a big part of the. conspiracy it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smart we need to stop slamming the door on the back and shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now we're watching closely watching the hawks.

hello and welcome the crosstalk we're all paying for considered i'm peter lavelle what explains the bipartisan commitment to an ending wars in foreign military interventions recent polls show the majority of veterans in this century's foreign wars say it wasn't worth it in 2016 trying to gain traction for doubting foreign adventures today. doing the same why are the elite out of touch. cross talking and ending wars i'm joined by my guest daniel shah in new york he is a professor of latin american and caribbean studies at city university of new york and but that is that we have peter cosmic he is a professor of history and director of the nuclear studies institute at american university as well as co-author with all of her stone of the untold history of the united states. and in washington we cross to camp he is the host and head writer of

the comedy new show redacted tonight on our t.v. america all right jim in cross talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want i always appreciate let's go to protests to peter i think that all of us would agree and our audience that it's unlikely that we would ever compared to donald trump ok they're very very different but they do have one commonality and it's an attitude towards foreign adventures now donald trump has not been able to do much about his rhetoric of the campaign while he's been in office but keeps going both of them are slammed every time they go outside the the borders or the perimeters of the bipartisan commitment to these wars why is it why do they get slammed down so hard so fast even with people within their own party go ahead peter. well as you indicate there is a bipartisan consensus when it comes to american foreign policy and it's

dominated by a neo con neoconservative or a view is based on this idea of american exceptionalism that the united states has the right duty the obligation to intervene or out or 0 of the united states is god's gift to humanity unlike everybody else where alex was to commend evelyn you are just read freedom and democracy but the net result of this is that we live in a war of them which the richest people have more wealth than the poorest 3800000000 people that us policy has been consistently interventionist one that the cold more never really and the policy change at the end of the cold or and there's been a war a war between the 1st world in the 3rd world ever since but it's very very dangerous tulsi understands that i don't agree that donald trump and so on syrian anyway comparable. use of foreign policy are so much better informed than donald trump

that's for sure but that's what our record is actually in very hawkish very militaristic so even though he has a rhetoric about not want to intervene it's very very different than the kind of aggressive intelligent view in which one is opposed to this i agree with you completely my point is for example removing troops from syria and you know even his own governor his own cabinet you know kind of came piling in i take your point well taken here daniel let me go to to you in my introduction also i mention that recent polling because of memorial day the veterans of these wars in this century these interventionist wars they say the majority of a large majority actually say it quote unquote it wasn't worth it so that should be kind of some wake up call whitney a think go ahead daniel one would certainly. the hope with the foreign policy establishment the pentagon has never listen to the veterans or listen to anybody

except for their own narrow interests of course the vietnam era veterans still suffering to this day from p.t.s.d. and thousands upon thousands tens of thousands of our loved ones sisters and brothers sent to iraq and afghanistan in these wars of foreign pillage no question that these veterans are against the war and gabbett very articulately captures that sentiment and she's really a fresh of breath air in the still democratic party debates where no one besides bernie is willing to take on the foreign policy establishment and here you have a very unique individual was 16 years of quote unquote service one might say a disservice if one agrees with martin luther king that the u.s. government in the u.s. military is the greatest purveyors of violence in the world but she speaks a certain language and can go on fox news you know and can relate to really millions of american families and they're afraid of their very definitively afraid

of her yet they really are and it is really quite interesting that she has a place at fox news who who would have thought it would let me go to leave here in washington you know leave that for my everything we've heard so far on this program here i suppose is that the. democratic process and having popular opinion about foreign policy is simply for bowden ok you can argue about everything else but you can't argue about foreign policy it just isn't there and it's in one of the reasons why it's there is because the corporate mainstream media gives this bipartisan view cover all of the time go ahead lee yeah yeah it's totally disgusting that we live in largely a death a column a i mean we make tremendous amounts of money from our weapons sales 55 percent of our discretionary spending is dumped into the military. and if anyone questions it it's dead they're called right hillary clinton called gabbert a russian asset that is completely not allowed to question our military industrial

complex and if you are you are pushed out by the 2 corporate parties you are you are purged from them like something they needed to vomit up because you dared question these things and as you mentioned earlier in the few instances that donald trump has tried to do something that was against war against death against our military such as withdraw troops or peace with north korea he is shut down and you know that is not to say he's some kind of dove. that obama dropped 26000 drone bombs his final year in office and with under trumpet went up to 40000 a year or so he has no dog it's a bomb every 12 minutes you know there's blood on all of our hands as americans and but in those few instances where he does seem like he has some desire to create peace or to limit war he is completely shut down and it raises the question have we seen basically a soft coup in terms of foreign policy if it's completely run by our military

industrial complex and you cannot question it even if you're the press to present the united states then who's in control of it and you know the president's not congress well peter as we heard a few weeks ago from a former deputy director of the cia thank god for the deep state ok and everybody clapped ok peter saying with you ok given everything we've said here on this program it but if we look at these interventions particularly since in this century there all have been utter failures so there's no learning curve on top of this vice bipartisan commitment to an ending wars so they think they can even in a knowledge failure is that even worse go ahead peter. well we've had some stunning successes we did several dozen cuban construction workers in grenada right in 83 of. our military. it's. really gotten since the korean war i mean how much more do we have to learn there were just

a big conference last week in washington about the vietnam war you know and. it's the worst atrocity since the holocaust 3800000 vietnamese died according to robert mcnamara when he came into my class he said he accepts the 3800000 vietnamese died but we look at the track record since then there's been military intervention after military intervention with this low results creating more problems not only killing millions of people but. wreaking havoc of many of the problems that we're facing in the world now are results of the u.s. invasion of iraq in 2003 and people who warned beforehand that that would be the effect oh yeah i think when he gets the media did not allow that that point of view the only one who are talking about that phil donahue and he lost his job yeah he lost his job. and the n.b.c.

existential said well everybody else is waving the flag we don't want to be seen as some kind of doves over here it is then been that dangerous kind of consensus you turn on c.n.n. or when they send these you know fox news is absurd you turn on c.n.n. and some b c and you'll have 4 talking heads there who are experts saying that the russian intervention in the 26 election was an actor who are and nobody even thinks to read any of the ok peter i was kind of hoping to avoid the impeachment thing but you opened that can of worms i'm going to go to daniel you know daniel i've been watching part of some of the hearings because there's so absurd and they're so boring and they're so opaque. it is really just a 6 show to watch what the ok given that i watch the quote unquote experts on ukraine why. do they have their jobs they have no idea what they're talking about and then you can add on what peter was saying the media just says oh my goodness

these patriots are so knowledgeable you have to defer to them their their expertise no they're not they're all political hacks daniel. the impeachment proceedings is the other guests have said are a massive distraction from the very real issues in new york city right now every day more poverty in homelessness the opioid epidemic all these real working class issues that need to be addressed in the media spin doctors 247 with every minute boring detail about ukraine in all the russia phobia and russia gate field so now there's this whole ukraine thing it's extremely distracting and what's really behind that is. donald trump is not a reliable dependable candidate for what you call the deep state for the pentagon the state department good point of course he should be impeached he should be overthrown because he's a racist warmongering zina phobia homophobic massage honest but the mainstream

media doesn't focus on that they focus on really these. deceptive and rush hysterical plus that they've concocted. ok but you know daniel last 30 seconds go to you for before we go to the break but what russia gate was a hoax it failed why do they think it's going to get traction if you just put ukraine in front of it here i mean that it's absurd to go 25 seconds to before we go to the break. again it is designed to distract if the top 10 new york times stories and fox stories and c.n.n. and there's this media i gem many in the every day american people can see outside of that box and the everyday american populace is not educated on u.s. foreign policy i still subscribe to this idea of what the professor called american exceptionalism all right gentlemen i'm going to jump in here we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on an ending war stayed with r.t.

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thank. you. please. play. lists lists lists. list. and a very warm welcome to you watching us in such. my

name is. jack see. if you. will let me know. who cause. the movie. you know that these kids and i use i don't think she's making any babies here you know food's new school on drugs used to people. who. comes home during his. life a new thing that. makes me happy. he dies because he meets me copy. and when.

the cloth is back off last. year. i doubt. in the united states presidential candidates debate the future of the us and the world. max kaiser and stacy her but dig into the burning questions of this election cycle one self big every week wealth tax student debt trade was money universal basic. and more catch up with what's front running this sunday exclusively on r.t. . welcome back to crossfire where all things considered i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing and ending wars.

ok let's go to lee in washington it's part of my job lead to watch the media as much as painful and stupid and a waste of time as it is i have to keep up with what other people are saying i should i should get hard i should get a hardship pay because i watch a lot of nonsense ok we are going to pick up on 2 points that we were brought up on this program peter brought up american exceptionalism here and daniel was also talking about how poorly educated americans are about foreign policy and i think that's really kind of the nexus because most americans maybe not for through no fault of their own actually have no idea the impact of american foreign policy around the world i mean what's going on in bolivia right now it is horrendous what's going on it really when you look at. opposition figures being kidnapped being tied to trees being tortured. every constitutional law there

is and it's not dare make the greys onal cover it the interceptor will cover it in a few other people you will cover it lee ok but the american people largely have no idea about these things and because of what we heard about american exceptional that's the bow on the top isn't it where it kind of keeps everything and stay says go ahead lee. yeah i think it's a testament to what a brilliant job they've done and shutting down an actual discussion in the media of the truth behind these these coups that we've helped create in bolivia right now with many of these leaders were trained at the school the americas which has been renamed for branding purposes you know the brand was getting solid so they had to change the name but you know an inventive swale our economic sanction or economic war has killed 40000 people over the past couple of years and americans don't know any of this because you're not going to get it really on just about any mainstream

outlet and that includes n.p.r. and p.b.s. and those that that are now you know the head of n.p.r. is the former head of voice of america so you have a full a full scale american propaganda network across all of the outlets and many of the independent outlets so it's really an impressive job they've done it dumbing down the american populace and i do real quick want to take issue with one thing that was said earlier i don't know that all of these wars and invasions that we've been involved in are of failures from the view of the neo cons and the you know the neo liberals that have run them i think destroying the country of iraq and and making it so it basically is is powerless but i think that you know their view is probably a success probably similar with syria just seeing them collapse it's chaos theory i've heard this argument and i think it has a lot of military i'm glad you brought it up thankfully let me go to peter now what happened to the anti-war movement what happened i mean i remember the marches all around the world particularly in europe in the protests in the u.s.

were protesting the iraq war and it's gone and it's why is it because of the media or is it because of control of the internet and social media platforms how do we explain it go ahead peter. had a good answer to that maybe. but it's not that you know i'm on the campuses and i go around the country speaking quite a bit and it's. not that the young people think students don't care they do care 1st of all they're not very well informed on this issue they're very vocal lives on climate change they're really activists about that they're very sensitive to gender and sexual issues and need to movement they're very concerned about racial issues but there's very little concern about nuclear issues number one and number 2 foreign policy in general and we're talking about you you introduce trump to someone in a positive way in the beginning you look at his nuclear policies and it's an

absolute disaster yet no not all he'd pull out of the c.p.o. and the nuclear deal with iran not only did he. i.n.f. treaty so much is the new start treaty you want to look at this nuclear posture review lots of pushes back to a nuclear arms race like the 1980 s. when we had 70000 nuclear weapons in the world so they're not they're not focused on these issues either so that's not that they don't care but i think that they do have a 7 minute sense of existential threat which is why they're concerned about climate change but some of the other issues he issues of us and then do morse and the issues of nuclear threats it's not on their agenda right now i guess peter well guess what that you know you ring up the environment i suppose your students know that the pentagon is the biggest polluter in the world ok they probably know that but probably not in the foreign interventions around the world and how they happen

here daniel the same question to you i mean i'll use peter as you know how do we rebuild the anti-war movement we have code pink out there it's great and i agree with him on those issues here but you know how do you how do you capitalise on what we had before because it's only getting worse i mean i think one of the biggest changes in the last couple years is that you have the neil. and baiting the left the liberals now i mean now they're in but they have equal footing in each party and you can hear neo con propaganda talking points on the mainstream corporate media 247 ok i mean it's just blanket coverage right now i couldn't you know peter is an expert on vietnam i mean it was members of the media that started questioning the war nobody in the media mainstream media questions it or their silence go ahead daniel. in the bush years we had marches in d.c. and right below me in times square of hundreds of thousands of people consistently

against george bush in the war machine what happened was the barack obama effect an obama nation if you will a new face of imperialism. that was able to really pull so the whole liberal wing of the war movement folded and suddenly on marches when libya was destroyed. to smithereens and recall and and we marched here in times square and across the country our marches went from hundreds of thousands to maybe a 100 but honestly dozens and when we stood up to syria and imperialist dance for syria who would come into the streets of syria we've had marches for bolivia and for venezuela but again in general the american public it's the last thing that they're thinking about it's the last thing that they're educated on so really there's a lot of work in front of us as popular educators to have these conversations that venezuela is not the enemy the cuba is not the enemy that our enemy is right here in washington d.c.

on wall street so i don't want to project any type of cynicism but we have to get in you to have that dialogue to to educate and build this as i war movement to what it was in the early years of the invasion in occupation of iraq you know you know i keep want covering what's going on dinner in iraq and afghanistan because i think it's really important too but you know i have to think twice about doing a program on it because when like the last couple of programs i did on both countries the questions on you tube is it what is he talking about why are they talking about this i mean to the recent you because nobody i mean you go to antiwar dot com every day at one of the things i do with my morning coffee every single day and i keep up you know incrementally what's going on here and but i could understand how someone that would just flip on this channel right now and saying. what in the world are they talking about you know because that's that that is really an indictment of the media because it doesn't have any pedagogical purpose

whatsoever anymore go ahead lee. well and it's even being purged from social media so even the outside outlets that people used to get that information from are now being purged you mention antiwar dot com i'm pretty sure they're one of the ones that were purged from facebook and there you know editors purged from twitter and you know the idea that anybody speaking out against war should be eliminated from these social media outlets it's so disgusting and it's revolting and it shouldn't people and one other thing i want to say about why the the antiwar movement has been has dwindled so heavily is all of america is told to put our entire energy in anger and frustration and and all just funnel it all into the presidential election that is it that's all that can be talked about if you are angry about these things go vote and avoid you should vote but you should vote if you vote against picking up a piece a litter it's a tiny little thing you do to help your society it is not going to it's not the way if you're angry about things you need to get angry beyond just your voting or your

arguing about which political candidate you know said something silly the other day you know you know peter is i think one of the great tragedies you know one because we had walked away from all of these important arms control agreements the agreement with the random nucular deal which i thought obama was right in doing that we're all fakes least we're told they could hear a page from leave right right now we're all told to focus as ourselves on the orange man in the white house that is the biggest distraction that could possibly be and i keep telling my viewers so much is going on in the world right now that you're not paying attention to that are detrimental to everyone involved but it is this huge distraction on donald trump and i think that's a huge mistake but it does work well for the deep state the intelligence community because everybody is arguing with each other and they're making their own decisions on their own peter. it's like fahrenheit $451.00 you know people have their television walls while the planes are flying off to distant mortars and nobody is

paying attention and that's you know donald trump sucks all the out of the room he wants everything to be focused on him and the media does it does it. and it's going in some ways it's important because he is dangerous and we do need to get him out of office as quickly as possible but the other issues that are so important is that any discussion of the fact that we've got more than $800.00 overseas military bases is there any discussion of the fact that u.s. special forces operated proximately $143.00 countries last year is there any discussion of our arms sales and how dangerous they are around the world the fact that the u.s. is bombing 7 countries right now. then the real issues about what's going on are not the discussed and you know we're all very frustrated with the media you get on

mainstream media in the united states if you've got a clear if you're critical of american empire there is no discussion of american empire well they won't even they won't even say it let me go to the annual finish i'll put you 30 as i can see it's for bowden to say american empire but that's exactly what it is 30 seconds to my friend go ahead yeah look would have been a mark lamont hill on c.n.n. a critical voice for black liberation in 1st alliston in the given the acts just because he did to mention palestinian determination and i think it's always important with my students or with the general public to clarify that these are not our wars we did not invade iraq the ruling class using our bodies and our limbs invaded iraq for their benefit but this is not our government our system our wars so we have to oppose them. ok gentlemen that's all the time we've had fascinating discussion we have to get the anti-war movement moving again many thanks to my guests in new york but that's and in washington and thanks to our viewers for

watching us here are to see you next time and remember. same camera can use to snare someone's head is the same camera can use to build them a home but that's a human choosing what to do with that's me expressing my values for the tool and that's what we need to do with artificial intelligence as well. lou.

load. syrian government forces push deeper into and live dislodging on cable and linked fighters from dozens of villages and. probably. also this hour a punishing polluters the french government introduces a new tax on s.u.v.s and trucks and the battle to reduce carbon emissions. and research shows u.k. weapon sales to the saudi led coalition in yemen have spiked dramatically in the last 5 years despite britain being signed up to the arms trade treaty.