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Radio War Nerd EP #371 — Iraq War 20th Anniversary, pt. 2: Countdown To Lunacy (Patreon)

Published:
2023-03-30 01:50:02
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Recorded: March 24, 2023

The War Nerd & Ames recall the long loony lead-up to the Iraq War from their literary bunker in Moscow...

Total time: 1:27:49

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

Comments

grimbo

Nice

blazed uncle

That Tom Friedman clip should be the new American national anthem.

ChicagoJon

The military rise of China is the opportunity cost of our 30 years in Iraq and Afghanistan. Had we not been entangled in these two conflicts there would have been a lot more attention and capital available to focus on the rise of China as a military power and the soft power of belt and road.

Jimmy B

as an Honest RWN fan this is more of what I like, less of former US troops who shot and now feel bad

etienne

trying to find the time to re-listen to Blowback S1 to mark this occasion

Jake Paterson

Imagine coming to a podcast about war and complaining about them doing an interview with former solider about the war they fought in. Shut the fuck up you idiot troglodyte

a clash of purple

I am eternally flabbergasted at how stupid Thomas Friedman is. I can think of quite a few historically stupid people, from the Trump family to that Nazi pedophile who poked his own eye out with a fork to Dan Quinn, Bari Weiss, Megan McArdle, et al, and they're all astonishingly and aggressively stupid, but I really think Tom Friedman might have them all beat. His only serious competition in my mind for stupidest creature to ever live is Donald Trump Jr..

JFE-1138

Isn’t “The Bubble and the Stick” the title of one of Friedman’s books?

Matelda

LBJ couldn't back off on Vietnam because he didn't want to get JFKd.

Of course

I always admire this take: we shouldn't have committed the genocidal evil we did... no, we should've committed a whole other genocidal evil. ... Or maybe, just maybe, instead of focusing on stopping the cursed Asiatics or whatever other imperial adventure you have in mind, we could've built a society worth living in.

William

Lol what evidence do you have for that? If they were “focused on china” they wouldn’t have outsourced all their factory jobs there. American imperialism has been primarily based on sowing enough local chaos and division that they can have a secure grasp on the resources, primarily oil, that they need. PNAC was about military power and resources. The ‘pivot to Asia’ came 10 years ago; nobody took china seriously until then

cstenzy

🎵 Bush bravely ran away! 🎵

a clash of purple

To be fair to Jimmy B, I actually don't care much about the perspective of the average soldier when it comes to war. I mean, what insight will they have to offer? "Our officers sucked, we didn't care about the mission, our gear sucked, we never had enough supplies, we did some war crimes," etc.. That's almost everyone who's ever gone to war. Most people are not Mario Rigoni Stern, they lack the skills and inclination to say anything interesting about their experiences. But Seth Harp is not just "a former U.S. soldier who shot people and now feels bad." He's also a journalist who did serious original research on the topics that RWN is talking to him about. So chill out.

a clash of purple

Also Nixon and Kissinger sabotaged his peace negotiations, and he didn't have them shot as traitors for some reason.

Matelda

From what i hear Friedman is also a flat earther

a clash of purple

But if we built a society worth living in, then there wouldn't be any billionaires or artificial scarcity or wasting money on scatterbrained military adventures just so you don't have to give it to the poors. And that's certainly no society I want to live in. There's nothing the United States could do to stop China from becoming a dominant world power, short of blowing up the planet (which they might). China is the most populous country on Earth, and for thousands of years it was the wealthiest and most powerful as well. The imperial hegemony of the West is a short-lived historical aberration based on the ruthless, genocidal exploitation of the Americas and Africa. But that dream can't last forever. Sooner or later, whether under the CCP or some other regime, China is going to retake their place as one of the centers of human civilization. The U.S. can hold out longer than England did, and it could nuke the world into a cinder out of spite if it wants, but you can't maintain this current absurd disequilibrium forever. All this violence and imperialist dick-waving is only delaying the inevitable, when a smarter strategy would be to assume that we're all going to have to learn to share this planet if we want to keep it, and plan accordingly.

Arielle Curtin

How bout Rummy’s Red/Yellow/Green terror alerts and advice to duct tape your windows/doors in case of radiation? Good times!

Brian

That god-awful song “Right Here, Right Now” was by Jesus Jones, not James.

JFE-1138

That’s what all the taxi drivers tell me.

ClockworkOuroborous

Be sure to have lots of plastic sheeting to cover the doors and windows! I immediately went to "And if there is an attack, it'll make it easy to bundle you up for a mass grave.

ClockworkOuroborous

God, this brings back memories. Bush's chickenshit cowering in a bunker, the rush into Iraq II. I had a lot of people where I lived pissed at me because I saw that the war was going to be a fiasco. Not a word from them when it turned into a quagmire. When Bush was asked about Saddam and he said he wasn't a priority, God I was pissed. Just wondering how anyone couldn't see it was a naked grab for oil. The greed and stupidity just boggled my mind.

Stewie

Great episode! One quibble with Gary, who seems to be pouring cold water on the idea that “Amerithrax” could have been state sponsored: please consider listening to Robby Martin’s excellent podcast episodes on the topic, which he collaborated on with Gumby4Christ. There are absolutely ties to US state actors, and its a wild story. Would make an excellent podcast topic for you guys, considering how absolutely memory-holed it is.

CR

Come on, guys. Biden has been wrong about everything and has never done anything good in his life. And he never will. He was the biggest fucking cheerleader for the Iraq War in the Senate *where he was the Foreign Relations Chair*.

CR

He married a billionaire. His corpse will be bloviating on Meet The Press 1,000 years from now

CR

That was Tom Ridge

CR

"Didn't we already tell you?" - classic bully/abuser chickenshit statement that he said earnestly but which really puts a bow on the whole thing just perfectly as far as how evil and depraved that thinking and behavior is.

CR

> I immediately went to "And if there is an attack, it'll make it easy to bundle you up for a mass grave. Those PSAs in Threads were real, you know.

CR

Andrew Card was Bush's chief of staff. And everyone was lauding these monsters as the most experienced foreign policy team in history.

Patrick Friel

Great episode, thanks guys. Even before the invasion, the sanctions and bombing took a terrible toll. When asked about the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children on 60 Minutes in 1996, Madeleine Albright famously said it was worth it.

John Waaben

When I was 6 in 2003 they made our suburban NJ (public) classroom sing “caissons go rolling along” bc one of the teacher’s husbands was in the National Guard so they were striking us young with the rah rah feel good WW2 nostalgia. Great funny ep, appreciate the coverage

AJ

It wasn’t Saddam, it was Osama who Bush said wasn’t a priority. Saddam was captured in December 2003.

Nicholas Levis

You're always the coast or ghost Mark Ames. ;-)

William

I think my biggest takeaway is that everyone needs to lose their rose colored glasses view of the military and intelligence being the “best and the brightest”. There may be some smart men and women in those ranks but there’s also a reason why the phrase, “lions led by donkeys” exists

William

Imagine being able to hit “pause” and stop listening when something doesn’t hold your interest anymore. Maybe one day I guess

Aditya V

Exactly. Exiting Afghanistan too was part of Biden's plan to go to war with Russia and make no mistake, today it IS NATO's war on Russia. A cursory look at the progression of events in 2021 reveals the cause for Putin's SMO is not the breakdown of Minsk accords, but the Zelensky announcement in March 2021 of a strategy to take Crimea. This was a threat of war made 2 months into Biden administration. The timing is important because no such strategy was ever put forward by UA officials between 2014 and 2021. The Russians anyway took this seriously enough to send 100K troops to the border and were stopped from invading by a phone call from Biden to Putin on April 13, 2021 promising a summit. Biden was probably playing for time because on April 15, he announced withdrawal from Afghanistan to divert those resources to Ukraine (annual spending on Afghanistan was around 45 billion usd)

Aditya V

Great episode. Brought back those memories. When the 9/11 news was breaking out, I was a PhD student in the US, sitting in a computer lab with some freshmen undergrads scrolling the internet.They too behaved exactly like Dr. Dolan's New Zealand  TAs. Being young, they just could not have any other reaction.

Aditya V

Biden is indefensible. Those who provoke the war are just as responsible as those who fire the first shot. Biden or his adjutants pushed Zelensky into announcing a strategy in March 2021 to take Crimea. The announced strategy contained "military measures" among other measures. Russia correctly perceived this as threat of aggression and said so in official statement. Russian officials then warned that Zelensky govt was like "children playing with matches" and that it would be the "end of Ukraine". They sent 100K troops to the border. Biden in a panic called Putin on 13 April and offered a summit. On 15 April, Biden announced exit from Afghanistan and then set about exiting troops in a rushed panic stricken manner as the whole world saw. He would save 45 billion USD annually by this removal. Good amount to use for Ukraine. The summit was a disaster , just used to gain time by fooling Putin (easily fooled all the time by EU, Biden etc).

Aditya V

One month after Biden inauguration, Zelensky said this: "Crimea was the heart of Ukraine. It was a sunny, kind, and bright heart. Seven years ago, the heart was ripped out of Ukraine". No one in Ukraine actually believes it. Two months after Biden inauguration, the Ukrainian govt for the first time in 7 years, announced a strategy for taking Crimea. https://www.ppu.gov.ua/en/sogodni-prezydent-ukrayiny-volodymyr-zelenskyj-pidpysav-ukaz-117-2021-vid-24-bereznya-2021-roku-pro-rishennya-rady-natsionalnoyi-bezpeky-i-oborony-ukrayiny-vid-11-bereznya-2021-roku-pro-strategiyu-deo/

Demented Avenger

Did any of you actually read the PNAC report? I read it around the time of the Iraq invasion, and it's *insane*. It's like Underpants Gnomes: Step 1: Invade Iraq Step 2: ? (involves something with Iran and other regional foes that's hard to define other than war war war for indeterminable reasons) Step 3: China! It kind of leads you in, and the insanity really takes off around page 35 or so (again, it's been 20 years or so since I read it, so I don't remember for sure; that was around midway).

Aditya V

Weirdly , Zelensky announced the 'take crimea' strategy after Ukraine outlawed private sector service businesses such as restaurants, groceries, veterinarians etc from using Russian to communicate to customers. First they have to use Ukrainian and if customer does not understand, then only use Russian.

Michelle Shocked

My dudes. This ep was invaluable. Thank you~

Ander Pierce

Ah yes, the three bubbles 'NASDAQ bubble', 'Tech bubble', 'Terrorism bubble'. These three bubbles, and the military contractor bubble, create the 'suck on this bubble' which costs trillions and a lot of blood, and provides fuel for the third bubble haha

Aditya V

"stand in the way of the insanity". yes scary times. I had gone to the peace rally in US in Feb 2003, where the local city paper interviewed me. They printed the interview the next day... But I didn't feel good about it, somehow the article made me look like some radical simply for saying Iraq had no WMDs and for saying Iraq was secular country and allowed Women to drive.

Hardcore Virgin

Around 40 min. About anthrax and ppl believing it was the state. I mean. It was anthrax made at Fort Detrick…

CR

The CIA is Mormons led by donkeys

CR

All the bubbles were just steam escaping from the boiling pot of THE LARGEST UPWARD TRANSFER OF WEALTH SINCE CHATTEL SLAVERY

J.L. Vaughn

That song was Jesus Jones, not James!

Benj

2025 update: Giuliani is still America’s Mayor, but for whole different reason