Ben Rhodes

We better go after them.

Or there's some bad guy that just popped up in Mali.

We have to deal with him.

Or lo and behold, Netanyahu comes and says, look, you've got the table all set here.

to encircle the Iranians and deliver a blow at them.

The problem is you build this massive machinery, it becomes kind of self-sustaining.

You can find a threat anywhere, or all it takes is, you know, apparently Donald Trump waking up with the wrong idea in his head and starting a war in Iran.

And I think we just have to stop.

Nobody wants this.

Americans don't want to pay for this.

The people in these countries are tired of violence.

The war on terror has created the refugee crisis.

Tens of millions of people displaced in the wake of American violence.

That's radicalized European politics to the far right.

The machinery came home because we had the equipment.

What do you think ICE, why they look so scary?

Because

The equipment that we used in wars, we bring home and give to police forces that are at ICE, and suddenly you've got armored vehicles and dudes in body armor.

And some of those guys in ICE were trained in counterinsurgency tactics in Baghdad, and then they're doing them in Minneapolis.

This is what the entire edifice of the war on terror is.