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As the late Johnny Thunders would say, "Rock and roll is simply an attitude." And we bring the attitude this week with Free Press contributor Eli Lake, as we talk Graham Platner's Maine implosion, underestimating the Ukranians and how Donald Trump may have stumbled to the right answer in Iran.
All that and Eli leads us through a round of "What Are You Listening To?" and Charlie's collection of semi-pornographic album covers.
Let's have ourselves a podcast...
Charles C. W. Cooke
James Lileks
Steve Hayward
Eli Lake
Discussion (5)
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This was an excellent podcast from beginning to the end. I hope you have Eli Lake on more often. He should be a frequent guest. I have a few comments.
1.
The decapitation strike was worth it, eliminating the most powerful leaders and many of those responsible for decades of terrorism. It left the B-Team in charge, afraid to live outside of their semi-secure locations. The Iran problem isn’t the same as eliminating OBL to eliminate the Al Qaeda threat.
What is the “regime”? It is a nihilistic culture, an aggressive form of cancer infecting many Iranians. To destroy the “regime,” we would have to kill thousands nestled in cities surrounded by innocents. Bernard Lewis explained the folly of thinking Mutual Assured Destruction would work on Iran. Alternatives? Unarmed civilians can't do it. I read Turkey wouldn't let us move arms in using the Kurds and I read arms we gave the Kurds stayed with the Kurds. Who knows what the truth is. The Carthage Solution? Americans aren’t there, yet.
2.
Trump retained the ability to escalate, leaving targets for later should the Iranians refuse to deal (bridges, communications, rail lines, and targets not worth valuable munitions). These were acts of a desparate animal losing a life or death battle. Hormuz was one trump card that Iran would have been played later, if not now, to prevent us from stopping their nuclear advancement. By hurting the world’s energy source, they hoped countries would pressure the US to stop. Hitting our bases was more than warfighting. They played a psychological game hitting specific planes, antennae, and command centers in other countries. The message was they could get accurate target info and accurately deliver weapons on target. Our message back was throwing all they had at us would have little impact.
They wanted to kill our will to fight. In their eyes, we are a soft country with no staying power, an image reinforced by history and comments from the media and politicians. Their goal, a reasonable one, survive until November and then the soft Democrats would return to power:.
3.
Running out of “interceptors” wasn’t bad planning on DoW’s part. Defense appropriations only consume 3% of GDP while Entitlements appropriations consume 14-15% of GDP. The administration saw a threat and responded with the military Congress was willing to fund. That is inadequate funding, not poor planning.
We are behind in drone warfare and hypervelocity warfare. Our munitions supply chain is inadequate, old news. Ukraine drained us of many munitions. Trump inherited a military that would need 7 years to restock. We ran low after only a few months fighting a country the approximate size of Texas, not a superpower. What does that tell you about defending against threats to CONUS. China is building ships faster than we can, much faster, while becoming the world’s ship-building power. Don’t like getting an AF-1 platform from Qatar because Boeing is still three years away from delivering our order? Imagine having China building our naval vessels.
4. I’m glad we eliminated we eliminated Iran’s nuclear threat for many years in such a short time with so few losses. It took our experts 14 years to develop the munitions needed for such a deep, hardened target. I’m glad we are learning how to defend against small, hard-to-detect, drones and hypervelocity missiles. I’m glad we have a president brave enough to face the challenges. I’m sorry we have a Congress not up to the task. I hope future leaders won’t be cavalier about draining the strategic oil reserves like Biden did. I hope other countries will become less dependent on the Strait of Hormuz.
Quotes are from the podcast’s transcript:
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This makes me insane. The military is a public good. 80% of government is non-public goods. The military should be at 10% of GDP.
We are ruled by idiots.
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Which got to Sen.Warren to cause her to blurt out 'What a man!"?
The porta-potty self-abuse ....or the SS tattoo?
Perhaps a listeners poll is warranted?
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Recently my daughter tried to tell me about a song she liked. I heard her say Devil Inside and replied that it was great she was getting into INXS. After a bit of back and forth, the song was Devil in Disguise. "Ah, Elvis." "No, Dad." Found out it was some new singer and it isn't even a cover. I did play Elvis' song for her and she loved it. I told her that her Grandma is a huge Elvis fan and she texted her that Elvis had quite a banger. Mom's not up on slang, but after learning that banger is a great song was excited that someone else was enjoying Elvis.
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In 1951, Sen. Joe McCarthy became godfather to Bobby Kennedy’s first child, Kathleen, not RFK Jr. She is usually known as Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.
N.B.: Any biopic would have to deal with McCarthy’s homosexuality — which by the standards of the modern film industry would tend to make him more sympathetic.