[Stewart] Coming up on The Problem...
America hired itself as the guardian of world peace,
and our foreign policy has been everything, everywhere, all at once.
[audience chuckling]
We're competing for talent.
Almost 40% of our budget is pay for the people that we hire.
You don't want China coming in, going, "What are they offering you?"
We are the agents of this instability,
in search of cheaper oil, cheaper goods, cheaper labor.
It's certainly arguable.
- Doesn't mean that I embrace it. - You-- You will embrace it, sir.
[audience applauding, cheering]
Hey!
Hello!
Welcome!
I'm Jon Stewart.
You know, in the old Daily Show days,
I used to doodle and, like, pretend that I was doing something.
Now I look at this and pretend I'm reading it
because without... [chuckles] ...my glasses, I can't even read this script.
I just wanted you to know that. I'm an old man.
My name is Jon Stewart,
and I wanted to ask you, uh,
the audience here and the audience at home,
are you enjoying your peace dividend?
[audience laughs]
You know what a peace dividend is?
Your peace dividend is the bonus that citizens of a country enjoy
when their country finally emerges from years of conflict, of war.
We have had 20 years of war. Yes.
[whispering] Twenty years.
[normal voice] And from what I understand, it's now-- It's over.
Trillions of dollars spent, thousands of lives lost--
hundreds of thousands of lives lost if you count the lives in other countries,
which as you know, we-- we do not.
[audience laughing]
The reasonable expectation for Americans might be
that the war-fighting arm of the American system,
the Defense Department, would thus be receiving
a postwar bit of what we'll call a haircut, budgetarily.
The Senate passing a record $858 billion defense authorization bill.
[reporter] I believe $45 billion more
than the White House was asking for in this budget.
Was that necessary?
No, it wasn't.
- [scoffs] Wha-- - [audience laughing]
Take-- No. Take your time with the answer.
Yes. It almost never is.
You got it correct. $858 billion.
The war's ended, and the Pentagon got a raise.
Forty-five billion dollars could hire 400,000 nurses,
subsidize health care for over 15 million children,
fix every one of America's failing bridges.
Why in God's name does the Pentagon, in a postwar environment, need more money?
The world continues to flirt with World War III.
- [reporter 2] Tensions rising with China. - Another object flying over Alaska.
[reporter 3] ...unprecedented number of missile tests by North Korea.
[reporter 4] A major incident is only a matter of time.
Putin and his military leaders have threatened nuclear war.
[audience laughing]
Nuclear war?
No problem. They told me in grade school that this would work.
- Hold on, I'll be right back-- - [laughing continues]
So this never ends!
Because the world needs us on that wall.
And that wall has to be built by professional contractors like Raytheon.
And those contractors have to dip their balls in gold.
- Oh, gold and balls. Perfect together. - [audience laughing]
Two great tastes that go great together.
Heavy is the head that wears the crown.
For nearly seven decades,
the United States has been the anchor of global security.
This has meant doing more than forging international agreements.
It has meant enforcing them.
The burdens of leadership are often heavy,
but the world's a better place because we have borne them.
I forgot how fucking slow he used to talk.
[audience laughing]
I literally-- I almost fell out of my chair like--
[audience laughs]
'Cause, you know, anytime he speaks from the "I killed bin Laden" hallway,
you know shit's about to go down.
[audience laughs]
But the point is very simple.
The United States doesn't wanna do this, but we have to,
for you, the free world.
And thus...
"The Problem with Defense."
Since World War II, America has hired itself
as the guardian of global security and international order.
But for some reason, this massive job of world peace
is funneled almost entirely through the Department of Blowing Shit Up.
Of course, there are other avenues to maintain world peace.
But when the entire budget of your State Department,
the carrot part of our government,
is $52 billion,
and $75 billion is going to just one stick-maker,
what do you think we're gonna reach for first?
Carrot or stick?
How does it happen?
Well, there's 535 members of Congress.
And last year, there were 816 defense contractor lobbyists.
So war has more representatives in Congress than Americans do.
Even our lead peace activist has pivoted
to selling bespoke dildos on Netflix.
[audience laughing]
I'm told each one of those costs a million dollars at the Pentagon.
[audience laughs]
So the question becomes, are we getting our world peace money's worth?
Because over the years, we've employed
many different costly international agreement-enforcing measures.
We've tried the bomb-and-leave methodology.
It's a bit of an ordnance sampler that says we care,
but not enough for boots on the ground...
that I know about.
- [audience laughs] - [clicks tongue]
Does it work?
Well, it's more cost effective, but it's-- pardon the phrase-- hit-or-miss.
And then, of course, we offer countries the platinum package: the bomb-and-stay.
Your Koreas, your Vietnams,
your Afghanistans, your Iraqs.
You may ask yourself,
"Why do we have to stay so long in those places?"
Well, it turns out that when you bomb the shit out of a place,
the instability you create needs to be managed.
For instance, when we took out Saddam Hussein...
[chuckles] ...the craziest thing happened.
ISIS originated with Al-Qaeda in Iraq, going back to 2005, 2006, 2007--
We had to stay there to deal with the ISIS threat,
which we caused by taking out Saddam.
- It totally worked. - [audience laughs]
[reporter 5] ISIS has spread far beyond its strongholds in Syria and Iraq.
In fact, US military officials tell NBC news
they worry about the growing signs of ISIS presence
in a half dozen other places.
You see, sometimes a side effect of spreading democracy
is accidentally spreading ISIS and a refugee crisis.
Moving on.
Maybe you're looking for more of a refresher package
without all that collateral damage,
in which case, America will teach you how to bomb.
We offer military training to nascent democratic republics
looking to shore up those aspirations.
- We do that a lot. [chuckles] - [audience laughs]
And while that occasionally does lead to newly trained militaries
overthrowing those nascent democracies...
you gotta risk it to get the biscuit. [laughs]
[audience laughing]
And then there's just the straight fucking coups.
Have we ever tried to meddle in other countries' elections?
Oh, probably.
But, uh, it was for the good of the system
in order to avoid the communists from taking over.
We don't do that now? We don't mess around in other people's elections, Jim?
Well, mmm... [mumbles]
[audience laughing]
She asked you if we do coups,
and your response was the same as you get when you're lapping up soft ice cream.
[audience laughing]
Are we overthrowing leaders?
[imitating Woolsey] Mmm, yum-yum-yum-yum-yum...
- Mmm. [smacks lips] - [audience laughing]
[normal voice] The point is, being the world's policeman is a big job
because the world is a very dangerous place
filled with many dangerous weapons.
And here's where it gets tricky.
We are also the world's largest weapons dealer.
While we are personally enforcing global security agreements,
we are also seeding the world with global chaos starter kits.
And while, occasionally,
two of the countries we sell weapons to end up fighting each other
or use those weapons to commit war crimes,
we are very careful with what happens to these precious weapons.
[reporter 6] Courtesy of Uncle Sam,
American-supplied armor now riding under Taliban colors.
The spoils of victory being paraded by the new masters of Kandahar.
- [imitating Steve Urkel] Did we do that? - [audience laughing]
[normal voice] By the way, Masters of Kandahar is
the worst reality show I've ever seen.
I am starting to wonder
if the anchor of global security might be attached to a sinking ship.
Since 1945,
our mostly chasing-our-tail military strategy has been
everything, everywhere, all at once.
[audience laughing]
That's super fucking creepy, that graphic.
- [chuckles, stammers] - [audience laughing]
Such a good movie though.
And while it's incredibly expensive and not that successful,
at least it's unsustainable.
Twenty percent of America's total budget goes to defense.
Fifty percent of America's discretionary budget goes to defense.
We spend more money on defense than the next nine countries combined,
including China and Russia.
We spend $55 billion a year
maintaining about 750 military bases in 80 different countries and territories
and then added a space force
'cause I don't think we appreciate Venus's attitude.
Are you looking at us?
[audience laughs]
But we can keep this going 'cause we're America.
King Kong got nothing on us!
What goes up can stay up indefinitely.
Unless it's of unknown or Chinese origin.
And yes, our reach extends to the bases,
to our interventions,
the arms sales and to the coups.
We look a lot like an empire.
And as the Roman Empire learned,
and then the Ottoman Empire, and then the British Empire,
we appear to be out over our skis a bit.
It's like we're playing a game of Risk with ourselves.
Meanwhile, at home, our infrastructure plan seems to rest solely on the stamina
of one 400-year-old man.
[audience laughing]
After decades of destruction both at home and abroad,
maybe it's time for the United States military and media industrial complex
to lay down our weapons and rethink this suicide pact of a strategy,
believing that we can not just influence but control the world.
Maybe we need a moment to take a breather and think.
War with China could be coming as soon as 2025.
Go fuck yourself.
[audience laughing]
Take a look at this.
[audience cheering, applauding]
- America has... - ...no money...
- ...so please... - ...stop asking us...
- ...to provide for... - ...our own citizens.
We must be fiscally responsible.
We're broke.
- We can't... - ...feed everybody.
- We're broke. - We can't help...
...every American.
We just don't have the money to do it.
- But if you want to... - ...start a war...
...surely we can...
...find the money for that.
- How much money do you need? - A couple billion dollars.
- 5.7. - Twelve.
- 700. - 1.7.
- Six trillion. - Thirty trillion.
- How about 35 or 40 trillion... - ...for defense contractors...
...all around the world.
We are always going to have...
- ...money for... - ...defense contractors...
...because they're our friends.
- They pay for... - ...our campaigns.
So everyday Americans are...
...not important to us.
- But if you... - ...profit from war...
- ...we'll give you... - ...anything that you want...
...for democracy.
Mmm... [mumbles]
[audience laughing, cheering, applauding]
- All right. So... - [cheering, applauding continues]
...to help-- [exclaims]
Nicely done.
Uh, to help make sense of our ever-growing defense spending
and its ramifications, both abroad and at home,
we have with us today Michael McCord,
who is the chief financial officer and comptroller at the Defense Department.
We have Farhad Yousafzai,
the former head of procurement in Afghanistan
for USAID and military projects.
And Elizabeth Shackelford.
She's a career diplomat across Africa
and senior fellow on US foreign policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
Thank you guys so much for joining us. It's much appreciated.
- [audience cheering, applauding] - Uh...
- Michael, I'm gonna start with you. - [McCord] Yeah.
And I want to make sure that we understand.
You're just trying to make sense of the chaos of the budget.
Would that be correct?
We can talk about why is our budget the size it is.
I would say the first thing is, is who we are.
Fifty years ago, we decided to end the draft,
so now we're competing for talent.
So, almost 40% of our budget is pay and allowances
and benefits for the people that we hire: civilians, military especially.
So we're competing for talent.
We're-- We're paying for-- You know, be competitive.
You don't want them going to work for other armies.
Not luxurious, but competitive.
You don't want China coming in, going, "What are they offering you?"
[McCord] Yep. Yep.
- Second is what we do... - [Stewart] Mm-hmm.
- ...which is, we're expected to be-- - Global security.
Global. In this hemisphere. Anywhere in the world.
If you send the military, you expect them to be able to do
what you ask them to do, near or far.
And then the third thing is what we buy.
I'm talking about things that are high-end, like submarines,
- that only one or two companies can make. - Right.
- So... - [Stewart] Right.
Those things don't go on sale.
[Stewart, audience laughing]
[Stewart] I don't imagine they do.
Uh, what about the diplomacy-industrial complex?
Let's just say
that the diplomacy-industrial complex is not particularly robust
and doesn't have a lot of lobbyists on the Hill.
You don't get the same big money that you get from the military-industrial complex.
When I was in South Sudan,
which, at the time, was a country, um-- A war began while I was there.
It was a very high focus of the White House
in terms of Africa policy.
And because we were so poorly funded,
we didn't have enough vehicles to go to meetings and do our jobs.
So, for example,
while all of my military colleagues had cars to take themselves somewhere,
USAID colleagues and myself, and other diplomats,
would have to play Rock, Paper, Scissors
to decide who got to go do their work that day.
Wow.
My military colleagues always wanted us to be able to do our jobs.
All of them would stand up and say, uh, "Can't you make it to this meeting?"
But the budget differentiation is just a representation
of where we put our value.
Farhad, that brings up an interesting point.
I remember, uh, being in Afghanistan in, like, 2007, 2008.
And it was very clear that America was Afghanistan's economy...
- Mm-hmm. - ...at that moment.
But I also remember thinking,
"But we are an alien force and culture here."
The-- In the beginning, there was--
People were very much optimistic when the, uh-- after 9/11,
when the intervention start.
But after 2007 and '08, things have been changed.
The US, they didn't work with the people of Afghanistan.
The democracy that they were thinking that they can implement it in Afghanistan,
exactly what we have here in the US,
it's not the way it work over there.
Mm-hmm.
It's exactly like when we have a leakage in the roof,
and there is water all the way fall down,
and you're just cleaning the water without patching the leak.
- We were not fixing the real problem. - [Yousafzai] Absolutely.
The real problem and the source of the terrorism
never been touched in Afghanistan.
So, I guess, the question that I would ask is,
was there any real connection
to the money that came in and the strategic aims?
The money that's spent in Afghanistan, the Pentagon approve it.
They are just not spent on the target.
We spent the money in the areas where was no security.
We have no accountability where we spend the money.
For example, we spend the money on the infrastructure,
on the roads, on the buildings or clinics,
that was damaged back after a day or a month.
And then we don't have anything--
So we would build a road, and then we would bomb that road,
and then we would build it again?
We-- We bombed it, or maybe al-- Taliban bombed it,
or maybe the contractor bombed it
because they were doing a very worse quality of work.
That's right. We keep going into these situations with an incredible aspiration.
And every time, reality sort of meets us in the face.
And yet we continue to pursue what feels like an identical strategy.
Just keep bolstering the military complex,
keep the diplomatic core there but somewhat restrained.
Is-Is that a conversation in the Pentagon about shifting resources?
Or are they really just concerned about force projection,
and-and are they isolated from these other missions?
There was an attempt to train and equip the Afghan military
to-to stand on their own without us,
to do economic projects.
There were definitely, I think, attempts to branch out
and think about how to address that problem specifically
in ways that were different than had been in other places.
- But, um... - [Stewart stammers] It's difficult.
You know, in terms of a learning curve,
we go from world power problems to global terror problems,
and now we're pivoting back to world power problems.
I think a lot of it has to do with the tools that we're relying on.
And I like to think of diplomacy as being your primary care physician, right.
The person that you go to to do preventative work, preventative medicine.
And when you're looking at places that are already unstable and troubled,
you have-- you have underlying issues that need to be addressed.
You have grievances against a government that's not serving its people.
You have economic issues,
so people don't have jobs and can't support their families.
You have food insecurity.
And none of those can be addressed with a military solution.
- So we understand-- - [audience applauding]
[chuckles]
- [Shackelford] So, the mil-- - Hold on one-- You hippie motherfuckers.
- [audience laughing] - [chuckles]
So, we understand that we need that--
you know, that we need to use those other tools.
But, you know, you look at the additional $45 billion
that Congress gave to the Department of Defense.
That's not a huge amount of money to them. I don't know why.
But to the-- For the international affairs budget,
which is the entire civilian foreign affairs budget
that covers State Department, USAID,
for development work and a lot of other things...
[stammers] ...that's, like, 70% of what we get.
- That additional tack-on from Congress. - Really? The tip.
- The little top-off that they gave... - That little top-off.
- ...would be almost everything for you guys. - Almost everything for us.
And so just imagine how much more we could do
if we had those types of resources
and we were able to do our jobs more effectively.
[Stewart] I think the experience you had, Farhad, was,
if everything, uh-- if you're a hammer, everything's a nail.
And that's-- I was just trying to go with the roof thing, Farhad.
- I don't know. - [audience laughing]
Y-You know what? [stammers]
We spent millions of dollar on Afghan army.
But we-- we also spent million of dollars to support Pakistan army as well.
And they were the people who trained the al-- Taliban back
and bring them all of a sudden,
after 20 years, in one month, and collapse everything.
And in 1980s,
our parents were the partner with the US, and we defeated Russia.
At that time, we also left behind.
And what happened?
What happened on 9/11 in your neighborhood,
it was happening every day for 20 years in Afghanistan,
but no one see it until the world shock on 9/11,
and we went back to Afghanistan.
What happened right now in Afghanistan is worse than that.
The Taliban is more trained, well-equipped,
and also, we leave behind a lot of equipment,
a lot of military equipment-- weapons, night vision, body armor-- over there.
That is the biggest concern for our future generation as well.
It does feel like we repeat the same mistake in 20-year cycles.
I-I-I thank you guys so much, uh, for being here,
'cause it really does appear that we're chasing our tails.
Uh, thank you so much,
Michael McCord, Farhad Yousafzai and Elizabeth Shackelford.
[audience applauding, cheering]
- All right, well, uh... - [cheering, applauding continues]
So, uh, to get some perspective from someone on the front lines,
uh, in our felt-like-forever wars,
we sat down with retired four-star general
and former commander of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan,
General David Petraeus.
General Petraeus, in your mind,
what is the purpose of American military might around the world?
Well, look, the purpose of our military, of course, fundamentally, uh,
is to protect our territorial integrity,
our citizens, our sovereignty, our interests
and Americans around the world.
Mmm.
To be a bit more specific--
I actually did a tiny bit of research for this, uh, and I-- I--
I should have done that.
- What was I thinking? - What were you thinking?
- I wrote down five foreign policy goals. - [groans] Okay.
Um, and so to put those up front:
- preserve our national security... - Okay.
...protect world peace in a secure global environment,
uh, maintain a balance of power among nations,
work with allies and others to solve international problems,
promote democratic values, uh, and human rights.
So it's sort of a force for balance, stability,
and the world order...
- Yeah, I mean, from our perspective. - ...as we see it.
- From our perspective. - And from our perspective,
you might even say it would be a force for good.
You know, my experience mostly in the last 20, 25 years,
like everybody else's, is Iraq and Afghanistan.
But it's hard for me to look at those interventions
and see the metrics with, uh-- [stammers]
that you describe as being on the plus side.
Let's start with Afghanistan
because that was the first intervention, uh, understandably.
That's where the 9/11 attacks were planned,
when al-Qaeda had a sanctuary there under Taliban rule.
- Mm-hmm. - We went there for a simple reason.
When the Taliban refused to eliminate that sanctuary...
- Mm-hmm. - ...we went in to eliminate it, uh,
and to ensure that it could not come back.
- Because we-- - And-And in that moment, though,
we also have the responsibility then--
We're training an army, and we're trying to--
- Well, we're helping a country... - Helping a country--
...reestablish its institutions.
Right. [stammers] People would refer to it as nation-building.
- We're nation-building in Afghanistan... - Yes, sure. Yep. Yep.
- ...after achieving a military objective. - Yep.
Which was inescapable.
I know that a lot of the-- That many people conclude that, you know,
"It all went wrong. We should have just taken out bin Laden."
Of course to take him out, we had to take out the Taliban.
So the country is now without any organizing principles.
- Right. Yeah. - And the problem was that
we didn't focus sufficiently early on.
- We had an incredible-- - Well, we had Iraq.
- And so then you shifted focus. - That's right.
Ungoverned spaces in the Muslim world will be filled with Islamist extremists.
It drives violence, more extremism,
sometimes a tsunami of refugees,
as we saw with the reconstitution of the Islamic State after we left Iraq.
But thinking about our interventions in not just Afghanistan and Iraq,
but you think about what we did in Libya,
they estimate that 37 million refugees were created by the interventions.
So are we not creating,
through our interventionist foreign policy,
the very conditions that you say we're trying to avoid?
The fundamental question then is,
do you give up, or do you just try to learn from that?
How do you get better?
- I mean, the situation really throughout-- - Or do we humble ourselves?
I think we've been humbled.
Again, our ambitions have been very tempered.
Um, and so, what we did, for example, when we went back into Iraq,
which we had to do
because the Islamic State had established a caliphate. That's very worrisome.
- But in many ways, because of us. - They were attracting tens of thousands--
[stammers] We'd been gone by then, Jon.
- But we created the conditions for that. - And pursued highly sectarian--
Well, again, the real question is, it comes back to, you know,
when should you intervene, how should you intervene...
- There you go. - ...and how ambitious should it be?
And I would contend that our experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan
have very much tempered our enthusiasm, our ambitions,
our-- our views on what might be possible.
Have you seen the evidence of that?
Because it looks to me like we lost 20 years in Afghanistan,
20 years in Iraq,
and the Pentagon got a raise.
They got 50 billion more dollars than they even asked for.
There's no oversight.
That's not because of Iraq and Afghanistan.
That's because of a return of great power rivalries
and the need to transform the-- the force.
It feels like the military-industrial complex is the one undefeated combatant
in all of our adventures.
I do think that the security challenges that face us right now...
- Mm-hmm. - ...are more complex and actually greater
than any that we have faced, actually, during the post-Cold War era.
It's just hard to see the evidence of a learning curve manifest.
It still feels like our foreign policy is, uh, everything, everywhere, all at once.
Well, I th-- I think the argument there is going to be that,
"Look, if we don't do it, someone else will."
If you think of us as the guy in the circus
who puts a plate on a stick and gets it spinning,
the biggest plate, I think, bigger than all the others together, is China.
It's the US relationship with China. The US with our allies and partners.
They help us keep some of these plates spinning.
But then you have still North Korea with its nuclear program.
- But perhaps maybe the issue is... - Then there's Russia, Islamists--
...we're not gonna solve--
- And maybe it's American understanding-- - It's okay. Just keep the plate spinning.
- You don't want it to become a conflict. - Let me give you a different analogy.
Rather than us being a plate spinner,
shouldn't we be the people to go over and go,
"How you guys doing with the plates? You good? You need anything? All right."
No, look. I think--
Number one, I think that challenge should be out there, intellectually.
- Right. - I think we should have to address
that kind of, uh-- of view and warning and caution.
We could have continued to manage Afghanistan.
Not win it, not solve it, but you just manage it.
I would actually contend, given the state of Afghanistan now,
which... [stammers] ...has half the population starving,
half can't go to school, half can't participate in the economy,
and they're living under
this incredibly oppressive, again, eighth-century interpretation of Islam...
- But, again, do you see-- - ...that that might have been better.
But-But is that for us to decide for people in other countries?
No. Obviously we should ask them about that.
These aren't chess pieces to be moved around.
And I'll give you an example with the toxic exposure bills
that we've been doing for, uh, soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
- The burn pits legislation. Yeah. - The burn pits.
We're having enough trouble taking care of our people at home.
We have left those countries as Superfund sites.
Those countries will bear the scars of those burn pits.
The chemicals of those burn pits, it's in the soil, it's in the air,
it's in their genes, it's in their people.
We don't ever reckon with the true reality
of our intellectualized exercises in stability and democracy
with the people on the ground.
This is the beauty of a democracy, that you can have--
- Yeah. - You can do what we're doing right here.
And I think this is incredibly constructive.
But I actually do think that--
You know, I agree we are the indispensable nation.
Now, that doesn't mean you have to solve all problems
or that you should try to solve all problems.
But-- But Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia buys 20% of our arms.
This is billions and billions of dollars.
And so, we sell them these weapons, they bomb the hell out of Yemen.
- Let's stop on Yemen just for a second. - Please.
Let's remember who started the civil war in Yemen.
- It's the Houthis. - And the Houthis are supported by--
- Iran. - They're the proxies of Iran.
We've chosen a side with Saudi Arabia
because we think they're a good counterpoint to--
Well, compared to Iran, um, I would-- I would say that that's correct.
- They're truly evil. - Truly-- Okay.
- And killed a lot of our soldiers. - Certainly not the Iranian people. But--
- No, no, no, no. This is a regime. - And-And why is Iran that way?
Because in 1953,
the CIA, the United States, sponsored by British Petroleum,
overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran
and installed an autocrat,
and that inevitably led to the Khomeini era.
So my point is,
we are the agents of a lot of this tumult and instability
in search of cheaper oil, cheaper goods, cheaper labor.
That's my premise, thesis, only point.
Well, it's a wonderful one. And it's certainly arguable.
- Um, it doesn't mean that I embrace it. - [audience laughing]
You-- You will embrace it, sir.
- I believe in you. - You will hold me here until--
But does that resonate with you in any way?
Sure.
Look, we've made tons of mistakes over the years.
Um, think about the Bay of Pigs.
I mean, think about all the interventions in Central America.
When has it gone right, as a matter of fact?
Oh, I think there's a number of cases where our intervention's gone right.
I'd like to think that what we did in South Korea was--
was quite admirable and noble.
And look how South Korea has turned out.
I'd like to think that what we did in World War II did actually, um--
Right. But if we've got to go back to the '40s and the '50s,
- we're in trouble. - No. I think-- The Gulf War.
I think, again, there have--
I'm not suggesting you never utilize the power.
I'm suggesting that we have been cavalier in some of these.
The question is, again,
"Okay, got it. Understand. What do we do about it?"
And then you come back to those five foreign policy objectives.
- Yes. - And how do you achieve those, um--
And how not to create the other problems around it.
- [chuckles] Exactly right. - Right.
- Thank you, sir. - Great to be with you.
[audience cheering, applauding]
All right!
Can I tell you something?
First of all, uh, that's our show. Thank you very much.
Almost more alarming to me
than, uh, th-the cavalier nature of America's foreign policy,
is to see a retired general in a sleeveless fleece.
[audience laughing]
You know, you're not-- You're not gonna catch Patton...
Anyway, for more resources, go to our website,
ya fuckers.
That'll take you to another website,
and then you might find your life's true purpose.
Also, I have a podcast where I do mostly the hits from the '80s and '90s.
Anyway, here it is: one final "for fuck's sake."
It's apparently an F-35's bar mitzvah.
[electronic dance music playing]
[music stops]