Comments by "Jeffrey Gray" (@jgray2718) on "Former Obama WH Staffers on the 20th Anniversary of the Iraq War | Pod Save the World Podcast" video.

  1. I went to see the traveling version (3/4 scale replica) of the Vietnam Memorial today, and there are some obvious parallels between that war and this one. If you asked the public in 2003 "Would you like to spend $2 trillion to destroy Iraq, kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, thousands of US servicepeople, and ruin the lives of millions more Iraqis and hundreds of thousands of Americans so that we can execute Saddam Hussein?" or "Would you like to spend $2 trillion to end homelessness, end child poverty, and transition to a fully renewable energy grid?" I feel like I know which option they would prefer. The way I want to think about war, especially an elective war to have a "rally around the flag" effect on public opinion, is this: our leader(s) would like to murder thousands of people and ruin millions of lives at the cost of billions of dollars because it will make them more popular for a few months. It might raise their approval rating by 15 or even 20 percentage points! How can we say no to that?
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  2. 25:08 When your whole identity is "I'm the good guy because I fight the bad guys" there have to be bad guys to fight. If there aren't any convenient ones, the warmongers will make some up.
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