey, let's try to de-escalate this thing. I can sympathize with people on both sides of this struggle. Obviously, horrific crimes have been committed by Arabs and by Israelis. The Palestinians have gotten the brunt of it far more of them have been killed. And far, they have been the losers in this conflict, obviously. But the fact is that my country may, I'm forced to prop this whole thing up. And I just think this is like appalling. I mean, look, there's just, with all of these problems, if you want to go back through history, and you want to always give the benefit of the doubt to Israel, and always focus on what all the Arabs have done that's wrong, you can do that. In conflicts like that, you can also do the opposite, which I see lots of people do. I actually think I'm much more of a moderate on this topic than most people see me as, but whatever. I'm not like the equal opposite version of that, which I see a lot of people are, refer to Hamas as freedom fighters and everything is it. There's been atrocities committed by both sides here. There's been bad decisions made by both sides. But the idea, dude, like, okay, even if you want to blame the 67 war on Egypt and Jordan, like, okay, there's a reasonable, there's a reasonable argument to be made for that. Even if you want to say, oh, they wanted to not occupy him for this long, you just get to a certain point. The thing, even when you're talking about heavy Egyptians and the Palestinians, you know, talking about the three nose, this was in, this was within like 20 years of the creation of the state of Israel. It was a new thing. When it's a new thing, people still want to undo the last thing. When you see it, like, even in the same way that like Republicans don't talk about repealing Obamacare anymore. It's just too old now, man. It's part of the system. That's not even a talking point anymore. It's a huge talking point in 2012, but it's just not anymore, okay? The thing is, Israel didn't occupy them for a few months after a war or even a few years after a war. They occupied them for 60 years. The Palestinians today, the, I don't know the exact numbers, the overwhelming majority of them, that's their entire life, whose their entire life has been living under foreign military occupation or under siege, complete domination from a foreign country. And that is just unacceptable. That is a status quo that just cannot be justified, much like the destruction of Gaza over the last two years. And like, as an American, I am outraged that we are forced to finance the thing and prop it up.

Coleman Hughes: So do you believe that Israel should withdraw from the West Bank unilaterally because people, you can't occupy another people for 60 odd years? So tell me what about the following sketch you find and what, what, what you would do in the following situation. Israel unilaterally, they listen to Dave Smith, they say, we got to get out of the West Bank, we got to do Olmer its convergence plan, regardless, it's just been too long, screw the trade-offs. Would you allow them to have border security with Jordan or no?

Dave Smith: I'm sorry, so it would allow the West Bank to have border security with Jordan.

Coleman Hughes: Would you allow Israel to have some control over the West Bank border with Jordan or no?

Dave Smith: Well, the West Bank work, so I'm sorry, I'm just, maybe I'm not following the question here. So they would give the Palestinians a state, but the Israel would control the Jordanian border, but this would be the border between the West Bank and Jordan, correct? Yeah. I guess not.

Coleman Hughes: I don't know. I don't know. Okay, so they withdraw from the West Bank, they don't control the border with Jordan. As would, as happened in Gaza, it's a fairly high probability that there would be some kind of civil war between Hamas, which is more popular in the West Bank than the Palestinian authority and the Palestinian authority. So there would be some kind of power struggle between Abbas and Fatah and Hamas on the other end. Now, it's possible that Fatah just wins and that would be a really good outcome, I think, for the Palestinians and the region, but they didn't win in Gaza and they don't have great state capacity, great security control regardless. So with no help from the IDF, the betting man would predict that Hamas takes over, if not the whole West Bank, then some Lebanon situation where they control territory within the West Bank. Now we know what Hamas wants to do. They've said they will do October 7th again and again and again, even knowing the ridiculous cost that's been imposed on Gaza in this war. And we know that it's very easy to smuggle weapons across the border with Jordan. There's been tons of problems with weapons smuggling in Jordan in the past. There's no reason Iran would not be able to help them. So what you have now is a situation where Hamas controls some territory in the West Bank. And this is not like, I don't think the scenario I'm sketching is the paranoid, the paranoid ramblings of someone in the Israeli security state. I think it's pretty much a center of the fairway prediction. It could go better, it could go worse. But now you have Hamas controlling strategic territory, high ground in the West Bank, much closer to Tel Aviv, maybe 45 miles from Tel Aviv with missiles, perhaps that could easily reach that. Eventually they're going to attack because this is who they are. What happens then? Is this an outcome, I mean, it will lead to another war and I don't know how bloody that war will be. I know it certainly won't be good for the Palestinians. And so do you feel any burden to defend what would you say when that day came? Would you say, actually I was wrong about unilateral withdrawal withdrawal from the West Bank or would you say, no, I was still right about it for the following reasons.

Dave Smith: I mean, you know, if things were different, we'd be having a different conversation. And if Israel did take the boot off the neck of the Palestinians and they started attacking Israel, well, then that sure would be a different conversation. But again, with the un falsifiable counterfactuals, or here's another scenario, it was like Egypt and they just didn't fight wars anymore. You know, I think there's a lot of reason as I was saying before getting into with the opinion polls where you see when the peace negotiations fall apart, support for Hamas goes up. You see this constantly, you see after October 7th, there was a rally around the flag effect in Israel. They saw this after 9-11 when George W. Bush had record high approval ratings. General Macrystal, not exactly a libertarian dove like myself, he was the one who coined the term insurgent math about Afghanistan. And this was not an ideal log of any sort, just somebody who wanted to win the war. And he was just saying, right, 10 minus 2 equals 20. You got a list of insurgents that were supposed to take out, but every time we strike them, a bunch of innocent people get killed. And then the list gets longer and longer and longer because people want to join up with the cause. And so this is, so essentially, I don't think it's the likely bat that things would be much, much worse. I think that what creates a lot of this, the terrorism is the, and again, like again, like I said, I still haven't gotten exactly like a coherent definition of terrorism or why the IDF isn't terrorist or what, you know what I mean? But violence is used by human beings because it's effective. And I think that the less, the less violence that the Palestinians were under at Israeli hands, the harder it would be for Hamas to rally people. The harder it would be to get people to go commit these acts. So again, look, like I give you the example of Egypt, which is a country that I don't think you would say doesn't have a radical Islam problem, you know what I mean? Like Hamas was born out of like a Muslim brotherhood offshoot essentially. Egypt is there. The biggest enemy of Israel, not an Arab enemy, the Arab enemy of Israel fought four wars with them in 20 something years. They've had peace ever since they gave up the land, so I think that's a very like, now

Coleman Hughes: if you want to say to me, they had peace ever since a leader came to power that decided to enough with the wars, Sadat came to Kinesid, taking massive risks, also his credit, and said, I'm sick of my people dying. You're sick of your people dying. We have to end this thing.

Dave Smith: I would love nothing more. I would love nothing more than to see a leader like that rise up amongst the Palestinians.

Coleman Hughes: I would love to see a leader like that, my brother's up in the Israeli government. That was the crucial element that allowed for peace to happen, and that does not exist in Hamas. Yeah. Okay, if I'm saying as recently as two months ago, we're going to do it again from the river to the sea. Okay. So a couple of things on the alternative.

Dave Smith: Hamas is not in power in the West Bank. This Hamas obstacle doesn't exist there. Now you may say they have a lot of support there, and that's true, and look, who knows what would happen, but let me refer, let me hit a couple of things here, okay? Number one, Hamas saying they're going to do October 7th over and over again is like, rather than they didn't say that, I don't think it's wise that they say that. They are clearly engaging in this strategy, very similar to Osama bin Laden's strategy of, you know, this is essentially what counterterrorism always is, right? It's asymmetrical warfare, and the reaction is in the reaction. You're always trying to, you know, like Osama bin Laden, and he wrote this himself and his son really wrote about what his dad told him on this, although that is hearsay, I guess. But the goal was never to destroy the United States of America by taking down the towers. The goal was to lower us into a war in Afghanistan and to bankrupt us there. And you can see where like, you know, okay, maybe that didn't exactly happen, but not so far off. And so obviously, I think the goal here from Hamas has been to get this overreaction from Israel and completely turn the global opinion against them, and they've been incredibly successful at doing that. Now obviously, there's, you know, anyway, so the point here being is that you're falling right into their trap, essentially when you do this, which is like the worst reaction you could have to it.

Coleman Hughes: But you're conceding then that Hamas is a psychologically different enemy than Egypt was, because Egypt's goal wasn't to attack Israel to provoke a response, kill a bunch of Egyptians and turn. They actually were like, we want to destroy Israel, we want to avenge 48. And when they realized they couldn't do that and we're suffering an intolerable cost in civilian casualties, they changed course and haven't fought a war with Israel since. Now, this is a very important point because it shows that the psychology of the enemy is extremely important in determining whether a peace deal is possible. Now, I think part of the crux of your disagreement with me is that I think if a frozen conflict were possible, if this could become like North Korea, South Korea, Israel would have a massive moral obligation to go for that right now, to save Palestinian lives and prevent further bloodshed. But with an enemy that is psychologically different from Egypt and precisely the way I just described, there is no such thing as a frozen conflict because the only way you get to a frozen conflict, you don't get to a frozen conflict in Korea because they have a big wall. Like, you know, North Korea has a bunch of missiles pointed at Seoul. They could launch them today and hit Seoul. It's not about the wall, even though it's super high tech. It's not about, it's about the fact that North Korea's psychologically is actually deterred by what would happen to them if they attack South Korea. Now, the problem with Hamas and why it can't become a frozen conflict until either Hamas has a change of mindset, which there's no evidence of, or Hamas is replaced by the Palestinians who actually do have a different mindset, is because they are literally not deterred by any action that Israel could possibly take. There is no human toll in Gaza high enough, I think, for Hamas to be deterred. And therefore, there is no reason for them to accept a frozen conflict. And it doesn't matter how big that wall is, it doesn't matter if Israel spends another billion on that wall just like they did in 2021. Hamas will hack that wall again. They'll find the new weakness, which is because that's the nature of physical barriers. It's never perfect.

Dave Smith: Yeah, but I don't know. I mean, I, I, I somewhat agree with your point, but also it should be like clarified that that doesn't at all mean that another October 7th is even remotely likely. I mean, this was the bit, you know, like the thing Charlie Kirk got a, the clip that's been going super viral of him on Patrick Bettevich when his first reaction to October 7th was like, did someone give a stand-down order or something like that, which I'm not claiming that's the case, but it would be interesting to see like a real investigation of October 7th at one point in how Israel had such an unbelievable failure that day. But Hamas says, yes, you're, you're, you're right in the sense of like seeping through the cracks, like getting an attack off here or there, but Hamas had never pulled anything

Coleman Hughes: like that. Like it's thousands of rockets.

Dave Smith: Yeah, but I'm just saying that I said never pulled anything, whatever your own technology,

Coleman Hughes: they could.

Dave Smith: Never pulled anything like October 7th off before and it was a massive failure on Israeli security in order to allow that to happen. But just again, just to be clear here, this, because this is always the Israeli perspective that like, oh, it's a, we don't have the partner for peace. And then of course, as you know, because we've gone through some of these quotes, there's a whole bunch of times where the Israeli leadership is talking about how they're working to make sure they don't have a partner for peace, because then they could throw their hands up and say, see, we can just maintain the status quo now. And that the, you know, the Americans will back it up, which is what's required for the whole thing to happen. But look, you don't need a partner to end the occupation and return to 67 borders, or to give citizenship to the people who live under your control. You don't need a partner for that. Israel can decide to do that on their own. And if they were to decide to do that, listen, I'll say this, okay? On top of just like, because you said Israel has, I think Israel has an enormous moral obligation to end the destruction of Gaza and end the occupations of Gaza and the West Bank. That's, you know, I think. So what? Affirmative. Hold on. I'm not done. So let me just make my point. I think at this point, Israel deciding to do that right now is probably their only chance to not lose the world forever. Like it is just, it is hard to overstate. I'm sure you're aware of it, Coleman, because you're in this world. It is so hard to overstate how much support for Israel has evaporated amongst young people in America. And that's just America over the rest of the world. I mean, they're just like unanimously or damn near unanimously hated. And so Israel could do that. They could do that tomorrow. This is their decision to continue a 60 year occupation into the foreseeable future. And you know, as to your point, like, because look, I was saying that I do think there's reason to believe that, like, there would be less terrorism without the occupation than there is with the occupation. But I will say, like, I don't, you know, I can't with certainty predict the future. Okay. Well, I'll wrap up real quick here, but I'll say, like, even if, like, you know, look, that a lot of horrible things have been done to the Palestinians over the last 80 years. And there might be a lot of anger going forward. Now, your point about the differences between, like, black leadership post-slavery is well taken and fair enough, but I still think there was probably a real concern that, like, you free all these slaves. And what if one of them gets a gun and wants to come kill me? I would, I enslaved him in his family for 20 years, like, there could still be a concern there. But the bottom line is that, like, you can't just essentially enslave millions of people because you're worried about a violence problem. Any more than we would accept the solution to, like, the gun violence in Chicago being, like, we're just going to start drone bombing city blocks or something like that. Like, no, you don't get to just, like, rob millions of people of their most basic fundamental human rights because you're worried about a problem that might arise in the future. You know, if Israel returned to 67 borders and they allowed a government to be created in the West Bank and that government attacked Israel, we're having a new conversation there. And that would be a conversation where Israel might be able to win over support around the world again because they could go, look, we took our boot off the neck and look, we got proven right or something like that. So I wouldn't advise Israel to put their guns down. I wouldn't advise Israel to open their borders. But yeah, they could end this occupation. That's their choice.

Coleman Hughes: Yeah. So I mean, I fear we're going in circles here, but, you know, that is what Israel is, it Israeli would say they did in 2005. Like we left, we left Gaza, we left Lebanon and where are the places we're getting attacked from most, not the West Bank, not the place we're occupying, but the places we left, including the places like Lebanon, where they're not even Palestinian, right? They're not even Palestinian, they're not even Sunni, they have their land, we don't want their land, we, you know, and so if I were living there, I would say, okay, Dave Smith is telling me that if we was drawn from the West Bank, if we end the occupation, we'll have a much lower chance of terror than if we keep the occupation. But the evidence of my eyes and ears and everything around me is that we are getting attacked precisely from the places that we leave and less so from the places that we're occupying. And if I put my shoes, myself and those shoes, I say, well, why should I buy this guy's theory? This guy, you know, this guy, he thinks he understands the psychology of the enemy we're facing. But all of the evidence points in the opposite direction and why with all the marbles, with my family security on the line, would I gamble on getting a little bit more sympathy from the world that seems pretty unsympathetic, frankly, you know, like more UN resolutions against Israel than every country, like that seems a little bit, a little bit of a signal of where a world opinion is coming from. Why would I gamble my family's life on whether some Westerners like me a little more, when the consequence of a war with an independent West Bank could be catastrophic. And so in every other situation, such as with Sudan, these things come in the form of peace treaties. They come in the form of peace treaties, not unilateral decisions because that has the best chance of creating a stable peace. And you can't have a peace treaty if one of the belligerents, because if for ideological reasons, can't agree to a peace treaty.

Dave Smith: Okay. Fine. But even if you look again, I could put myself in the perspective of that Israeli, sure, I could feel the way. No, we're not going to let him go because I have too many security concerns. And then I can also put myself in the perspective of a Palestinian who goes, oh, so it's the status quo and I just have to watch my family get slaughtered. I'm going to grab a gun and go kill everything that moves. You know, yes. I'm not going to let myself in all of their perspectives. I'm not in any of their perspectives. I'm an American who's the one who's forced to pay for this whole thing. So to that Israeli who says, why do I care what an American thinks of me? Fine. Don't care what an American thinks of me. Stop taking our money and support. Can I ask you, Coleman? Like, honestly, what do you think would happen if America cut off all support for Israel? And I mean, all support. I mean, when the rockets come flying at you, you want to bomb around and then there's hundreds of rockets flying back at you, shoot them down yourself. We're not figuring that out for you. The billions of dollars that you get every year, you're not getting any of that anymore. The weapons that you get every year, you're not getting any of that anymore. The intelligence. I'm tired of all this stuff. I don't have any problem with that. No, well, what do you think? What do you think would happen to Israel if America just didn't support them at all? I'm not sure. I think they would be. We're not vetoing resolutions at the UN for you. Are you asking me? Or? Yeah. No, I'm just, I was just adding another, another element. We're not going to veto resolutions at the UN. Like, literally no support from America.

Coleman Hughes: My guess is what would happen is they would survive as a state. They'd figure it out and they'd be in a less, a less advantageous negotiating position and the conflict would last a much longer time because the Palestinians would say our strategy's working. The terrorism is working. Look, we got America to disengage. Full steam ahead, boys.

Dave Smith: So it would last a little longer time. It's lasted since the creation of Israel so far.

Coleman Hughes: No, I know. So Sudan was at war for 55 years and then they had a peace treaty. Let's not act like this has no possible horizon of solution.

Dave Smith: No, I agree with that.

Coleman Hughes: No, I agree with that. My point is simply on the margin, if America disengages, Israel would survive, they'll figure it out. America didn't give them a penny in the 1948 war and they won and I'm not at all opposed to stopping aid. But I think on balance that would send a signal to Hamas that the terrorism strategy is working, exhibit A, we got America to disengage by this strategy. So let's keep on doing it. We're pushing in the right direction which would have an effect to prolong the conflict rather than by making it seem like they have more leverage in their own mind. So I don't think that would necessarily be a good thing for all the people living there but if that answer, is that answer unreasonable to you?

Dave Smith: No, I think that's a reasonable answer. I was just curious like what you're taking as I think Israel as it exists, like I think you're probably right. I think Israel probably survives but I think that what you say as they would be, have a less advantageous negotiating position, I think means like they'd have to just make a deal. They'd have to finally make a deal and not be able to continue the status quo. Look, if you're going to say, what would the deal be? I think the deal would be the one you mean like a two-state deal? It's something, something like that ending the occupation, some type of compromise. I think if you're going to say that, essentially if I'm correct, if I'm wrong but if I'm understanding your point correctly, you're going to say that, look, so your response to me is that like, okay, yes, technically Israel could just stop occupying, like Israel could just themselves retreat to 67 borders and stop occupying Palestinian territory but it would be a better, more long-term peace if there was also a partner for peace who goes, okay, we're also on board with this deal and we make guarantees that we won't attack you and stuff like that. I can roughly, I think accept that, that like, yeah, it would be better off if you had to, but okay, so let's say I grant that, you don't have that partner on the other side. So now the choice is between you ending the occupation or continuing this indefinitely. And I think that for all the time we put ourselves in the Israeli perspectives, if you just for a second put yourself in the Palestinian perspective, you could see how unreasonable it is to expect them to accept that, that you got to stop first. Like you can't ever violently resist even though you're violently occupied by a brutal foreign army or in the case of Gaza, just having your, like, the destruction of the whole strip. I just think like, out of those two options, one is so obviously preferable and morally superior to the other.

Coleman Hughes: No, see, I actually disagree with this because, and this is good, that this is part of the crux of maybe my disagreement. So I'll give an analogy, and I hope it doesn't seem too glib, but I'm half Puerto Rican.

Dave Smith: Puerto Rican is the oldest, sorry, I just thought it'd be funny if you go on half Puerto Rican. I don't talk to Puerto Ricans. And that's left. That was my line. No one told me.

Coleman Hughes: So go ahead. Okay. So Puerto Rico is the oldest longstanding colony in the world. They don't vote for president. There was terrorism for a while and then it went away. And Puerto Ricans asked for independence in, you know, in the 1910s, America said no. And eventually, slowly, Puerto Ricans warmed up to the idea that actually all things considered, it was better to have an American passport and American citizenship than it was to have independence. Even though all of, there's no lack of pride. There is no lack of, you know, the, you know, America like banned the Puerto Rican flag in the, in the 1940s and 50s, like there was a no lack of boot on the throat in the, in the colonizing. But there was a decision made after a certain point that actually, you know what, shit, we're doing better than Cuba. We're doing better than Dominican Republic. We're, matter of fact, we're doing better than every island in the Caribbean. And the bread and butter kitchen table issue, we're never going to get attacked because we've got military base here, even though the military base was also like giving some of them cancer. So again, this is, these are the trade-offs that real people living through real history make. For, forget independence, we'll, we'll screw it. We'll be a colony and we'll call it a Commonwealth to kind of swallow our pride a little bit. But that's why I'm in front of you today. That's why my grandparents were able to even, even move to this country. And so if I'm thinking, what would I think if I lived right now in the West Bank? And obviously, far be it for me or you to truly speculate what folks over there are thinking. But in so far as I could put myself in anyone's shoes, I would think that, hey, I'm looking at my co-ethnic Palestinians in Gaza. I'm looking at people living in South Lebanon and I'm saying, well, yeah, we don't have our independence. We don't, in some way, we don't have pride without getting the Israeli boot off of our throat. But all things considered, the situation I'm in right now is one of humiliation, but no war relative to Gaza. If Israel withdraws, I know very well Hamas is going to, it's going to be a civil war. It's going to be a civil war where I live that could kill me or my children. And then there's pretty solid odds that it would become a war with Israel. And so you're, you're, you have like a forced choice between two dog shit alternatives. And it would not surprise me one bit if Palestinians in the West Bank took the opposite side of that choice that you're assuming they would take.

Dave Smith: Okay. So give them the choice then because that is the choice that Puerto Rican's made in the

Coleman Hughes: longest standing colony in the world. You know, that's why I use that example.

Dave Smith: Yeah, I understand. I understand your point. And so like, yeah, if you want it like, if there was an occupation, if you want to call that, you know, exactly, I don't know if you call it an occupation of Puerto Rico. But if there was an occupation that was not brutal and that increased the standard of living amongst the people, I'm like, yeah, there probably would be less resistance to it. But if you're going to say that like the people in the West Bank might choose to live under Israeli occupation, like, okay, let's give them the choice.

Coleman Hughes: No, no, no. So not choose on a menu of great alternatives, choose between a forced choice and that in civil war.

Dave Smith: I'm saying, well, yes, but you've, you've baked your conclusion, you know, into that, like, it's not a guarantee that this would be a civil war. Why don't we give them a choice? Why don't we hold a referendum? Would you like to be an independent state or would you like to remain militarily occupied by Israel? And if you suspect that maybe they would vote, remaining occupied, I'd happily eat crow on that if the referendum came back in your favor, but it won't, it won't come back overwhelmingly that they want to be independent.

Coleman Hughes: Fair, but democracies make terrible decisions all the time. So A, before and brother, we can agree on that. Last topic before we wrap, I have to wrap within the next 10 minutes I'm told otherwise I would go for longer. Maybe we'll do it again at another point. Absolutely. I just want to get you on Iran. So you've been, what is your argument against, because a lot of, you're an anti-war guy, which I get, you're against civilian casualties, which I really get. But then we have an example where we bomb Iran's nuclear facility, prevent this regime from getting nukes, which I would think an anti-war guy would be totally for, with no casualties that I have seen reported, zero casualties, and yet you still seem to be against it. So what's your view on that?

Dave Smith: Well, there weren't zero casualties in what's now being called the 12-day war. I think you're referring to the American bombings, like the bunker about the bombings. That's what I said. But there were Iranian and Israeli casualties in that war, which is tragic. I think we've lived through such a period of catastrophic wars that it's almost like that, I don't know, that's just like not thought of as very meaningful, because the numbers weren't like alarmingly high, but there's real people and real family members who lost people they loved over that.

Coleman Hughes: You're a specifically the strike on the nuclear facilities that had no casualties. That's what I'm asking you.

Dave Smith: Sure, sure. But I mean, look, the thing happened in the context of this 12-day war, but specifically about the strikes on the nuclear facilities, I mean, look, it does not, Joseph Stalin developed nuclear weapons and American knew that he was developing them. Now, St. Tongue, the worst man who's ever lived, developed nuclear weapons and American knew they were developing. We didn't launch an aggressive preemptive war over it, and so no, I don't think it would. And the other thing is that, first of all, Iran had not developed nuclear weapons, and they were at the negotiating table. And so you've got them at the negotiating table, specifically negotiating, you know, everybody was making such a big deal out of this 60% enriched uranium. They weren't enriching up to that percentage until Obama walked away from the JCPOA. They were at the negotiating table, specifically negotiating, getting back into that deal, which we already know the Iranians agreed to just a few years ago, right? Or I guess, I'm old, a little more than a few years ago, but back in the Obama administration. And so no, the obvious move there was to pursue this diplomatic strategy, and we could have avoided a nuclear around without having to go to war. And my argument at the time, and I think my argument continues to be, well, first of all, we really don't know, like, whether we're at half time of this thing, and certainly, you know, every comment from Benjamin Netanyahu about it so far has left the door wide open. And in fact, when he was on, I believe it was when he was being interviewed by Patrick David, and he was not talking about how a fat, you know, like the first day, it's so weird the way the war stuff works. But like, after the first Israeli strike, the Israeli government and all the pro-Israeli people on Twitter are bragging about how Israel just totally dismantled Iran's nuclear program, and they didn't even need American help. Then two days later, it's like, well, we actually need these bunker busters. Then everybody's bragging about how they've been totally decimated their nuclear program. As soon as Benjamin Netanyahu was on patch, but David, it's like a few weeks after the thing, then he's like, oh, no, they're still developing intercontinental ballistic missiles. Their nuclear program is still, they're still going to get that up and running. He started talking about how they can strike Florida, which I don't, I've never heard anyone claim, but okay. And so who knows what's going to come of this, you know, like this might still turn into something really bad. Can I say something? Well, let me just, this will be my last point in it. My argument was always that you really risk catastrophe every time you do one of these things. You know, these wars can escalate very easily. And what happened was Iran for obvious self preservation interests, essentially what gave like advanced notice and made sure that no Americans were killed in their retaliation. If they had not done that, I think there's really no question, like if they had killed, which every military expert I've heard talk about this, as always said, around has the capability of touching American military bases all over the region. If they had done that, I think Trump would have at that point had no choice but to respond with a much bigger response. And this could have spiraled into a regime change, which going back to the beginning portion of the show is something that I believe that a whole lot of powerful people, including neo conservatives and Benjamin Netanyahu, have wanted in that country for quite a long

Coleman Hughes: time. I do find it interesting that three or four times during this conversation, you have dismissed my arguments as counterfactuals that didn't actually happen or projections into the future that are speculative. Yet your argument against Iran is counterfactual could have been a lot worse if they had done this. They have zigged instead of zagged and speculative into the future. It could get a lot worse. So that I think that's an inconsistency in your case. But I'd like to ask you a question. We can argue till the cows come home about whether Iran negotiating in good faith or are they not. But how I think as a Bayesian is like, we've got 20 countries or so in the history of the world that I've enriched uranium to various percentages for various different purposes. So if we're trying to divine Iran's intentions, can you name me a single country in the history of nuclear proliferation that has enriched kilograms of uranium to 60% and then not gone on to create a bomb? And if you can answer that for me, I'm on your side of this.

Dave Smith: Okay. Well, I don't know. I don't know. The answer is zero. Yeah. Okay.

Coleman Hughes: So you're asking me to believe that something which has never happened before in the history of nuclear proliferation is being done right now in Iran by the same regime that supports Hezbollah that used to fly parades with mushroom clouds. And I say to you, like, I wasn't born yesterday, I don't buy it. There's nothing in the history of geopolitics and nuclear proliferation that leads me to your faith in that, that they are negotiating in good faith, not in the fact that the international body, whose job it is to keep tabs on this, formally condemn them last year and just before the war and over and over and over again.

Dave Smith: Okay. I have zero faith in the Iranian regime and none of my arguments are based off of faith. In fact, I think I had a lot less faith in the regime and that's why I was concerned that they would strike back and touch Americans after this. But or kill Americans, I should say. As far as your first point, it's like, yes, I guess it is true that like I criticize some of your points for being unfalseifiable hypotheticals or counterfactuals rather. I don't know. It's just, it's a little different to say that like, oh, if America pulled back, then China takes over the world or something like that, then to say like, hey, look, there was this Iranian response that was very obviously intentionally designed so that it wouldn't escalate the war, that it wouldn't kill Americans and then get them their regime overthrown. I think to say, imagine they didn't do that, things could be worse is not that crazy of a counterfactual. So, I guess to my argument is not that counterfactuals may never, ever once be uttered. I'm just saying that like, no, no, no, there's kind of a lot of times you can make wild assumptions of unfuelsifiable counterfactuals and then other times there are counterfactuals that are like, hey, just imagine they did this instead of that, this thing could have gotten a lot worse. Again, to the point, none of this is happening in a vacuum. And the fact is that you can't ignore the fact that after 9-11, George W. Bush puts a ran on the axis of evil list, even though they had absolutely nothing to do with 9-11, and then invades their two next-door neighbor countries and destroys them, okay? Like that is a big part of what's at play here in the Iranian mindset. And so it's not crazy that as a response to this, both North Korea and Iran have been looking for a nuke, I mean, or flirting with the idea of nuke or at least, well, I would say certainly, look, I'm not even like certainly letting the world know that we could go nuclear. We have that option. Like that is clearly what Iran has been doing this whole time. The point is that I'm not having faith in the Iranian regime. I'm saying that they were in negotiations. They had already agreed to the JCPOA under Obama and had drastically lowered, or they had their enrichment levels were drastically lower than they are now, and they're at the negotiating table. Negotiations hadn't even fallen apart. They had another meeting scheduled for like within the next 24 or 48 hours when Israel first attacked them. So if the big concern is if, which we all forget whether you call yourself anti-war or not, everybody ought to be anti-war as their default position, like you ought to try to avoid a war if it's possible. If the concern is they're going nuclear, is that you think they're going to develop nuclear weapons, they're at the negotiating table right now. And I got to say, I also just find which, you know, it was a little bit weird because there were kind of like mixed signals out of the Trump administration. And you know, there, whatever, there was different reporting about exactly what happened. But Donald Trump essentially said that like, yeah, we use the negotiations as a ruse to let Israel go launch this strike when they wouldn't suspect it. And I do just find that to be disgustingly dishonorable for the way you would want your country to act. No, there's, again, I'm not relying on a crazy, unfalsifiable counterfactual. I'm saying that launching a war can turn into a catastrophe. We've seen that seven times in the last 25 years. And this was a dangerous move to do against a country that did not have nuclear weapons that, according at least to the annual threat assessment from earlier in the year, had not even made the political decision to acquire nuclear weapons. And was at the negotiating table negotiating this issue, negotiating their level of enriched uranium. It was a crazy move to me to just launch a war in that situation. And it should also be pointed out that Israel after America dropped those bunker bombs, Israel just started bombing regime targets. Nothing to do with their nuclear capabilities. And also Israel called up and threatened all the generals and their families. Like it did sure seem like they were hoping to get a regime change there. And maybe I'd ask you this. Like do you think, do you think if Netanyahu had his way, which again actually kind of proves your point from earlier in a sense when that I agree with, that I do think people who like I'm broadly speaking my side of this issue overstate the case a lot. It's not that Israel owns our government or has full control. I know that's not true for a fact because I know we would have overthrown the regime in Iran if Netanyahu had full control of our government. But like if, you know, if Donald Trump, remember he had that vague tweet about regime change in the middle of the war, let's say he had just gone all in and said, you know what, we're overthrown the regime there. Do you think Netanyahu would have gone along with that? You think he would have been happy? I sure do. I think there are. I think there are. A lot of people. What's the point? The point is that there are a lot of people, powerful people who would be quite happy to see America get bogged down and yet another regime change catastrophe in the Middle East. And I'm against that passionately.

Coleman Hughes: Yeah. Okay. So we're going, I don't want to go in circles. Dave Smith, thank you for doing this. Maybe we'll do this again. And there's a lot more to talk about. People can follow you at, at Comic Dave Smith on Twitter slash X. Your podcast is called Part of the Problem. And do you have anything else to plug?

Dave Smith: No, that's fine. I just, I will say that I really appreciate you having me on. I appreciate the, just kind of the nature in which you conduct these conversations. And so let me know. Happy to do it again. Okay. Cool. Thank you, Dave.

Coleman Hughes: All right. Thanks, Coleman. Have a good one.

Transcript

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Coleman Hughes [00:00] There is no human toll in Gaza high enough for Hamas to be deterred.

Dave Smith [00:05] You can't just keep your boot on these people's neck forever. Israel has an enormous moral obligation to end the destruction of Gaza and end the occupations of Gaza and the West Bank.

Coleman Hughes [00:15] Hamas is absolutely committed to rejecting the only solution that could bring an end to this conflict.

Dave Smith [00:20] Okay, we're gonna put ourselves in the Israeli shoes. Like, okay, I'm fine to do that. Let's do that. Can we also attempt to do that to the other side here?

Coleman Hughes [00:28] Easily. I'll do it right now. I'll do it right now. Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman. My guest today is Dave Smith. Dave has been my most requested guest over the past year or so. He is a comedian and political commentator who focuses on American and Israeli foreign policy. Many of you will be familiar with him from his appearances on Joe Rogan, Lex Friedman, and Pierce Morgan. He also has a podcast called Part of the Problem. This conversation is the longest I have ever recorded. And when we finished, both Dave and I had the strange experience of thinking we had spoken for 90 minutes and suddenly realizing it had been three and a half hours. And still, there was a lot we didn't get to cover. It's not an exaggeration to say that Dave and I disagree about almost everything. But I think we were still able to have a productive debate with no ad hominems, no nastiness, and no cable newsy shouting, which is exactly what I try to do here on this show. And I'm thankful today for being the kind of interlocutor that can actually do that without needing a moderator. In this episode, we talk about why Dave loves Ron Paul. We talk about the relationship between military spending and the economy. We talk about the roots of jihadist terror. We talk about whether Israel got us into the war in Iraq. We talk about whether Israel's fundamental goal is peace with its neighbors or territorial expansion. We talk about the creation of the state of Israel. We talk about the ethics of the occupation of the West Bank. We talk about the barriers to a two-state solution. And finally, we talk about Iran's nuclear ambitions and the 12-day war. So without further ado, Dave Smith. Music Music

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Coleman Hughes [02:43] Music

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Coleman Hughes [02:55] Okay, Dave Smith. Thanks so much for coming on my show.

Dave Smith [02:59] Thank you for having me, Coleman. I've been looking forward to this.

Coleman Hughes [03:01] Yeah, so you are one of the most, maybe the most requested guest I've had over the past six months to a year. You have made a name for yourself as a very effective debater on Joe Rogan, on Pierce Morgan, Lex Friedman. You've been on as a critic of U.S. foreign policy and also Israeli, the war in Israel. So I want to get to all these topics. And I want to say first that I think a lot of your conversations have devolved into sort of for rendoms on you as a person which to me is totally uninteresting. And I think my audience knows what my MO is and what I'm about. I'm about talking about the substantive issues that both of our audiences care about. Like we in the grand scheme of history, our egos as people don't matter all that much. So I want to say that and I hope that we can model that kind of conversation so I expect us to disagree about many issues if not most. Sound fair? Yeah, absolutely.

Dave Smith [04:09] And that's kind of why I was looking forward to doing this because you know, not that we don't really know each other that well, but I've watched some of your stuff. And I've always kind of gotten that vibe from you that that was how you would approach this conversation. And despite the fact that I have been in my fair share of like mud slinging competitions, I generally do not prefer to do it that way and I completely agree with you. I think it's like one of the challenges of doing what we do is that you are on a show and you're a public person and the tendency to focus on oneself or to make oneself the story or for others to focus on the individual is very easy to fall into. And we all should remind ourselves no matter where we fall on the issues that there's actually people dying right now. There's actually a conflict going on. There's huge implications to all of this and that's actually much more important than any of that other stuff. And so I am completely on board with that.

Coleman Hughes [05:19] Okay, so let's before we get into the issues, I imagine many people in my audience might be familiar with you enough to know your origin story, but you're a comedian that's found a second career as a political commentator. And so walk me through that. What inspired you to get into all of these issues?

Dave Smith [05:41] Well, I started stand-up comedy first and I wasn't political really at all. I grew up in New York City. I was in New York City on 9-11. I was a liberal, a left liberal for most of my life, but without being very well informed or anything. That was kind of the standard starting point for a Jewish kid raised by a single mom in Brooklyn. And so after 9-11, I did grow to really dislike George W. Bush. The 9-11 and the war in Iraq were very much kind of the my coming of age time. So I was really against the war and I was really against George W. Bush. I knew enough to get that. And then it was just in 2007, I just happened to be watching the Republican primary debate. And I saw there was this what's now been become kind of like a viral famous moment where Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani like go at it arguing over what causes terrorism and what led to 9-11. And I don't know, just the moment to me was really fascinating. And it's still, I think no matter what your politics are, very fascinating moment. Because like at the time Rudy Giuliani was polling number one. He was leading the pack. And Ron Paul is a completely unknown. Like just a congressman from Texas who's never has no national presence. And Rudy Giuliani in terms of the crowd reaction dominates him in this exchange. But Ron Paul is just dropping wisdom. And then from that what you know it created this huge movement. And to this day is still something that people like I'll see posted all the time. Granted my algorithm might be a little bias on that. And then I just fell down the rabbit hole. Like I was just so interested in that guy. So I went and got his book. And then I loved it. The book was a revolution. That was the first Ron Paul book that I ever read. And then I just started falling down the rabbit hole. And reading everything I could get my hands on about libertarianism and foreign policy. And you know just political theory in general history economics. And then I just I don't know. I was just for a while there. I was just a stand up comedian. I was I was making like around this period of time like 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010. I was kind of like just eking out a living. Like some some bigger comedians would bring me on the road with them. And so I was just like I didn't have a day job. I could do just I was doing just good enough to be dead broke without having a day job. And then so then essentially right I just had to work at nights. I had to go to nightclubs and tell jokes. But I have my whole days for free. And I was married at the time. I didn't have kids at the time. And I just got obsessed with all of this stuff. And so I was just that guy was the guy you know just being weird and reading all this stuff. And then going to nightclubs and and doing stand up. And this is all really before like the podcast revolution. And then once the you know podcasting just became so big. I just it was just like the next logical progression was like oh start talking about this on shows. And then years of doing that. I think I started in 2011 or 2012 podcasting. And then over the years it just you know little by little kind of picked up. And becoming friends with Joe Rogan is really helpful in this business I've found.

Coleman Hughes [09:16] So it sounds like Ron Paul was very important to your your your evolution. What do you think are the most important things that Ron Paul got right?

Dave Smith [09:25] So I guess the big the big one right like in the the Giuliani moment was really him tearing down the lie. The propaganda which which dominated you know like right after 9-11 which was the idea that the terrorists hate us for our freedom. And they hate our goodness and our wonderfulness or something like that I you know like they would they would never like really exactly spell out what it was about our freedom but like you're supposed to imagine that they're all motivated by like I don't know women in many skirts or something like that or or right to free speech. And he was like well look like that there is a whole other huge element to this here that actually drives this conflict and that's that they hate us for what we're doing over there and that there are real grievances they have with America's foreign policy and here they are. And let's really examine those and you know think about what is this worth it is this the right thing to be doing is this you know productive for America is this moral. And I think that by it like you have to almost like put yourself back in 2007 like this is still during the George W Bush administration and there with for someone like me you know I had heard say like liberals who were against the war. But I had never really heard anyone break it down like that and there was something about it that kind of like it's almost like a portal where it allowed you to access a perspective from outside of the American empire. And I you know I remember there was something about that that was really I thought like profound to me that you're like oh okay yeah there's a there's another perspective about the American empire from outside it and they've got some real problems with this thing and that I just I found that to be very interesting. The other big thing was he really introduced the topic of the federal reserve almost nobody else was talking about I really like I don't think I knew what the federal reserve was until I heard Ron Paul talking about it I think if you had asked me I would have been like I guess they have some money put away somewhere and like the federal government keeps reserves of something I don't think I even knew. And once I started like reading about how the federal reserve actually works it's like it was just blowing away that how how did no one ever tell me that's how was this never like taught to me in school how you know and so that I thought was very interesting and then I think aside from that just being like the the truest public champion of free market economics generally speaking. I mean Ron Paul was so hardcore free market that like he made you know like he made Milton Friedman look like a socialist like he was just and he really I think was was like the only where the most prominent public advocate of true like peace and laissez-faire free markets and he was it seemed to me to be the only one who really had the courage of his convictions as far as those ideas were concerned.

Coleman Hughes [12:33] So let's take both of those one is the sort of why they hate us question and and the second one is the the federal reserve question because I think I'm going to try to follow rap report rules say where I agree first and then tell you where I disagree and why disagree. So when it comes to why say al-Qaeda hated us I agree they didn't hate us because of our freedom right that is online that does very well with Americans in a political context because we love freedom. But it's also not true that they hate us because of foreign policy grievances that would make sense to say to it in a secular context. In other words when al-Qaeda writes it's declaration of war in the United States for occupying the you know the holy land. What it's complaining about it's main grievance it's it's main grievance as evidenced by the fact that it's in the title and dominates the text as you know is that we had troops in Saudi Arabia that were there at the invitation of the Saudi government and stayed there for several years with permission from the Saudi government because they were afraid that Saddam might invade. Saudi Arabia now the only way that this is a legitimate grievance is if you add the special ingredient of radical salafi Islam which says that Christian crusader troops can't be near the holy sites and and by analogy you imagine a situation like South Korea where we were invited to put our troops over there during the Korean war we fought a war we've kept tens of thousands of troops there for much longer than Saudi Arabia. But there's no South Korean group flying planes into our buildings because they don't have that extra ingredient necessary which is there's no Korean religion which says American troops can't be in soul. So this would be my core critique of the idea that they hate us for for as Sam Harris would say terrestrial grievances.

Dave Smith [14:40] Yeah I mean so a couple things on that I mean number one like the the comparison say to like South Korea is just it's really not a one-to-one comparison I mean there's there's a difference between having like having a military presence but as we do in Germany or in in South Korea or in Japan or something like that where you have these are democracies these are Western countries that at. Like again I'm not like defending modern nation states or democracy or anything like that but there is at least somewhat of a somewhat of a free market somewhat of a democratic situation the people like participate to some degree in their government I don't exactly believe that but at least that's that's the way the thing is sold. What you're talking about in Saudi Arabia was using military bases the purpose of the military bases there was for the bombing and blockade campaign against Iraq and bin Laden in that letter that you're talking about laid this out very clearly now I'm certainly not arguing with you that there is like no effect that. Islam has on the way that say bin Laden or his men were thinking about these things but if you're talking about and there's been many books written on this but if you're talking about like what actually gets people to sign up to give their life and go kill other people it's almost always almost always the result of where like it almost always comes from a situation where you're recruiting stick. If you're bin Laden trying to get suicide bombers is to point at all the innocent people who have been killed by this group that you're going after in fact even our own FBI when they do these sting slash entrapment organize runs where they've done dozens of since 9 11 that's always what they go to them with aren't you pissed off about American foreign policy aren't don't you have all these grievances about what they do over there and so yes of course these were radical Islamists and so everything is filtered through. That world view and I have no like desire to absolve Islam of any problems that it has certainly not radical Islam but look at the end of all of that what you're still left with is that they do not want our troops in the Arabian peninsula they do not want our bases in Saudi Arabia and it's a fair enough question even if you're going to say it's some combination of the two to say well why exactly do we need to have those bases there. Why is that is that worth the price of of dealing with this this terrorism issue and and you know even if Saudi Arabia was concerned that Saddam Hussein was going to invade the country or there are other ways that we could give Saudi Arabia some security guarantees are there other ways do we really need to be slaughtering Iraqis in a non war period so again look there's and by the way it's not just the military bases there's a long list of grievances. That they have some that are completely incoherent and and just not justified but yeah I don't know I mean the the element of it's the element of American domination over the region that I think is pretty predictably very going to lead to resistance.

Coleman Hughes [18:13] So a few things one I would say you drew a distinction between a democracy on one hand like a democracy we have our troops and and a non democracy South Korea wasn't a democracy for a very long time so I would just point that out fair enough what I'm giving up any more right yeah well what what I'm arguing is more than that this gets filtered through Islamism I think the equation if we were to make a recipe of what makes a terrorist group like al-Qaeda tick it has to have all the ingredients it has to have these these grievances but it also has to have a jihadi ideology that we are not responsible for. Because otherwise it just that not otherwise the behavior just doesn't make any sense right like another one of their grievances was that we allowed Bosnian Muslims to die for too long in in the 90s right i.e. that we didn't intervene soon enough now all over the world we don't intervene soon enough we didn't intervene in in Rwanda soon enough we didn't intervene in Liberia soon enough we could have saved in many of these cases tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of lives but we don't want to have Rwandan terrorists flying planes into our buildings we don't have Liberians blowing up embassies and so there has to be this additional variable that that is the lens through which they interpret all of these foreign policy decisions.

Dave Smith [19:42] So are you saying that okay so like as I had already mentioned yes I don't think all of the grievances are legitimate that certainly was one that isn't legitimate but there were there were several other that is that I think are but is what exactly when you're saying they need to have this Muslim this Muslim element to it as well in order for what like in order to do terrorism yeah to justify killing civilians on the basis of these other things in other words I mean I don't know there's been

Coleman Hughes [20:12] there were Irish terrorists there were Jewish terrorists of course as you know in the lead up to the creation of the state of Israel I just there's been there's been terrorists those were local ethnic disputes between the Irish and the British between the Jewish and the Palestinians what justifies going abroad flying planes into building thousands of miles away except for the fact that they interpret all of these foreign policy actions that we do everywhere we station groups station troops in South Korea they don't fly into our

Dave Smith [20:42] buildings right yeah yeah it doesn't really prove anything like if you were going to say if there's let's say there was like a husband he comes home his wife is in bed with another man he pulls out his gun he murders both of them and you were to say I think the motivating factor here is that she was having an affair cheating on him and then you were to say well I know another situation where a guy was being cheated on and he didn't murder both of them like okay that still doesn't prove that that's not the motivating factor here and it doesn't even prove that there's any a needed extra element other than sometimes it goes this way and sometimes it doesn't but the idea of like I mean if we're just playing out this hypothetical if you put the shoe on the other foot and you imagine that China no let's just say like China had overthrown our government and propped up a dictator and then started you know occupying us or putting military bases in America I think there'd be some Americans who would be grabbing their guns and they would become terrorists in the eyes of this new ruling regime and they I bet they'd be screaming about Jesus while they did it so I don't actually think that's that's right the Irish became terrorists against the British because they were the ones who they had a beef with now if you're saying well why do they come halfway around the world as if that's some some huge different factor it's like oh because I guess America is the world empire and we are really the final sovereign we're all of this area and there are airplanes now so I don't think there's anything like again I'm not trying to absolve Islam of any responsibility that they might have we're losing have I think we're losing contact with the with these analogies because we're talking about a situation where mostly Saudis flew planes into our buildings and we had the permission of the Saudi government to be there right so we're not talking about a situation where we over through the regime in Saudi Arabia

Coleman Hughes [22:40] and now the Saudis are pissed we're talking about a situation where we had every right and the invitation of the Saudi regime and there is this terrorist veto and I guess one of my questions to you is that if we live in a system of nation states if the whole you know liberal international order is to work it has to mean that we can't take the veto of a terrorist organization within the a country to mean more than the word of the head of state that says actually we have an agreement they want us to be here the king of your country wants us to be here we have his permission you don't get to veto us being here by killing civilians

Dave Smith [23:18] yeah okay so just just to be clear you're right I probably were mixing up things here a little bit yeah no I'm not claiming that America overthrew the government of Saudi Arabia I guess it's just the point I'm making is we're getting into like whether radical Islam how much of a necessary ingredient that really is and so I was just saying like imagine some far away power over through our government but yet we did overthrow the government of Iran Iraq Libya Syria Somalia Yemen you know we've done quite a bit of overthrowing governments in that portion of the region it many in the last few decades and so look I mean to say that you have like I don't exactly know like where like at least the claim like I'm a radical libertarian here man so I really don't believe in much of government being legitimate at all but the idea that like I think the the general view of things is that we view the legitimacy of government as being derived from the people that I don't think actually makes any sense but that's kind of the the belief in the western world I don't know what the invitation of the Saudi government means in terms of legitimacy so we have a right to be there yes the dictatorship that we prop up and keep in power allowed us to be there so I guess that's true no I'm not suggesting that terrorists should get a veto if we are doing something that is moral that is correct and that is within the interest of the United States of America and that comes with the price that terrorists are going to be mad at us and want to attack us well then I don't think we should just allow them to bully us out of doing that in other words if the terrorists actually had a problem with the fact that America is just such a darn free place and wanted to attack us for that well then we got to fight them like screw that we're not going to allow a terrorist to have veto power over what we do the point I think is that if you recognize that this policy comes with the cost of these people hating you so much maybe we should reexamine this policy and we can sit here and say look like in the same sense that if you you know like all the the propaganda of that Joseph Stalin used to put out about how racist America was know which he loved that and he would put out all his propaganda about how horrible black people were treated in the South in America and you know that now any of us could look at this would be like okay what a the biggest hypocrite of the world Joseph Stalin like you care about human rights or something like that but that at the same time that doesn't mean you don't go you know what it is actually pretty messed up the way we're treating black people in America like maybe we ought to examine that that's not me giving Stalin veto power over American policy is just pointing out that number one like if you were in the Cold War space you're giving them a giant propaganda talking point here and it's also a bad policy it's wrong what you're doing so yeah you should stop that I've heard it argued by by some I'm not exactly sure if this is true but that that actually had a big like that was a big part of the civil rights movement and getting like the national security apparatus on board with it because they wanted to plug up that hole in the uh in the propaganda war I'm not sure if that's right or not but the point is that no I'm not saying the terrorists get a veto over I think that's right I think that's a very minor factor in my yeah that that might be right I'm really honestly not not sure about it I've heard I've heard it argued before but regardless there certainly were people who wanted to plug up that hole in the propaganda war not saying that that's what what percentage you know that had to do with it actually going through but I would say that I like I'm not suggesting Ben Laden get to dictate our policy I'm saying that when Ben Laden states his list of grievances and they are you have your military bases in our in our holy land you prop up Israel at who mistreats the Palestinians you've been slaughtering children in Iraq uh for for the last I guess a decade at that point um and uh whatever go through we you prop up brutal dictators in the region we didn't intervene soon

Coleman Hughes [27:14] enough in Bosnia great I'm saying I don't want to get into this military intervention they just want it specifically prescribed in there there yes but I'm not I'm not a Ben Laden night I'm not coming on here to tell you that I think he was no but I'm saying I'm not saying he was right

Dave Smith [27:29] about everything and I'm not claiming that Ben Laden was a non interventionist libertarian like myself I'm saying I as an American who cares about this country remaining free and prosperous and safe. I can look at this list of grievances and say, yeah, Coleman, that one about us not intervening enough is complete nonsense. The one about us killing a whole bunch of Iraqi kids, he's got a point on that. So the one about us propping up. Is it what I say, Dave, one second? And let me just like real quickly, just and this very quickly, is this is kind of the whole spirit of George Washington's farewell speech. That it's like, look, you get involved in all these entangling alliances and it causes nothing but disaster for your own country. So yes, I think it's reasonable to look at some of those grievances and go, we should have no part in any of this.

Coleman Hughes [28:17] So a few things. And then I want to move on to Ron Paul's other big. Sure. You said the big awakening for you was this Ron Paul thing of why they hate us. And I'm really addressing myself to that point. Very simply, if Al Qaeda did not believe in a solid fist extreme, it's Islamist ideology, which is the most radical corner of Sunni Islam. I'm not saying it's all of Islam, not even most of it. Take away that one ingredient, we could do everything else the same in the Middle East as we had done. Overthrowing, back in the overthrow of Iran, the tough sanctions on Saddam Hussein, which caused a humanitarian crisis, putting our troops in Saudi Arabia and they would not have flown planes into our buildings. That is my claim. That's my claim. And I'm addressing myself to this question of why they hate us. I agree with you, it's not they hate us for our freedoms. It's that they hate us because they have a very powerful ideology, which makes them prejudge any actions by what they consider to be non-Muslim Christian crusader, et cetera. And to me, it's crucial to understand if this issue of why they hate us in fact is important. And I'm not sure, I don't think that we can live with, I don't think the world, I don't just mean America, I don't think the world can live with a foreign policy that factors in the worst, most destabilizing elements of other societies, right? Because the Saudi regime complain about their human rights all you want and obviously one can write a book and books have been written on that. They have a much better chance of ruling Saudi Arabia and ruling it in a way so that the people flourish than the bin Ladenites. And if it were the case that in Korea with our troops there, if there was some Korean terrorist group that said, we can't have these Americans on sacred Korean soil anymore, it would not make sense to listen to that terror group over the Korean government and risk taking away our deterrence and make our foreign policy a basis on that decision when the Korean government is trying to get rid of these groups anyway in order to create flourishing societies. So I think we have to be on the side of the elements in these societies, these developing societies that are trying to haltingly and with many foibles bring their countries forward and make their countries, make their countries prosperous. Last word and then let's get to the other pillar.

Dave Smith [31:00] Yeah, I guess I just, I'm fundamentally unconvinced by this assertion that Islam is this necessary ingredient. I mean, there's been radical salafi Islam.

Coleman Hughes [31:09] I just want to be very precise.

Dave Smith [31:11] Well, I don't know. The Iranians seem to have a lot of resentment toward us for overthrown their government. By the way, I'm sorry.

Coleman Hughes [31:16] Just to clarify, I'm sorry and interrupting. Would I mean any ideology which many ideologies could fit this whole? It's not only Sunni radical Sunni Islam.

Dave Smith [31:26] I don't think it's only Islam to be honest. I mean, violence is used all the time and groups who have oppressed violently often use violence in retaliation. We had slave revolts in this country that were incredibly violent. There's been all types of violence used by every major religion, maybe not every minor one, but every major religion for sure. I just don't agree with that at all. I think that the obvious element that when missing, this none of this would happen, is America's domination and killing of innocent people in this part of the world. You know, when the King Crane Commission went to Syria after World War I, and they had this huge polling apparatus that tens of thousands of people were interviewed, and they overwhelmingly voted that they wanted America to rule over Syria in a League of Nations mandate. And it's really the opposite of what the George W. Bush administration said, it's not, they don't pay us for our freedom. They actually kind of loved us for our freedom. They viewed America as the good guys. America were the ones the city on the hill who were all about liberty. They hated the British and they hated the French. Why is that? Well, because they were dominating them, it's like the most natural human tendency on earth to hate the people who dominate you and violently oppress you. And it's quite often the case that people embrace violence in response. I don't think that's unique to Islam. I think that's more of a thing that brings us all together. That is, I don't mean to be such an egalitarian on your show here, I assure you, I'm not one. But I think that is one of the things that humans have in common. So I just don't see it as, you know, violence, I think that violence, we like to distinguish between terrorism and counter-terrorism, but that's really usually not much of a distinction, or at least there's usually not a very objective definition for it, Israel is quite comfortable using lots of violence right now. They're quite comfortable killing a building full of innocent people to get a guy that they don't like. And you know, this is, there's been acts of terrorism. I mean, some argue Israel introduced terrorism into the pre-Israeli Zionist settlers introduced terrorism into the region. I don't think it's something that's unique to Islam. And I don't think, yeah, like, okay, I essentially do agree with your point that most of these dictators in the Middle East are preferable to the Ben Ladenite, you know, head shoppers. I agree with you. And in fact, I've been very critical of our foreign policy for siding with the Ben Ladenite head shoppers in Libya, Syria, Yemen, and I guess not in Iraq, but next-door in Syria. So yeah, I certainly don't think we should be back in the Ben Ladenites either, but it's not a choice between, do we prop up brutal dictators or do we back the Ben Ladenites who oppose them, which seems to be the binary choice that the American foreign policy establishment has been working within. But there is a third option there, which is that we don't have to do any of this. It's not in our national interest. It leads to horrific outcomes. We get nothing out of it. And it was never, and it's also just completely unconstitutional. It's not at all what our government was formed to be. We're not supposed to be the world empire. We're supposed to be a limited constitutional republic. And the people never got a vote on this. There was never a referendum on, do we want to become a world empire? And in fact, if you look down the track list of American elections, the anti-war candidate seems to win just about every single time. Or if you run back the presidential elections, who was the more anti-war? Was it Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, or at least was perceived as more anti-war? It was Donald Trump. He wins. Hammer Hillary Clinton, Trump. He wins. Obama destroys McCain. You know, George W. Bush in the year 2000 ran on a humble foreign policy, no nation building. And it's like, I don't think the American people want this. And I think if we ever actually, and I don't think it's good for the country. So I'll wrap on that.

Coleman Hughes [35:28] Okay, so let's move on. So this other idea of Ron Paul's is that the economy and the military are linked, right? The economic problems that we experience the inflation, the debt, and so forth is linked to military spending. Now, my question here is, you know, obviously that story was true of World War II and Vietnam. And you can just look at the numbers, look at the inflation that happens as a direct result of money printing for wars. But in the past 40, 50 years, right? Reagan, he expands the military budget and inflation goes down. We fight these wars in the Middle East, starting in 2001 through the financial crisis. Inflation is in normal rates. It's at, you know, between one and three percent. This story that I think you believe and Ron Paul certainly believes seems like a true critique that is 50 years out of date. And I don't blame Ron Paul for that because he's of the age where he would have opinions that are 50 years out of date. But what do you find compelling about this idea?

Dave Smith [36:42] Well, I don't think that it's out of date at all. I think it completely applies. It probably applies even better to the last 20 years. You know, there's a real problem with measuring inflation by the CPI. And I think like even today, I'm pretty sure I'm right about this, but like if you were taking like a, if you were trying to get like your Series 7 or your Series 63 license to go sell stocks and bonds and they asked you on the test for your license, you know, like is inflation? The, you know, it was like a multiple choice and they were like inflation is rising prices. You will get that wrong. That's not what inflation is. Inflation is an increase in the money supply. It's more money chasing fewer goods. And so if you want to measure say the price is going up, the problem with that is that there's just like with anything else, there's a lot of factors going into it. So like for example, if you, if you raise the minimum wage in a state and unemployment goes down, that doesn't prove that raising the minimum wage lowers unemployment because it might be that three new factories came and opened up in your state. And that's why employment went down. So there's lots of factors leading into why prices go up or prices go down. But the point is it's still inflationary. So like in other words, right, if let's say you had an economy where you were about to go through a steep, steep recession and prices were going to drop by 50%. There was going to be a massive deflationary event. And then the government just like doubled or tripled the money supply. And so prices didn't change at all. You could sit there and say the CPI didn't change at all. I get that it's not the guzzle. But that infusion of cash still created a huge amount of inflation there. So no, it's not a theory that war spending, you know, drives the debt. It's a fact for spending trillions and trillions of dollars

Coleman Hughes [38:28] in this whole thing. How important can that fact be if America with all of its excess massive military spending compared to say Europe has the same long run inflation rates as all these European countries and pretty much the same debt to GDP ratio. It doesn't, it's not a one-to-one correlation. Obviously all of these economies are complicated. But it does undermine the idea that the military is the difference between Western Europe spending 1.5 of GDP on their military and America spending 4% of GDP on our military is showing up at the grocery store in any way that a person could actually detect.

Dave Smith [39:10] No, again, that's just not right. I mean, it's not the case that like if you're getting drunk and getting behind the wheel of your car and you go, oh, but my neighbors shooting up heroin and getting behind the wheel of his car, it seems like we have the same out.

Coleman Hughes [39:24] Why do we have the same long run inflation rates as all these European countries that they'll have empires?

Dave Smith [39:29] Typically speaking, they've embraced more generous welfare states than we have. They have big government of a different variety and that also requires money printing and we also kind of act at least to some degree in uniform. I mean, the central banks of Europe and the United States of America do coordinate quite a bit together. But yes, you're right, it is absolutely the case that America has embraced more of the militaristic big government, whereas the European countries have embraced more expensive-

Coleman Hughes [39:58] And even in the case of America, our spending is one part military, three, four, five part welfare states. So- 100%. So it's, you know, a-

Dave Smith [40:09] Yeah, they're all huge, they're all huge drivers of this. But like, look, and I'm as against the welfare state as anybody you've ever talked to, Coleman, like I can assure you that. Like, but there is a difference between-

Coleman Hughes [40:21] So you could reduce, we could reduce, like we could reduce military spending to zero tomorrow and we would still, every year, be increasing the debt to GDP ratio in this country. So to me, the idea of focusing on it is like a firefly to the sun if we're talking about it. No, I mean, she's like in inflation and the debt.

Dave Smith [40:38] No, I mean, look, it's not a firefly to the sun. I mean, yes. I'm exaggerating slightly. I'm exaggerating. No, but not even slightly. No, it is. No, it's no, I mean, it's kind of like, like a third of the sun to the sun. So yes, there are other sections that the entitlement programs are slightly bigger, but that's it. After that, it's the, well, I guess interest on the debt now might be overtaken it, but then it's the military. We've spent something like $20 trillion since the collapse of the Soviet Union. And that's, yeah, no, that's a huge driver of the 37 trillion, but you are absolutely right. That with the-

Coleman Hughes [41:12] It's not too soon. When you don't include the biggest GDP in the world and the denominator.

Dave Smith [41:17] Yeah, no, it sounds like a lot of money for the government to be spending, which is currently $37 trillion in debt. It's not the GDP isn't spending money on defense, right? It's not, it's the government spending this,

Coleman Hughes [41:28] and they do not bring in numbers only have meaning in comparison to the denominator. No, I don't know if I- No, I don't know if I- Yeah, yeah, it's true. Okay. So do you want to move office? Do you want the last word? No, go ahead, let's move office. Okay. So I'm curious, do you support, I don't think I've ever heard an example of a military intervention that you support, and I'm curious, in your anti-war philosophy, I know that you're okay with, you know, if for some reason Mexico invaded us, you'd be okay with us pushing them out. You're not- Everyone supports a purely defensive- I'm pure- Yes, absolutely. So is that the limit of the wars that you support, or is there any war in the past 100 years that America has fought, that was not, or let me just say any military intervention that was not purely defensive that you support?

Dave Smith [42:26] No, I mean, I think in American history, right, the revolution in the war of 1812 were purely defensive wars. And that's, you know, leaving aside any of the stuff about how conspiratorial the founding fathers were about what the British were about to do. None of that really matters to me. They sent an invading army, and I think people have a right to declare their independence, so that's a legitimate war. In terms of a war that I could support, I, you know, I can't think of an example of one. I think that there's, like if you're, I, like just talking in theory here, right? I do think that if you're attacked, and you, you know, if you have reason to believe that you can't stop attacks from continuing to come, and that the only way to save your people is to God forbid kill some innocent people on the other side. I could see there being like a horrible consequentialist argument for it, but I don't, you know, I don't, no, I don't support any of the wars that America's been in in my lifetime for sure.

Coleman Hughes [43:32] Okay, so I, well, I can give you two examples of wars. I, I definitely support one is Korea. If we had an intervening in Korea, there would be no South Korea. It would be the whole peninsula would be ruled by the Kim family, and every humanitarian consequence that's come as a result of that in the past 70 years, including all the famines and the repression and the purges. And, and, and so to me, it's easy to make a consequentialist argument that our intervention in Korea, though it did increase deaths from, from what would have resulted, was in the long run a good choice. And then I can also easily support the military intervention in Liberia in 2003, where this country's been at civil war, hundreds of thousands of deaths, people slaughtering each other left and right for 12 years. Clinton does nothing. George Bush shows up since 2000 Marines, within a week the civil war is done, and the country's been at peace for 20 years, and they fly American flags there. And these seem to me both examples where your philosophy of war would not allow us to go, do things like that, where as mine would.

Dave Smith [44:47] Yeah, so I guess like the Liberia ones certainly did work out fairly well. Korea, you know, like, you know, I don't, honestly, I support Liberia. No, I said it worked out fairly well. But you don't support it, you know, worked out well. This is the point that I'm getting to, right? Is that, so no, I wouldn't have supported the policy, but it did work out a lot better than the other catastrophes. But if you want to sit here and say that like my philosophy wouldn't allow Liberia to have happened, like, okay, fair enough. But your philosophy won't prevent a rack, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. And I'll take that trade.

Coleman Hughes [45:26] I wouldn't say my philosophy is pro-Rak. I wasn't pro-Theirak war.

Dave Smith [45:29] No, it's not a matter, but you're saying my philosophy of not getting into these entanglements will not allow us to have the success of Liberia. That's correct, right? So then, right, yes, sure. But then the flip side of that is that then you also have to credit that my philosophy would not allow the catastrophe is that I just rattled off. So it's a trade off?

Coleman Hughes [45:48] Forget your point. Your philosophy is, as every philosophy is.

Dave Smith [45:51] Everything is trade-offs, yeah. Everything in life is trade-off, sure.

Coleman Hughes [45:53] But like, yeah, that's a deep insight. That's a deep insight. I mean, that's not something to gloss over. It's a trade-off and human lives on both sides.

Dave Smith [46:01] 100%, but, well, yes, it's a trade-off, I suppose it. Yes, it can be. Everything is a trade-off, but also the thing is that giving the government power to do something is not something that you can then always have control over than how it's going to be used. And so, yes, in a sense, it is a trade-off, like everything in life is trade-offs. But I think the trade-off is way on my side. And if you're saying that of the last 19 military interventions, 19 military interventions, we got two who didn't turn out to be complete catastrophes. That's like, oh, yeah, I would still rather err on the side of the trade-off that didn't allow for all of the catastrophes to happen.

Coleman Hughes [46:47] I would say there are more than two. You could probably add the NATO bombing in the 1990s and you could probably add getting Saddam out of Kuwait. Which NATO bombing in the 1990s? Serbia, are you talking about? Both, 95 and 99.

Dave Smith [47:00] Well, no, all right. I mean, you know, there's, there's, there's more.

Coleman Hughes [47:03] I'll grant you those are more arguable cases. Those aren't shut and dry, like, like, Liberia.

Dave Smith [47:08] No, I mean, I think, I think, honestly, like, like, you know, I know a lot more,

Coleman Hughes [47:12] I know more of the experts would argue that we halted a genocide in progress.

Dave Smith [47:16] No, no expert, no expert has any evidence that we halted a genocide in progress. This is what they said, this is what they said leading into the war, right? Bill Clinton said that like 100,000 people or something like that had already been killed. And the FBI went over there and investigated afterward and they just didn't find anything to back up those claims. And, and Milosevic had absolutely committed war crimes. And he, you know, he had killed some soldiers and he had done some bad things and there were people who got massacred. But even, he never even got convicted of the genocide charge in the international criminal court. He got convicted of war crimes and I think some other lesser charge. But no, I think that thing was sold on lies just like all the other wars in my lifetime have been.

Coleman Hughes [47:57] Okay, so I want to talk to you a little more about your anti-war philosophy because I've heard, you know, one of the arguments on the other side of you is that the world is basically a competition of great powers or if not great powers than regional powers. And if America were to adopt your favorite stance of isolationism and purely defensive wars, we're not fighting a war until there's a bomb dropped, you know, on American soil and then we're gonna fight a purely defensive war to eliminate the threat and that's it. What would happen is all of the other powers in the world from Russia to China to Iran would simply fill in the void, right? And so you have examples like, you know, we pull our military bases out of the Philippines and it's not two years before China has created an artificial island and plopped a military base right off the coast of the Philippines. We, and then there's the additional point which I want to get your response to, which is that we feel many critiques of our military industrial complex, the fact that we have this revolving door where you can predict with like half like coin flip accuracy that the current secretary of defense is gonna end up at a weapons company in some way, shape or form. Yeah. And there's a revolving door. And in the aggregate, it wouldn't require a genius in human psychology to think that perhaps this pushes the whole system to be a little more war happy than it otherwise would. And I think I would probably disagree with you. I think I would certainly disagree with you about the power of that effect. But what would you say to the critique that Russia and China also have their own military industrial complexes? It's not even a revolving door in the case of Russia because they're in the same room. It's like the 49% owner of Kalashnikov became the deputy secretary of defense in 2018 in Russia. And he didn't even have to get rid of his shares in Kalashnikov, right? So they're not revolving in and out. They're just in the same room. They're the same people. In China, it all works with, it all works through bribery because everything is state owned but they've had massive bribery scandals in the past 10 years where the weapons companies are bribing the people that decide whether to secure their contracts to give them higher prices who are bribing the people above them to make decisions that were down to the benefit of ultimately financial motives. So if America pulls back from the world, what is to stop the military industrial complexes of all the other countries in the world from simply filling the space now that they're undeterred?

Dave Smith [50:45] Sure. Well, I mean, I think, yes, I've certainly heard this argument before. I would kind of point out that it does seem to me that the more pro-war position almost always seems to rely on like an unfulsive, viable counterfactual of how things would be way worse if we didn't do this. And whereas the anti-war position tends to more rely on the actual catastrophes that have happened. And so just to be clear, which I'll defend my philosophical views or whatever, but the idea of like, oh, the problem with the non-interventionist libertarians is that if we completely withdrew from the world, then China comes and totally takes over the world in our absence. It's like, okay, but like just first, I will say just on a practical level, like without embracing pure Ron Paulianism or something, which is probably not gonna happen tomorrow. Like our criminal government in DC could have just not lied through their teeth to sell the war in Iraq. Like that would have just been a lot better. A million people would still be alive. And trillions of dollars wouldn't have been wasted in tens of thousands of our bravest young boys wouldn't have committed suicide in the aftermath of it. And so like we didn't need to fight all of these disastrous wars even if you think on top of that, you can't completely pull back from the world. But I don't know. I fundamentally reject the idea that there will be one power who takes over the world. You know, part of the life.

Coleman Hughes [52:17] There would have to be one. Each regional power projects fills the vacuum of its own area that we leave. It's not a hypothetical based on nothing. It's based on, can you point to a single time period in the past 5,000 years of human civilization where the regional powers have not expanded using their militaries to the best of their ability given the accounting for the blowback they will get? Can you point to any time? So it's not.

Dave Smith [52:44] No, I'm not, okay, but I'm not suggesting that like that no regional powers will exert influence over their realm of their sphere of influence, like of course not. But I'm also seeing that right now, Vladimir Putin is limping through his third year in a war with Ukraine. I don't see him as being a threat to dominate Europe anytime soon. The rest of Europe is all against him and much wealthier and much stronger than him. China is more empowered.

Coleman Hughes [53:15] Even in that argument, you can see implicitly that if they were less strong, for instance, if they didn't have it all the backing of the United States, that he could expand. And that that would be the natural tendency throughout all of human history.

Dave Smith [53:29] I'm not conceding that that's necessarily the natural tendency, but sure, if Ukraine was weaker, he would be able to have defeated the country quicker. I'll certainly grant that. I'll be the natural tendency.

Coleman Hughes [53:40] So you don't agree with me or Shimer guys that believe great powers have a default tendency to expand up to the limit of the resistance against them.

Dave Smith [53:49] Well, listen, certainly, I think every organization has a desire to expand. I mean, this is true in general of businesses, of countries. So they're always trying to expand not necessarily territorial, territorially. And I do think that a country like China who is kind of known for playing the long game even in their kind of crazy central controlled method. No, I don't think that they're watching America going bankrupt, fighting all of these wars and saying, oh, we gotta get it on all that action. I think that, so essentially, yeah, I would probably agree with much of what John Meersheimer says in the sense that it is the way of the world that great powers will have their realm of influence. I do think that's true, but looking at the world right now, I mean, I find this to be kind of a silly thing where we become the world empire, we bully the entire world, and then we sit there being worried that someone else is gonna start doing this, whereas China has adversaries all around it. China has to contend with Japan and South Korea. It's not, it's not so obvious that they just take over the world. And no, I just, essentially, no, I'm so, I'm a George Washingtonian, Washingtonian on this. I think that America, we struggle enough with just doing liberty right here. That should be our focus. And no, I don't think, like I think you can trade with the world and be friends with the world. And yes, there will, it will suck to be a little country next to a bigger, much stronger country. That's already true. That's true with America. We're more guilty of making it suck for little countries than any of them are. So I just don't, I don't find any of this stuff compelling.

Coleman Hughes [55:28] Okay, let's move on because there are other topics I wanna get to. One of your big arguments and you've made this on Rogan and elsewhere is that Iraq, Israel got us into the Iraq war or more specifically pro-Israeli interests where a key factor, a key influence that pushed America into the war in Iraq. So I wanna give you the floor to make your case here.

Dave Smith [55:55] Yeah, well, I mean, if, you know, for John Meersheim or Boots, you were just mentioning him. So I just was at the top of my mind, but he wrote a book called The Israel Lobby where he really details this pretty, like extensively with all the footnotes and citations that you need.

Coleman Hughes [56:11] I've read it. I've read it. I find it totally unconvincing,

Dave Smith [56:14] but I mean, I don't even know how, how do you find it unconvincing? I mean, obviously.

Coleman Hughes [56:20] I'll tell you. I'll tell you. Okay, so I'll tell you why I find it.

Dave Smith [56:23] I'll lay out the case if you want first, but no, no.

Coleman Hughes [56:26] Okay, well, if we're talking about Meersheimer, let's talk about that and then you can lay out whatever other elements of the case you think are compelling. So the idea that domestic Israel lobby is big enough or powerful enough to get America to fight an entire war that we would not otherwise have fought is to me ridiculous. And now I'll give you a few touch points. During the entire George W. Bush administration, the Israel lobby spent $17 million lobbying Congress. Now that might sound like a lot to me or you. It is absolute chum change on the scale of domestic lobbying to put it in perspective. The tobacco lobby spent $200 million. So more than 10 times that amount over the same time period. And they couldn't even stop Congress from passing a federal tax hike on cigarettes in 2009. Now during the Obama era, the Israel lobby spent $30 million. And they were outspent by the dentists. The dentists lobby spent $32 million. This is all according to opensecrets.org, which is usually the standard source people go to for such figures. This is, again, not to repeat my favorite phrase, but like a firefly to the Sun when compared to the $2 billion, for instance, that Wall Street spent lobbying Congress and they couldn't even prevent Dodd-Frank from being passed. So the idea that the domestic Israel lobby could get us to fight an entire war that we wouldn't otherwise have fought at the same price as the dentists are paying Congress is too much for me.

Dave Smith [58:03] Right. Oh, this is a topic for another show but the bankers love Dodd-Frank. And I think they were quite happy with that bill be again. But that's a topic for another show.

Coleman Hughes [58:11] They tried to, they tried to prevent it from being passed. And only once they failed, did they try to mold it as a plan B to their own image. So, yeah, I mean, look, I get, don't start the movie in the middle. They failed with $2 billion to prevent it being passed.

Dave Smith [58:24] I think, I think you're the one who's missing the firefly for the Sun or whatever your analogy was in that case with the big banks. It's like, look, man, you can talk about these people who like get, you know, contribute tons of money to candidates in Washington DC and then point out the one area where they didn't get the policy that they wanted or they didn't get their A plan and only got their B plan. Okay, but yeah, but then if you zoom out, you can look at how the whole system is rigged in their favor. They get free money and then lend it out to the American people. I think it seems to be working out pretty good for them rigging the system. But onto the Israel lobby thing, I mean, look, the, again, this isn't refuting any of what Miersheimer said. Miersheimer simply claimed that because you're talking about A-PAC and he's talking about the entire lobby.

Coleman Hughes [59:09] No, no, no, no, no, no, no, those numbers I gave were the entire pro-Israel lobby of which A-PAC is something like half.

Dave Smith [59:16] Okay, fine, but okay, so fine, but you're talking A-PAC and the American Enterprise Institute and the Washington...

Coleman Hughes [59:22] I'm talking about every organization that's listed under the pro-Israel lobby on open screen.

Dave Smith [59:26] But what he's talking about for most of the book, which is really what Am always hammering down, I mean, look, there's no question like A-PAC supported the war and some of these other, or the American Enterprise Institute, they all supported the war and they threw money toward that and they lobbied for it. But this was a neo-conservative war. I mean, the neo-conservative... I don't think there's any chance. It looked the Iraq war was highly debated. It was contested. It was contested in Congress. There were people who were against it. There were uniform military people who were against it. There were people at the State Department who were for it. And the neo-cons were the ones who really pushed it through. And look, I mean, Coleman, you look at who the neo-cons were, okay? In their own words, they have deep loyalty to Israel. Every last one of them has said in their own words that they have a deep commitment toward Israel. They're writing all of their policy papers through the 1990s on how we have to overthrow the government in Iraq as part of this clean break strategy on behalf of Israel. And then they get, they are all of George W. Bush's men. Literally once the towers come down, George W. Bush is in the White House. It's a project for a new American century all down his staff, death from his defense secretary, his vice president, and all of their men. They're the State Department, the Defense Department. And so it is not going out on a limb to say, yet this word doesn't happen without the neo-conservatives. And I think John Meersheimer very reasonably puts them as part of the Israel lobby. They, all you have to do is read their own words. It's not like I'm putting together some conspiracy. By the way, I love that Meersheimer points out in that book because I do think there's a real interesting point to make that he's not saying it was a Jewish war. It's like the Jewish people in America actually oppose the war in Iraq much more so than just about any other group. I think the polling data was they were like, they were way out of head against the war in Iraq. I forget the exact number. Yes, that's it. But yeah, there's no question that call it whatever you want to. I mean, like they would basically through the 90s self-identify as the American version of the LaCoudnec party. But whatever, whatever you want to call it, these group of people who have in their own words admitted, they have like profound loyalty and connection to Israel pushed for this war. And they had written in their own words that a huge part of it was because this was the strategy for it to help Israel.

Coleman Hughes [61:52] None of this is true, Dave. Okay, so let's look at it.

Dave Smith [61:56] It's all true.

Coleman Hughes [61:56] Let's look at their own words. Project for a new American century is founded in 1998. If you go to their archive online, you can find the earliest thing written about Iraq by a member. The earliest thing is written by John Bolton in 1997. Here's the first sentence of the earliest thing written on the Panac archive. You might think the United Nations would want to punish Saddam Hussein for disrupting and nearly killing the UN's own efforts to eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Instead, the UN Security Council effectively rewarded him. The next year when the Panac is actually founded, as you know, they write a letter to Bill Clinton. Now, this is the first time that Panac, the Neocons, call for the Alster of Saddam Hussein, right, publicly.

Dave Smith [62:43] You know, this is the first time the project for a new American century called form. It's not the first time the Neocons were called form, right? But it's not, no, you said the Neocons. It's not the first time the Neocons had called for it publicly.

Coleman Hughes [62:52] Correct, we'll get to that, apologies. So the first time Panac calls for the Alster of Saddam Hussein in 98, they write a letter to Bill Clinton. The entire letter is about the fact that Saddam has WMDs or is pursuing WMD and we can't let it happen. And this is how the letter ends. We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the US or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept it, blah, blah, blah, blah, okay. So Israel is mentioned once in that letter and it's grouped in with all of our other allies in the region. It's like they say also this will be good for Israel and Jordan and our other allies in the region. So Panac, this idea that the project for a new American century that you and I both agree is a good bell weather for the Neocons was not using the WMD argument. It was their main argument. It was almost their only argument long before Iraq. Now let's get to this.

Dave Smith [63:53] No, no, but this is just, we hold on, but, but Coleman, this is just not right. I mean, you, you've read a clean break a new strategy for securing the realm and coping with crumbling states.

Coleman Hughes [64:02] That wasn't about US foreign policy. That was a recommendation for Israeli foreign policy.

Dave Smith [64:06] Yes, okay. Okay, but you're just saying they talk openly about wanting to overthrow Saddam who's saying for the clean break strategy. Like, so, okay, like, yes, in the letter to Bill Clinton, they didn't say that, but they had written openly about this. No, it's the entire strategy that they laid out and we also have a four-star general who's on record saying that he saw these plans that they were going to go overthrow all of these governments.

Coleman Hughes [64:30] Let's deal with one at a time. The clean break memo written by Richard Pearl, Douglas Faith, all these Neocons. David Worms, or David Worms, or in 1996. It is a recommendation to Israel, to the Lecude, to Benjamin Netanyahu to say, here are some things we think that Israel should prioritize. It is not a recommendation about what American foreign policy should prioritize. That's the first thing to note. The second thing to note is that when that paper advocates overthrowing Saddam, the point of overthrowing Saddam was to replace him with a Hashemite monarch that would be friendly to Israel, like Jordan is friendly to Israel. That's the whole point. The point of deposing Saddam was not to replace it with a democracy. That is nowhere in the clean break memo. The question for you, if the clean break memo was some kind of blueprint, why didn't we even make an attempt to replace Saddam with a Hashemite monarchy? Oh, yeah.

Dave Smith [65:31] I mean, that's a good point. I think the whole thing fell apart, right? I mean, like, you know, we never even contemplated it.

Coleman Hughes [65:36] We never even floated the idea. So how could it be that, therefore, true that the clean break memo was some kind of blueprint?

Dave Smith [65:43] Well, Chalabee was like Judith Miller's big source on the whole thing, right? I think that a lot of the Neocons seem to really believe that that was going to be what happened, and that's not what happened after they invaded the country. But Coleman, I mean, like, you're sitting here saying, like, okay, so these people are, like, they're writing to Benjamin Netanyahu saying, here's the strategy for a clean break to get away from the peace process so you don't have to give up a Palestinian state, and you can keep the status quo going. And so what we think you ought to do for that is overthrow this guy, Saddam Hussein, and then you have them advocating for overthrowing Saddam Hussein for years more after that. Then they actually get into power, and they do the thing, and we're supposed to pretend like that there's no connection there. I'm not like connecting wild dots. I'm saying like they said, this is what their interest was. This is why they wanted it done, and then they did the thing. No.

Coleman Hughes [66:32] No, that's not true. I mean, as it's not true, because Richard Pearl was not saying what America should do. He was saying what he thought Israel should do. What we ended up doing was not what was in the clean break memo. Their whole argument is that what we ended up doing was what was in this memo. It's not true. We deposed Saddam, and we know where in the clean break memo does it say make Iraq a democracy. No Israeli-licued member would think you can make Iraq a democracy. They thought that notion was ridiculous. So what we ended up doing had nothing to do with what Richard Pearl recommended, and everything to do with what George Bush thought would make sense. You could be totally clear. Well, it's a mix of all of that. But you cannot argue that what we did, we did the clean break memo. That's just factually incorrect. No, and then everything else Penaq is saying their entire argument is WMD, WMD, WMD, WMD.

Dave Smith [67:22] This is fine. This is real there. Coleman, this is like if I point to General Wesley Clark saying we're going to overthrow seven governments in the next five years, and that decision's being made. And then you say, yeah, dude, but we didn't overthrow. It took us like 15, 20 years to do that. Like, yes, of course, obviously George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and you know, Condoleez of Reiser, Colin Powell at the time, obviously all these guys had influence on this too. And so I'm not claiming that the piece of paper came to life and everything that was on it magically happened after that is still a pretty important paper to look at. And this was written by people who were in positions of substantial power when the time came due. Yes, you're right. The spreading democracy to Iraq, which seemed to at least in George W. Bush's estimation be an essential selling point to the war. You're right. That wasn't in the paper. And that got added later.

Coleman Hughes [68:24] But I think it's still kind of relevant. That's kind of half the enchilada. Let's talk about this. No, I don't see. Okay. Let's talk about this, this Wesley Clark memo that he never saw. Okay. He never saw it. He never saw it. Yeah, he says so. And this he's been interview. You don't remember this. He's talking about it. He says, he's got. Yeah. He says, I'm talking to the joint.

Dave Smith [68:45] He says, he handed him the paper and he was like, I don't want to show this to me.

Coleman Hughes [68:50] I don't want to be on the hook for seeing classified info.

Dave Smith [68:53] Yeah, I think it was. You're talking about the interview with Amy Goodman on democracy now, right?

Coleman Hughes [68:56] Yeah. Yes. Yes. So the memo that Wesley Clark never saw. Okay. It said, according to his hearsay, and it would be dismissed in accordance hearsay, that we're going to overthrow seven countries in five years as Iraq, then Syria, then Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Iran. So the first thing I want to say about this is that Pentagon memos in the Bush White House were called snowflakes because they came so often and they piled up on your desk. And let me read to you from the Washington Post at the time. Rumsfeld, who sometimes abrasive approach, often alienated other cabinet members, produced 20 to 60 snowflakes, these memos snowflakes a day, 20 to 60 a day, regularly poured out his thoughts in writing as the basis for developing policy and and hit Rumsfeld's aid, Rumsfeld's aid, Keith Urban, which is funny name, estimated that he wrote 20,000 memos during his time in the George W. Bush White House. And then we have from national security counterterrorism advisor, Richard Clark, who is in the room, he was close with Condoleezza Rice, national security. He says, from time to time, Condoleezza Rice would show Clark notes sent by the defense secretary, these snowflake memos, all telling her to stay off his turf. The first time she got one of them, she thought, hmm, what do I do with this? This says Clark, who adds she was advised to ignore them. Every once in a while, one of these ranting Rumsfeld notes to Condi would come. You can almost hear the eye roll, like this dude Rumsfeld is drowning us in his little thoughts and his stupid memos. He sent 20 yesterday, I get 20 emails from someone I'm like, dude, what the fuck? Send me one important one. So then this guy, four star general, Wesley Clark comes along, doesn't see the memo, here's about one memo, isn't privy to it because he's not allowed to see it. Also isn't privy to the other 20 memos that day, isn't privy to the memos next week that might cancel out the strategy that was laid out. Do you have any evidence that this memo was actually important as opposed to one snowflake in a shifting strategy of 60,000?

Dave Smith [71:18] Well, I think, okay, so first of all, Wesley Clark is actually clarified a bunch of this up more recently, but he did talk about how he had actually seen the plans originally a decade earlier in 1991 that they came separate Israeli study.

Coleman Hughes [71:33] He said, right? Yeah.

Dave Smith [71:35] Well, it was kind of, it was a little bit clunky the way he said it. He said it came from Paul Wolfowitz's desk and that he had brought it to Brent Scowcroft, I think, who had said, let's look at that after the, yeah, he said it was, it was resurrected in an Israeli study later and it wasn't exactly clear what he was referring to there. But again, we got a four star general, right? And he was not saying, like, because this was kind of weird when I, I remember Douglas Murray kind of taking a similar line with this when I had my conversation with him, but he wasn't saying like, oh, there's a memo or there's just like something, like what Wesley Clark is saying and you're right, it is him saying what he heard from someone else. But he was saying, and a four star general felt comfortable enough to like say this on national television that he went to the defense department and was told that the decision had been made, that we were not only going through Iraq, if the way he tells the story is, he came in and he found out they had decided they were going to invade Iraq. Then he comes back a couple months later, this is late 2001 and the guy goes, dude, it's so much worse than just Iraq. We're going to topple seven countries in the next five years. Now he said he goes to show him this and Wesley Clark's like, I shouldn't really be looking at that document there. And this might be a crime for you to be showing this. But okay, so what we have is a four star general saying he's, he knew of these plans a decade later. The same group of people is now back in power after being kicked out, you know, for the Clinton years. They're now back in power. He's saying the decision's been made that we're going to want with all the ones who he knows.

Coleman Hughes [73:11] Hold on one second. He didn't even, he was even allowed to see them.

Dave Smith [73:13] Let me just finish the point. Okay. Then you can respond to this. He's saying, you're right. You didn't see the memo. Just a four star general saying that somebody at the Defense Department told them the decisions to be made. And then in the following years, we didn't overthrow five seven countries in five years. But we did overthrow a bunch of the ones on the list or target a bunch of the ones on the list. And so Coleman, my argument here isn't that again. I'm not saying that memo came to life and exactly what was written down on that. It's happened. Of course, there were more memos. Of course, there were more decisions that were added in afterward. But isn't it kind of hard to, don't you find it to be a little bit of a coincidence that general Clark tells you the decision was made in 2001 that we were going to overthrow Gaddafi and Assad? Just think about that. That was a wild claim in 2001 to be made. And then we did just that. You don't find that. That doesn't make your eyebrows poke up a little bit.

Coleman Hughes [74:05] That doesn't make you go like, oh, I'll tell you why, I'll tell you why. So it doesn't make my eyebrows raised for the following reasons. First of all, the people that actually saw the memo like Condoleezza Rice would say, oh, okay, another fucking 20 memos from Don put that in the special filing cabinet for my memos from Don, which is the trash bin. There is no evidence that this was some grand strategy, right? And the only evidence you have is the general who never saw the memo. So then you actually look at, is there any set of facts that were persuaded you that this wasn't a plan? Because we didn't, three of the countries on the, on out of seven, almost half the countries have not done regime change, let alone within five years, let alone in the specific order prescribed by the memo. And so, and not to mention, we had, we did do regime change in countries not on the memo at all, like Liberia. So there's actually no variable from the memo that actually matches our foreign policy. And so my question to you is like, is there any possible set of facts of U.S. foreign policy from the last four years that were persuaded you that this memo was not important?

Dave Smith [75:09] Again, it's not, it's not the memo that you keep saying. It's that Wesley Clark says the decisions been made that were going to tell, how would he know? He didn't even read the memo. He's saying that his source at the Defense Department, and again, keep it up.

Coleman Hughes [75:23] So is it your argument that no one at the DOD would ever exaggerate our lie because if that's what you're saying, then who are you and what have you done with Dave Smith?

Dave Smith [75:31] Okay. Well, certainly Coleman, that's a blatant straw man and not at all what I'm saying. So no, I have not said nobody would ever exaggerate sure, but I'm sure lots of people are exaggerating. The point is that the supreme leader of the allied of the NATO allies, okay, he's selling that his guy at the Defense Department said the decisions been made. My guess is that he's talking to people at the Defense Department who are in the know on this and the point is, look, obviously Coleman, the plan didn't go exactly according to plan. There's just no question about that. All of this is, we're talking, this is late 2001 here. This is still over a year, almost a year and a half until we invade Iraq. They all believed the height. They all thought it was going to be a cakewalk. And in fact, that's another interesting thing that John Mearsheim recovers a bit there, right? Is that essentially this was Sharon's initial beef with invading Iraq. Because he was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, like he wanted, he's like, hey, I want Saddam Hussein overthrown, but we got to overthrow the mullahs in Iran first because he wanted Saddam

Coleman Hughes [76:32] Hussein. Where does he, what's your source on that? That Sharon said he wants, sorry, this, I mean, it's, it's, it's the envoy of Sean. He warned Bush not to invade Iraq, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned Bush not to invade Iraq in February 2002, which is confirmed by the Israeli ambassador at the time, confirmed by A, who brocks former senior advisor, again, by Lawrence Wilkerson, that then chief, chief, chief of staff to Colin Powell. The Prime Minister of Israel told Bush, do not invade Iraq, it's not going to work. And anyway, Iraq is weak, Iran is the real threat. Yes, right. This is a massive glaring hole in your story. No, it's not at all.

Dave Smith [77:10] That Israel pushed us into Iraq. Go ahead. Okay. If you let me finish the sentence, then it's not a glaring hole in my story at all. What got them on board, ultimately, the Israelis were that they were persuaded that Iran was going to be next, and they thought, all of them thought Iraq was going to be a cake walk. Now, Iraq turned out to be a catastrophe. And so, of course, the plan didn't go exactly according to plan. But again, you don't find it interesting, like, honestly, just on a human level. You got a four-star general saying the decisions been made to overthrow the governments in Libya and Syria, and then we went and did it years later. You don't find that to be, that's kind of interesting to me.

Coleman Hughes [77:44] Yeah. No, because he never saw, the guy who never saw the memo heard about a memo, and no one else who's ever seen the memo has come out.

Dave Smith [77:51] Forget the memo. He was told the decisions been made, and we're doing this. But how would he know? How would this guy know? How would the guy at the Defense Department know? Yes. Because he's at the Defense Department.

Coleman Hughes [78:02] But he's not the one making the decision. Yes, he's the one making the decision.

Dave Smith [78:06] He said the decisions been made. By who? By Bush? Bush didn't want to imagine the top of the defense department. I don't know. Runsfeld, Bush. I don't know if it was going to make the decision to get a lot more of this information, but we have what we have.

Coleman Hughes [78:19] Okay. Instead of trusting the four-star general that didn't even read the memo because he wasn't allowed to, let's trust the people that were actually in the room, Condoleezza Rice, talking to Bush every single day of the entire administration, says that the decision was made to go into Iraq for sure on September 7th, 2002. If you have better information than that from other people that were in the room, I'd love to hear it, but in the absence of that, I'm not going to listen to a four-star general that never read the memo that he's talking about.

Dave Smith [78:47] Okay. Again, it's not the memo. I don't know. I don't know. We're going to go in a story. In circles here. Okay. Yeah. You got a four-star general telling you the plan has been made that we're going to go fight all of these wars.

Coleman Hughes [78:58] They didn't even have enough classification to read Pentagon memos. I'm supposed to listen to him over the national security adviser that was reading all of these memos and talking to Bush every day and talking to him. Yeah.

Dave Smith [79:09] It was also a member of the regime who was selling this war. So yeah.

Coleman Hughes [79:13] I mean. It was your rice? No. She was not a rump. She had a horrible relationship with rump with rump's fellow.

Dave Smith [79:20] No. I said she was a member of the regime who was selling the war and that's exactly what she was.

Coleman Hughes [79:24] But why would that make her less of an authority on what the plans were?

Dave Smith [79:31] It's not a matter of making her less of an authority. It makes her less trustworthy and he's not more of an authority or more trustworthy. The fact is that much of what he said came true and that's what makes it interesting. If we had never invaded Libya, never invaded Syria, never taken any of the actions that we took in the war on terrorism, then yeah, I would be much less relevant that a general said he saw that the decision had been made in 2001.

Coleman Hughes [79:58] Okay. Well, everyone else in the room does not say the decision had been made. And he was not in these rooms making these decisions with the Secretary of Defense and the national security adviser and George Bush.

Dave Smith [80:09] So it's just a common coincidence that we went over through those regimes that we have

Coleman Hughes [80:13] planned. We have contingency plans for all kinds of things. Again, there's not a contingency plan, when you're the Pentagon writing, when you're the Pentagon writing 60 memos a day, I guarantee you, you will troll those memos and find information and plans for every possible contingency in the world. The burden on you, this is not talking about one out of the 60,000 and say that this was important.

Dave Smith [80:38] But can you get to Sherone? But that's just not what you're doing. It's just not what I'm doing. I'm not saying there was a memo once that said something. I'm saying that a four star general said the decision had been made, that he had sources and based on one department, the memo, the defense department, who was basing it on what? The memo. Okay, fine. But even if it was, it's not, but the issue isn't that there's a memo, the issue is whether that decision has been made here. There might be lots of memos that go out every day, but the memo that says we're going to fight. We're going to topple seven countries in the next five years, a pretty big memo. That's not just one of the regular memos, that's a point.

Coleman Hughes [81:11] Once it was a big memo, your only evidence is the guy who never read it. You realize how ridiculous this is? If you were a historian writing a book, you'd have to cut this out of the book because you're relying on the hearsay of someone that never even read the document. Much less, you or I have never read the document. Then we know that they were writing 60 documents a day that Condoleezza Rice was putting in the trash. It's a ridiculously low bar of evidence you'd have to have to consider this memo and everything implied by it important.

Dave Smith [81:40] I mean, I don't know how to say this, dude. This just feels so nutty to me. I guess we'll just leave this up to people. Can we talk about the role now? One second, I'll just say, I guess we'll leave it up to the audience to decide. I think having the head of the NATO Allied Forces and a four star general saying he was informed that the decision has been made to fight all of these wars and then we went on and fought a whole bunch of them. I think that's a pretty relevant detail and I'm not a historian writing a book. I'm a guy talking about these issues to the American people, so I don't know. You can decide whether you find that to be a pretty interesting story or not.

Coleman Hughes [82:13] Okay. Let's go on to Sharon because this is the core of the issue. You said earlier, I mentioned and you agree that Sharon weren't Bush in February 22 not to go into Iraq and that Iran was the big threat. But then you said the Israelis got on board when they were guaranteed that Iran would be after Iraq. Yes. Is that right? How does that amount to you? It really is my life's source on this. Okay. But I'm not following your logic because how does that all add up to the Israelis pushed us into Iraq because they're still that he warned us. That sounds more like we pulled that sounds more like we pulled them into Iraq. That's your argument.

Dave Smith [82:53] Well, no. I mean, look, it's not again, my argument isn't either of those things exactly.

Coleman Hughes [82:58] You said we had to persuade them by putting out Iran as a chip and we had to loop them into it. Yeah.

Dave Smith [83:05] Yeah, but they're not monoliths here, right? So essentially you have different factions within all of these groups, right? So you have the neo conservatives who were always more closely aligned with the Likud guys and Benjamin Netanyahu as Sharon, I think was a Likud at one point and then split with the party and formed his own thing like he had his own weird falling outs with Benjamin Netanyahu over the years.

Coleman Hughes [83:28] Here's Likud at the time of the Iraq war decision. He was the leader of the Likud party.

Dave Smith [83:33] He was still a Likud at that point, sure, but there's still different factions. It's not Benjamin Netanyahu, it was Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu a few years later quit the government over some of Sharon's policies, I believe. I think it was what, sorry, I'm just getting confused in my own head here. There was the withdrawal in 2005 as when Netanyahu quit the government. But so you had the neo conservatives and Benjamin Netanyahu, who at that wing, they were pushing for Iraq first, the Sharon's envoy, at least according to, at least the first envoy that he sent over, right? He goes, well, no, we should go after Iran first and that was like their issue. And they were, essentially, that group won and they persuaded the other group that they would do Iran next, which also lines up with General Wesley's clerks' statement about how Iran would be the final regime. That was overthrown.

Coleman Hughes [84:29] I also didn't come true, by the way. So, so let me just nail down what you're arguing. You're arguing, you're arguing that there's a split in the Lecude Party between the pro-Iraq and the anti-Iraq invasion. And within the Lecude Party, the pro-Iraq invasion element persuaded the anti-Iraq evasion, Sharon elements. Is that just your argument?

Dave Smith [84:47] No, I mean, the argument is really that the neo conservatives drove the war and that they agreed with Benjamin Netanyahu, who also, as you know, came over that year and testified that we should go overthrow.

Coleman Hughes [84:56] That was after the decision had already been made. I was on September 12th, according to Condoleezza Rice, they had a big meeting on September 7th and they agreed on the war in Iraq. The fact that Netanyahu testified to Congress five days later after the decision has been made, I mean, if you're saying Joe is the reason I moved to New York, but I didn't talk to Joe until after I moved to, I made the decision, then this is totally irrelevant. What matters is what was happening during the time that the U.S. security established on just debating Iraq, which was winter of 22, to summer of 22. And during this time, we have multiple sources, including Lawrence Wilkerson, who is no fan of the Neocons. He's a Serbic about the Neocons and a Serbic about the Israel lobby, which he says is too powerful. This is Colin Powell's chief of staff. He hates the Israel lobby. Nevertheless, he said, well, let me quote you from him, actually. He said in the newer public, he goes, hold on, let me find it. He confirms the basic picture. Hold on, let me find it really fast. Okay, so he says Lawrence Wilkerson, who hates the Israel lobby, says, the Israelis were telling us Iraq is not the enemy. Iran is the enemy. The Israelis tried their best to persuade us that we were focused on the wrong enemy. But once they understood that we were going to war, come hell or high water, they weren't going to get on the wrong side of the president of the United States. That's Lauren Wilkerson, who hates the Israel lobby, chief of staff to the Secretary of State during these years in the newer public. So everyone that is in the room says that basically what the Israelis did. Sharon is the leader of the party and leader of the country. Tells Bush, this Iraq idea is stupid, it's not going to work. Democracy doesn't work in the Middle East anyway. Iran is the threat. You should be focused on them. Bush tells them to f off, we're going into Iraq. And then Sharon says, okay, well, we didn't convince them. We might as well support our biggest allies, because we don't want to, we never want to be on the wrong side of America. That's actually what happened. And then once the decision is made, after that point Netanyahu testifies to Congress, saying, oh, we love the war in Iraq, testifies as a citizen, not as a leader of the party. And everyone in the room corroborates this story.

Dave Smith [87:23] Okay. Look, I would just say, I highly recommend people read Mir Shimer's book, The Israel Lobby. The guy, this world renowned scholar wrote a book about the most controversial topic in the world. So he just went out of his way to back up everything he says in the book. But the whole point is that, yes, initially there were people in Shrones camp who didn't want to over, I mean, they all wanted to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Let's get real. They were worried about doing it first before you, I mean, we signed the Iraq Liberation

Coleman Hughes [87:52] Act in 98. So it was bipartisan policy. Lots of people didn't push. Right.

Dave Smith [87:56] Okay. Right. So that kind of helps my point. So let me just finish the point I'm making. Right. Exactly. So that totally backs up what I was just saying. Not that Israel was behind it.

Coleman Hughes [88:04] Okay. I'm sorry.

Dave Smith [88:06] All right, man. Okay. Yeah. You're right. Israel was totally against the war in Iraq. The whole year, APEC and the Neocons and the Israel government were not pushing for the war in Iraq. I mean, anyway, I'd highly recommend people go read the book. It's all backed up in there. There's tons of evidence on it. APEC was bragging, by the way, about how their influence over the thing.

Coleman Hughes [88:26] They bought the Iraq war for dentist money.

Dave Smith [88:28] Yeah. No, I didn't say that actually. It's just a lot of straw manning, man. How about just like, if I don't say it, don't just like make that my argument for me. Anyway, yeah, the fact that the longest serving prime minister in Israeli history comes to America in 2002 and advocates to Congress, whether or not the decision I've been made at the executive branch, advocates to Congress that we are going to, that you ought to overthrow the regime in Iraq, also overthrow the Mullahs in Iran, also overthrow Gaddafi in Libya. That is relevant, man.

Coleman Hughes [89:05] And the fact is, at the time he had been prime minister for three years, he wasn't the longest serving anything of anything. He was testified.

Dave Smith [89:12] Did I say that? Did I say that he was?

Coleman Hughes [89:14] No, but it's relevant to the impact he would have had at the time. No, but it's also relevant that he went on to be the, and he testified after the Iraq war decision had already been finalized by the White House. What is it matter what he said after the decision was made?

Dave Smith [89:27] Because he's talking to Congress and trying to persuade them to support it. I don't know, man. I mean, it does seem like you're bending over backward to cover for a foreign country. It's just a little bit strange. The longest serving prime minister in Israel's history comes over here and advocates that we fight multiple wars on his behalf. And that's nothing to you because the decision to fight one of them had already been made. Like, I don't know what to say. The neo-conservatives drove us into the war in Iraq. They were all publicly admitting this at the time. This wasn't a secret.

Coleman Hughes [90:00] No conspiracy of Israel's sake, but not for Israel's sake. I agree on that.

Dave Smith [90:04] Nothing to do with Israel. I agree on that. Nothing to do with Israel. They all called the neo-cons just happened to, you know, right about how much they love Israel all the time.

Coleman Hughes [90:10] All right. Okay. So, what's your theory of Tony Blair? Because in my view, Tony Blair is the second most important architect of the war in Iraq. He put 40,000 troops towards the invasion. MI6 was responsible for some of the bogus intelligence about Saddam being able to deploy chemical biological weapons within 45 minutes or whatever it was, it turned out not to be true. And he was also the primary international salesman for the war in Iraq. He gave all these speeches all around the world trying to persuade. He put really his entire shoulder to the wheel of this war. Yeah. He's the same Tony Blair that in 2009 said that Gaza was an open air prison. So it seems to me, if he was somehow compromised by Israeli interests, those same Israeli interests would have been strong enough to get him not to say that about Gaza, because Israelis don't like that very much. And so what's your theory of why of him?

Dave Smith [91:09] Oh, I mean, I don't know that I have much of a theory of other than I agree with everything that you just said there. I mean, yeah, I think he was a main driver of the war. He got on board with it for his reasons, and I'm not sure exactly what they are. But there, yeah, no question about it. He was a main driver of it. I mean, there's a lot of this, I've never made the claim that any of this stuff is like black and white or that like Israel is the only actor or the only reason why anyone supported the war in Iraq was because they were bought off or threatened or influenced by Israel somehow. They're like, yeah, we thought we fought a whole war in Afghanistan too. I think that really had nothing to do with the Israel lobby. I don't think the war in Yemen, despite the tensions with the Houthis and the Israelis over the last couple of years, I don't think that back in the Saudi war in Yemen had anything to do with Israel. So I don't, yeah, I think he got on board for his own reasons. He probably, my suspicion would be that in the wake of 9-11, he thought it was the best political move for him to make would be to be absolute best friends with George W. Bush and get on board with whatever he was saying. And you're absolutely right, that British intelligence was amongst the worst offenders of pumping out all types of garbage lies to get us into that war.

Coleman Hughes [92:25] So I, yeah, I think, presumably if he was motivated, I would say I'm sure political calculation is never 0% of the story in these cases. It was not a very good political calculation for him. And whenever he justified it, he had this liberal interventionist philosophy that the armies of modern Western societies have a duty to overthrow terrible dictators. That's how he made the case, basically. Yeah, and I think, and that's true, that presumably, presumably a lot of his contemporaries in America were awash in the same ideas. And if you understand the point I'm making, that that's, it's not like Tony Blair was plucked out of the head of Zeus and had his own philosophy. He was sharing a sort of worldview with a certain kind of Western leader at the time of which George Bush was in that crowd. And this hadn't for them, it had nothing to do with Israel, but had to do with this other

Dave Smith [93:26] motive. Oh, yeah, no question there. There's lots of things going on in the world, Coleman. It's a complicated place. Sure. And I think also a thing that's important that I think just being my age, I guess, I remember this, well, even though I was a little kid at the time. But Joe Biden was, he was opposed the, the George H. W. Bush's war in Iraq. And then after that, he never opposed another war again, like publicly like that, because it was, the thing was viewed at the time as this overwhelming success. And you look totally, you totally looked like an idiot. If you had been the one who was opposing it, at least in the short run, and not at all in the long run. But so I think there was a feeling like that it was still very much, you know, this was only 10 years earlier that we had got nine years earlier, that we had gone into Iraq and had, you know, this, this kind of what was looked at as a real easy, you know, military victory with no losses on our side, and nothing but parades. And, you know, it's great. And I think a lot of people thought that's what we were gearing up for again. You know, if you remember at the beginning, they were going in under Rumsfeld's lightfoot print strategy, you know, it was going to be like a war on the cheap. And I don't think my guess would just be that like, yeah, probably a lot of people, especially people in power. I think it's very easy and very intoxicating for them to be like, yeah, we'll remove Saddam Hussein. And then everything will be better. And that'll be, you know, we'll go down as we did this really great, big thing together. And that'll be cool. And I don't think that many of them thought the Civil War in Iraq would go as bad as it did. I mean, I think honestly, even of the people who were anti-war, I think it would have been hard to predict how terrible that you blame us.

Coleman Hughes [95:15] Do you blame, blame America 100% for those deaths? Even though it was Sunni's and she is slaughtering each other?

Dave Smith [95:22] Well, I mean, I guess the word 100% or it would be a little bit tricky there. But yeah, I mean, there's no question that like that's, you start a war that turns into, and it's not as if it's not like we, we did a thing and then there was a Civil War and then we were just like a non-active, you know, participant in the whole thing. Like we broke the country, a Civil War broke out and then we sided with one side of the Civil War and fought it brutally for years. So yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, of course, I mean, if you lead a war of aggression based off lies, you have a large degree of responsibility for the catastrophe that ensues after.

Coleman Hughes [96:03] Even if that's not actually Americans. I think, so my view is, so my view is there's partial blame to the extent that it's foreseeable. To the extent that it's foreseeable, that's the extent to which we are to blame for it. And so it was a known risk that the country could collapse. It was not, not everyone predicted it. Some people predicted it.

Dave Smith [96:26] But I wanted to ask you, analogously, I would just say it was easy enough to be predicted that Dick Cheney before he went and lost Haliburton a bunch of money. Dick Cheney was able to describe exactly what was going to happen if you were, if you would have removed Saddam Hussein when he was talking about the first war there. I'm sure you've seen that, that clip of him. And so I think that basically takes away even the plausible deniability that you might have there. If you're, if your vice president was already a, like he didn't, not only did he see this as a possibility, he precisely said what would happen if Saddam was removed. So I don't know. I think I think it really removes all that. No, I mean, I think whether, whether you can foresee it or not, I think like in the same, almost in the same way that like if you kidnap someone and keep them in your basement and they die down there, yeah, you're, you're going down for murder now, man, you're not just going down for kidnapping anymore. So I do looking at like that. I think absolutely. And that's not to remove any of the responsibility from like the, the Sunnis and Shiites who are fighting over there. But yeah. And again, like I said, it's not like America was a not, not an active participant in that civil war. So, so yes, I think we have a lot of responsibility or DC has a lot of responsibility.

Coleman Hughes [97:43] In the Vietnam War, many people argue that if we pulled out Cambodia and Laos and other countries would go communist and that this would lead to what had happened in every other communist country, which is widespread slaughter. And that's what happened. The Cambodian genocide killed two, two million people. Do you rest any of the blame for those consequences for seeing to some extent at the anti-Vietnam War factions feet? Now, I think it's a, you know, look, there's a not a similar case in terms of, you know, knowing that our foreign policies carry a risk of group B killing group C, even though we're not pulling the trigger and we do it anyway, knowing that it's risk.

Dave Smith [98:27] Yeah, it's much, much murkier and much more complicated, I think, to make that, to draw that line. Like if I go, you know, if there's something going on at my neighbor's house and I grab my gun and run over there and I shoot in the window and I end up killing somebody inside, like I'm responsible for that in some way. If I, if there's a schizophrenic person in the house and I hand them a loaded gun and they go kill someone, I'm responsible for that in a very direct way. If I just stay in my house and something real bad happens in my neighbor's house, I'm not responsible in the, in the same type of direct way. And so, you know, yes, millions of people died after we left Vietnam. Millions of people also died while we were fighting a war in Vietnam. I, I think that's a much tougher, like, straight lines that are being guilt on behalf of people advocating that we stop bomb in the place.

Coleman Hughes [99:19] But it was predicted. I mean, Domino Firi was mainstream at the time and people knew there was a risk and sure enough it happened. Okay, let's move on. I want, oh, I wanted to, you mentioned Rumsfeld earlier. So what, what is your view of, do you have a view of what was motivating Rumsfeld in, in his Iraq war decisions in general? Do you think he was, he was acting out of pro-Israel belief or military industrial complex belief or neither?

Dave Smith [99:51] You know, I, I probably don't know enough about Rumsfeld personally. You know, I know, like, you know, I, I know the press conferences that he used to give. I know he was a signature on the project for a new American century, I believe, right? So like, I think he, I think he was a big business guy, kind of like a crony capitalist type guy. And I think he ran with that crowd and he went with the, you know, like, he was on board with it. I also think he had that, as I said, isn't that what they called the light footprint? I think was what they called his strategy, right? And so he had this idea that he was like, like, I think he was, my perception of him was always that he was like drunk on his own idea of, like, applying this business concept to the military and going, like, we're going to fight a war on the cheap and we're going to show that this is the new way to fight war and the new way to win. That was always my view of him was that that was kind of, you know, what, what I thought it as view was. But I don't know.

Coleman Hughes [100:49] So you don't consider him like an evil, uh, neocon with, with, with bad intentions and acting in bad faith.

Dave Smith [100:58] You know, I don't know the, no, I guess, I guess I don't know what enough about him to, like, have a strong opinion on what his psychological state of mind was. Um, I think that there's, I think that a lot of the, I don't know that I would call a lot of the neocons. I don't know if they were acting in bad faith exactly. I mean, many of them did act in bad faith at moments. Um, but I think many of them believed in their, uh, in their worldview, believe that this was going to, you know, like, be better for the world that I think I do think that they like, I think for the most part, they thought what they were doing was ensuring of the next century for American dominance.

Coleman Hughes [101:44] Um, what is your theory of Donald Trump because measured by his actions? He may go down as the most pro-Israel president in history. We're talking about moving the embassy to Jerusalem. Um, we're talking about recognizing, uh, uh, Israeli sovereignty over the goal on heights, which I find it an interesting fact to contemplate that the Israel lobby, as powerful as you think it is, couldn't get any president to do that for 36 years, even though it just takes a single stroke of a pen, but they could get us into a whole war. Um, but again, that's not exactly what I'm saying, but all right, well, it's implied. It's implied. I mean, if they could get us into a whole war, why can they get a single president for 36 years to recognize the goal on heights? It's a much lower lift for us, right? Condoleezza Rice talks about, in her memoir, she talks about a story where, remember, President Bush gave this Palestine speech in 2002 and he said there's going to be, we're going to push for a two-state solution and we're going to call the Arab state, we're going to call it Palestine. So she tells a story that the Israelis were freaking out and they called Condoleezza Rice and they said, you absolutely cannot call it Palestine because that, because it's called Judea and Sumeria. That's our, you know, that's historically. And Condoleezza Rice said, uh, basically screw you where we're not rewriting our speech for you at all. And he said, oh, hold on, let me talk to Sharon, call Sharon, okay, can you just add the word new, just add one word to the speech, call it new Palestine instead of Palestine. And Condoleezza Rice says, absolutely not, it's written, basically fuck off and don't try to lobby Congress either because it's not going to work. So the idea is like the same Israelis that can't get President Bush to add one little teeny word to a speech could somehow get us into a 10-year war billions of dollars.

Dave Smith [103:37] I think this is like the logic, like, comment, the logic of this is like, if you had one, like anecdote about like, um, like I asked my wife for a sip of coffee and she wouldn't share it with me. And then you were like, so we're supposed to believe that you couldn't get this woman to share a sip of coffee with you, but you could get her to marry you and have kids with you and do all of it. Like, yeah, okay.

Coleman Hughes [104:01] I'm like, I've never, I've never, I've never, who's wife wouldn't share a sip of coffee with them. Huh? Who's wife wouldn't share a sip of coffee with them? I don't know. It's actually a good analogy.

Dave Smith [104:11] I mean, if there's one little thing that your wife wouldn't do for you or something like that, yeah, you're right. You should probably share a sip of coffee. I don't know. I'm just saying, like, it doesn't prove the point. It doesn't follow from that. I've never been one of these conspiracy cooks. I'm not claiming Israel controls everything that ever happens. Well, you think it was a key variable, though. You think it was a key variable? Yes. I think Israel has a lot of influence on this country and they obviously do. I mean, like, I don't even know how this is, this is a debatable. Um, and anyway, that being said, like, yeah, you're right. But what all of the sum total of what Israel has gotten out of the United States of America is like undying loyal support, hundreds of billions of dollars, backing them in war, protecting them, bribing off their neighbors to help them. But yeah, they didn't get every single little thing that they ever wanted. So I certainly agree with that. I think just recently, I think that Netanyahu didn't get everything he wanted out of Trump in Iran just now. And, you know, even like you said, he's Donald Trump, who knows if this is true, but he went on record and said that he would not stand for Israel annexing the West Bank or today in Samaria as you like to call it. No, no, no. Sorry. I wasn't calling it that. I don't care what it's called. I don't care what it's called. I don't care about the religious. To be honest, um, but, uh, but yeah, so anyway, back to your question of my gauge of Donald Trump, um, you know, my gauge of Donald Trump in general is always just, you know, I think like, I think one of the things that's interesting about Donald Trump is that like left wingers and right wingers always project this thing on to him that I don't think exists like, you know, like the left wingers are like, he's literally Hitler for years and then the right wingers seem as like this champion of patriotic Americans. And I've always just seen him as Donald Trump, like just what he is, like I don't know. I think he's, I think he's a guy who's never read a book about anything, like I think he's, I think everything he knows comes from a show that he saw, like that's, that's essentially where Donald Trump's at. He'll watch Hannity and then form an opinion on a complicated topic or watch morning Joe.

Coleman Hughes [106:24] Yeah. I agree with this. I agree with this. My question though about Trump is what accounts for his pro Israeli, like pro Israeli poll, maybe not perfectly consistently, but compared to other US presidents. Well, I mentioned all those examples bombing around what accounts for this. Is it that he, how do you think he's influenced by Israel or do you think he's coming to these decisions on his own base because he thinks they're good decisions as an American president?

Dave Smith [106:49] That's an interesting question and, you know, we're kind of into the territory of speculating. I mean, like, I'm sure he's influenced by some, to some degree, like, yes, I'm sure that like the hundreds of millions of dollars that he got from Miriam Adelson made, you know, I'm sure that has some influence on him, like I would say that about any politician with a donation, that size, I didn't have another election to worry about. Yeah, but he does have a midterm and that's a pretty big deal, whether she could fund a whole bunch of, you know what I mean, and also just on the human level, when someone's done that much for you, you, I do think tend to feel like, you know, I'm one, but not Donald Trump. I don't think that I think John, you know, you are, maybe, you might be right about that, but you know, I know that he does have a midterm election and that's a big deal to him in his legacy, whether or not these Republicans maintain like the Congress. So, but I will say I do remember, and I'm not like, I'm really not speculating here or making any more of this than it is. And this is a little bit vague in my mind that you might remember this better than me. But there was some, when Donald Trump was running in 2016, he at one point, um, pissed off, uh, the, the pissed off APEC at like the, the Zionist in general, because he said, he said something like about like, uh, like I think someone asked him what his take, you know, remember when Donald Trump was first running for president, and they would ask him about issues that he clearly had never even like, you know, like, like, is it Chris Matthews goes, like, are you a pro life or pro choice? He goes, I'm extremely pro life the most pro life, and then they go, so should women go to jail? He's like, yeah, they got to go to jail. And then the next day, he was like, I don't know, I just never thought of that before. Like, I, you know, it's not like, he's not a traditional politician in that sense. And so he just said, like they asked him a question, like, where do you stand on Israel Palestine? And I think he just said America should stay out and be neutral, because that just seemed to him, like, oh, yeah, that's what I'm running on. I'm running on like, damn, you know, stay out of the Middle East and let's not waste money on that. And then people, you know, like as you don't, you know, to, to, uh, to a hardcore Zionist, saying America should just stay out and be neutral is basically saying we should be eight off Hitler. I mean, they were just like, furious about it. And I remember this was, so this was very at the beginning of when Donald Trump was running for president. And the reason why I just remember this is because for me, it was the first moment that it was the first time I ever took Donald Trump seriously as a politician, like up until then he was leading in the polls, but I was kind of like, this is like a joke candidate. You know, he's going to, he's going to drop out and go write a book or something like that. I didn't really think he was, was going to be a contender. And then he went and spoke at APEC and he, there was like this tension because he had just made this comment and then he opened it by railing against what, uh, he opened it by talking about how the around deal was the worst deal that's ever been made in the history of the world and that he is the art of the deal guy and Obama so bad at deals at all of this. And he had the place like on their feet, like they just loved him. And I remember it was the first time that I thought like, oh, oh, he's not just like moving red state Americans. I'm like, yeah, we're going to build a wall, but he can go in and like move APEC, like I remember thinking, oh, maybe this guy might be a legit contender. But so anyway, I'm not like even drawn any conclusion from that, but I do know that like early on, he said something, there was kind of like a horn, it's nest reaction. And then he went like, well, I'm going to go way hardcore over the top. And my guess would be that Donald Trump's, I think kind of his, like the Abraham Accords type shit, the, um, I'm sorry, I don't know if we're not supposed to curse now, he can curse. Okay. But the Abraham Accord stuff, um, this stuff about talking about turning Gaza into, um, into beautiful, you know, beachfront property. I do think that's the type of stuff that kind of makes Donald Trump tick. And I think that he thinks being all in pro Israel is like the best way to accomplish that. This is kind of my sense. I don't know. I'm actually curious, like, what do you think it is? What do you think it is that he's so pro Israel?

Coleman Hughes [110:52] I'll tell you what I think, um, I think, first of all, I think it's, it's a, it's a little bit of a problem for the argument about Israeli influence that the most pro Israeli president ever doesn't seem to be acting out of this influence. And I'll tell you why I think that is because one, he's independently wealthy, he's in his second term. Yeah. You, you make a good point that he has midterm story about, but there's also just the longstanding fact that the Israel lobby mostly contributes to Democrats anyway. Um, he's famous for firing anyone that's trying to push him to do shit. He doesn't want to do. That's why he's gotten rid of all his, you got, gets rid of his advisor so often. And so the idea of him sort of being pushed in a pro Israel direction, I'm not saying you're saying this, you're saying, uh, you're agnostic on the question. But the idea that he might be pushed in this direction seems implausible to me. So what, what I'm left with is that he basically tends to agree with Israel in most of its conflicts with its neighbors. He tends to view Iran certainly as, as an enemy. He's been very steadfast on that and, and, and therefore views Israel as, as, as, as basically a friend. And his, I agree with you, he's not very ideological. He's neither an isolationist nor a neoconservative interventionist. He's kind of like a case by case basis. Yeah. Who are my enemies? Who are my friends? And I think he has a basic understanding that the Israelis are our friends. And, uh, they're, most of their enemies are our enemies. And so on balance, he's going to side with the Israelis. That's my theory of view.

Dave Smith [112:34] Yeah. I don't, I, I think that's quite possibly right. I think, um, you know, I, I will say the, I, I've heard a lot of people, like at this point in, in my career, I've just like, I've gotten to know a lot of people who are like more inside than me, like, I, you know, I'm not, and it's, I'm just like a, uh, shit talking comedian who, you know, like, does a podcast and then does stand up shows, like I don't, but now I like know a lot, and almost everyone to a man who's like really close to the administration or has like been really close into politics, they all say, and it's all kind of vague, but they were, they go, dude, when you get to the top, the top, the levels of control would blow your mind. And like there is, it is the fact that the case that like people are blackmailing each other left and right and people have stuff that's on your phone and they know what you did and what you looked at and who you cheated with and all that. And of course, we do know, you know, through examples of history, like that are, that are not controversial now, but like, you know, we, we know that the FBI was blackmailing, uh, uh, uh, presidents and all types of people and, and popular leaders. I will say this. I'm not saying anything like that's going on with Donald Trump and, and by the way, I just gave you a, uh, another, I guess, Wesley Clark example, but I'm not a four star general. So I'm just telling you what I heard from other people. I never saw the memo on this one either where there wasn't even a memo, but it, it is a little strange to me that even when Benjamin Netanyahu pisses off Trump, and there are these examples where it's very obvious that Donald Trump is pissed off. He never gets the Trump wrath that any other leader would get in that situation, including Zalinsky, including any European leader, including Kim Jong Un, including Vladimir Putin, no matter who it is, like he just doesn't, even when he's furious, he can see that he's

Coleman Hughes [114:25] angry. He dropped that, he dropped the F bomb talking about Netanyahu.

Dave Smith [114:28] Right. And what did he say? He said, don't know the fuck they're doing. Both of them don't know what the fuck that Netanyahu is included in that conjunction with both of them. And that's the, and that's the angriest he's ever gotten. And then the next day he was right back to the, he dropped F bombs on all these other

Coleman Hughes [114:41] leaders.

Dave Smith [114:42] I mean, a bunch of them, he's called him every name in the book, if an F bomb is nothing to Donald Trump. I don't remember Trump ever saying the F word. Yeah, but then F, that's not, well, he said the F word a bunch of times. Okay. Yeah. I've said, he says it in stump speeches and stuff like that. But no, I'm just saying, no, it's a little different though. He's never done what he did. So Zalinsky to, to Netanyahu.

Coleman Hughes [115:05] And I do think that, although that was JD Vance's fault, that was in Trump's fault. That's a whole nother conversation. That was Zalinsky's fault. More than anyone else. Yeah, it was, yeah, I agree. Zalinsky and Vance. Trump was actually very kind for 45 minutes of that.

Dave Smith [115:18] What happened is then Zalinsky took the bait of JD Vance, but then Zalinsky crossed the line and you can't do that in front of Donald Trump, because then it's an alpha competition.

Coleman Hughes [115:29] Yeah, then it's a fissing contest, but Trump didn't want it to become that we, we're getting off topic. I want to hit these other topics that we disagree about because I'm sure there's stuff we agree about, but it's more interesting to explore disagreements. So I believe I've heard you make the argument that Israel's foreign policy is motivated at a deep level by this greater Israel ambition and not by fundamentally a desire for peace. And I think this is a deep disagreement between us. So give me your view on whether Israel's main motivation is peace or put it in your own

Dave Smith [116:10] words. Well, I mean, again, I think it's always a little bit problematic when we say this like Israel's main motivation because again, it's like there's different people and there's different factions. And I really am an individualist at my core and like there is no will of the Israelis. In fact, for, you know, at least for a period of time, the will of the Israelis, if there is such a thing, was for a two-state solution, I think at least up until the second in Tifada, I think that, look, I mean Netanyahu said something about the greater Israel project being very close and near and dear to his heart or something like that. I think that essentially my view of it is that Netanyahu has had to coalition with hard, hard right wing Israeli politicians for a couple clicks to the right of Benjamin Netanyahu who is the right winger himself. I think many of them are openly motivated by the greater idea of the greater Israel and that the idea that the land was given to them by God. And when you really fundamentally believe that from a religious perspective, as many religious Jews do, that's really tough to argue with that, you know, once the land was given to you by God, well, then whatever we got to do in order to get it is kind of justified because it was God's will. So I think that is, there's a portion of Israel who are motivated by that. I've always thought that the center of Netanyahu's motivation of his life's ambition, his career, has been a thwart of Palestinian state. Now, what exactly, I mean, I think it's pretty open about that. It's not like I'm, you know, reading minds or something here, but I think that, you know, why exactly? You know, I don't know enough, well, you know, I'm not in Israeli and even as an American, it's hard to tell what are the true motivations of some of our politicians are. I don't know exactly what, you know, like is that because he thinks that's what's best for Israel long term? Is that because he thinks that greater Israel will ultimately be achieved through the process of building settlements in the West Bank and things like that? I don't know, but it certainly seems to be the thwarting of a Palestinian state driving a lot of his ideology.

Coleman Hughes [118:40] So I would say a few things, points of agreement. I agree that Israel wanted a two-state solution up until the second intifada changed everything. And I'm happy to hear you agree with that. I think that as you say Israel's a democracy, it has factions like we do. Netanyahu is the mainstream right-wing faction. And when he won the Prime Minister's office, in the most recent time, the centrist parties refused to go into coalition with him. This is what forced him to partner with the crazies, with the bang veer and with the smote rich. And this is absolutely a tragedy for Israeli politics, for Palestinians, for the region. And I think it's many people were critical of the centrist party not partnering with him at the time. I think in retrospect, it is not talked about enough how bad a calculation was that that was for everyone involved. However, you can sort of judge a democracy by the output of its policies put into context. So not only did Israel offer a two-state solution, land for peace in 2000, the whole way that they came under possession of the West Bank in the Six-Day War was in the context of a defensive war, not a war of expansion. They left Gaza in 2005. And you add these things up and you get a picture of what is the actual output of Israeli policies taking as a rounding error the obvious factional differences within the society. And it's clear to me, whenever the choice has been between greater Israel ambitions and peace such as in negotiations with Egypt, but they give back the Sinai, they're at war with Egypt for decades and decades and decades. They give back the Sinai in exchange for peace because peace is more important to most Israelis. And Israeli society swings to the right when people become convinced as a result of Palestinian and transrogens, Palestinian terror, that the leadership is not actually currently capable of making a peace deal and therefore we might as well just batten down the hatches. So that's my basic view.

Dave Smith [121:08] Okay. So I disagree with the lot there. I don't disagree with all of it. I mean, I think it's like kind of the most charitable interpretation you could possibly give the Israelis. And there's a lot of different ways to look at this. And I also think there's a lot, you know, get to get to the details of the negotiations. I don't think it's exactly right that they offer the Palestinians a state. I would say, okay, so let's start with Camp David, number one, not Camp David 2000, Camp David in the 70s. You're talking about the deal with the Egyptians, right? Like the other way to look at that though, which is true, right? And I like, I give, and like, look, I don't like essentially what came out of that agreement was that we would forever give foreign aid to Israel and Egypt. That was a big part of making the agreement happen. And I'm not the biggest fan of foreign aid, but I kind of give everybody involved some credit for this. But the other way to look at it from the way you're saying, right, is you could number one, you could say, if you want to just be charitable to the Israelis, you say what you said. Hey, look, they have the opportunity to give up land for peace. They were happy to do that. But the flip side to that is that they got peace for it. They gave up the land and they got peace. They went to war with Egypt. It was at four times in 25 years and they haven't been to war with them since then. It's been quite a while. We're going on, you know, 50 years. So that's the flip side to it. And now in terms of like the negotiations, look, even even Shlomo Ben-Ami said that he would have turned down the Camp David deal too. So I think.

Coleman Hughes [122:35] He said he would have turned down Camp David and accepted the Clinton parameters. That was a second half of itself.

Dave Smith [122:39] Yeah, fair enough. But I'm just saying what everyone says the Camp David deal was like such a great offer. I'm just saying the even the foreign minister or the acting foreign minister at the time of Israel has a different view of it.

Coleman Hughes [122:50] And then they made a better offer. And the same guy said it was a tragedy. They didn't take this.

Dave Smith [122:54] Yes. Yes.

Coleman Hughes [122:56] No, I agree. But that's important context.

Dave Smith [122:58] It is. It is important context. But you know, I agree. It's a fair point. But at the same time like there is something like, okay, like in a court of law, if the guy who's on trial denied committing the murder 10 times and then he confessed, the one confession means a lot more than the 10 denials. And so the point is that even the foreign minister, who you would expect to be saying like taking the pro-Israel side on this, even he admitted that one of the deals that is flouted, you have to admit, is constantly talked about in the context of this debate as being this amazing offer that Israel gave to the Palestinians. He said he would have turned it down. That's pretty interesting piece of information and much more interesting than him saying, oh, but the other deal was really fair. Of course, we also have Netanyahu referring to Hebron now, not, you know, but-

Coleman Hughes [123:47] Well, hold on. If you're going to say Shlomo Benami had his head on, screwed on straight among Israeli voices, then you also have to put a lot of weight on him saying, we made them a much better offer in the Clinton parameters and they were crazy to say no. No, he's either, you don't, you don't have to say that they are poor because- So he has his had his screwed on straight when he's saying Camp David was a bad offer.

Dave Smith [124:09] No, it's not, it's not, it's not about being credible or not credible or has had being screwed on differently. It's a more interesting and relevant detail when the, the acting foreign minister at the time admits that this wasn't a great deal than him saying, oh, and at this point, I think we did do the right thing and offer a good deal here, and they said no, and they still said no. Oh, look, and by the way, I'm not taking the position that the Arabs shouldn't have taken that deal. I mean, like I, I think perhaps we'd be living in a much better world if they had. I, you know, there's been many mistakes made on both sides of this, including embracing

Coleman Hughes [124:47] violence. Benami said the effort to get Arifat to accept the Clinton parameters was probably the greatest effort of diplomatic pressure the world has ever seen on a leader of any people. I'm almost quoting him directly.

Dave Smith [124:59] Let me, okay. Sure, sure. Okay. I think there's, there's a real problem that you have here going, that even like leaving aside the negotiations, I mean, we could talk more about it if you want to, but leaving aside that, I was going to make the point that we have Benjamin Netanyahu on tape bragging about the poison pill. He doesn't know he's on tape, but he's bragging about the poison pills that he was able to put in the negotiation process. And so it's, it's a lot more complicated than this, but I think this is a real problem you have when you zoom out.

Coleman Hughes [125:24] Can I respond to the poison pill thing?

Dave Smith [125:26] Sure.

Coleman Hughes [125:28] I agree with you that the poison pill thing is, is, is, is terrible, but how did Israeli society react? They got Benjamin Netanyahu out of office because they're a democracy and they voted in a hood baroque. Partly, one of the many reasons people are unsatisfied with Netanyahu is because he was not taking the negotiations seriously. And this goes to show when the Israelis feel like there is a chance for peace, society tends to swing to the left in a democracy.

Dave Smith [125:57] Uh, okay, perhaps it's an interesting, uh, theory, I, you know, okay, I'll give the Israelis credit for Netanyahu out that one time, but then they got to take the blame for him being their longest serving, uh, their longest, uh, serving prime minister in Israeli history. Um, I think that, uh, also, I, I just want another point of detail. I mean, you know, I, I don't know the, the 67 war or the six day war calling it a defensive war is a little bit debatable, but regardless of that, um, I don't think it is.

Coleman Hughes [126:28] I think it's an open in shot case.

Dave Smith [126:30] All right. I mean, even, again, even though he defended the war, uh, Menachem Begum himself called it a war of choice. And it was a preemptive strike on Egypt, um, that, that kicked the whole thing off. They had, they had to mask some troops and they're certainly, they're, there were provocations on the Israeli side on the, uh, Egyptian side. So, but, but regardless, they weren't attacked by Palestinians. They fought a war with Egyptians and Jordanians. And then they took, oh, they took control at the end of this of a territory that had millions of people living in it. And I think the major problem you got, Coleman, and I think this is a big part of the reason why just like broadly speaking, Israel is losing this debate so badly right now in the eye of the public. And I think one of the major problems here is that like, if you just zoom, look, even saying we offer, like, let's say they offered them 100% statehood five times, which is not true. But let's just say for the sake of argument that we're true. So what? Prick, it's, it's on the level of just being like, because it's the only way the conflict

Coleman Hughes [127:33] will end is when there's a part, obviously, I wasn't done with that.

Dave Smith [127:37] Go ahead. So I'm obviously about to say the so what? Yeah, dude, if you, if you had a, like, an institution of slavery or something like that, and you go, well, we offered them their freedom five times and they didn't take it. It's like, who cares, stop enslaving them? That is nothing to do with anything. It's like, look, dude, you don't need a partner to just stop the occupation. It's statehood, nobody in the enlightenment world views statehood as a gift to be chosen from one people to give to another people. I mean, what is going on here? Is Israel have a right to the West Bank and Tagaza? Is that theirs? If it's theirs, the millions of people who live there do not have citizenship or voting rights or any natural rights under Israeli law. So if that, if that is Israel, then they're not a democracy. They're an apartheid regime. And if it's not Israel, well, then what, what right do they have to be the ones who decide whether these people get a state or not? This is like, they're, I just don't find any other example where any modernization acts this way, and this is acceptable.

Coleman Hughes [128:41] What you're recommending is what Israel did with Gaza in 2005. They left unilaterally without getting a piece deal in return.

Dave Smith [128:49] Okay. So let's get into the withdrawal from Gaza. I mean, like, as you know, right, like Sharon's top advisor, the formaldehyde, I'm sorry, what's his name again? Dove Weisglas. Dove Weisglas. Go read Dove Weisglas' quote on what the whole deal was there.

Coleman Hughes [129:08] I'll read it to you right now, Dave. Okay. I'll read it to you because I've heard you quote this before, and actually, I had you Seth Manayer, a Palestinian activist on my podcast, and he said, what I think you're about to say, which is that Dove Weisglas in a hard interview in 2004 said, the point of the Gaza withdrawal was to put the piece process in formaldehyde.

Dave Smith [129:26] Yeah. And he said, everything that the entire deal was in the state, not just adding to the

Coleman Hughes [129:31] quote. This was what he said, but sure. Go ahead. Okay. Because I have never seen someone on your side of this argument quote the full context of his interview, honestly, and in full context. So this is what he said just before the idea of putting the piece process in formaldehyde. This is him. He goes, when we enter the Prime Minister's office, he means 2002, Sharon still believed he would be able to achieve, achieve a very long term interim agreement, an agreement of 25 or 20 or 15 or 10 or five years, a truce. But very quickly, we discovered that we were up against a stone wall, that when you get to the decision-making center, nothing happens. We reached that conclusion after years of thinking otherwise, after years of attempts at dialogue. But when Arifat undermined Abu Mazen at the end of the summer of 2003, we reached the sad conclusion that there was no one to talk to, no one to negotiate, hence the disengagement plan. So in context, what he is saying is that when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was elected in 2002, his plan A was to get a 25 year piece truce with the Palestinians. When he realized that they didn't want that or that Arifat didn't want that and wouldn't let Abbas go for it, only then did he pivot to say, okay, our next best option is just to get out of Gaza unilaterally. Now I think that is very important in context if you're going to quote the Doug Weiss class interview in the future because it speaks to this whole argument we're having is what were Israel's intentions leaving the Gaza Strip. And it's highly relevant that the age you're quoting said, plan A was to get a truce. And the hope is that if you get 25 years of a truce, well then people get used to not fighting. I'm waxing now. They didn't say this, but my guess is-

Dave Smith [131:22] Right, right.

Coleman Hughes [131:23] I get your point. I mean, I don't know. I don't think there's anything dishonest about leaving. And then- Sorry, if you don't mind, just 30 more seconds and then just say whatever you want. After the Gaza disengagement plan, also a few settlements in the West Bank were also nobody talks about that, but also taken out. What does Ariel Sharon do? Oh, he just starts a new party. He starts a new party called Kadima. The platform of Kadima is to eventually withdraw unilaterally from the West Bank. Then he gets a stroke, and his number two, Omar, runs on the platform of leaving the West Bank the convergence plan, and he wins. So that also is important context in addressing what Sharon was trying to get at with the Gaza

Dave Smith [132:05] plan. Well, go ahead. Look, yeah, it's important context, and it's also important context that, you know, like that the Israeli people were on board with, you know, or at least voted for someone running on that platform. I agree with you. I don't think there's anything dishonest though about leaving that out. The point is that we're talking about the disengagement in 2005, and you have the senior advisor for the prime minister overseeing it, telling you that what that was about was putting the peace process in formaldehyde, making it impossible for the Palestinian state to ever be achieved. That that was their goal. Now, you could say they came up with that as a second best option, okay, fine, but the point is that so many of the Israel defenders, they describe it as if, in fact, Douglas Murray, when we debated said that was the Palestinian state, that was a two-state solution. And this is just like, that's what's intensely dishonest is to leave this out. Now, about the settlements, I think you're pretty sure, I'd have to go back and double check this, but I think the number of settlements in the West Bank drastically increased in the following couple of years after 2005.

Coleman Hughes [133:08] Again, this really, what I said is that the Gaza disengagement also, there was like four West Bank settlements that were added, that were also evacuated at the same time. Yeah, okay, it's actually not, it's not important. What I wanted to address myself.

Dave Smith [133:22] I built up a lot more settlements though over the years, on net, there were more settlements in the West Bank, and there's many more settlements in the West Bank than there were back then.

Coleman Hughes [133:30] So, so the point I'm making is not just it was Plan A and Plan B, it's actually deeper than that. The reason they switched to Plan B is because they came to the belief based on Arafat's behavior, that Arafat actually did not want the political process to lead to a true peace. Right? So, if you believe that the peace process would, would essentially be a gift box with peace on the label, and then the moment you open it up, you get terrorism, if you come to that belief based on the behavior of your negotiating partner, that they intend to take whatever they can get out of the negotiations and then launch terror. Then thwarting the peace process is not thwarting a peaceful, a situation like American Canada. You're not thwarting a true two-state solution. You believe based on the behavior of your negotiating partner, that you're thwarting what would essentially be a situation where terrorists take over parts of the West Bank. Oh, this is the other part of the interview that is crucial to this point. Is that Sharon came to believe that a Palestinian state would be two-week to control its violent minority. I.E., the fatah would not be strong enough, would not have the state capacity to prevent Hamas, to prevent it from coming basically another Lebanon, a Lebanon where half the country is controlled by a terrorist group. And then you're as a leader of Israel, you're basically telling people, well, if we really come to believe in good faith that this guy is not a partner for peace, and we've got to wait till we get a real partner for peace, giving him two states will essentially mean that we're going to be in a situation where terrorist control, strategic high ground, a place from which they can much more easily launch rockets and missiles and smuggle anything over the border with Jordan, which would be very easy to do. And you're essentially telling your people, I'm going to put you in much more jeopardy than you're already in. So this is the trade off Israel faces.

Dave Smith [135:42] Yeah, you know, it's like, which I know I've quoted before when talking about this, but is that that old Thomas Jefferson quote about slavery, or he's like, we have the wolf by the ear and can neither afford to hold onto it nor safely let it go. And you know, like it's like, I just call them and they've been occupying them since 1967. Are they concerned about what might happen if they take their boot off their neck? Okay. But they still don't get to do that to people. We got a real problem with black crime in this country, Coleman. But if I said, let's reinstitute slavery and that will take care of the problem with black crime, I think you'd go, yeah, you don't have a right to do that. If not having slavery means that it's a little bit more dangerous and some areas tough deal with that. You don't Israel. Look, dude, this is just so obvious. It's bananas to me that anybody who lives in a first world country on this side of the enlightenment can just not say, look, Israel's got two options here. Your options, if you want to be a moral country or whatever your options are, you can say, we can't give them their own state and so we're just annexing all of this land and giving citizenship to all the Palestinians and we will all live under one state together or you can stop occupying them militarily and let them have their own, you know, autonomy. Those are the options. You can't just keep your boot on these people's neck forever because you're worried about what might happen, even if it's a legitimate worry about what might happen if you take your boot off and the idea that on the other side of this, the Palestinians are just supposed to accept you live in subjugation for perpetuity forever because some of your leaders made bad decisions and then, you know, you can say like, I mean, look, you could have made this argument about Egypt. I don't think they had a strong enough state to control their radicals or something like that. Now, we could get into a whole separate argument like which is that I, and I think there's a very strong argument that actually Israel is going to face much more of a terrorist threat while they're occupying these areas than they would if they were to give them their own state. And I think there's lots of good reasons to suspect that. But just purely on a principled ground, this is just totally indefensible. And there's no other country, no other country that we would call a democracy who behaves this way. It's like this is, I don't know, I just find this whole thing to be so goofy. Like either this is Israel, either you're saying Israel has a legitimate claim to Gaza and the West Bank or you're saying they do not. And if they do not, then they have to stop occupying them. And if they do, then they have to give citizenship to the people that they control. So really fundamental, Western civilization stuff.

Coleman Hughes [138:25] So the analogy to slavery is a bad one for many reasons. But first, yes, Jefferson and Southerners in general, they feared partly based on Haiti and other examples that if they gave slaves freedom, it would result in a race war. And this was highly motivating for Southerners. It turned out to be completely wrong. Now there was a lot of evidence at the time that this wouldn't happen, namely the fact that you had black people living very peacefully all over the North with no problem. You even had free blacks in the South with no problem. And so you would have had to cherry pick massively to look at the Nat Turner revolt, say, erase all the other evidence of peaceful coexistence between whites and blacks and say, we can't let these people have freedom because look at Nat Turner. Not only that, there was no any time there was black leadership. The most famous black leader, the most important black leader in the aftermath of the Civil War was Booker T. Washington, right? You can make the same argument about the civil rights movement, right? We can't give them voting rights because then they're going to make decisions that are going to be terrible, it's going to be a race war, they're going to destroy us, they're going to whatever slaughter us. Every single popular black leader, Booker T. Washington, utterly peaceful, had the total faith and devotion of the black community. He was the most beloved figure and he was fundamentally nonviolent. Luther King, absolutely the most beloved figure within the black community, much more so than Malcolm X at the time. And even Malcolm X in his most radical mood, you know, never... It wasn't a terrorist, yeah, it wasn't a terrorist. So there was an enormous amount of evidence in the case of African Americans in the United States that the likely result of loosening the chains was not going to be a race war. It's just that people ignored that evidence. Okay, now when you translate that to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they leave Gaza. They leave Gaza two different countries impose a harsh blockade in response to rockets against Israel. And one of those two countries gets October 7th and not the other. So one question I have for you is like, why doesn't Hamas attack Egypt? Why can't they spare a single rocket for Egypt if it's all about the blockade and occupation?

Dave Smith [141:00] No, I mean, obviously because they're hatred of Israel is on a whole different level. And also like, yeah, I don't know, like there's...

Coleman Hughes [141:06] So then it's not all about the blockade and the...

Dave Smith [141:08] No, it's not all. A lot of it's about the creation of the state of Israel. A lot of it's about the fact that they view that as they are land that a lot of them did get kicked out of. Of course, all of this stuff is involved. But anyway, back to your point though, but like, so say there was a higher risk. And again, I wasn't saying, again, I wasn't saying a lot of times when people make logical analogies. People say, well, that's a bad analogy because the situations aren't the same. But there's a difference between equating two different things and making a logical analogy. The claim isn't that they're the same. But let's say there was going to be a real increase in crime or let's say there was that some of the black leaders were more radical and were... Hold on, let me just finish. And we're advocating violence. Is the answer then continue the institution of slavery? I mean, the thing is no, right? It's obviously... And look, the thing about this is with all of this stuff, with all of this. I just feel like to be a defender of Israel requires you to not be like fair-minded to both groups here. It requires you to think of like, oh, but think about the danger that the Israelis might have to deal with if they were to give these people a state. It's like, yeah, think about the danger that the Palestinians are in being militarily occupied. Like how are you gonna sit here and tell these people that you guys have to embrace nonviolence? Your leaders all have to be nonviolent leaders. All these Israeli leaders can be as horrifically violent as they want to. You know, you call Hezbollah a terrorist organization. You call Hamas a terrorist organization. And like fair enough, I don't really object to that categorization. I don't exactly see why the IDF wouldn't also be categorized as a terrorist organization. So it's like...

Coleman Hughes [142:44] Here's the crucial difference. The crucial difference is that Israeli society, as we've discussed in this conversation, if they feel they have a partner for peace, are capable of offering, of negotiating in good faith and making an offer, because they don't want to serve in the army for the rest of time. They don't want to send their boys to fight these wars. Hamas rejects the two-state solution, period. But we just talked about it without without without... Yeah, okay, but no, but Israel is a democracy, and they will vote Netanyahu out of power if they feel that the other side is capable and interested in a permanent conflict.

Dave Smith [143:27] But they made their long, disturbing prime minister in their country's history. So like, they're not voting him out of power that much.

Coleman Hughes [143:34] Hold on, hold on. This happened as you yourself admitted, not even reluctantly, I don't mean to phrase it that way. The second intifada, Israel offered a two-state end of conflict, period. It was rejected by the Palestinians, and then the second intifada was launched. This was, you know, mothers sending their kids on two different buses to schools because a bus was getting blown up every three days, right? Which was traumatizing for a country the size of New Jersey. I can't imagine how I would react to having grown up in New Jersey if there was two bombs going off a week just in my state. Yeah, absolutely. I would demand of my government to do to absolutely do what it had to do to make us safe. But only that, the fact that this came right after an offer of peace, and what Shlomo Ben-Ami called the biggest effort ever to pressure an international leader on any issue to end this conflict, because the world, my God, we have to see this conflict end at some point. It's so heartbreaking. The problem with this is that Israeli society can move because it's a democracy, Hamas can't move. Hamas is absolutely committed to rejecting the only solution that could bring an end to this conflict. So Hamas is like a rock, whereas Israel, object as much as you want to Netanyahu, I'm not going to defend him. I'm not going to defend Smotrich. I'm not going to defend Bangvier. Israel is a democracy that can move to the left if the opportunity came, sign a peace treaty that will be inked for all time. How the hell do we get that with Hamas running the Gaza Strip when every single time they are asked? We reject any alternative for all time, for all time, except between the river and the sea.

Dave Smith [145:18] Yeah. There actually have been different periods of time where Hamas leaders have said they would accept 67 borders, but they have also a lot of time said they wouldn't and so on. Including over and over and over again recently and in their charter. I'm not, I'm not even like arguing with you on that detail, but you know, it's always like when you say like, first of all, I actually disagree with fundamentally with your premise that democracy is like have this ability to move. I think actually one of the kind of counterintuitive, strange realities is that often democracies get very stuck. For example, like the political system in the United States of America really has not like fundamentally changed nearly as much as the political system in China has over say like the last 40 years and they did it through a one party dictatorship. They still call themselves the, because the one party says business is good now and then all of a sudden it's a drastically different thing than it was before. But regardless of that, yeah, but like you can say there's a lot of things Hamas could do that would be a lot better than the things that Hamas has done and could do now that would be better than the things they're doing. Israel also can end the war. It's not true that only one side could do the things that would end the war and I don't even know if you can call it a war, but this war, but but but but Hamas is just going

Coleman Hughes [146:39] to restart the war. It's not even a real war, man.

Dave Smith [146:41] Like a war you kind of think of as like two governments with militaries battling. It's a cat.

Coleman Hughes [146:47] Hamas has people 20,000, 30,000 people that's not a war, Hamas has 30,000 fighters or whatever

Dave Smith [146:53] it is. Yeah, no, it's a captive people who have been held stateless without a military of their own being like annihilated, it'd be like, yeah, no, I don't think war is exactly the right word. But regardless of that, Israel also has the opportunity. Israel could simply say we're going to stop militarily occupying the West Bank. We're going to pull those and we're going to live in 67 borders and you do what you want to do. But if you attack us, we're responding. They could do that too and they have not done that. Yeah. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Every time I debate or have a discussion like this about the topic, I'm just always struck by the fact that you have like, we're halfway around the world. There is a long standing conflict that's going on between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But yet when you talk about this again, which by the way, I'm with you on, I think we should think about like, what would it be like to live in a state the size of New Jersey where there's school buses being blown up every day. Listen, I live in the state of New Jersey and I have little kids like when you say that, I'm listening and I'm like, genuinely trying to put myself in that position. And by the way, I am not saying I'm like a very good person. I think I would go to a pretty bad place pretty quickly if I thought one of my kids were threatened. However, in this conflict, Gaza is a substantially smaller place than Israel and has way more bombings going off, way more innocent people being killed. And so I just always find it interesting that like, okay, we're going to put ourselves in the Israeli shoes. Like, okay, I'm fine to do that. Let's do that. Can we also attempt to do that to the other side here? Easily. I'll do it right now. I'll do it right now. I'll do it right now.

Coleman Hughes [148:44] I'll do it right now. I'll do it right now. Dave, this is the point I tried to make before, but I don't think I made it precisely enough. Let's put ourselves in the shoes of Palestinians for a moment. Now we know from the history of the 20th century, whether it is the partition of Indian Pakistan or the partition of Sudan and South Sudan more recently, that when you have a situation like this, a gruesome situation where two peoples can't get along. And they're slaughtering on both sides. It seems like pretty much the best formula we have is something like a partition along roughly ethnic lines. It's not a perfect solution by any means, but Sudan and South Sudan are fighting with each other estates a lot less than they did when it was one state for 50 years of brutal civil war. So if I'm a Palestinian in Gaza right now, purely looking from my own perspective, sure I would absolutely want Israel to end the war, to alleviate my immediate suffering. But I would also like to think that I would understand the regime that rules Gaza right now is committed to a forever war against Israel, which means if Israel withdraws, ends the war right now, leaves Hamas in power, I am, Gaza is again on borrowed time until the next time that Hamas is able to find a crack in the armor, which always happens. And so in addition to wanting Israel to end the war, I would really want to see some massive international effort to get rid of Hamas. And I don't know how you do that because Hamas embeds itself in this a million population and uses them as a shield. But I would understand just purely from the point of view of me wanting, I would, I'd love to live in a situation like South Sudan and Sudan. We don't have to love each other, but we're not at each other's throats. We could be like, we could be a frozen conflict like North and South Korea. We could, we can hate each other. The only way you get to a frozen conflict is with a ruling entity in Gaza that could actually agree to a frozen conflict because it's what they want. So how do you get that without getting rid of Hamas? This is from the Palestinian perspective.

Dave Smith [151:03] Yeah, I guess it kind of is. I don't really think it's a very reasonable way to look at it from my family perspective.

Coleman Hughes [151:08] I think that videos of Palestinians protesting Hamas, what's their point of view? Their point of view is exactly what I just said.

Dave Smith [151:15] There were some videos of people protesting Hamas. There's been some protests of the Israeli government in Israel too. One could argue not nearly enough on both sides or whatever, but like, yeah, no, I think that like, I think that if you, if your story was, okay, and, and keep in mind with these things that, you know, often when people talk about war, people talk about the conflict like this side started it. This side was guilty. This side did it when really what's going on is that there are people in positions of power who are making decisions. And then there's a whole bunch of innocent people just caught up in the situation. The entire project of Israel, the entire project of a bunch of Eastern Europeans deciding that they wanted to go create a state in land where Arabs were already living when it came into fruition resulted in hundreds of thousands of them being expelled from where they were living, or not allowed to return.

Coleman Hughes [152:14] After the six day war, they were occupying, that's an intellectually honest way of describing the birth of Israel.

Dave Smith [152:20] I think it was a factually correct way of describing it.

Coleman Hughes [152:24] It's very easy to paint a dishonest picture by leaving out a lot of facts. Okay. This is why we have to phrase liable mission. Sure, but I wasn't claiming to have been telling the totality of everything that ever

Dave Smith [152:36] happened there.

Coleman Hughes [152:37] No, no, no, no, but crucial facts like a bunch of Eastern Europeans deciding to go to Palestine. That framing ignores the fact that Eastern European refugees, basically their plan A was all, and I think you know, to flood into New York and Canada and other places and escape the pogroms and the slaughtering of the Russian Civil War and do what any human being would do and get the hell away from the violence against your family. Then the entire West closes doors. American closes doors, essentially in 1921, 24, Canada closes doors, Australia closes doors, Latin America closes doors, and only then do you see Eastern European Jews saying, okay, this place, Palestine, I guess we can't get into New York, I guess we'll start going there. I mean, it was trickles before that happened, and so it was a refugee state. They weren't ideological Zionists for the most part, and I don't think anyone could go back without 2020 hindsight and tell them that they shouldn't have gone there. So I think that's very important content, and it's also important content if you just start the story at the ending and say, and as you did, as the end result, 750,000 Palestinians were pushed out, well, what happened? Palestinians started a civil war in Mandate, Palestine, and then five Arab countries all at once invaded Israel in a war of aggression. Those decisions didn't need to be made, they're pretty relevant context, you don't really understand the last scene of the movie without the first, so I think that's important.

Dave Smith [154:08] Yeah, I guess again, it's all just irrelevant to the point that I was trying to make, and again, you're back to just harping on the perspective of the Jews and then the Zionists and then the Israelis. The point I was making is that there's another perspective here too, and all of that might is true, essentially, what you said. I mean, not exactly, I mean, like the King Crane Commission also pretty accurately predicted what the future of this struggle was going to look like when they were looking at it in 1919, or whatever year it was, the 1920, when they went over there, they went, man, you're going to try to create a Jewish state here, this is just going to be permanent struggle, it's going to require permanent force because this is just something that, like, obviously, the people who live here are going to resist. I'm saying from the perspective of the Palestinian person who didn't start that war or didn't do that, and just happened to be one of the people caught up in there and got kicked out of their land, then you're occupied for 60 years, the Israeli project, whether you, I'm not saying this is the entirety of everything, I'm not, yes, there are, there are things being omitted here just like every time both of us speak, we're not telling the entire story of all of history, the experiment of Israel, like the experiment of Europeans trying to create a Jewish state on land where Arabs lived, like, that is what they did, there might have been reasons for that, but that's what ended up happening. The result of that was 750 Arabs being expelled from where they lived and not allowed back in. They're for the period between 1948 and 1967, they're living as refugees in different places, and from 1967, all the way up till today, they're militarily occupied by a foreign power, and now it's culminating in what scholars will debate whether it's a genocide or not, okay, or whatever the hell you want to call this, I don't want to get caught up in semantics here. That, all of that happened too, and then after all of that, you sit here, Coleman, and you go, why are they attacking Israel and not Egypt? It's like, you know, because there's like a long history here, man, and they're really pissed off about this. Hold on.

Coleman Hughes [156:21] I think this is worth actually dwelling on this, because what you didn't emphasize in your story is that Egypt obviously occupied Gaza for 19 years, did not, did not give them a state. That's true. Could have given them a state, did not, and Egypt has every single bit of harsh blockades since 2007, Egypt copy-paste absolutely. In fact, worse, because when they discovered smuggling tunnels underneath the Gaza border, they pumped them with poison gas and sewage and killed Palestinians as a result. Now, if Israel had done that, that would be exhibits A through Z on why Hamas is fighting Israel for legitimate understandable reasons, and yet, Egypt does all of that, and Hamas can't spare a single rocket, and this is practically a science experiment for understanding what Hamas actually cares about. I think you're very quick to see pretenses in American foreign policy, and very slow to see them in other groups around the world. No, I don't think so, man, I'm not, but again, this is practically a science experiment. It's practically a science experiment to see actually what does Hamas care about? It is entirely about the humiliation of having a Jewish state on that land, not about the occupation, not about not having a country. For them, it's not about the settlements in the West Bank. For them, Tel Aviv is the same as a settlement in the West Bank. It's all one phenomenon of a Jewish state that needs to be expired from the river to the sea.

Dave Smith [157:56] Well, look, I mean, I think, again, it's not, when you say that, oh, I could see, this is what I think is kind of bizarre about this, right? Is that you'll say, oh, you could see all the corruption in like the American war party or the Israeli war party or something like that, but you can't see obviously here with Hamas too. But that's just not right. I'm not sitting here defending Hamas. Hamas has just been horrible. They're like a death cult.

Coleman Hughes [158:20] I didn't say corruption. I said false pretence. It's just not.

Dave Smith [158:23] Sure, the false pretence. Whatever you want to, whatever.

Coleman Hughes [158:25] Do you agree with that? So you agree with that? Hamas is concerned about blockade and occupation and not having a, this is, you agree this is a false pretence, and that is actually about the humiliation of a Jewish state.

Dave Smith [158:35] I think that we are so many decades into this thing that it's devolved to the tragic level where Hamas is basically a death cult. And yeah, it's a grudge. They're trying to get back at the Israelis in any way they can for the most part. Yeah, that's like, yes, essentially, like I do think that's right. And I also would say that like what I think everybody should kind of accept here in the same way that like we're not giving the land back to the Native Americans, man. And like it's, it's horrible the way states rise to be. I mean, I'm a, I'm a radical libertarian. My fundamental view is essentially that states are gangs who took over and are in some sense perceived as legitimate. But that's essentially what they are, the ruling gang in a geographic territory. And so yeah, lots of them are created in real messy, immoral circumstances, but generations later, you know, you'd be doing the same thing over to a whole new group of innocent people if you were to kick all the Israelis out of Israel and make it from the river to the sea, all Palestinian or something like that. I think that that's why almost every adult in the room, when there's been real negotiations or when there's been real talks of ever getting close to a peace process, have always started talking about 67 borders, right? But so the dynamic is this. I essentially think as horrible as the Nakba was and as horrible as the 1948 war was and as horrible as all of that is, yeah, I do think that eventually people can get over that and move on. It's very, very painful.

Coleman Hughes [160:11] So not only that, but everyone else in an analysis situation from the 1940s has moved

Dave Smith [160:15] on. Yeah. But the other factor they are Coleman is that they occupied them militarily for 60 years,

Coleman Hughes [160:22] the longest military occupation in the world, this we have to talk about the 67 world. Why did that happen? Israel did not choose that war. I mean, I know you have this big end quote, but saying that Israel chose or or or you're not exactly saying this, but saying that because Egypt fired first, that therefore Israel caused the 67 war is as intellectually dishonest as saying that because Mexico fired first, Mexico caused the Mexican-American war. Now we all know that America wanted that war, that we put our troops in that territory that was contested and Texas said was theirs. Specifically, Ulysses S. Grant said exactly the plan was to get them to fire, and it was essential that they fire first, but we all know what the plan was. We wanted territory, okay? So you have everyone in the room from the Egyptian side, from the Jordanian side saying that Nasser knew if he closed the strait of Tehran that it was war. This is from Sadat's memoir, from Sadat who was in the room, his memoir.

Dave Smith [161:23] He goes familiar.

Coleman Hughes [161:24] Yeah, Nasser convened a meeting, the Supreme Executive Council. He said, now with our troops in the Sinai, the chances of war are 50-50. But if we close the strait, war will be a 100% certainty. Then he says to his general, are the forces ready, okay? And the king, King Hussain said he knew the same thing. So Israel was freaking out about this war. They didn't want this war. And on top of that, they gave Jordan every opportunity not to join in and even let them fire for a little bit, hoping that they would make a show of attacking from the West Bank and then save their pride. So that's how the West Bank came under Israeli occupation. And then immediately, Israelis proposed going into negotiations for land for peace. And what do the Arab countries do, the three knows of cartoon, no peace, no negotiation, no recognition. Yeah. That's all right. Okay, so then that is very important context for, first of all, how the occupation came to be. It was not by Israeli design. Israelis didn't want it. But some religious minorities wanted it, but-

Dave Smith [162:32] Yeah, but the difference here, Coleman, is that like, yeah, I can gladly concede all of that. Can I address my lead or your point? It's tragic. It's tragic how much this was all mishandled and what a devastation it was. And obviously, in hindsight, what a horrific decision for the Egyptians to begin provoking that war.

Coleman Hughes [162:49] Very great. Yeah. So, but you said earlier, basically, like you don't get to occupy people for, for this many years. And I get that, I get that. And my point is that, as I said earlier, Omar ran on a campaign of withdrawing from the West Bank out of this very, this exact impulse, this sense that we, we've got to give it a try, right? We've given, and he won. And then what undermined his ultimate plan to withdraw from the West Bank was the fact that right after he's elected, two things happened. There's a cross-border raid from Gaza, and Galad Shalik gets taken, and some other people get killed. And then there's a cross-border raid from Lebanon, where the Israelis had, had pulled out unilaterally just a few years ago. So what happened is that they have this twin example of a place that we've occupied, and a place that we've pulled out of. And we just got attacked from both of, both of the places that we unilaterally pulled out of. Now, can you understand how an Israeli voter would say, seeing this say, okay, you know, I was for the idea of pulling out of the West Bank, it kind of made sense to me, and just batting down the hatches, trying to play perfect defense. And then we pulled out of Gaza, and we pulled out of Lebanon, and instantly we get, not instantly, but in the same year, we get cross-border raids, we get rockets, and we have to go into bomb shelters. I don't think this unilateral withdrawal, withdrawal strategy works. I think we have to have a peace deal, and withdraw only in that context. You can sympathize with the, within an Israeli voter, with a family, living, who wants peace, but says, I'm not going to sign on to peace, unless it's going to be a real peace.

Dave Smith [164:42] Yeah. I can sympathize with them, but again, it's the only one side who you ever make an attempt to like-

Coleman Hughes [164:49] No, I already gave you a whole answer about what I would think- No, but Palestine.

Dave Smith [164:52] Yeah, but it's kind of nonsense. It's like, yeah, but when you sympathize with the Palestinians, you go, oh, man, I think if I were a Palestinian, I would really feel like my government really should do a better job, or my government, that Hamas should really do a better job, instead of just going like- No, I would be for a partition on either side. If I was- Dude, if I, if someone, I got, I have little kids. If someone had the value of life over my little kids, the way that all of you guys who support what Israel has been doing to Gaza for the last two years-

Coleman Hughes [165:22] I told you, Dave, I told you what I would say from a Palestinian perspective, and you are totally mischaracterizing what I said. What I said is that I would want Israel to end the war now, and then I would also want there to be some kind of massive effort to get rid of Hamas, because I would understand that my family would not have long-term peace until our regime was done with the forever war against Israel. Okay. That's what I said. Now, if you want to say that's disingenuous, a disingenuous version of a Palestinian, I don't think that's crazy.

Dave Smith [165:50] Okay. Let me just- I just gotta say- I'm listening to like everything you say. I feel like you're cutting me off every time I talk, so-

Coleman Hughes [165:56] I only did that because you mischaracterized what I said.

Dave Smith [165:58] Okay. No, I mean, I feel like every time, so anyway, but okay. I have little kids, if little kids are being killed the way little kids in Gaza are being killed right now, and that was just like acceptable. That's just what we have to do. I think I would probably join up with the most radical group I could find and try to kill as many Israelis as I could. Also, if I was in Israel, and one of those terrorists came over and killed one of my little kids, I think I would probably be supporting the destruction of the whole entire place. So yes, I can put myself in the situation of either one, and totally simple- and by the way, I mean, this is just also born out by opinion polls and stuff like that. Of course, we only talked about it from the Israeli side when we were saying that after the Second Intifada public support for a two-state solution really, really tanked, but also, you can go look at how, when the peace process fell apart, support for terrorists rose amongst the Palestinians, like when the peace process was on the table, Hamas had much less support, and when it fell apart, they got more support. The point is that there is this, listen, there was a plan with this movement of Zionism to create a Jewish state in the historic Palestine. It has always involved an enormous amount of force in order for the thing to be created. There has been Israel and the Palestinians essentially have been at war since 1947. I mean, there's flare-ups and there's times that are worse right now. It's the worst it's ever been. But that also really says something at the end of this project. We are Americans sitting halfway around the world. And I think that obviously our role here should be to say like, hey, let's try to de-escalate this thing. I can sympathize with people on both sides of this struggle. Obviously, horrific crimes have been committed by Arabs and by Israelis. The Palestinians have gotten the brunt of it far more of them have been killed. And far, they have been the losers in this conflict, obviously. But the fact is that my country may, I'm forced to prop this whole thing up. And I just think this is like appalling. I mean, look, there's just, with all of these problems, if you want to go back through history, and you want to always give the benefit of the doubt to Israel, and always focus on what all the Arabs have done that's wrong, you can do that. In conflicts like that, you can also do the opposite, which I see lots of people do. I actually think I'm much more of a moderate on this topic than most people see me as, but whatever. I'm not like the equal opposite version of that, which I see a lot of people are, refer to Hamas as freedom fighters and everything is it. There's been atrocities committed by both sides here. There's been bad decisions made by both sides. But the idea, dude, like, okay, even if you want to blame the 67 war on Egypt and Jordan, like, okay, there's a reasonable, there's a reasonable argument to be made for that. Even if you want to say, oh, they wanted to not occupy him for this long, you just get to a certain point. The thing, even when you're talking about heavy Egyptians and the Palestinians, you know, talking about the three nose, this was in, this was within like 20 years of the creation of the state of Israel. It was a new thing. When it's a new thing, people still want to undo the last thing. When you see it, like, even in the same way that like Republicans don't talk about repealing Obamacare anymore. It's just too old now, man. It's part of the system. That's not even a talking point anymore. It's a huge talking point in 2012, but it's just not anymore, okay? The thing is, Israel didn't occupy them for a few months after a war or even a few years after a war. They occupied them for 60 years. The Palestinians today, the, I don't know the exact numbers, the overwhelming majority of them, that's their entire life, whose their entire life has been living under foreign military occupation or under siege, complete domination from a foreign country. And that is just unacceptable. That is a status quo that just cannot be justified, much like the destruction of Gaza over the last two years. And like, as an American, I am outraged that we are forced to finance the thing and prop it up.

Coleman Hughes [170:26] So do you believe that Israel should withdraw from the West Bank unilaterally because people, you can't occupy another people for 60 odd years? So tell me what about the following sketch you find and what, what, what you would do in the following situation. Israel unilaterally, they listen to Dave Smith, they say, we got to get out of the West Bank, we got to do Olmer its convergence plan, regardless, it's just been too long, screw the trade-offs. Would you allow them to have border security with Jordan or no?

Dave Smith [171:02] I'm sorry, so it would allow the West Bank to have border security with Jordan.

Coleman Hughes [171:06] Would you allow Israel to have some control over the West Bank border with Jordan or no?

Dave Smith [171:11] Well, the West Bank work, so I'm sorry, I'm just, maybe I'm not following the question here. So they would give the Palestinians a state, but the Israel would control the Jordanian border, but this would be the border between the West Bank and Jordan, correct? Yeah. I guess not.

Coleman Hughes [171:27] I don't know. I don't know. Okay, so they withdraw from the West Bank, they don't control the border with Jordan. As would, as happened in Gaza, it's a fairly high probability that there would be some kind of civil war between Hamas, which is more popular in the West Bank than the Palestinian authority and the Palestinian authority. So there would be some kind of power struggle between Abbas and Fatah and Hamas on the other end. Now, it's possible that Fatah just wins and that would be a really good outcome, I think, for the Palestinians and the region, but they didn't win in Gaza and they don't have great state capacity, great security control regardless. So with no help from the IDF, the betting man would predict that Hamas takes over, if not the whole West Bank, then some Lebanon situation where they control territory within the West Bank. Now we know what Hamas wants to do. They've said they will do October 7th again and again and again, even knowing the ridiculous cost that's been imposed on Gaza in this war. And we know that it's very easy to smuggle weapons across the border with Jordan. There's been tons of problems with weapons smuggling in Jordan in the past. There's no reason Iran would not be able to help them. So what you have now is a situation where Hamas controls some territory in the West Bank. And this is not like, I don't think the scenario I'm sketching is the paranoid, the paranoid ramblings of someone in the Israeli security state. I think it's pretty much a center of the fairway prediction. It could go better, it could go worse. But now you have Hamas controlling strategic territory, high ground in the West Bank, much closer to Tel Aviv, maybe 45 miles from Tel Aviv with missiles, perhaps that could easily reach that. Eventually they're going to attack because this is who they are. What happens then? Is this an outcome, I mean, it will lead to another war and I don't know how bloody that war will be. I know it certainly won't be good for the Palestinians. And so do you feel any burden to defend what would you say when that day came? Would you say, actually I was wrong about unilateral withdrawal withdrawal from the West Bank or would you say, no, I was still right about it for the following reasons.

Dave Smith [174:11] I mean, you know, if things were different, we'd be having a different conversation. And if Israel did take the boot off the neck of the Palestinians and they started attacking Israel, well, then that sure would be a different conversation. But again, with the un falsifiable counterfactuals, or here's another scenario, it was like Egypt and they just didn't fight wars anymore. You know, I think there's a lot of reason as I was saying before getting into with the opinion polls where you see when the peace negotiations fall apart, support for Hamas goes up. You see this constantly, you see after October 7th, there was a rally around the flag effect in Israel. They saw this after 9-11 when George W. Bush had record high approval ratings. General Macrystal, not exactly a libertarian dove like myself, he was the one who coined the term insurgent math about Afghanistan. And this was not an ideal log of any sort, just somebody who wanted to win the war. And he was just saying, right, 10 minus 2 equals 20. You got a list of insurgents that were supposed to take out, but every time we strike them, a bunch of innocent people get killed. And then the list gets longer and longer and longer because people want to join up with the cause. And so this is, so essentially, I don't think it's the likely bat that things would be much, much worse. I think that what creates a lot of this, the terrorism is the, and again, like again, like I said, I still haven't gotten exactly like a coherent definition of terrorism or why the IDF isn't terrorist or what, you know what I mean? But violence is used by human beings because it's effective. And I think that the less, the less violence that the Palestinians were under at Israeli hands, the harder it would be for Hamas to rally people. The harder it would be to get people to go commit these acts. So again, look, like I give you the example of Egypt, which is a country that I don't think you would say doesn't have a radical Islam problem, you know what I mean? Like Hamas was born out of like a Muslim brotherhood offshoot essentially. Egypt is there. The biggest enemy of Israel, not an Arab enemy, the Arab enemy of Israel fought four wars with them in 20 something years. They've had peace ever since they gave up the land, so I think that's a very like, now

Coleman Hughes [176:33] if you want to say to me, they had peace ever since a leader came to power that decided to enough with the wars, Sadat came to Kinesid, taking massive risks, also his credit, and said, I'm sick of my people dying. You're sick of your people dying. We have to end this thing.

Dave Smith [176:54] I would love nothing more. I would love nothing more than to see a leader like that rise up amongst the Palestinians.

Coleman Hughes [177:00] I would love to see a leader like that, my brother's up in the Israeli government. That was the crucial element that allowed for peace to happen, and that does not exist in Hamas. Yeah. Okay, if I'm saying as recently as two months ago, we're going to do it again from the river to the sea. Okay. So a couple of things on the alternative.

Dave Smith [177:18] Hamas is not in power in the West Bank. This Hamas obstacle doesn't exist there. Now you may say they have a lot of support there, and that's true, and look, who knows what would happen, but let me refer, let me hit a couple of things here, okay? Number one, Hamas saying they're going to do October 7th over and over again is like, rather than they didn't say that, I don't think it's wise that they say that. They are clearly engaging in this strategy, very similar to Osama bin Laden's strategy of, you know, this is essentially what counterterrorism always is, right? It's asymmetrical warfare, and the reaction is in the reaction. You're always trying to, you know, like Osama bin Laden, and he wrote this himself and his son really wrote about what his dad told him on this, although that is hearsay, I guess. But the goal was never to destroy the United States of America by taking down the towers. The goal was to lower us into a war in Afghanistan and to bankrupt us there. And you can see where like, you know, okay, maybe that didn't exactly happen, but not so far off. And so obviously, I think the goal here from Hamas has been to get this overreaction from Israel and completely turn the global opinion against them, and they've been incredibly successful at doing that. Now obviously, there's, you know, anyway, so the point here being is that you're falling right into their trap, essentially when you do this, which is like the worst reaction you could have to it.

Coleman Hughes [178:56] But you're conceding then that Hamas is a psychologically different enemy than Egypt was, because Egypt's goal wasn't to attack Israel to provoke a response, kill a bunch of Egyptians and turn. They actually were like, we want to destroy Israel, we want to avenge 48. And when they realized they couldn't do that and we're suffering an intolerable cost in civilian casualties, they changed course and haven't fought a war with Israel since. Now, this is a very important point because it shows that the psychology of the enemy is extremely important in determining whether a peace deal is possible. Now, I think part of the crux of your disagreement with me is that I think if a frozen conflict were possible, if this could become like North Korea, South Korea, Israel would have a massive moral obligation to go for that right now, to save Palestinian lives and prevent further bloodshed. But with an enemy that is psychologically different from Egypt and precisely the way I just described, there is no such thing as a frozen conflict because the only way you get to a frozen conflict, you don't get to a frozen conflict in Korea because they have a big wall. Like, you know, North Korea has a bunch of missiles pointed at Seoul. They could launch them today and hit Seoul. It's not about the wall, even though it's super high tech. It's not about, it's about the fact that North Korea's psychologically is actually deterred by what would happen to them if they attack South Korea. Now, the problem with Hamas and why it can't become a frozen conflict until either Hamas has a change of mindset, which there's no evidence of, or Hamas is replaced by the Palestinians who actually do have a different mindset, is because they are literally not deterred by any action that Israel could possibly take. There is no human toll in Gaza high enough, I think, for Hamas to be deterred. And therefore, there is no reason for them to accept a frozen conflict. And it doesn't matter how big that wall is, it doesn't matter if Israel spends another billion on that wall just like they did in 2021. Hamas will hack that wall again. They'll find the new weakness, which is because that's the nature of physical barriers. It's never perfect.

Dave Smith [181:18] Yeah, but I don't know. I mean, I, I, I somewhat agree with your point, but also it should be like clarified that that doesn't at all mean that another October 7th is even remotely likely. I mean, this was the bit, you know, like the thing Charlie Kirk got a, the clip that's been going super viral of him on Patrick Bettevich when his first reaction to October 7th was like, did someone give a stand-down order or something like that, which I'm not claiming that's the case, but it would be interesting to see like a real investigation of October 7th at one point in how Israel had such an unbelievable failure that day. But Hamas says, yes, you're, you're, you're right in the sense of like seeping through the cracks, like getting an attack off here or there, but Hamas had never pulled anything

Coleman Hughes [182:03] like that. Like it's thousands of rockets.

Dave Smith [182:05] Yeah, but I'm just saying that I said never pulled anything, whatever your own technology,

Coleman Hughes [182:09] they could.

Dave Smith [182:10] Never pulled anything like October 7th off before and it was a massive failure on Israeli security in order to allow that to happen. But just again, just to be clear here, this, because this is always the Israeli perspective that like, oh, it's a, we don't have the partner for peace. And then of course, as you know, because we've gone through some of these quotes, there's a whole bunch of times where the Israeli leadership is talking about how they're working to make sure they don't have a partner for peace, because then they could throw their hands up and say, see, we can just maintain the status quo now. And that the, you know, the Americans will back it up, which is what's required for the whole thing to happen. But look, you don't need a partner to end the occupation and return to 67 borders, or to give citizenship to the people who live under your control. You don't need a partner for that. Israel can decide to do that on their own. And if they were to decide to do that, listen, I'll say this, okay? On top of just like, because you said Israel has, I think Israel has an enormous moral obligation to end the destruction of Gaza and end the occupations of Gaza and the West Bank. That's, you know, I think. So what? Affirmative. Hold on. I'm not done. So let me just make my point. I think at this point, Israel deciding to do that right now is probably their only chance to not lose the world forever. Like it is just, it is hard to overstate. I'm sure you're aware of it, Coleman, because you're in this world. It is so hard to overstate how much support for Israel has evaporated amongst young people in America. And that's just America over the rest of the world. I mean, they're just like unanimously or damn near unanimously hated. And so Israel could do that. They could do that tomorrow. This is their decision to continue a 60 year occupation into the foreseeable future. And you know, as to your point, like, because look, I was saying that I do think there's reason to believe that, like, there would be less terrorism without the occupation than there is with the occupation. But I will say, like, I don't, you know, I can't with certainty predict the future. Okay. Well, I'll wrap up real quick here, but I'll say, like, even if, like, you know, look, that a lot of horrible things have been done to the Palestinians over the last 80 years. And there might be a lot of anger going forward. Now, your point about the differences between, like, black leadership post-slavery is well taken and fair enough, but I still think there was probably a real concern that, like, you free all these slaves. And what if one of them gets a gun and wants to come kill me? I would, I enslaved him in his family for 20 years, like, there could still be a concern there. But the bottom line is that, like, you can't just essentially enslave millions of people because you're worried about a violence problem. Any more than we would accept the solution to, like, the gun violence in Chicago being, like, we're just going to start drone bombing city blocks or something like that. Like, no, you don't get to just, like, rob millions of people of their most basic fundamental human rights because you're worried about a problem that might arise in the future. You know, if Israel returned to 67 borders and they allowed a government to be created in the West Bank and that government attacked Israel, we're having a new conversation there. And that would be a conversation where Israel might be able to win over support around the world again because they could go, look, we took our boot off the neck and look, we got proven right or something like that. So I wouldn't advise Israel to put their guns down. I wouldn't advise Israel to open their borders. But yeah, they could end this occupation. That's their choice.

Coleman Hughes [185:38] Yeah. So I mean, I fear we're going in circles here, but, you know, that is what Israel is, it Israeli would say they did in 2005. Like we left, we left Gaza, we left Lebanon and where are the places we're getting attacked from most, not the West Bank, not the place we're occupying, but the places we left, including the places like Lebanon, where they're not even Palestinian, right? They're not even Palestinian, they're not even Sunni, they have their land, we don't want their land, we, you know, and so if I were living there, I would say, okay, Dave Smith is telling me that if we was drawn from the West Bank, if we end the occupation, we'll have a much lower chance of terror than if we keep the occupation. But the evidence of my eyes and ears and everything around me is that we are getting attacked precisely from the places that we leave and less so from the places that we're occupying. And if I put my shoes, myself and those shoes, I say, well, why should I buy this guy's theory? This guy, you know, this guy, he thinks he understands the psychology of the enemy we're facing. But all of the evidence points in the opposite direction and why with all the marbles, with my family security on the line, would I gamble on getting a little bit more sympathy from the world that seems pretty unsympathetic, frankly, you know, like more UN resolutions against Israel than every country, like that seems a little bit, a little bit of a signal of where a world opinion is coming from. Why would I gamble my family's life on whether some Westerners like me a little more, when the consequence of a war with an independent West Bank could be catastrophic. And so in every other situation, such as with Sudan, these things come in the form of peace treaties. They come in the form of peace treaties, not unilateral decisions because that has the best chance of creating a stable peace. And you can't have a peace treaty if one of the belligerents, because if for ideological reasons, can't agree to a peace treaty.

Dave Smith [188:02] Okay. Fine. But even if you look again, I could put myself in the perspective of that Israeli, sure, I could feel the way. No, we're not going to let him go because I have too many security concerns. And then I can also put myself in the perspective of a Palestinian who goes, oh, so it's the status quo and I just have to watch my family get slaughtered. I'm going to grab a gun and go kill everything that moves. You know, yes. I'm not going to let myself in all of their perspectives. I'm not in any of their perspectives. I'm an American who's the one who's forced to pay for this whole thing. So to that Israeli who says, why do I care what an American thinks of me? Fine. Don't care what an American thinks of me. Stop taking our money and support. Can I ask you, Coleman? Like, honestly, what do you think would happen if America cut off all support for Israel? And I mean, all support. I mean, when the rockets come flying at you, you want to bomb around and then there's hundreds of rockets flying back at you, shoot them down yourself. We're not figuring that out for you. The billions of dollars that you get every year, you're not getting any of that anymore. The weapons that you get every year, you're not getting any of that anymore. The intelligence. I'm tired of all this stuff. I don't have any problem with that. No, well, what do you think? What do you think would happen to Israel if America just didn't support them at all? I'm not sure. I think they would be. We're not vetoing resolutions at the UN for you. Are you asking me? Or? Yeah. No, I'm just, I was just adding another, another element. We're not going to veto resolutions at the UN. Like, literally no support from America.

Coleman Hughes [189:19] My guess is what would happen is they would survive as a state. They'd figure it out and they'd be in a less, a less advantageous negotiating position and the conflict would last a much longer time because the Palestinians would say our strategy's working. The terrorism is working. Look, we got America to disengage. Full steam ahead, boys.

Dave Smith [189:43] So it would last a little longer time. It's lasted since the creation of Israel so far.

Coleman Hughes [189:48] No, I know. So Sudan was at war for 55 years and then they had a peace treaty. Let's not act like this has no possible horizon of solution.

Dave Smith [189:56] No, I agree with that.

Coleman Hughes [189:57] No, I agree with that. My point is simply on the margin, if America disengages, Israel would survive, they'll figure it out. America didn't give them a penny in the 1948 war and they won and I'm not at all opposed to stopping aid. But I think on balance that would send a signal to Hamas that the terrorism strategy is working, exhibit A, we got America to disengage by this strategy. So let's keep on doing it. We're pushing in the right direction which would have an effect to prolong the conflict rather than by making it seem like they have more leverage in their own mind. So I don't think that would necessarily be a good thing for all the people living there but if that answer, is that answer unreasonable to you?

Dave Smith [190:41] No, I think that's a reasonable answer. I was just curious like what you're taking as I think Israel as it exists, like I think you're probably right. I think Israel probably survives but I think that what you say as they would be, have a less advantageous negotiating position, I think means like they'd have to just make a deal. They'd have to finally make a deal and not be able to continue the status quo. Look, if you're going to say, what would the deal be? I think the deal would be the one you mean like a two-state deal? It's something, something like that ending the occupation, some type of compromise. I think if you're going to say that, essentially if I'm correct, if I'm wrong but if I'm understanding your point correctly, you're going to say that, look, so your response to me is that like, okay, yes, technically Israel could just stop occupying, like Israel could just themselves retreat to 67 borders and stop occupying Palestinian territory but it would be a better, more long-term peace if there was also a partner for peace who goes, okay, we're also on board with this deal and we make guarantees that we won't attack you and stuff like that. I can roughly, I think accept that, that like, yeah, it would be better off if you had to, but okay, so let's say I grant that, you don't have that partner on the other side. So now the choice is between you ending the occupation or continuing this indefinitely. And I think that for all the time we put ourselves in the Israeli perspectives, if you just for a second put yourself in the Palestinian perspective, you could see how unreasonable it is to expect them to accept that, that you got to stop first. Like you can't ever violently resist even though you're violently occupied by a brutal foreign army or in the case of Gaza, just having your, like, the destruction of the whole strip. I just think like, out of those two options, one is so obviously preferable and morally superior to the other.

Coleman Hughes [192:40] No, see, I actually disagree with this because, and this is good, that this is part of the crux of maybe my disagreement. So I'll give an analogy, and I hope it doesn't seem too glib, but I'm half Puerto Rican.

Dave Smith [192:57] Puerto Rican is the oldest, sorry, I just thought it'd be funny if you go on half Puerto Rican. I don't talk to Puerto Ricans. And that's left. That was my line. No one told me.

Coleman Hughes [193:08] So go ahead. Okay. So Puerto Rico is the oldest longstanding colony in the world. They don't vote for president. There was terrorism for a while and then it went away. And Puerto Ricans asked for independence in, you know, in the 1910s, America said no. And eventually, slowly, Puerto Ricans warmed up to the idea that actually all things considered, it was better to have an American passport and American citizenship than it was to have independence. Even though all of, there's no lack of pride. There is no lack of, you know, the, you know, America like banned the Puerto Rican flag in the, in the 1940s and 50s, like there was a no lack of boot on the throat in the, in the colonizing. But there was a decision made after a certain point that actually, you know what, shit, we're doing better than Cuba. We're doing better than Dominican Republic. We're, matter of fact, we're doing better than every island in the Caribbean. And the bread and butter kitchen table issue, we're never going to get attacked because we've got military base here, even though the military base was also like giving some of them cancer. So again, this is, these are the trade-offs that real people living through real history make. For, forget independence, we'll, we'll screw it. We'll be a colony and we'll call it a Commonwealth to kind of swallow our pride a little bit. But that's why I'm in front of you today. That's why my grandparents were able to even, even move to this country. And so if I'm thinking, what would I think if I lived right now in the West Bank? And obviously, far be it for me or you to truly speculate what folks over there are thinking. But in so far as I could put myself in anyone's shoes, I would think that, hey, I'm looking at my co-ethnic Palestinians in Gaza. I'm looking at people living in South Lebanon and I'm saying, well, yeah, we don't have our independence. We don't, in some way, we don't have pride without getting the Israeli boot off of our throat. But all things considered, the situation I'm in right now is one of humiliation, but no war relative to Gaza. If Israel withdraws, I know very well Hamas is going to, it's going to be a civil war. It's going to be a civil war where I live that could kill me or my children. And then there's pretty solid odds that it would become a war with Israel. And so you're, you're, you have like a forced choice between two dog shit alternatives. And it would not surprise me one bit if Palestinians in the West Bank took the opposite side of that choice that you're assuming they would take.

Dave Smith [196:02] Okay. So give them the choice then because that is the choice that Puerto Rican's made in the

Coleman Hughes [196:06] longest standing colony in the world. You know, that's why I use that example.

Dave Smith [196:10] Yeah, I understand. I understand your point. And so like, yeah, if you want it like, if there was an occupation, if you want to call that, you know, exactly, I don't know if you call it an occupation of Puerto Rico. But if there was an occupation that was not brutal and that increased the standard of living amongst the people, I'm like, yeah, there probably would be less resistance to it. But if you're going to say that like the people in the West Bank might choose to live under Israeli occupation, like, okay, let's give them the choice.

Coleman Hughes [196:41] No, no, no. So not choose on a menu of great alternatives, choose between a forced choice and that in civil war.

Dave Smith [196:48] I'm saying, well, yes, but you've, you've baked your conclusion, you know, into that, like, it's not a guarantee that this would be a civil war. Why don't we give them a choice? Why don't we hold a referendum? Would you like to be an independent state or would you like to remain militarily occupied by Israel? And if you suspect that maybe they would vote, remaining occupied, I'd happily eat crow on that if the referendum came back in your favor, but it won't, it won't come back overwhelmingly that they want to be independent.

Coleman Hughes [197:20] Fair, but democracies make terrible decisions all the time. So A, before and brother, we can agree on that. Last topic before we wrap, I have to wrap within the next 10 minutes I'm told otherwise I would go for longer. Maybe we'll do it again at another point. Absolutely. I just want to get you on Iran. So you've been, what is your argument against, because a lot of, you're an anti-war guy, which I get, you're against civilian casualties, which I really get. But then we have an example where we bomb Iran's nuclear facility, prevent this regime from getting nukes, which I would think an anti-war guy would be totally for, with no casualties that I have seen reported, zero casualties, and yet you still seem to be against it. So what's your view on that?

Dave Smith [198:06] Well, there weren't zero casualties in what's now being called the 12-day war. I think you're referring to the American bombings, like the bunker about the bombings. That's what I said. But there were Iranian and Israeli casualties in that war, which is tragic. I think we've lived through such a period of catastrophic wars that it's almost like that, I don't know, that's just like not thought of as very meaningful, because the numbers weren't like alarmingly high, but there's real people and real family members who lost people they loved over that.

Coleman Hughes [198:39] You're a specifically the strike on the nuclear facilities that had no casualties. That's what I'm asking you.

Dave Smith [198:43] Sure, sure. But I mean, look, the thing happened in the context of this 12-day war, but specifically about the strikes on the nuclear facilities, I mean, look, it does not, Joseph Stalin developed nuclear weapons and American knew that he was developing them. Now, St. Tongue, the worst man who's ever lived, developed nuclear weapons and American knew they were developing. We didn't launch an aggressive preemptive war over it, and so no, I don't think it would. And the other thing is that, first of all, Iran had not developed nuclear weapons, and they were at the negotiating table. And so you've got them at the negotiating table, specifically negotiating, you know, everybody was making such a big deal out of this 60% enriched uranium. They weren't enriching up to that percentage until Obama walked away from the JCPOA. They were at the negotiating table, specifically negotiating, getting back into that deal, which we already know the Iranians agreed to just a few years ago, right? Or I guess, I'm old, a little more than a few years ago, but back in the Obama administration. And so no, the obvious move there was to pursue this diplomatic strategy, and we could have avoided a nuclear around without having to go to war. And my argument at the time, and I think my argument continues to be, well, first of all, we really don't know, like, whether we're at half time of this thing, and certainly, you know, every comment from Benjamin Netanyahu about it so far has left the door wide open. And in fact, when he was on, I believe it was when he was being interviewed by Patrick David, and he was not talking about how a fat, you know, like the first day, it's so weird the way the war stuff works. But like, after the first Israeli strike, the Israeli government and all the pro-Israeli people on Twitter are bragging about how Israel just totally dismantled Iran's nuclear program, and they didn't even need American help. Then two days later, it's like, well, we actually need these bunker busters. Then everybody's bragging about how they've been totally decimated their nuclear program. As soon as Benjamin Netanyahu was on patch, but David, it's like a few weeks after the thing, then he's like, oh, no, they're still developing intercontinental ballistic missiles. Their nuclear program is still, they're still going to get that up and running. He started talking about how they can strike Florida, which I don't, I've never heard anyone claim, but okay. And so who knows what's going to come of this, you know, like this might still turn into something really bad. Can I say something? Well, let me just, this will be my last point in it. My argument was always that you really risk catastrophe every time you do one of these things. You know, these wars can escalate very easily. And what happened was Iran for obvious self preservation interests, essentially what gave like advanced notice and made sure that no Americans were killed in their retaliation. If they had not done that, I think there's really no question, like if they had killed, which every military expert I've heard talk about this, as always said, around has the capability of touching American military bases all over the region. If they had done that, I think Trump would have at that point had no choice but to respond with a much bigger response. And this could have spiraled into a regime change, which going back to the beginning portion of the show is something that I believe that a whole lot of powerful people, including neo conservatives and Benjamin Netanyahu, have wanted in that country for quite a long

Coleman Hughes [202:08] time. I do find it interesting that three or four times during this conversation, you have dismissed my arguments as counterfactuals that didn't actually happen or projections into the future that are speculative. Yet your argument against Iran is counterfactual could have been a lot worse if they had done this. They have zigged instead of zagged and speculative into the future. It could get a lot worse. So that I think that's an inconsistency in your case. But I'd like to ask you a question. We can argue till the cows come home about whether Iran negotiating in good faith or are they not. But how I think as a Bayesian is like, we've got 20 countries or so in the history of the world that I've enriched uranium to various percentages for various different purposes. So if we're trying to divine Iran's intentions, can you name me a single country in the history of nuclear proliferation that has enriched kilograms of uranium to 60% and then not gone on to create a bomb? And if you can answer that for me, I'm on your side of this.

Dave Smith [203:16] Okay. Well, I don't know. I don't know. The answer is zero. Yeah. Okay.

Coleman Hughes [203:22] So you're asking me to believe that something which has never happened before in the history of nuclear proliferation is being done right now in Iran by the same regime that supports Hezbollah that used to fly parades with mushroom clouds. And I say to you, like, I wasn't born yesterday, I don't buy it. There's nothing in the history of geopolitics and nuclear proliferation that leads me to your faith in that, that they are negotiating in good faith, not in the fact that the international body, whose job it is to keep tabs on this, formally condemn them last year and just before the war and over and over and over again.

Dave Smith [204:00] Okay. I have zero faith in the Iranian regime and none of my arguments are based off of faith. In fact, I think I had a lot less faith in the regime and that's why I was concerned that they would strike back and touch Americans after this. But or kill Americans, I should say. As far as your first point, it's like, yes, I guess it is true that like I criticize some of your points for being unfalseifiable hypotheticals or counterfactuals rather. I don't know. It's just, it's a little different to say that like, oh, if America pulled back, then China takes over the world or something like that, then to say like, hey, look, there was this Iranian response that was very obviously intentionally designed so that it wouldn't escalate the war, that it wouldn't kill Americans and then get them their regime overthrown. I think to say, imagine they didn't do that, things could be worse is not that crazy of a counterfactual. So, I guess to my argument is not that counterfactuals may never, ever once be uttered. I'm just saying that like, no, no, no, there's kind of a lot of times you can make wild assumptions of unfuelsifiable counterfactuals and then other times there are counterfactuals that are like, hey, just imagine they did this instead of that, this thing could have gotten a lot worse. Again, to the point, none of this is happening in a vacuum. And the fact is that you can't ignore the fact that after 9-11, George W. Bush puts a ran on the axis of evil list, even though they had absolutely nothing to do with 9-11, and then invades their two next-door neighbor countries and destroys them, okay? Like that is a big part of what's at play here in the Iranian mindset. And so it's not crazy that as a response to this, both North Korea and Iran have been looking for a nuke, I mean, or flirting with the idea of nuke or at least, well, I would say certainly, look, I'm not even like certainly letting the world know that we could go nuclear. We have that option. Like that is clearly what Iran has been doing this whole time. The point is that I'm not having faith in the Iranian regime. I'm saying that they were in negotiations. They had already agreed to the JCPOA under Obama and had drastically lowered, or they had their enrichment levels were drastically lower than they are now, and they're at the negotiating table. Negotiations hadn't even fallen apart. They had another meeting scheduled for like within the next 24 or 48 hours when Israel first attacked them. So if the big concern is if, which we all forget whether you call yourself anti-war or not, everybody ought to be anti-war as their default position, like you ought to try to avoid a war if it's possible. If the concern is they're going nuclear, is that you think they're going to develop nuclear weapons, they're at the negotiating table right now. And I got to say, I also just find which, you know, it was a little bit weird because there were kind of like mixed signals out of the Trump administration. And you know, there, whatever, there was different reporting about exactly what happened. But Donald Trump essentially said that like, yeah, we use the negotiations as a ruse to let Israel go launch this strike when they wouldn't suspect it. And I do just find that to be disgustingly dishonorable for the way you would want your country to act. No, there's, again, I'm not relying on a crazy, unfalsifiable counterfactual. I'm saying that launching a war can turn into a catastrophe. We've seen that seven times in the last 25 years. And this was a dangerous move to do against a country that did not have nuclear weapons that, according at least to the annual threat assessment from earlier in the year, had not even made the political decision to acquire nuclear weapons. And was at the negotiating table negotiating this issue, negotiating their level of enriched uranium. It was a crazy move to me to just launch a war in that situation. And it should also be pointed out that Israel after America dropped those bunker bombs, Israel just started bombing regime targets. Nothing to do with their nuclear capabilities. And also Israel called up and threatened all the generals and their families. Like it did sure seem like they were hoping to get a regime change there. And maybe I'd ask you this. Like do you think, do you think if Netanyahu had his way, which again actually kind of proves your point from earlier in a sense when that I agree with, that I do think people who like I'm broadly speaking my side of this issue overstate the case a lot. It's not that Israel owns our government or has full control. I know that's not true for a fact because I know we would have overthrown the regime in Iran if Netanyahu had full control of our government. But like if, you know, if Donald Trump, remember he had that vague tweet about regime change in the middle of the war, let's say he had just gone all in and said, you know what, we're overthrown the regime there. Do you think Netanyahu would have gone along with that? You think he would have been happy? I sure do. I think there are. I think there are. A lot of people. What's the point? The point is that there are a lot of people, powerful people who would be quite happy to see America get bogged down and yet another regime change catastrophe in the Middle East. And I'm against that passionately.

Coleman Hughes [209:19] Yeah. Okay. So we're going, I don't want to go in circles. Dave Smith, thank you for doing this. Maybe we'll do this again. And there's a lot more to talk about. People can follow you at, at Comic Dave Smith on Twitter slash X. Your podcast is called Part of the Problem. And do you have anything else to plug?

Dave Smith [209:40] No, that's fine. I just, I will say that I really appreciate you having me on. I appreciate the, just kind of the nature in which you conduct these conversations. And so let me know. Happy to do it again. Okay. Cool. Thank you, Dave.

Coleman Hughes [209:54] All right. Thanks, Coleman. Have a good one.

The Question at the Heart of the Debate

How should moral responsibility be allocated-and policy chosen-when security, sovereignty, and human rights collide in asymmetric conflicts?

What this analysis found

Coleman argues that peace requires deterrence, credible partners, and enforceable security conditions; Dave argues that occupation and empire are morally indefensible and strategically self-defeating. The analysis found they weren’t really debating whether civilians matter — both were trying to prevent civilians from being turned into leverage. They were debating which catastrophe should be prevented first: Coleman fears a security vacuum captured by maximalist actors, while Dave fears a permanent emergency that turns “security” into an endlessly renewable license for domination. The missing object was an exit architecture: a concrete sequence that could end occupation without simply handing the future to the most violent faction.

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Coleman Hughes

3.5Formal/Systemicreasoning

3.5Rationalworldview

What do these labels mean? →

Dave Smith

3.0Abstractreasoning

3.0Ideologicalworldview

What do these labels mean? →

Good-Faith Summary

He argues that durable peace depends on deterrence and credible partners; ideology and incentives can make some actors non-negotiable, so withdrawals without enforceable security can backfire catastrophically.

Good-Faith Summary

He argues that occupation and large-scale coercion are morally indefensible and strategically radicalizing; Israel must withdraw or annex with equal rights, and the U.S. should stop enabling empire and war.

3.5Humanist

Security

3.5Humanist

Responsibility

3.5Formal/Systemic

Ideology

3.5Rational

Sovereignty

Freedom

3.5Social Contract

Restraint

3.5Social Contract

Grievance

3.0Abstract

Order

3.5Rational

Epistemic Style

Prefers archives, memoirs, comparative cases, and probabilistic inference; presses for disconfirmers and operational definitions.

Epistemic Style

Privileges moral legitimacy and historical pattern over institutional records; uses analogies and track-record inference, with selective citation.

The Tell

He repeatedly returns to “name a country” style base-rate tests when intent claims get slippery.

The Tell

He repeatedly returns to “boot on these people’s neck” as the decisive moral discriminator when security tradeoffs are raised.

Synthesis

He is protecting the need for enforceable equilibrium conditions, without which “peace” becomes a pause before the next mass-casualty cycle.

Synthesis

He is protecting the demand for non-domination as a hard limit, without which security becomes an endlessly renewable license for atrocity.

Coleman Hughes

3.5Formal/Systemicreasoning

3.5Rationalworldview

What do these labels mean? →

Good-Faith Summary

Security

3.5Humanist

Responsibility

3.5Humanist

Ideology

3.5Formal/Systemic

Sovereignty

3.5Rational

Epistemic Style

Prefers archives, memoirs, comparative cases, and probabilistic inference; presses for disconfirmers and operational definitions.

The Tell

He repeatedly returns to “name a country” style base-rate tests when intent claims get slippery.

Synthesis

He is protecting the need for enforceable equilibrium conditions, without which “peace” becomes a pause before the next mass-casualty cycle.

Dave Smith

3.0Abstractreasoning

3.0Ideologicalworldview

What do these labels mean? →

Good-Faith Summary

Freedom

3.5Social Contract

Restraint

3.5Social Contract

Grievance

3.0Abstract

Order

3.5Rational

Epistemic Style

Privileges moral legitimacy and historical pattern over institutional records; uses analogies and track-record inference, with selective citation.

The Tell

He repeatedly returns to “boot on these people’s neck” as the decisive moral discriminator when security tradeoffs are raised.

Synthesis

He is protecting the demand for non-domination as a hard limit, without which security becomes an endlessly renewable license for atrocity.

Highlights

The moments that matter most

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The Debate Changed Subjects

They start on blame and end on sequencing

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Every debate has a surface argument and a deeper one. This section maps both — what each speaker is explicitly claiming, what they're actually trying to protect, and where their real disagreement lives. Start here to understand what's actually at stake before the analysis begins.

Coleman Hughes

Coleman Hughes’ core claim is that durable peace in Israel–Palestine (and more broadly in asymmetric conflicts involving jihadist actors) is constrained less by “understandable grievance” than by the presence of ideologically committed groups that cannot be bargained with in the normal nation-state framework. He repeatedly returns to the idea that grievances alone do not explain the intensity and form of violence (e.g., 9/11; Hamas’ stated intent to repeat Oct 7), and that ideology (Salafi-jihadism in the al-Qaeda case; Hamas’ maximalism in Gaza) is a necessary ingredient. Under this view, policy must be designed around deterrence, state capacity, and the reality that some actors treat civilian suffering as instrumentally useful rather than as a deterrent.

His motivational stakes are largely about preventing moral reasoning from becoming strategically naïve: he seems to fear that “empathy-first” narratives (or anti-intervention reflexes) can unintentionally reward terror incentives, weaken the legitimacy of sovereign agreements, and produce worse long-run outcomes for both Israelis and Palestinians. He also appears to be protecting a worldview in which international order depends on treating recognized governments and formal agreements as more authoritative than non-state violent vetoes. A recurring anxiety is that if policy is set by whoever can credibly threaten civilians, the system collapses into permanent blackmail.

His dominant narrative metaphor is “deterrence and incentives in a world of imperfect actors”: peace is a negotiated equilibrium, not a moral wish. He uses analogies like South Korea vs. Saudi Arabia to isolate the “extra ingredient” of ideology; Gaza/Lebanon vs. West Bank to argue that unilateral withdrawal can increase attacks; and nuclear proliferation history (“Bayesian” reasoning) to argue Iran’s enrichment signals intent. The strongest version of his argument is: Israel (and the U.S.) should pursue peace where a credible partner exists, but must not treat maximalist actors as if they are normal negotiating counterparts; withdrawals and concessions without enforceable security arrangements can predictably empower the most rejectionist factions, leading to repeated war cycles that ultimately harm civilians most.

A tension in his position is that he sometimes frames his approach as hard-nosed realism (deterrence, incentives, historical base rates), while also making moral claims about obligation (e.g., “we have to be on the side of the elements… trying to bring their countries forward”). This can blur whether he is arguing primarily from consequentialist security logic or from a normative commitment to a particular kind of international order. Another internal tension is his reliance on “what would happen” projections (e.g., Hamas takeover of the West Bank) while criticizing Dave for counterfactual reasoning—though Coleman tries to ground his projections in recent precedent (Gaza/Lebanon).

Dave Smith

Dave Smith’s core claim is that U.S. and Israeli policy in the Middle East is best explained by power, domination, and predictable blowback: violence against civilians is primarily grievance-driven, and large-scale interventions/occupations reliably generate radicalization and retaliation. He argues that the U.S. should adopt a non-interventionist posture rooted in constitutional limits and a moral aversion to empire; and that Israel has a moral obligation to end the destruction of Gaza and end the occupation (or else annex and grant equal rights). In his framing, the central moral failure is indefinite subjugation: “you can’t keep your boot on these people’s neck forever.”

His motivational and emotional stakes center on preventing what he sees as normalized atrocity under the banner of “security,” and on resisting narratives that, in his view, launder domination into necessity. He repeatedly signals disgust at what he experiences as asymmetric moral accounting: Israelis’ fears are treated as dispositive while Palestinians’ lived conditions are treated as secondary or as a mere “cost of security.” He also protects an American civic identity story: the U.S. was not meant to be an empire; wars of choice are unconstitutional, corrupting, and domestically destructive (debt, moral injury, suicides, institutional rot).

His dominant narrative metaphor is “blowback and the empire”: interventions create enemies; occupations create insurgencies; and elites rationalize this cycle with ideology talk. He treats Hamas (and al-Qaeda) less as sui generis ideological anomalies and more as predictable products of oppression plus opportunistic leadership—often describing them as a “death cult” but still downstream of conditions. The strongest version of his argument is: even if jihadist ideology matters, the decisive variable the U.S./Israel can control is their own coercive footprint; reducing domination reduces recruitment and removes the moral pretext for violence; and regardless of predicted risks, indefinite occupation is morally indefensible—states must choose either equal citizenship (one state) or genuine withdrawal (two states).

A tension in Dave’s position is that he oscillates between (a) a principled deontic claim (“occupation is unacceptable regardless of consequences”) and (b) an empirical consequentialist claim (“ending occupation will likely reduce terrorism”). When pressed with scenarios where withdrawal could plausibly increase violence, he tends to treat them as speculative counterfactuals—yet he also uses counterfactual escalation arguments (Iran retaliation could have killed Americans; Wesley Clark “decisions made” story) when they support his anti-war stance. Another tension is his “Israel lobby/Israel got us into Iraq” thesis: he insists it’s not a simplistic “Israel controls everything” claim, but his evidentiary chain sometimes leans on broad category expansions (neocons as “part of the Israel lobby”) and on contested/secondhand accounts (Wesley Clark), which makes his causal attribution vulnerable.

Good arguments can still contain weak evidence, logical slippage, or rhetorical moves that substitute for reasoning. This section examines each speaker's argumentative integrity — not to declare a winner, but to identify where the strongest and weakest links are in each case.

Coleman Hughes

Coherence strengths
Coleman’s arguments are generally structured around isolating causal variables and testing them with comparative cases (South Korea vs. Saudi Arabia; Egypt blockade vs. Israel blockade; Gaza/Lebanon withdrawal vs. West Bank occupation). He consistently emphasizes incentives, deterrence, and the problem of negotiating with actors who reject the negotiating premise. He also shows a pattern of tightening definitions midstream (e.g., clarifying he means “ideology” broadly, not only Sunni Islam), which improves internal coherence.

Weaknesses and logical issues

Overconfident causal necessity claims: Coleman asserts that “take away” Salafi-jihadist ideology and 9/11 would not have happened even if U.S. policy remained the same. That’s plausible but stated with a level of certainty that exceeds what the transcript evidences; it’s a strong counterfactual claim without a clear empirical warrant.
Potential selection effects in “science experiment” framing: The Egypt-vs-Israel blockade comparison is rhetorically powerful, but the inference “therefore Hamas’ motivations are entirely about Jewish sovereignty” may overreach. Different constraints, capabilities, and strategic incentives vis-à-vis Egypt vs. Israel could also contribute (even if ideology is central).
Occasional rhetorical escalation: He calls Dave’s reliance on Wesley Clark “ridiculous” and implies it would be unusable by any historian; this is partly a methodological critique but also functions as delegitimizing rhetoric.
Empirical claims that would benefit from sourcing: He cites lobbying totals, memo “snowflake” volume, and specific dates (e.g., Rice saying Iraq decision made Sept 7, 2002) with confidence. They may be accurate, but in-transcript they’re not fully sourced beyond “Washington Post” or “opensecrets,” and some are used as decisive knockdowns.

Epistemic style
Primarily evidence- and institution-referential (memoirs, archives, opensecrets, historical analogies) combined with rationalist “base rate/Bayesian” reasoning. He also uses moral reasoning, but it is usually subordinated to strategic/incentive analysis. He treats formal sovereignty and state legitimacy as key epistemic anchors.

Dave Smith

Coherence strengths
Dave’s case is anchored in a consistent anti-interventionist ethic: war and occupation are morally corrosive, strategically counterproductive, and domestically illegitimate (constitutional/consent-based critique). He is strong at pointing to repeated historical failures of intervention and at highlighting asymmetric suffering and moral inconsistency. He also occasionally concedes nuance (e.g., dictators can be preferable to “bin Ladenites”; Liberia “worked out fairly well” though he wouldn’t have supported it; Israel doesn’t control everything).

Weaknesses and logical issues

Evidentiary fragility / hearsay reliance: The Wesley Clark “seven countries” account is explicitly secondhand; Dave treats its partial “coming true” as strong corroboration. Coleman’s critique that this is weak historical evidence is methodologically fair. Dave’s defense (“I’m not a historian”) doesn’t resolve the epistemic weakness when the claim is used to support a sweeping narrative of pre-planned regime change.
Category expansion / definitional drift: He treats “neocons” as part of the “Israel lobby” because they are pro-Israel, which risks a category error: ideological alignment is not identical to lobbying power or causal control. This is central to his “Israel got us into Iraq” thesis and is where his argument is most vulnerable.
Unsourced or overstated empirical claims: Examples include “a million people would still be alive” (Iraq), “tens of thousands… committed suicide,” “Israel introduced terrorism,” and broad claims about global opinion unanimity. Some are directionally plausible or widely debated, but in transcript they’re asserted without careful sourcing or acknowledged uncertainty.
Rhetorical moral compression: Analogies to slavery and “boot on the neck” sharpen the moral point but can function as moral coercion rather than argument—especially when the security dilemma is treated as insufficiently morally relevant. The slavery analogy also risks a category mismatch (citizenship-based chattel slavery vs. national conflict/occupation), even if intended as a moral-structure analogy.
Counterfactual inconsistency: He criticizes pro-war arguments for relying on unfalsifiable counterfactuals, but uses counterfactual escalation scenarios (Iran could have killed Americans; withdrawal might not lead to civil war) and future projections (Israel “losing the world forever”) when they support his stance. This doesn’t invalidate his points, but it weakens his critique of counterfactual reasoning as such.

Epistemic style
Primarily moral-intuitive and anti-imperial genealogical reasoning (power causes blowback; elites lie; institutions corrupt), mixed with selective historical references (Washington’s farewell address; King-Crane Commission; quotes like Weisglas). He often treats repeated pattern recognition (wars go badly; occupations radicalize) as sufficient warrant, sometimes without discriminating among cases.

Epistemic mismatch note
Yes: Coleman tends to treat institutional records, base rates, and formal sovereignty as “proof,” while Dave treats moral illegitimacy, pattern-of-empire behavior, and lived asymmetry as “proof.” They often talk past each other because one is optimizing for deterrence/incentives under hostile ideology, and the other is optimizing for moral non-domination and blowback minimization.

Polarity: Security ↔ Freedom

Summary: Coleman prioritizes preventing attacks and maintaining deterrence; Dave prioritizes ending occupation/siege as a prerequisite for legitimate peace. Integration: Secure freedom guarantees Lever: Conditional withdrawal sequencing

Pole 1 name: Security Pole 1 tagline: Prevent violence through deterrence Pole 1 protects:

Civilian safety under credible threats
Stable agreements with enforceable borders Pole 1 neglects:
Moral injury of indefinite subjugation
Radicalization from coercive control Pole 1 pathology:
Permanent emergency justifying permanent domination
Treating civilian suffering as acceptable “cost”

Pole 2 name: Freedom Pole 2 tagline: End domination and occupation Pole 2 protects:

Political self-determination and equal rights
Moral legitimacy and human dignity Pole 2 neglects:
Security vacuums after rapid withdrawal
Non-state actors exploiting new autonomy Pole 2 pathology:
Underestimating deterrence failures and worst-case actors
Treating “ending control” as sufficient for peace

Speaker enactment:

Speaker: Coleman Hughes Enacts: Pole 1 Pole Center line: values Pole Center: 3.5 Achiever Pole Center rationale: The defended pole prioritizes workable safety and deterrence tradeoffs (“what will work to prevent attacks”) over absolute rights claims, making values the best-fit line. Perspective Structure: 3.5 Managed Perspective Structure rationale: He acknowledges the moral cost of occupation and attempts limited Palestinian perspective-taking, but generally holds the tension by subordinating freedom to security gating rather than fully inhabiting both poles. Contributes: Keeps attention on deterrence, incentives, and the risk of empowering maximalists. Misses:
- Occupation’s corrosive moral cost
- Asymmetry of lived suffering Cues:
- “There is no human toll in Gaza high enough for Hamas to be deterred.”
- “We pulled out of Gaza… and we got attacked from the places we left.”
Speaker: Dave Smith Enacts: Pole 2 Pole Center line: moral Pole Center: 3.5 Achiever Pole Center rationale: His pole is a rights/legitimacy claim (“occupation is unacceptable; annex+citizenship or withdraw”), best captured as moral social-contract reasoning. Perspective Structure: 3.0 Oppositional Perspective Structure rationale: He recognizes security concerns but tends to treat them as moral alibis (“boot on neck”) rather than a legitimate value requiring design-level integration. Contributes: Forces moral clarity about indefinite occupation and civilian devastation. Misses:
- Post-withdrawal security collapse risks
- Ideological actors’ non-deterrability Cues:
- “You can’t just keep your boot on these people’s neck forever.”
- “Israel has… two options… annex and give citizenship, or end the occupation.”

Mismatch: Coleman hears “freedom” as a security gamble; Dave hears “security” as a moral alibi for domination. Mismatch A→B: When Coleman says “deterrence,” Dave tends to hear “permission for indefinite occupation.” Mismatch B→A: When Dave says “end the occupation,” Coleman tends to hear “ignore Hamas’ stated intentions.” Bridge move: Jointly define a phased end-state with enforceable security benchmarks and rights guarantees, then test it against Gaza/Lebanon precedents. Synthesis: Coleman is protecting the basic promise that a state must keep its people alive and cannot outsource policy to violent vetoes. In his frame, deterrence and credible enforcement are not luxuries; they are the only reason “peace deals” aren’t just pauses before the next massacre. Dave is protecting the equally basic promise that no people should live indefinitely under domination without rights, and that policies that crush civilians corrode legitimacy and fuel the very violence they claim to prevent. Both are responding to real human stakes: Coleman to the fear of repeated October 7ths; Dave to the fear of normalized mass suffering and permanent subjugation.

The talking-past dynamic is that Coleman treats security architecture as the precondition for freedom, while Dave treats freedom as the precondition for legitimate security. Coleman hears Dave’s urgency as a willingness to accept catastrophic downside risk; Dave hears Coleman’s caution as rationalization for “forever.” Integration would require a concrete sequencing proposal: what rights, withdrawals, and sovereignty steps happen when; what verification and border-control mechanisms exist; and what triggers pause or reversal. A shared threshold question could be: “What minimum security capacity and political commitments must exist for Israel to withdraw without creating a Gaza-repeat—and what minimum rights and territorial integrity must exist for Palestinians to view nonviolence as rational?”

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The Crux

The deepest disagreement isn’t “Israel good vs. Israel bad,” or “war vs. peace.” It’s a clash over what kind of problem this is—and therefore what kind of moral reasoning is responsible. Coleman is arguing from the Security ↔ Freedom polarity as if the decisive variable is non-negotiable actors under hostile incentives: if Hamas (or al‑Qaeda, or Iran) is the kind of actor that treats civilian suffering as fuel, then “ending domination” without enforceable security architecture is not liberation—it’s a setup for the next massacre. Dave is arguing from the same polarity as if the decisive variable is non-negotiable structures: if occupation/siege is the ongoing reality, then “security” talk becomes a moral alibi for indefinite subjugation, and the system will keep producing radicalization and atrocity.

What each most fears losing is revealing. Coleman fears losing the premise that politics can be stabilized by rules, deterrence, and credible commitments—because if violent vetoes work, the whole settlement logic collapses into permanent blackmail. Dave fears losing the premise that human dignity sets hard limits on what “security” can justify—because if indefinite domination is normalized, then atrocity becomes policy with better branding.

The missing variable neither of them fully introduced—yet it would have changed what was possible in the conversation—is a jointly specified “exit architecture”: not just whether to end occupation or whether Hamas is evil, but what concrete governance-and-security sequence could credibly end domination while preventing a Gaza/Lebanon repeat. They circle this (“conditional withdrawal sequencing,” “partner for peace,” “border control with Jordan”), but they never turn it into a shared design object with measurable thresholds.

The Higher-Order Reframe

A frame neither speaker was operating from is: this conflict is not primarily a debate about intentions; it’s a debate about transition design under adversarial capture. In that frame, “occupation” and “deterrence” are not competing moral slogans—they are competing diagnoses of failure modes during a transition. Dave is pointing to the failure mode of permanent emergency (Security pole pathology): domination becomes self-renewing, civilian devastation becomes “cost,” and legitimacy collapses. Coleman is pointing to the failure mode of security vacuum (Freedom pole neglect): sovereignty steps create openings that maximalist factions exploit, making “withdrawal” functionally equivalent to handing over launchpads. This reframe can be built directly out of the Security ↔ Freedom polarity integration handle and lever: the handle is “Secure freedom guarantees,” and the lever is “Conditional withdrawal sequencing.” The new move is to treat sequencing not as a rhetorical concession (“sure, phased withdrawal”) but as the actual moral substance: the ethical question becomes, “What sequence minimizes the probability of two catastrophes at once—permanent subjugation and repeated mass-casualty attacks?” That’s bigger than either man’s preferred frame, but it doesn’t require a fantasy leap: it’s accessible to Coleman’s 3.5 Achiever center (designing enforceable equilibria) and to Dave’s 3.0–3.5 range (turning moral constraints into operational rules rather than analogies). The average mode of discourse helps explain why this reframe was unavailable in the conversation: the exchange stayed mostly in Mode 3.0 Debate, where the win condition is opponent concession on causal claims (“ideology is necessary,” “occupation is indefensible,” “Israel lobby did/didn’t do Iraq”), not co-authoring a shared mechanism.

Made by Corey deVos · About this analysis