David Frum
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Yeah.
Well, on your point about the loser deciding.
I remember reading a memoir of post-war Japan and the memoir writer just marveling that in the spring of 1946, individual American officers unarmed could go to the market and shop and buy things and everybody was polite to them.
There was no assassination.
There was no harassment.
They didn't have to put on a sidearm to go buy things in the market.
The society collectively decided, we accept you, we accept this outcome.
And the United States in turn, by the way, one of the reasons the Japanese occupation went in the way that it did, said to everybody, and by the way, just about everybody here is forgiven.
And whoever was the assistant minister of streetcars before is still assistant minister of streetcars today.
What should the people, what should you and I, what should anyone who cares about our voices, what should anyone who is watching or listening who shares broadly our perspective, what should we do now?
Because American personnel are in harm's way.
We want the United States to succeed in its foreign policy objectives.
This seems, in the abstract, a good cause.
And yeah, it's run by unworthy, the clowns are the best one.
It's run by unworthy people.
both morally and intellectually unworthy, but it's done.
There's no undoing this.
What does Tom Nichols, what does David Fromm, what do people care what we think?
What should we think and say?
Yeah, I have a particular dog in this fight because I'm on record as saying, and people often say this is contradictory and I keep insisting it's not.