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Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the wax museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al Qaeda Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it.
I say it again.
You've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else except as a fact, he came, he saw, he died, but we ain't killing their army.
But we killing them.
We'd be on CNN like say our name, been saying, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right.
All right, you guys introducing the great Doug Bandao, uh, he writes primarily, uh, of course, at the Cato Institute, but also you can find him at the National Interest as well, and he's a specialist on, uh, well, you name a country.
He's been there and has written about it and knows everything about it and is great on everything.
Welcome back to the show, Doug.
Good to talk to you again.
Happy to be on.
All right.
So Korea, um, the sound of the war.
Um, the South Koreans, I guess, made a major breakthrough here and sort of delivered it on a platter to Donald Trump that, Hey, if you will meet with Kim, they, the North Koreans are prepared to make major concessions in exchange for some, and he went for it.
Am I right?
Does it sound good?
Well, we have to hope for that.
I mean, one of the problems is they may have different expectations.
He may expect to, uh, bring some North Korean nukes back on the airplane from the summit while the North Koreans aren't going to do this without some serious assurances for their own security.
But still, it's a major step forward, far better to be doing this than threatening each other with war.
Yeah.
So, I mean, I guess the naysayers are their idea is that, well, but it's Donald Trump and that the stakes are too high that the North Koreans aren't going to give up their missiles and nukes, which is what the Americans demand.
And the Americans aren't going to make a final piece to the Korean war.
And, you know, back off practicing invading the North, uh, every year and so forth as they do give them a real security guarantee, uh, because that's a bridge too far for both sides.
So grand bargain maybe, but it's too grand of a bargain.
Uh, what do you think of that?
Oh, we don't know.
I mean, the point is, unless you try, you don't know.
There's a lot that can go wrong.
On the other hand, you know, everything was going in a very bad direction before.
So this offers us at least an opportunity.
And to me, the real issue is, is the U S willing to back away?
I mean, we should offer, I frankly offer to pull us troops out.
There's no need for them there.
And if you get rid of North Korea's nukes, what's the excuse?
I mean, the South Koreans can defend themselves.
You get rid of nuclear weapons.
It's a very different peninsula.
Right.
Well, then it makes perfect sense too, that if there's no American threat, then what do you need nukes for?
Remember the good old days when you, when you were in the nonproliferation treaty and we promised to give you some light water reactors.
Let's go back to that.
No, I think that's right.
I mean, the real problem here, frankly, is that the president doesn't have an awful lot of credibility.
So especially if he tears up the, uh, the Iran nuke agreement beforehand, how do you convince the North Koreans to sign on if you're dumping the agreement, your predecessor made?
Yeah, that's a big issue.
And you know what, I mean, that has to be part of the conversation up there too, right?
He's even if for only the most narrow political reasons, he wants, uh, apparently, you know, thinks it's important enough to at least give a real try to get a piece, uh, to get some kind of major deal with Korea.
And yet is it, are they really not having the conversation that tearing up the JCPOA with Iran is the absolute worst way to convince the North Koreans that you mean what you say when you make a deal with them?
Well, the problem is the sort of people he surround himself with in the administration, a lot of these people want to tear it up, you know, and he got rid of Rex Tillerson Tillerson was one of those people, you know, I could certainly imagine, however, Kim Jong-un bringing that up, you know, the president for all of his faults, at least on this one in the campaign, he talked about being willing to meet Kim Jong-un.
So I think there's something floating around in the back of his mind there that he are thinking this is a real opportunity.
And I think he, you know, he, he likes the idea of the deal that if he could be the guy to make it happen.
So I think that gives it at least a shot that they could have a serious conversation that frankly, other presidents wouldn't have because they'd be far too diplomatic and kind of constrained, you know, by the officials around them.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, that's, has always been really the potential of Donald Trump is that he's such a wrecker.
What if he wrecked all the worst stuff that would be kind of cool, you know, like, no, I mean, that's always, that was the hope of many of us that are recognizing as many flaws.
So we figured at least he had that potential that clearly Hillary Clinton did not.
Yeah.
Um, well, and of course, also because he's a Democrat or a, I mean, a former Democrat him, uh, because he's a Republican and cause he's a rich, uh, you know, skyscraper tycoon from Manhattan.
He could do this whole Nixon goes to China and shake hands with mouth.
No one can call Nixon a commie.
You can call Nixon lots of things.
I guess if you're Gary Allen, you can call him a commie, but nobody else can call Nixon a commie.
And, um, and so that's, I know that they claim all this Russia, Russia, Russia, garbage, but the American people by and large, you know, if, if he really wanted to go to Pyongyang and meet there and then go on to Tehran and go on to Moscow and just end the enmity going on in the, the conflicts that America has, the various states of cold war and hot war that we have around in the world, the American people would absolutely support that.
You know, in fact, it would guarantee his reelection.
Kim Jong-un.
And it works out reasonably well as to say, well, why not go to Tehran?
Why not talk to Rouhani?
Yeah.
So who knows?
Maybe that's a possibility.
Well, so let me ask is why not go to Tehran and talk to Rouhani?
Are there any reasons why not?
No, I think, you know, what we see today is a, a us policy driven by of all people, the Saudi Arabians.
I mean, you know, kind of give me a break.
I mean, if you talk about, you know, a country where, whose government is rather unfriendly to American values and interests, Saudi Arabia, you know, we shouldn't be doing their dirty work for them.
You know, I think Iran long had a history.
They're much more liberal, much more open young people.
They love America.
You know, how can we try to open that up?
One of the ways is to try to reduce the perceived hostility.
Yeah.
Well, now, I mean, I don't know, is it, is it too utopian to say that instead of invasion or cold war threats or dual containment or even offshore balancing that we actually could just be friends and not have any of these policies of dominance in the Middle East at all, or one way or the other, Doug, Uncle Sam's got to be in charge over there or else X.
Well, I think the good news is that the change of energy, you know, that it's hard to come up with an argument why the U.S. has to be there.
I mean, number one, the U.S. has done an awful job.
The idea that somehow we are creating stability there is really quite a joke.
And the second is the idea that, you know, kind of these evil Iranians are about to take over is just one of the silliest things imaginable.
I mean, Saudi Arabia spent something like five times as much on its military.
You know, the Gulf countries are now working with the Israelis.
You know, there's a balance of power there that can emerge without America.
There's no reason for us to be in the middle.
I mean, right now we're in the middle in Syria between the Kurds and the Turks.
Both of these are supposed to be our allies.
They're shooting at each other.
You know, this is crazy policy.
Yeah, it sure does seem to be.
But now, OK, you got to admit, though, that, I mean, you would have it would have been an accusation at the time, Doug.
But at this point, we all got to admit that, hey, George Bush really increased the power and influence of Iran in Iraq.
And in fact, Barack Obama in trying to limit Iranian influence in Syria has greatly enhanced it there.
And so now what are we going to do?
Because the Persian Empire and the Shiite crescent and the domination of the evil Ayatollah.
And so, of course, the neocons will never admit that this is all their fault.
But they will say that, you know, considering history began yesterday, this is something that we must deal with.
Yeah, I mean, it really is amazing how they brought all this on.
That for people to complain about Iran to have been the very people that enhanced its influence.
I mean, it's really to show how foolish their foreign policy is.
And it's certainly a very good reason to not listen to them when they say, let's take Iran on.
It's like, how did that work out when you came up with that other idea?
But I look at this and say, where is the empire?
I mean, Iran has some influence in Syria, which is a wreck.
I mean, they were allied before the country fell into civil war today.
I mean, Assad survives based on support from Russia and Iran.
You know, this is a wreck of its former self.
The idea of influence in Yemen, this is a country that's been at civil war since it was gained independence 50 years ago.
They're not going to run that.
They're basically involved in Yemen to bleed the Saudi Arabians.
Lebanon is a country that's kind of broken up sectarian wise.
It's I mean, they're desperate not to have another civil war.
Iran has influence there, but so what?
I mean, so do other countries.
So you look at this and then Iraq, well, they're both Shia countries.
They're going to have a relationship, but even the Iraqis don't want to be run by Iran.
So where's the empire?
I mean, I listen to these people act as if the Saudi royal crown prince called kind of the Ayatollah, the new Hitler.
I mean, this is utter idiocy.
What Iran today is the new Hitler.
Please.
I mean, Hitler was in charge of the most powerful country at the center of Europe.
Iran's a mess, a bad economy divided politically.
Where is this?
This is all being made up to feed kind of the war message.
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Well, I spared myself watching the show, but I did read Daniel Larrison's piece about the 60 Minutes interview of Ben Salman there, where it's unfortunate for him that he has to pivot from Iran is nothing.
Iran is scum and they have no money and they'll never amount to anything.
And then right to, oh, yeah, also, they're Hitler and they're going to take over the entire Middle East if we don't stop them and all this in one breath.
The way that the question was phrased, I couldn't watch it either, but I read the transcript and I was struck by that where at one point he's telling us how evil they are and dangerous.
And the next point he said, well, they're not Saudi Arabia's rival.
Their economy is a lot smaller.
Their army is nearly as good as ours.
Well, wait a minute.
How are you either taking over the Middle East and you're telling me they're not very important?
What gives?
You can't have both of these.
And then the news hairdo lady is just going, uh-huh, uh-huh.
And I mean, he has his groupies.
I mean, David Ignatius at The Post, Tom Friedman at The New York Times, they all write this guy up as this wonderful progressive reformer.
Well, in January, they threw the heads of a human rights group into jail.
I mean, they're doing this under him.
I mean, the idea that he's somehow liberalizing, well, he's doing some good social stuff with, like, women, but there's no political liberalization, there's no religious liberalization in terms of non-Muslims.
You know, this is still an authoritarian state.
Sure.
I mean, just think for a minute, if the Americans decided that the Saudis were their official enemies, what they would say about the Saudi regime and why we need to overthrow it, you know?
Exactly.
Absolutely.
They'd never run out of talking points.
So now let me ask you this, because you mentioned this, and unfortunately, it seems to just go without saying all the time that sort of everybody knows that Iran backs the Houthis, but is that even really true?
What does that even mean, Doug?
Well, we have to realize, number one, is the Houthis are not Shiites.
They're called Zaydis, which is kind of an offshoot that has some stuff that's more closer to Shia, but also some stuff closer to Sunnis.
They're actually more liberal religiously, typically, than the Iranians.
Yeah, apparently they pray side by side with the Sunnis in Yemen.
Exactly.
The point is, number one, this is not as if these are co-religionists.
People call them a Shiite political militia.
They aren't.
It really is a different kind of offshoot.
The second is the Iranians, you know, everybody's mucked around in that peninsula.
But the Iranians are hardly the most active.
At one point, Egyptian and Saudi Arabian troops were fighting on opposite sides.
This goes back a number of decades.
The Saudis have always been involved.
So Iran, the Houthis are not ones to be dominated.
They were in revolt against the government when it was run by Saleh.
They helped push him out.
But the point is, this whole new episode started because they came back and worked with Saleh.
This had nothing to do with Iran, nothing to do with Shia, Sunni.
You know, the Saudis have made it sectarian.
And the point is, the Iranians are involved simply because it hurts the Saudis.
The Houthis get arms to some degree from the Iranians because they need them.
You know, the U.S. is supplying their enemies, the Saudis.
So basically, blaming this all on Iran is blaming the wrong person.
It's the Saudis who turned this into a sectarian conflict.
And basically, Iran's just along for the ride.
They're not going to get anything much out of this.
They won't run Yemen, but they can make Saudi Arabia bleed.
It's the strategy we used against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
But they're giving them weapons or money or do you know exactly?
Oh, a little bit.
I mean, the point is, we think some weapons go through some support, but not a lot.
You know, and among other things, there's a blockade and everything on us.
Not easy to do so.
And the second is the Houthis were allied with Saleh.
Saleh had the Yemeni's military behind him, even when he was out of office.
So they basically got all the weapons that were in the arms depots.
I mean, there are plenty of weapons in Yemen.
You don't have to work hard to find them.
Yeah.
I mean, I think Gareth showed that one of those ships that they seized and said, ah, these are Iranian guns bound for Yemen.
It was actually a Yemeni ship bound for Somalia.
They're exporting guns.
They got so many guns.
Exactly.
Even in the middle of the war, they're exporting guns.
That's right.
A little bit of money there.
Yeah.
And this is, you know, honestly, they're just like America with the Second Amendment kind of thing.
We're on the list of the most armed civilian populations in the world.
It's Yemen and the United States are right up there at the top.
I think Iraq is in third place.
That's right.
So, man.
All right.
Now, listen, I'm sorry.
I know you don't have much time, but I feel like I must be neglecting to really ask you the best question about Korea and the possibility of a real deal here.
I mean, I know it's kind of just all in the future or whatever, but maybe if you could just help people understand what exactly is at stake and how difficult you think it might be to actually make a breakthrough here.
Well, the critical thing is we've got to avoid a war.
This would be an utter disaster.
We've been through a real war there before.
I mean, there were millions of casualties and refugees.
Seoul is 35 miles from the border.
Assuming the North Koreans have missiles that they could put nukes on, imagine a nuke exploding in Seoul or in Tokyo.
So we have to I mean, the whole threats that have been coming out of Washington are not at all helpful.
Nobody can afford a war.
This is not going to be easy.
There's 70 years of conflict and hostility there.
The North Koreans have to believe we're not going to take them out.
And unfortunately, we have a recent history that is likely to make them skeptical.
That means that while we don't trust them, they don't trust us.
So the question is, how do you create that mutual trust?
It's not going to be easy.
What I hope is you can get these two leaders to sit down and agree to a process and start down that road.
It won't happen tomorrow.
But if you can actually start making some progress, you know, stop the military maneuvers, stop testing these sorts of things.
Maybe we can move in that direction.
It's really important we do so.
I mean, the last thing we need or want is a war there.
You know, Lindsey Graham may figure it's no big deal.
It's a war over there.
You know, but, you know, millions of people conceivably die.
I mean, this is horrendous.
We've got to avoid that.
Yeah.
Lindsey Graham, he believed he's still a thing.
It's incredible.
It is extraordinary.
Now.
So listen, I saw a thing or read a thing.
I'm not sure who I'm plagiarizing here.
I forget my footnote.
But they were saying, you know what?
The analogy here with Mao Zedong is really important, in fact, because if the Americans had tried, if Nixon and Kissinger had tried to sort of piecemeal begin some low level negotiations where you spend half a year figuring out the size and shape of the table, you're going to meet at and all of this crap that none of it would have ever gone anywhere.
That was so important because especially because China and hey, America, too, but especially China's such a top down system under Mao Zedong that the only way to do it was to go over there and shake hands with the SOB and say, we are now friends.
And now all these outstanding issues, we're going to work those out.
But that comes second.
First comes the handshake.
First comes the come on, let's knock all this enmity off and get things, you know, off on a better foot.
And that so that's how it must go here as well.
And I think that's a very good example, because there was very serious consideration in the Kennedy administration and at least superficial consideration in the Johnson administration of doing preventive war against China to prevent it from having nuclear weapons.
And Mao said things that were a lot crazier than Kim Jong-un has ever said.
Talking about we have so many people who cares if there's a nuclear war, you know, even if half the world's population dies, it doesn't really matter.
Socialism would win.
I mean, really nutty stuff.
You know, the point is they thought about it and they realized this is not a good idea.
We need it.
We can deter.
You know, we can stop these people.
And then very quickly you move to Richard Nixon, who said engagement's the way to do this.
We can turn them around.
And he was right.
And I think that's a very important example is to realize, you know, war is almost always the very worst option for almost everything.
So you've got to look for alternatives.
And here we have an alternative right in front of us.
You know, we need to use it and push it as far as we can.
Yep.
All right.
Great, man.
Well, thanks again for your time, Doug.
Really appreciate it.
Happy to be on.
You take care now.
You too.
All right, you guys, that's our good friend Doug Bandow.
He's senior fellow at the Cato Institute.
And, you know, say what you will about the Kochs, but their foreign policy staff at Cato is, you know, Trevor Thrall and Doug and Ted Galen Carpenter and John Glazer over there.
And man, they're really holding it down.
That's the great Doug Bandow, senior fellow there at Cato and writes also for the National Interest.
You can find his byline all the time at Antiwar.com, where he used to write a regular column as well there.
All right.
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