Dave Smith

But look, I mean, what can you say here?

It is true in a way, right, Rob?

Like he's got a point.

There is something, and this is part of the reason, it's not the only reason, but it's part of the reason why we oppose wars of choice, getting into wars that you don't have to, in other words.

And the reason you oppose that is because the truth is you don't really have to be fighting this war.

You're choosing to.

In that situation, you typically don't have – part of the reason why the old adage is that occupations never work or something like that is because people who are fighting for their own homes are fighting for more.

It's a must win for them.

It's not a war of choice.

It's a war of necessity for them.

When you launch a war of choice in a country that's incredibly war weary, that has no appetite for war, with an administration that doesn't even have that large of an appetite for war.

And you're kind of you are kind of half assing it to some attempt to some degree.

There's something about war where you're always pretending that that it's necessary.

But these wars aren't necessary.

You know, there's something about it in the same way.

Rob, if you remember during the war in Ukraine, they would always kind of pretend that like somehow this is a must win for Europe.

for the way if and that's why they would have to do this like they'll reconstitute the soviet union he'll take over poland next he'll take over all of europe because you got to feel like yo this is a must win when the truth is just that like it's not look ukraine lost the war we're all still fine it wasn't a must win he's not taking poland he's not reconstituting the soviet union like none of that actually ended up happening

um likewise when donald trump is just half-assing and pretending like i'm gonna launch a war but of course i'm not gonna send ground troops yeah it's true you can only do so much but again rob to your point we already knew from the the very beginning that there was no appetite for ground troops and the the other thing here is like why not

Why is there not?

I mean, it sure is nice that John Podhoretz is comfortable with more U.S.