Bob Kagan
speaker
1,471 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2026
last heard 29 Jul
Bob Kagan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
And one of the reasons was setting everything else aside.
One thing we learned in the 1990s was that you could not bomb your way into success like this.
You could not bomb your way into regime change.
You could not bomb your way into solving problems.
Why do we think that George W. Bush sent troops to Iraq in order to get regime change?
It wasn't because he was dying to send troops somewhere.
It was because we'd already figured out that if you didn't do that, then you weren't getting regime change, which is fine.
Maybe we shouldn't have done it, whatever.
But if you were going to do it, you had to do it.
So we learned that that was true.
And these people knew that too.
So I was just surprised.
And I think it was a combination of
They want to be pro-Trump.
They've obviously made that calculation in their heads, whether it's for career purposes or money purposes or because they truly like Donald Trump or they really hate the Democrats or whatever.
So they were initially pro-Trump.
And then Iran is a special issue for some people, clearly.
And so the notion that the United States was finally blowing up Iranians and killing the regime, I just think was just a very – you know, after decades, some of these people have committed themselves to containing, defeating, et cetera, Iran, that it got the better of them.
And maybe they even believed –
What they said they believed, and this is a thing that I think has been a big factor in all this, is that Donald Trump is different from all the rest of these guys.
Showing 601–620 of 1,471 · page 31 of 74
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