Winning Wars: Something Americans Can't Do.

i get letters and a great many of my
youtube videos are composed in response to questions and comments sent in by viewers like you and once in a while there's a topic and i pause and reflect that nobody has ever asked me about it despite the constant inflow of emails questions i get on various social media formats i got people telling me about the positive impact i've had in their lives that they quit video games or they quit drugs or became vegan or whatever it is they stopped following one cult leader or another because of the influence of my youtube channel because the questions we've entertained here at the discussion we've had the last five years how many people have ever written into me wanting to talk to me about are asking me about war how many people have ever asked me about the war this is 2021 we're coming to the end of a significant period of history in which the war has a self-evident meaning i remember when i was a kid i must have been 11 years old exactly asking my father when people say the war which war do they mean because i really noticed that my father did not handle the question either and sometimes at that they were referring to the vietnam war in those days you know and sometimes it was world war ii that was self-heavenly the war if people said that in english well from september 11th 2001 up to september 11th it's been a self-evident meaning to the war what about war as such all right this is a salast s-a-l-l-u-s-t one of the most famous and influential authors out of ancient rome never heard anyone mention to me even once no professor has ever quoted him to me never seen him cited into it shows you what kind of company i keep shows the low quality of intellectual discourse frankly among the phd holding people in my life i've never heard anyone quite recently found out about salas and he opens by telling you and this this was studied by many impressionable young men for many centuries do you want to be a man do you want to live your life like a cow let me tell you what the difference is between being truly human and being a cow the answer has a whole lot to do with war and conquest and empire virtue yes and the cultivation of the intel intellect yes but it's a very war-like view of what it is to be a man and what is to be a human being life life on earth um we had this broad cultural transition certainly punctuated by the invention of the atom bomb you know from holding up war as an unquestioned and unquestionable virtue for young men over to presenting it as a similarly unquestioned and questionable evil and you may not have picked up on this on my youtube channel but i don't regard war as either one i really do regard war as a meaningful and important part of politics and a meaningful and important part of life that we have to learn to examine with a certain kind of detachment that rejects both of these extremes why is it you suppose that people don't write it to me asking to know what i think about the war why is it that so few people want to know what i have to say about the american wars in our time given that we're really now as never before in a period of evaluating the meaning and significance of the american empire both looking back and looking ahead well for one thing if talking about my audience and my um i don't know apparition here on youtube like the illusion of who i am in as much as my audience gets to know me keep in mind that in the early days of this channel there was a widespread expectation that because i was vegan because i talked about the disasters horrors the atrocities of the american war in vietnam laos and cambodia you know that i would be someone who was the staunchest peacenik imaginable that i would be more anti-war than the stereotypical vegan hippie and probably if you quote me in certain contexts it may it may sound that way my position on war may may lend itself to that analysis i think the biggest problem we have now in talking and thinking clearly about war in western democracies really comes down to a habit of mind that treats capability as something quite separate from the ethical decision about what you're going to do about what you should do about what the right thing to do is had so many debates on this channel and kind of intersecting with the work i do on this channel which begin with someone saying well let me give you a hypothetical question and they want to pose a hypothetical question that completely separates the question of what you can do from what you should do and when we're really talking about ethics we're really talking about politics we're making decisions in our own lives as individuals on a massive scale as nations as empires for the future plan as a whole what we have to deal with precisely is the way in which what you can do is inextricably tied up with what you should do if there is a man drowning and somebody sees him from the safety of the beach should he jump in and swim out and attempt to rescue the droning man don't you think it matters the question of whether or not he can rescue the drowning man what if the person on the shore who sees the drowning man has no legs that someone can find you in a wheelchair with no legs do you think they're going to be able to swim out and rescue the others or do you think that if they swim out of the ocean they may drown before the man there they're going out to rescue i just heard in great detail recently a guy's account of how he almost died drowning in the ocean in california not worth telling the tale any detail but five or six people were standing on the shore looking at him with their phones out trying to figure out what to do and then one young man who actually had lifeguard training ran up went out and rescued him he was out there drowning for quite a long time and there were these five or six kind of gawkers and onlookers like well you can call an ambulance what do you want to do now all of those people had legs now the way this guy tells the story he just says how great it is that this one young man rescued him and he tried to give the young man money and he refused like after he'd saved his life like he tried to do something and i refused to be receive any reward for his good work whatever interesting story in different ways but the story is told in such a way that it completely ignores the onlookers who stood there and either did nothing or did almost nothing that there was only one person who swam out to rescue you but why does this matter look i i don't know maybe maybe all those people were 400 pounds overweight like i don't know i mean there are aspects to the story i don't know maybe if you just saw a photograph of these people at the beach like yeah yeah i get it i see why you didn't so am i capability morality obligation and indeed virtue and these things they are you know they're inextricably bound up together process we have to do is stop training ourselves to think in this hypothetical way that separates actions from abilities and consequences that treats decisions and so they can be isolated from whether or not you actually have the capability to do to do the thing being discussed now off the coast of greece there's a tiny island called cyprus in greek kupros it's part of the origin of our word for copper cupric so it's one of the most ancient and important civilizations not just in the history of europe but in the history of the world half of the island is occupied illegally by turkey do you think that greece should start a war with turkey by invading the island of cyprus and reunifying cyprus under one government driving out the turks do you think that greece can now if you're really thinking it through step by step over a five-year period over a 20-year period spoilers the americans in afghanistan 20 years the question of capability is much more important qualitatively not just qualitatively than we first want to admit to ourselves right do you think that an alliance of greece and france and italy should combine all of their armed forces navy air force land army and invade the island of cyprus and drive out the turks oh oh oh now that seems like a very different proposition not because of the question of whether or not they should but because the question of whether or not they can and what you may not be entirely aware of is that you're not just thinking about whether or not it's possible you're thinking about whether or not it could be rapid whether or not the invasion and conquest could be so to speak irresistible and sudden or if it would be a situation like the korean war aka the korean civil war where over many years the armies march from south to north and north to south there are incredible casualties it goes back and forth again again and oh yes isn't the question of north korea also a very interesting hypothetical thought experiment we were not questioning whether war would be good or bad but whether or not it would be possible and at what cost it seems to be very easy for people to imagine that the united states could suddenly and irresistibly conquer north korea and basically anyone who sat down and looked at u.s military simulations realized this is not the case america could conquer north korea america could at tremendous cost tremendous cost in fortune and in blood in casualties with tremendous consequences they could do it but not quickly not easily and wouldn't it be different wouldn't it be a different question ethically if they could do it quickly and easily right and this is how we get to the bottom of the riddle of american imperialism and really the total abject failure of the american empire since the end of world war ii it sounds somewhat surreal we could actually talk about the failure of the american empire during world war ii another very interesting discussion how things really went very wrong for america during that period even though of course it's remembered as a as a great victory um americans think about politics and think about war as if it is a foregone conclusion that they have the expertise that they have the capability to resolve any and all of these conflicts instantaneously with a minimal body count with minimum consequences in a minimal number of years and what history has proven them again and again and again is that that's just not the case now somebody is in a lot of pain and weeping and yelling lying on the floor of a train station because they're trying to give birth to a baby would you run up and help them deliver the baby you personally when you got to the front people oh well why why are you trying to help it's because you're the most compassionate or the most concerned would you be willing to lie and say that you're a surgeon when you're not one right see what you're getting here this question of competence we think of it in english-speaking western culture as if it's something amoral as if it's something separate from it outside of the realm of the ethical question of whether or not one ought to do something well somebody is in pain whether it's somebody drowning or someone giving a giving birth to a baby someone ought to help but the question i'm asking is should that someone be you if you have no medical education if you have no training if there is the very real possibility that you will make the process of this woman giving birth worse rather than better through your intervention what then can we say about your moral decision to intervene alright so the question of capacity is really the question of confidence even is inextricably profoundly bound up in these questions about you know military and political decisions since world war ii ended did the united states have the competence or the capacity to bring democracy to cuba the answer is no they lost they failed how about haiti how well did the united states do in haiti have they stabilized haiti if they created democracy and and look at it decade by decade since world war ii what happened with u.s policy in haiti how did that go how about vietnam how about cambodia how about myanmar as we keep going down the list how about colombia how did colombia work out for the americans um what we have is one warning after another that the americans do not have what it takes to resolve any of these conflicts now if there were some tremendously powerful foreign country that could intervene militarily and bring about a total occupation of the island of cyprus and the turkish occupation of half of the island create a you know regular democracy with normal elections human rights and the crisis on cyprus once and for all should they do it yes they should do it is the united states that country can the united states do for cyprus what they did for south korea or would the disaster of american intervention making an enemy out of turkey as never before with all these long-term consequences possibly resulting in nuclear missiles being fired one doesn't know you know you could come up with the best case get a scenario in a worst case scenario right or would an american intervention and a war with turkey would that turn out as badly as vietnam would that turn out as badly as the wars we've just lived through in afghanistan and iraq where we look back 20 years later right this really does come down to the sort of question of if someone's in pain if someone is struggling to give birth at a train station or a bus station you know it's not the question of whether or not someone should help the question is who and americans have always lacked the humility to take that look in the mirror and say it's not me and if not me maybe it's you