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all right this segment is on ukraine and we've uh we're calling the ukraine debate because
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we have two great writers and thinkers up here who are on slightly different sides of this issue of the us
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involvement in ukraine antonio garcia martinez writes is the author of the best-selling book chaos
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monkey is about silicon valley he writes a sub-stack called pull request and also has a great call-in show
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and glenn greenwald is uh glenn greenwald is back with us uh from yesterday uh also a phenomenal writer has a uh
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amazing sub stack all of you guys should check out as well and a great call-in show um
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so in in setting up this topic let me just say i think you know that um you know in thinking about the us
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involvement in ukraine um you know there's not a lot of debate about this topic and in that sense it's pretty
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similar to other wars that the us has gotten into many of you probably are not old enough
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to remember when the u.s got into iraq or afghanistan and i'm not old enough to remember the
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us getting into vietnam but the thing to understand about all those wars is that
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they were incredibly popular at the time that we entered them and by the time that they ended they were not
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and now i'm not saying i'm not prejudging ukraine and saying it's one of those i think there's important
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differences that we should get into but i think we should at least have this debate and we need more discussion
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around this and so for that i'm grateful that antonio and glenn decide to participate
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[Music] so what i'm going to do is kick it to each of them for kind of five minute
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opening statements and then we'll just get into sort of more of a back and forth and we'll start with antonio
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cool thanks thanks david uh thanks for skewing the moderation from like literally the first second comparing it
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to a rock because i come up here to say it's not about a rock at all um but um yeah so let's just start off with i
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think probably most people here know that i actually spent some time in ukraine um unlike a lot of the
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independent voices um who decided to opine from afar about ukraine i i felt that the american media
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discourse about ukraine was completely skewed and it just smelled kind of bullshitted to me and so i thought i had
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to go and actually see it and so i spent some time on the polish border with ukraine uh this was kind of in the
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earliest part of the war kind of early march and the western part of ukraine which by the way is not particularly
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dangerous or anything is probably no more dangerous than walking across san francisco these days to be honest um but
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it was interesting to actually go and see and i took away two things i wrote two subset post about it that i want to
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share with you two parts of the ukraine story one the refugee situation is incredible it is
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something that you have to see to believe and even then you can't quite understand the scope of it 10 million
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ukrainians fully a quarter of the country is currently displaced something like six million ukrainians have left in
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the span of two months when you stand at the border at um medica which is one of the the border
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crossings with poland what you see is you're you're at it and you realize you're at the fringes of sort of normal
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you know western european life and you've entered on the other side of that is hell that people are escaping and
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what do you see you see again the men can't leave because they're prohibited from leaving because
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they're because they have to fight and so you see is old people or women with children imagine a woman in her 30s with
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two kids a little rolly bag and like a cat in a bag like that's the typical thing and just a line of them going over
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the border again and again and again right and the polls have been amazing and how they receive the ukrainians
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literally millions of ukrainians but all the same it's an enormous strain everywhere you go in eastern poland or
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western ukraine that's a big open area is basically a refugee camp whether it be a train station repurposed warehouses
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all of it the human situation is just kind of mind-boggling the other thing i'd like to share i crossed the border
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it was weird crossing the border there's this line of people looking to leave and
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there's like you with my little starlink and my little bag and my little body armor like walking across the other way
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because you can't take cars across everyone walks across and everyone's looking at me like i'm crazy
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because why are you walking in the other direction bro and so anyway i walked in
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the other direction had a driver pick me up experienced a little bit of western ukraine for for a few days and i
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experience what i think probably nobody here has experienced directly which is total war right a society that's
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completely and totally mobilized to repel a foreign invader right i was in a city called la viv which is one of the
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western cities that sort of free ukraine and everything there is either men and weapons and trucks going east or women
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and children and refugees going west that's all you would see that's all that would happen there and all of society
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from the interpreter i had because unfortunately i speak no ukrainian to the driver who would drive me around to
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the hacker interviewer who was like ddosing russian websites all of them would punctuate their statements with we
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will win right and that's when i realized that the big mistake that everyone had made i think particularly
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in the u.s discourse is underrating ukrainian resolve and their zeal for their own nationalist project right
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after after spending a day there and again remember this is the relatively early
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days of the war keeve is still encircled it wasn't clear if they were if the belarusians would start a western front
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it was all still up in the air but i was starting to think you know i i don't see
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how the russians win this like this just seems impossible ukraine is the size of
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texas it has a population of 40 million people roughly the size i imagine the russians showing up with 200 000
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soldiers and trying to control california it's going to be very difficult to do particularly when
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literally everybody is staring at you and saying we will win which is what what happened and that's when i realized
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that this whole story was very different than it's being projected in the united
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states and that's i felt um i felt vindicated and going because i think there aren't that many american
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journalists there and i think a lot of the discourse in the u.s tends to skew towards iraq or towards projection of
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american political domestic neuroses and not the facts on the ground in ukraine in which you have devastated
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cities you have women and children refugees you have literally a total war situation that the western world hasn't
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seen since world war ii that's the reality of ukraine and what i hope to debate here
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all right thank you glenn great so i certainly have respect for anyone's decision to go actually see a
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place that you want to talk about i think that there is though a question of how much you can actually learn about a
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country of 44 million people with an incredibly complex history with extreme diversity of thought
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in terms of the population by going for whatever it is a week or 10 days to a kind of sliver of that country that has
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extremely different views than another region for example if in 2003 you wanted to go before the war in iraq and figure
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out what iraqis thought if you went to the kurdish regions of iraq you would hear nothing but i want the united
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states to come and liberate us from salaam hussein if you went to the sunni triangle you would hear if you come if
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the united states comes here we're going to make this a graveyard of of americans and and similarly if you
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go to western ukraine of course you're going to hear we want american help we want to fight
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the russians to the end if you go to the eastern up regions of ukraine which are
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russian speaking who identify with moscow you're going to hear the exact opposite so i think you know it it's
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commendable to go to a country like ukraine i think we have to be humble about our ability to
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understand the thoughts of the population the reality on the ground when you go to
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certain segments that you select um and that are almost likely to kind of feed back to you what it is that uh you're
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already expecting to hear the other thing i think is very important to note is that
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you know first of all i'm a little surprised by the idea that i guess it was implicit that antonio
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felt that the media narrative has been off or one-sided in the sense that it hasn't been favorable enough to the idea
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that ukraine is the victim that needs help and russia is the clear aggressor i can't remember
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ever reading an article on the mainstream press since the invasion that said anything other than that which is
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why you know 80 percent of americans the entire bipartisan class in washington of
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both parties are essentially unified in support of the narrative that antonio believes in my opinion with great
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sincerity i think there's been if anything a kind of lack of dissent available in the united states on the other side
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and this is one thing i want to emphasize is there has been this claim this sort of
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implicit claim sometimes explicit claim that the entire war is united behind the
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united states behind ukraine against russia the reality is overwhelmingly the most of the world is in fact not united
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behind the united states and then in a position on ukraine most of the global south 15 of the most of the 20
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most populous countries on the planet either abstained or voted no when it came time to decide whether to expel
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russia from the human rights council and some of those countries are tyrannies many of them such as india the
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world's largest democracy brazil the second largest democracy after the united states um
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very much deviates from the re the the consensus in the united states and and sometimes i think if we're americans and
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we're living in a country in which we're bombarded with one message it's incumbent upon us to ask why it is that
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so much of the rest of the world does not believe that the united states is participating in the war in ukraine with
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benevolent intentions or with the desire to protect democracy or protect against
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aggression when in fact the the rest of the world looks at the history of the united states not just distant but very
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recent and sees a country not devoted to protecting democracy but to propping up
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tyranny to fighting wars not to protect innocents but to sacrifice innocence in its own
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interests and so i think that's one really important thing is to make sure that we're looking at this war not as a
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country that's essentially a belligerent in it but as a country that is just a small part of the rest of the world that
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has a lot of opinions the other thing i would point out is war in general is the worst thing that humanity can
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unleash upon itself there is no war that doesn't involve extreme amounts of atrocities extreme amounts of war crimes
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all kinds of hideous things and if you look at any war any war not just the ones that united states the
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united states adversaries have started but once the united states has started ones that the united states is allies
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have started that we support you're going to find enormous amounts of atrocities and any decent person
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with any kind of a minimum moral compass who looks at any war like that is going
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to walk away horrified and disgusted and wanting to do something about it the only difference between what's
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happening in the war in ukraine and so many other wars is that the u.s media is constantly
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showing us images and stories about ukrainian victims as it should but think about the wars that the united
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states has itself started or is propping up like for example the war in yemen that has been going on for many years
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that is still going on because the united states is supplying saudi arabia not exactly a democracy with enormous
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amounts of weapons and and money and intelligence to fight that war and think about how much you've heard or
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seen about the victims of yemen how many yemenis have you heard from talking about their relatives who have been lost
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in in in battle or how many uh people who we bombed in wedding parties and the like have been lost and well and so i
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think what this can happen is it can create an imbalance in our perception the imbalance isn't that the war in
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ukraine really isn't horrible it is but that there's really nothing extraordinary about what's taking place
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in that war all wars including the ones we start the ones that were waging the ones that were supporting have the same
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kinds of atrocities and the question ultimately becomes does the united states really have benevolent motives in
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trying to defend ukraine instead of sacrifice it and secondly does the united states have
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the ability to foster a positive outcome on the other side of the world involving
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extremely complex cultures and histories and two countries of very intertwined geostrategic interests that even if we
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did have the right motives would we really have the ability by flooding this country with weapons and all the other
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things we typically do in wars to foster a positive outcome and i think that's why the rest of the world has a lot of
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doubts okay thank you lin so glenn went a little bit longer so antonio i want to
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give you a couple of minutes to respond to that and then i want to ask you both a question okay i think i've welcomed
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the wrong thing i didn't realize we're debating yemen instead of ukraine glenn um or indian foreign policy instead of
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our own um one thing i'd say is one thing you said is just completely wrong it's not the case that eastern ukraine
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is pro-russian if so how do you explain mariopol a city completely destroyed that fought to the last man with
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civilians literally hauling up in a steel plane how do you explain all the successes in the eastern part of the war
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you never actually mentioned the facts of the war you're is what abouting other countries reaction to the war the fact
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that the eastern front in russia the war is going very poorly for russia how do you explain that fact that if eastern
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ukraine is actually pro-russian that the russians are doing so poorly there the other thing i would say i don't think
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it's the fact if you look at most polls and it's funny this poll came out and instantly your friend tucker carlson as
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well as jd vans have to change their line on ukraine because they realize that it's hard to be a populist if your
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views aren't very popular right ap did a poll and not just democrats support biden being tougher on russian
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republicans do as well right and why is that because you have a small country that's getting crushed by a country
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that's been the historical sworn enemy of the united states as long as anyone can remember i live out in the middle of
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nowhere in a red state trump country in the desert outside of reno and people are flying ukrainian flags along with
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the u.s flags i don't think that's because they read the new york times right um
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the other so antonio let me ask a question so we recently had uh well previously binding can i just
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address one last thing there because several points there um you know the other thing i would say is that you know
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this in that country don't support it one thing i found one aspect of the story that i found was very interesting
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was that all of europe has shown up on ukraine's door to help out the ukrainians right usually i'm
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i'm both eu us citizen usually i read both media it's like the u.s that is like the hard line real politique and
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then the eu that's in like geopolitical la la land i think in the case of this story it's been reversed
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and i think the us is taking ukraine and projecting it in its own domestic political narratives like lenas and i
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think the europeans actually see their own collective history in the ukrainian story because whether it be the spanish
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civil war whether it be the germans they all remember what total war actually means what it is to stumble through
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destroyed streets and be a refugee and a displaced person americans don't have an
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experience of that they can't really resonate with that fortunately for us to be clear but i think europeans do so if
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you go to that border area you will see all of europe as far away as spain denmark whatever showing up to actually
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help the ukraines the last thing i would say is i think one thing that unites i think the old left that you probably put
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yourself into in with glenn like a bernie leftist and the new right is that both consider two key things one the us
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can never act abroad in a legitimate good way everything the u.s does abroad is always a fiasco and then two
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everything that happens abroad is our fault like literally the entire world's events are downstream of the state
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department phone call and i just don't i just don't think that's true being in ukraine it doesn't seem to me as if the
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us is pulling all the strings on the contrary it seems like a very chaotic situation where the ukrainians are
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trying to improvise as much as they can and so again on the one hand i reject the fact that the u.s can't act abroad
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well i think it can if you look at things east asia japan korea western europe itself the u.s has created the
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conditions for democracy in the past okay but antonio is there a limit to wise us involvement in ukraine so
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you know we have biden basically said that putin cannot remain in power and then immediately his own press secretary
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walked that back as a gaff he then had secretary of defense austin say that our objective in ukraine is not just to
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expel the russians but to weaken russia as a great power so it can never threaten anyone again you then had seth
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moulton the the uh a democrat of the house armed services committee saying that we were in a proxy war with russia
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and then cindy hoyer the house majority leader said we are at war with russia do
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you think we are at war with russia and is that wise no we're in a proxy war we're in a proxy worth russia what is
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the vital national interest of the united states that compels us to be in a war admittedly through a proxy with
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russia that has six thousand nuclear weapons even if i were to grant that we should be trying to out of humanitarian
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motives expel the russians from ukraine do you believe that we should be trying to destabilize and
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topple putin let me counter that with the questions i feel like i'm debating two people but
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like i jumped in my tweet the odds are even worse for the ukrainians so i'll take it but um
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i mean i ask you this question in miami not too long ago david um you're the one
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who said oh we're threatening world war three we're engaging in nuclear brinksmanship by the way things that we
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did all throughout the cold war right i was raised as an 80s kid here in miami we used to do this thing all the time at
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what point would you stop at what point do you think it's actually worth rolling
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the dice at what point between levive and warsaw and your front door would you stop and say actually world war iii
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nuclear war is worth risking because that's an answer i don't get out of the appeasers at what point do you actually
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put your foot down well i mean look what i've said is that i'm willing to arm ukraine under cold
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war rules i.e the way that we armed the mujahideen in afghanistan so we provided
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them with stingers but it wasn't a u.s flag on the box and we didn't draw you know it wasn't us flags on the trucks we
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there were a certain set of rules by which we engaged in to avoid the risk of world war three with the russians do you
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feel that's not the case now i think it's i know because we have now defined our objectives in a much more expansive
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way and i'll let glenn speak for himself because i think he would not go as far as me i'm sort of
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i'm willing to do a little bit more but um but no i mean look you have the president united states saying
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that he wants to basically topple putin you've got austin saying that our objectives here go beyond ukraine it's
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basically to kick russia out of the league of great powers and moreover you've got the state department
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declaring that we're in a global struggle between autocracy and democracy so we've defined the struggle in
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manichaean terms and if somehow ukraine were to lose there's like there's a domino theory where dictators are going
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to take over the whole globe and so i think we've invested ukraine i would give them
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some help but i would not allow the we no american president has ever claimed that the united states has a
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vital national interest in ukraine name of the president has done it before can i
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so first of all at the start of every war that we fought over the last 60 years the same climate
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if we were in the united states would prevail as the one that's in this room every time some comment was made that
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the united states is on the right side we're actually doing the right thing we're fighting on behalf of everybody in
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the auditorium a pod it's really good it's a good feeling to feel like your country your
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government is doing something deeply moral so again i just want to show and maybe you know this doesn't matter
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because you think that most other countries are primitive or arrogant or immersed in
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propaganda and we're we're not but here are the top 20 countries by population and the ones in yellow are the ones who
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refuse to support the u.n resolution expelling russia from the un human rights council and you can
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see that it's nine out of the ten most populous countries that are on the opposite side of all the cheering that's
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taking place in this auditorium this is exactly what has repeated itself every time we've gone to war in vietnam in
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iraq in afghanistan in libya in syria all americans across the board 80 percent 85 are on board with the war in
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the beginning because it feels so good to believe your country is going to where to do something positive and then
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six months later or a year later or five years later every single one of those wars overwhelming majority say it was a
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huge mistake that at least to me would cause some humility to ask why does that pattern keep repeating itself
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why am i as american an american always so susceptible to cheering my government's involvement in a war when
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the rest of the world is telling you that actually you're being propagandized that the motive the united states
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government is claiming to have which is defending democracy is not actually their motive as illustrated by i don't
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know why the rule is we're not allowed to evaluate other things the united states is doing to determine whether
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those motives are real like what we do in saudi arabia or what we do in yemen it seems like if someone comes to you
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and claims that they're acting with a certain motive to determine whether that's really the motive you'd want to
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look at the history of that person and whether their behavior is consistent with that motive that's what the rest of
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the world is doing and the reason why they find these propagandist claims of the united states so preposterous
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because so many of them have been victimized by the united states overthrowing their democratically
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elected governments not in the distant past but in the recent ones here's the next uh 10 most populous countries 6 out
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of 10 also deviates from the us position and then as far as what david was saying
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this was barack obama so it's not what antonio was saying people on the far left my
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friend tucker carlson evil far right people this is barack obama in 2016 on his way out the door
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he was confronted in a very lengthy interview by jeffrey goldberg the neoconservative editor-in-chief of the
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atlantic who probably did more than anybody else to convince americans to support the war in iraq in 2002-3
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by claiming that al-qaeda was in an alliance with sodom hussein and he was demanding to know why obama spent his
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presidency refusing to arm the ukrainians and refusing to confront moscow and here's what jeffrey goldberg
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in 2016 quoted obama as saying this is goldberg's uh quote for obama quote obama's theory here is simple
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ukraine is a core russian interest but not an american one so russia will always be able to maintain escalatory
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dominance there quote the fact is that ukraine which is a non-nato country is going to be vulnerable to military
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domination by russia no matter what we do it's realistic but this is an example of where we have to be very clear about
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what our core interests are and what we are willing to go to war for and then here is the
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current cia director william burns who's also not on the far left or part of the
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far right who in 2008 in a memo to condoleezza rice when the bush administration wanted to expand nato up
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to russian borders warned this is what he wrote quote ukrainian entry into nato is the brightest of all red lines for
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the russian elite not just putin in more than two and a half years of conversations with key russian players
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from knuckle draggers in the dark recesses of the kremlin to putin's sharpest liberal critics i have yet to
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find anyone who views ukraine and nato as anything other than a direct challenge to russian interests this has
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been conventional wisdom in washington up until february 24th when it suddenly became taboo to talk about russia
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views ukraine as the most vital interest to it because it was twice used by germany to invade russia in the 20th
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century and virtually destroy it and that ukraine never has been and never will be of vital interest to the united
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states okay let me let's go to antonio okay give him a chance okay glenn i think that arguments on it better than
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the original russian to be honest i mean i don't know why you're sitting here citing six-year-old atlantic pieces
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about obama are you going to address the reality what we're talking about in that
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list of nations by the way you included such human rights luminaries as iran and
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china as having voted against it let me ask you a direct question should russia be sitting on the u.n human rights
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council a country that routinely incarcerates journalists and has a heinous human rights record i mean the
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quote if you look at who else is on the human rights council like the united states
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like you're always what about it just answer the question it's not what about ism to say you have to look at what the
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rest of the world is doing in order to understand the moral framework why is it that the united states that still has
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people in guantanamo for 20 years with no trial that destroyed the country of iraq a country of 25 million people that
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is the created the worst humanitarian crisis in yemen that is imprisoning journalists like julian assange with no
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charges for over a decade now has any moral credibility to say we are morally superior i know it feels good to say
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that but the reality is the united states if you look at what it's actually doing which is going around the world
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and has always done this supporting tyranny not supporting democracy propping up despots not fighting them
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if you want to believe that there's a way to go into ukraine and defend the ukrainians and all of that i believe
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that that's what you want to do but it would be incredibly naive to refuse to ask ourselves whether that's really the
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goal of the united states given everything we know about the government and if the goal of the united states is
00:24:59
not the benevolent one that you hope they have and that you have but it instead is a different one
00:25:04
namely not to defend ukraine and ukrainians but to sacrifice ukraine in pursuit of this broader geopolitical
00:25:11
goal that david mentioned that they're now admitting which is to weaken russia and bring about regime change then
00:25:17
you're cheering for a war that is completely different than the war that is actually being fought no i disagree
00:25:22
and i think i think you've spent too long in plato's cave of twitter and you don't you don't stare at reality anymore
00:25:27
to be quiet no no what i showed you excuse me twitter not what i just showed you came from twitter yeah it came from
00:25:31
the six-year-old atlantic piece it's even less relevant just this week the finnish and swedish parliaments voted to
00:25:37
join nato why is that your your argument is completely backwards russia's not aggressive
00:25:43
hold on hold on let me finish the thought right right no hold on russia let me respond to the point that you sat
00:25:48
there for two minutes staring at russia is not surrounded by nato russia isn't aggressive because it's
00:25:52
surrounded by nato it's surrounded by nato because it's aggressive okay and countries like finland and sweden have
00:25:57
been living under the russian boot and finland most of all knows it from the winter war and that threat has been
00:26:02
there constantly so again what do you know that the finnish and swedish parliaments who are trying
00:26:07
to make a decision for their people don't know right if i were a country and i and the and and i had the option to
00:26:12
have the richest and most powerful country with the biggest military tell me that if anyone invades you i'm gonna
00:26:19
go into war and fight against you i would say yeah i would love that also that sounds like a really great thing of
00:26:24
course every country would love to have a pledge from the world's greatest military that if anyone are you
00:26:28
seriously saying that countries would line up to be ukraine what do you know what do you know
00:26:33
about united the united states intentions that all of the countries i just showed you not including tyrannies
00:26:40
many of which are on the united states side but many democracies who have had their democracy subverted by the united
00:26:45
states who are saying we do not believe the united states is well intentioned that every time the united states
00:26:51
involves itself in a war it convinces its own citizens that it's going to do benevolent things but the reality is
00:26:57
exactly the opposite what do you know that the entire rest of the world doesn't it's not the entire rest of the
00:27:02
world the europeans the europeans who are close to the conflict completely disagree with you
00:27:06
the danes the cuddly little danes are seeing left lethal aids ukraine first my own country the spanish are us and
00:27:11
europeans are let's make shift gears i want to get another aspect of this topic so
00:27:15
um let's let's start with you antonio what is the outcome that you would like to see here and um
00:27:22
you know right now the way that victory is being defined by ukraine and by our state department is that
00:27:32
we kick russia out of ukraine maybe even crimea too that's the official policy and maybe we destabilize and topple
00:27:40
putin i mean where wh where's the like what do you what's the outcome that you think our objective
00:27:47
should be here my ideal outcome is whatever the ukrainians want for themselves which
00:27:52
seems to be if you listen to them seems to be a liberal democratic ukraine that wants to join the greater eu
00:28:00
western sphere if you look at the the maidan protest in 2015 this is when everyone kind of revolted against the
00:28:06
the pro-russian leader at the time and there were civilian shootings and if you talk to ukrainians i mean there's been
00:28:10
200 years or longer of ukrainian sort of nationalism kind of brewing but the 2014-2015 protests were really a
00:28:16
formative period where the ukrainians really said this is it we've got our own country and if you talk to them they're
00:28:21
like we've had seven years of democracy we're not giving it up now right and if you look at things like the mass graves
00:28:26
discovered abuca when the russians pulled back they look at that and they say if we fail that's the future that
00:28:30
awaits us right so they want the opposite of that apparently 80 to 90 of the population in
00:28:35
crimea is russian and wants to be part of russia does that go back to ukraine or does that go to russia
00:28:42
it's a good question but the ukrainians under zielinski believe that crimea belongs to them so is he wrong about
00:28:49
that doesn't the principle of self-determination mean that those peoples should get to decide which
00:28:55
country they go with i mean that's as much a question for crimea as it is catalunya in spain i
00:28:59
mean uh you want me to speak for the lens but but the russians have a naval base
00:29:04
at sevastopol that gives them control over the black sea and if you tell them that
00:29:09
that what ukrainian victory means here as they get kicked out of that naval base and lose control of the black sea
00:29:16
you have threatened them existentially and you know their policy with regard to nuclear weapons is it's allowed if their
00:29:23
nation is existentially threatened so we are playing with fire here is that an objective that we are willing to risk a
00:29:29
nuclear war for as we did in cuba with nuclear weapons there i don't think we should be so
00:29:36
we need to define our objectives here in a more limited way than just whatever the ukrainians say but here's the
00:29:41
reality right again this is one of the things you get into american political discourse everything isn't downstream of
00:29:46
american decision this will come down to the fortunes of war on the ground in ukraine which is partially a function of
00:29:51
how much it would give them obviously yes and we can put strings on those weapons right
00:29:56
40 billion of weapons are going there and it's just this month's delivery so i mean and it's a good question to
00:30:01
ask what happens to those weapons after which i'm sure is a concern do you believe our state department is working
00:30:07
for a negotiated peace i don't know the inner workings of the state department but should they be
00:30:13
no i think the worst stops in the ukrainians wanted to stop glad your views there's so many countries all over the
00:30:20
world who want the united states to do things that we don't that we don't do for them the yemenis have been begging
00:30:27
the united states for six years to stop sending huge amounts of weaponry and intelligence to
00:30:33
the the saudis and you can say oh yeah yemen is a totally different country yemen's a different country but it's
00:30:39
still the united states government and it is extremely disturbing to me i have to say
00:30:43
that we suddenly seem to care so much about the lives of ukrainians and seem to care very little
00:30:52
about the lives of all the countries in which we ourselves are the aggressors and you can say well that's a completely
00:30:58
different issue but it's not a completely different issue because what the united what the outcome is of the
00:31:03
united states's role in ukraine is determined by the us motive and what you have to do to look at what the us motive
00:31:10
is is not pick the rhetoric that makes you feel good we're on the side of liberation that's what george bush said
00:31:17
in his 2003 state of the union speech we're going to iraq because we love democracy and we're going to liberate
00:31:23
the iraqi people from saddam hussein that's what lyndon johnson said about why we're getting involved in the war in
00:31:29
vietnam we love the south vietnamese democrats and we're going there to protect them from the south vietnamese
00:31:35
communists maybe if that had been true those words would have had much different outcomes but that wasn't the
00:31:40
reason that was the propagandistic pretense and so to refuse to say i'm going to interrogate the authenticity of
00:31:47
what u.s motives are is it just wash your hands of the reality of the war instead of what you hope the war is and
00:31:55
and that's given antonio the last word yeah okay right we're good i'm gonna give you the last
00:32:00
one we're gonna give antonio the last word since he was a little bit outgunned here uh not outgunned because you did
00:32:05
more than fine on your own but there was a little bit of two on one so we're gonna give interview a lot david what
00:32:10
what were you guys talking about somalia apparently or yemen apparently but anyhow so when i was coming back
00:32:15
from ukraine and i was crossing back and suddenly i was obviously i wasn't really
00:32:18
a refugee but i was in the refugee line along with all the ukrainians leaving and you're at the border it's the middle
00:32:22
of nowhere by the way it's not like a big city or anything and you saw a sign in polish that said you're entering
00:32:27
poland and the eu flag right and as a new citizen that flag never really meant much to me but and again not that my
00:32:33
time in ukraine was that bad but it did feel precarious and it was a war zone and sirens going off and all that stuff
00:32:38
to go back to what seemed like an ordered liberal world seemed magical to me i had the same feeling i went to
00:32:42
report on cuba on the internet years ago for wired magazine and when i landed at
00:32:46
miami airport here was like man god bless america i'm glad to be back here there's a certain order and and rules to
00:32:51
life i think the global liberal order is real and i think those who tend to [ __ ]
00:32:56
on it or at least question its value are those that typically tend not to live outside of it for one and undervalue its
00:33:02
importance in the world ladies and gentlemen a debate for the ages well done [Music]
00:33:23
it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it [Music] besties [Music] it's like this like sexual tension but
00:33:50
they just need [Music] we need to get these [Music] i'm going on [Music]