Is Assad Our Enemy ? | Joe Rogan and Ben Anderson

But I mean, the example I always use, and this, you know, some of my colleagues have been broken by this is, is, you know, the Syrian war has been very well covered. Every crime has been very well documented, you know, often with video footage of exactly the crime being carried out. Has it made any difference whatsoever? I'm not sure. The Syrian one is one where you hear, you hear rational people say that like Assad is not our enemy. And that, how do you, who do you feel about that? I mean, I think we're dealing with the legacy of the Iraq and the Afghanistan wars in that even if you want to help, what's the point you can't, you're only going to make it worse. I think a lot of people feel that way. And I think that leads some people to think Assad is not a good guy. He probably does have the blood of hundreds of thousands on his hands. But we should deal with them anyway, because that's better than Iraq or Afghanistan. Is it because when we do get rid of a leader like Libya with Qaddafi or Iraq with Hussein, that what happens is you get this power vacuum and then it becomes far worse? We've tried every model. We've tried invading Afghanistan, taking over trying to rebuild the entire culture and armed forces and government ourselves that has failed miserably. Tried Iraq, Libya tried leading from the back, you know, limited intervention, hoping that the guys on the ground could do the fighting for us. And then Syria, we've tried almost no intervention whatsoever. And all three have failed. So I think now you've got people. I mean, the thing I always think most people would say we should have intervened in Rwanda. I think almost everyone would say, I mean, Bill Clinton would say that's his biggest regret. I think in his presidency, most people would say we should have intervened in Rwanda. I think if Rwanda happened tomorrow, you'd have a lot of people here saying it's not worth it. We won't help. We can't make the situation better. So why even try? Well, it's so hard when you look at the rest of the world and you see these horrific conditions and you see warlords in power and you see atrocities being committed and we're sitting over here and in the valley watching on internet and drinking Starbucks, you know? Or it's just Trump gossip. Yeah, I mean, well, more so. Yeah. American American foreign coverage was never was never great. No, now it's it's almost gone. I mean, Yemen, we'll see. I mean, because of the Khashoggi murder, maybe, maybe something can happen with Yemen because and there is a lot we can do there because we are, you know, directly supporting one side. It almost seems like what you were talking about, but in a far lesser extent, the feeling that you get when you're in these war zones, that it's almost that it's not real, that you're covering it through this this lens. So you're immune from it. It almost feels like we view the massive conflicts of the world that way. They're like, we're watching it on television. We're seeing it on our phones or our laptops. It's not it's real. I know it's real. It is a it's a real issue, but it's not real. Like in terms of it's not knocking on my door. Yeah, no, it's almost like we feel about it that way. Yeah. And the numbers as well. I mean, you know, Syria could be 800,000 dead. Do people really think what that means? What does 800,000 dead actually mean? Right? Do they when I think with certain numbers, you just they just become it just becomes digits and it just doesn't make sense. Yeah, doesn't look if you hear five guys get killed in a shootout, you go, whoa, five guys are dead. Yeah, you start thinking about it. You hear 500,000 people died on the other side of the planet. It's almost it almost doesn't register. Yeah. But for you, it registers. Yeah, yeah. And you know, I mean, the reason I started doing this, you know, when I was a kid, as soon as I started reading about these situations, I and you know, when I when I remember reading that my government, the British government was arming, you know, often the wrong side in these conflicts. I remember thinking, how is this not front page news? Right? How is everyone not talking about this every single day? And I still feel like that now, even though I'm clearly out of step with, you know, most of the population. But you're so immersed. Is it hard for you when you come back and you see the Trump gossip and all the nonsense and all the things that we need to do? And engage in a daily basis here in America that are really trivial at best? I mean, you know, is it hard for you to mean you you get to see the worst shit happening in the world all the time? Is it hard for you to relate? Yeah, I mean, you know, I mean, one of the one of the main symptoms I had of the PTSD from covering this for so long was was it was numbness to physical danger when I was there. But it was numbness when I got back home. So you'd come back and, you know, at one point, you used to think if I come back with with the footage I have of whatever conflict, it's gonna have some kind of impact, it's gonna create some kind of ripple, right? And you come back and you think it's there's gonna be, there's gonna be nothing. The film is gonna go out as a few people are gonna tweet a few people are gonna, you know, send me a message that that's