Dave Smith: evaluation

Transcript context

…Yeah, we’ll have to remember the thing that’s difficult to measure that you just mentioned, which is the hate that’s created by every bomb that’s dropped. It was a General McChrystal who was the general running the war in Afghanistan. He wasn’t Ron Paul, you know what I mean? He was a, “Sir, yes, sir. How do we fight and win this war general?” And he’s the one who coined the term insurgent math, that 10 minus two equals 20. It’s like the more you keep, I was re-reading about this the other day because of the Trump’s been bombing the Houthis in Yemen. And I think it was at least in 2009 is when Obama really stepped up the drone campaign with the then secret drone bombing campaign. And Yemen was one of the major theaters. And even back then when it really was just a… it was a war on terrorism. The main targets were always Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and their presence in Yemen, even then, so before the Saudis invaded. So from 2009 through 2015, AQAP just kept growing. It was doing all these targeted bombing campaigns, so they call them targeted. 96% of the people are innocent who get killed, but they call them targeted drone bombings. And Al-Qaeda and the Arabian Peninsula just kept getting bigger and bigger because every time you go in there, it’s like, okay, you took out one target and then you took out three little girls. And every one of those little girls had brothers and uncles and fathers, and all of them just signed up to join the fight now. Ron Paul was the first one who really made this click for me. But it’s in a way, and I’m not a leftist, I’m not an egalitarian, I’m not a cultural relativist. I’m not saying that all cultures are the same or that we all look at the world the same way. There’s enormous differences between all of us, and I personally think some are better than others, but there are things that unite all of us. And in a weird way, I remember one time I was arguing with a Democrat guy on a S. E. Cupp show. I used to be a contributor on her show, and we were arguing, and it was after a terrorist attack here in New York, a fairly minor one. It was a guy, I think he hit someone with his car and then jumped out with a gun, and then the cops lit him up and killed him. This is back in 2017, I think, and he claimed to be ISIS inspired. I don’t remember if there was a direct connection or not, but at the time, they were like, “Doesn’t this mean we got to step up the war in Iraq or in Syria where ISIS’s stronghold is.” ISIS inspired. I don’t remember if there was a direct connection or not, but at the time, they were like, “Doesn’t this mean we got to step up the war in Iraq or in Syria where ISIS’s stronghold is.” And I remember the guy saying to me, I went off on how these wars have been disaster and he goes, ” Yeah, but Dave, what you’re saying here is we’re supposed to do nothing. This just happened and now we’re supposed to do nothing.” And so even though this guy had a suit and tie on, and we’re in a cable news studio and we’re in a first world country, we’re in the United States of America and we’re having that. The basic thing that he’s saying is, “You’re saying, we’re not going to go kill some motherfuckers.” I mean, he was just putting it as do something. But what’s something? Something is dropping bombs on human beings when yes, some innocent people are going to die, but it’s the same thing. It’s the same after 9/11. We’re like, “We got to go fucking invade some countries right now.” That’s the same impulse. It’s like they killed some of our people. You think we’re not going to show them who the real killers are. You think there’s a chance that you could come here? And that is the most human instinct ever. It’s like some other tribe just came in here and killed some people in our tribe. So what do you want to do about that? Well, I don’t know. It’s not going to take me too long to figure out we’re going to go kill a bunch of people in their tribe. And I think that’s the major motivating factor for both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict. I think that’s the major motivator for both sides of the war on terror conflict. In a way, when you look at it like that, even though it’s so dark and tragic, there’s something almost beautiful about it where you’re like, “Oh, we’re all caught in this same cycle.”…

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