Tom Nichols
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Right.
We disbanded the Iraqi army.
We did all kinds of stupid things.
But to take this and to compare it, say, to Venezuela.
We eliminated exactly one level of leadership in one person, and then we said to the vice president, okay, fine, you can run things.
That's not going to happen here.
This is a total... The 40 top leaders are already dead.
They're already dead.
And the top, you know, at some point...
This is an ideological regime.
This is a totalitarian ideological regime.
Now, there is a huge amount of corruption.
I read, I think it was somebody writing in The Atlantic pointed out that it used to be 80% true believers, 20% charlatans and hangers-on.
Now, it's the other way around.
It's 80% charlatans and 20% true believers.
Great.
But in the meantime, you have a gigantic country.
This isn't even Iraq.
I mean, and Iraq was hard enough.
You have this gigantic country of 92 million people that could fracture into some authorities.