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Radio War Nerd EP #615 — To The Crows: John Dolan Reads + Iran MOU (Patreon)

Published:
2026-06-24 21:03:13
Imported:
2026-06
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Recorded: June 23, 2026

John Dolan, aka The War Nerd, reads selections from his new collection of essays To The Crows, soon to be released. This collection draws from the first two decades of this century, including The eXile, NSFWCorp and Pando.

First: We briefly discuss the US-Iran MOU and some of the comedy it's producingAt 22:10 - John introduces his new book To The Crows and reads excerpts...

Total time: 55:09Direct link to this episode's mp3 here

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Buy & review John Dolan's new book, They Should Have Been Hanged: War Nerd Essays on the U.S. Civil War

Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Sound production by Telescope Audio

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Comments

Bad Room Podcast

At approximately 16 minutes, co host mark ames casually hits a “6 7”

CR

As a nerd loser, episode 616 should be the current status of the Blob using Marvel and Hollywood for imperial propaganda. I was just thinking that as hilariously stupid Alex Garland's Civil War is, it is jarring upon further reflection that any semblance of the modern military would survive a prolonged domestic war because there's no deep or broad capacity to build more M1 tanks and Apache helicopters, and it's so shallow and narrow that it would be easy to destroy the existing manufacturing capacity.

CR

"Hitchens really is Orwell's rightful heir." That is brilliant. It also cannot be overstated how much it benefited Hitchens, like Bernard-Henri Lévy, to be the elites' pet European intellectual they got to keep around to dance for them at parties and in print like the obedient dog to power and authority he was. He wasn't as brilliant a writer as Orwell, but he had his finger on the pulse of power to know when and how to flip against the war and to provide his masters with intellectual cover when the Iraq War he cheered on so heavily became unpopular like when he let himself be waterboarded. An absolutely despicable piece of shit.

Jack Ross

That destroyed me

Jack Ross

Mark hitting the 6 7 at exactly 15:59 destroyed me

Jack Ross

I’m buying this immediately

Michael Cousins

It’s an odd possibility, but a piece of me wonders if Trump set Netanyahu and Israel up. The reason this keeps tumbling around the back of my mind is that it seems like the Zionists have directly given the trump family only tens of millions of dollars, but it looks like some of the GCC countries gave his family billions. Trump and the Kushners strike me as people who ultimately are just for sale and the Arabs paid more. Maybe Trumo doesn’t even consciously realize it but perhaps in some way this is what happened. I also have noticed ex CIA people like John Kiriakou and others state that everyone in the CIA hates Mossad. Even Hilary Clinton came out after the Mou was signed, sort of admonishing Israel. I don’t know if I really believe this but somehow I feel like it’s a possibility or maybe this unbridled Zionist support has just finally exhausted everyone. Can’t wait for the new book! M

CR

It's darkly humorous how NATO is sucking off the vibe of those Hezbollah drone videos, but in the worst way possible. Instead of video of invading soldiers in tanks getting blown up, they're jerking themselves off to videos of semi truck drivers within Russia getting blown up because terrorists don't give a fuck about life. Meanwhile, it has surely done wonders to harden the resolve of the Russians to see their enemies destroyed and their women to drown in the blood of their dead husbands and sons because fuck those terrorist losers.

J P 3

The Adelsons alone are reported to have given Trump over $600 million over three presidential campaigns. Of course, not all of this money is going into Trump's bank account, but it clearly had a major influence over his policy program, staffing decisions, etc. Personally, I don't think Trump set Netanyahu up. I think Netanyahu and the Israel lobby worked overtime to sell Trump on the war, because they believed that Iran would disintegrate under pressure. At the very start of Trump's presidency there were some internal divisions with "restrainers" tied to American Conservative Mag/Tucker Carlson put in advisory roles in the Trump administration. However, the Israel firsters were given the most critical cabinet/agency positions (e.g. Rubio at State Dept, Walz at the UN Ambassador; John Ratcliff at CIA; Trump's own chief of staff, his gate-keeper, Susie Wiles, worked on Netanyahu's re-election campaign in 2020). Over the course of 2025, a bunch of the "restrainers" were actively marginalized by the Israel lobby -- some pushed out of the administration altogether. On top of this Fox News, Trump's favorite cable news channel, effectively sold the Israel line of a quick and easy war with victory always just around the corner. It doesn't sound like anyone in Trump's orbit was telling him that the bombing campaign was a bad idea. My sense is that Trump bought into the idea of a quick and easy war that would be like Venezuela, but even more lucrative. Things blew up in his face and within three days he realized that things were going sideways. e.g. based on reporting about Witkoff repeatedly trying to engage Iranian interlocutors in negotiations; Trump's claim that the "Iranians were desperate to talk" was also an obvious tell about his own desperation. The GCC countries and Pakistan are major factors in the pivot towards negotiations. It seems highly likely that Trump was seeing his business deals evaporating into thin air as his actions likely inflicted tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars worth of damage on the region and his "business partners". Throw into the mix Trump's tanking approval ratings and the upcoming mid-term elections. I don't think Trump played Netanyahu, my sense is that Netanyahu and the Israeli lobby kind of played itself. This is the classic case of "be careful what you wish for". Trump is easy to manipulate, and my sense is that Netanyahu assumed he could gradually drag Trump into a much larger war. He assumed that the Kurds would invade Iran. He thought he could draw the GCC countries, including especially Saudi Arabia, more directly into the conflict. At a fundamental level, I think Netanyahu miscalculated. Netanyahu is a political survivor and a gambler. His wagers have worked again and again and again, and like Trump he has defied political gravity. The expansion of the post October 2023 wars buy him time domestically, are a means to avoid elections and avoid potential legal jeopardy in connection with a long-stalled corruption trial. Maybe he's finally run out of time.

Michael Cousins

I know. You are right. I agree with you. I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have said it. I don’t really believe anyone has the sophistication or daring to try something like starting a war to purposely lose it, let alone Trump. But I do think that at Trump’s most basic level, when he looks at the zeros stretching across the page on his money ledger, he likely knows where each of those zeros come from. His awareness of this I guess drives me into ridiculous perverse fantasies. He must think, “At least they paid me.”

Alex

came here to comment this lol

AG

Cruel and mean with a smile in his eye

ggmacd

I'm sure there are worse smells out there but a wolverine's scent is genuinely one of the most foul. Like drying out rotting meat next to a tire fire. Also, finding the remains of a few marmots that I can only describe as being peeled like bananas gave me a lasting appreciation for a wolverine's handiwork. This spring my friend found the remains of a ptarmigan on a glacier that he judged as a wolverine's work because it "looked like it had been hit by a mortar shell"

Alex

Another Cockburn critique of Hitchens extended to his "revelatory" attacks on religion: "Attacking God? The big battles on that issue were fought one, two, even five hundred years ago when they burned Giordano Bruno at the stake in the Campo de' Fiore. A contrarian these days would be someone who staunchly argued for the existence of a Supreme Being." - Alexander Cockburn Some other great quips are in the source as well: https://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12/16/farewell-to-c-h/ Didn't think of Orwell as a reactionary though but maybe i did miss something. He seemed pro-anarchist but I haven't read all his work.

Alex

god on the airbags bit too. I think Carter also put solar panels on the white house and Reagan removed them. Looking forward to the book!

ggmacd

Re: the lifespan conversation, it makes me wonder if "peter thiel" being an anagram for "the reptile" is a conscious attempt by him to manifest superhuman longevity. Homeopathy never really goes away, does it?

Benjamin Holgate

Never ascribe to malice what can be attributed to incompetence.

Benke

Mark is hip with the kids

Benke

On god no cap?

Benke

Of crows and fischer cats. And Iran too.

Greg

Not to be too much of "that guy", but Mark casually mentioned that early human lifespan were about 30 years. That is technically true, but only because so many infants and children died before they reached adulthood it skews the statistic. The fact is, if you were a caveman or cave woman and you survived past puberty, you were almost as likely as any of us to live into your 70s and maybe 80s

CR

I want to believe that story that Japanese researchers may have figured out how to prolong cat lifespans

tam

I've read a lot of Orwell. He has his faults, but the clarity of his writing is superb and he did an excellent job of chronicling the fading of the British Empire, from his position of being very slightly outside the heart of the English establishment. He attended Eton school, but was quickly made aware many of the other boys came from far more moneyed and prestigious backgrounds and I suspect that perspective informed a lot of his writing

Miko

Shout out to Thatcher who was a lot of the brains and will for gutting society, while Reagan was the salesman to pitch it to the masses. I seem to remember she scolded him to not "go wobbly" at one point. And then the roles got reversed with Blair and Bush, with Bush as the brains (???) and Blair as the front man for the Iraq years.

Kiel Cone

that sounds like a psychotically insular take from Cockburn. Religion was a fascist behemoth in the 2000s and still is a galvanizing force for the far right/these calvinist inspired freaks who think being a white male christian gives them some predetermined destiny in how they should be in an elevated part of a social caste and how their morality should be given the benefit of the doubt while being completely divorced from their actions bc that's meritocracy lol. If you were on the left in the 2000s/early 2010s then atheism was this unifying force that everything revolved around like a star and I'll still argue it was a panacea for American fascism. It hit them where it hurt and was an obvious bridge to popular socialism.

dashiell blum

The is probably my favorite rwn episode so I must ask...why only 55 minutes??????