Joe Rogan | We Need to Stop Wasteful Wars (Like Iraq) w/Tulsi Gabbard

And we're back. What's up? How are you? We're back. Aloha. I'm good. Nice to be back here. When you first came here, you were thinking about running for president. Now you're out there. We're all in. It's happening. Yes. Are you nervous? No. Is it weird? No. Not enough? Do you feel like this is like destiny? No. So how does it not feel weird? I'm on a mission. Oh. I'm on a mission. You know, there's a lot of issues I think we're going to talk about about why I'm running for president. But being out and connecting with people all across this country, bringing this message really of ending these wasteful destructive foreign policies that have been so costly on the American people for so long, costly on our troops, costly on our veterans, ending these wasteful regime change wars, ending this new Cold War and nuclear arms race, and taking the trillions of dollars that we've been spending on these programs and that we will continue to spend if the status quo is allowed to continue and investing those dollars back into serving the people in our communities, serving the people of this country, things like health care, education, infrastructure, protecting our environment, clean water. There's so much that we need to do. We've got limited resources to accomplish that. These are my favorite things that you talk about. My question is always, though, why do we spend so much time and money at such a titanic human cost for these regime change wars? What do you think is the cause? Other than the obvious – if you have a dictator that's in place, there's an obvious outcry like Saddam Hussein post-9-11. Other than that, what is the reason why we invest so much time and energy into regime change wars, so much so that we've just accepted that this is a part of our gross economy? Like, if you're going to take all the money that the United States earns and all the money that goes to taxes, we just automatically put a gigantic chunk of that into investing in these wars in other countries. Blindly. Blindly, almost. Without any kind of real accountability. Six to eight trillion dollars is what's estimated that's been spent since 9-11 alone on these regime change wars without even taking into account what the cost will continue to be to take care of our veterans, those who have gone and fought in these wars and have come home dealing with visible and invisible wounds that they'll have to live with for the rest of their lives. Let's start back. You mentioned Saddam Hussein. I don't think it was necessarily an obvious outcry. Saddam Hussein and the toppling of his regime was done for oil, right? It was done for financial reasons. And the architects of that Iraq war sold it in the guise of, hey, Saddam Hussein is working with al-Qaeda, those terrorists who attacked us on 9-11, and he's going to give them his weapons of mass destruction, both of which turned out to be false, false intelligence and lies that were sold to the American people, sold to soldiers, people like me, who believed what they said. You know, I enlisted after 9-11, like so many people in this country, to go after the terrorists who had attacked us on that day killing thousands of Americans. And they sold this lie for financial gain, for oil. You look at some of the architects of that Iraq war, guys like John Bolton, who today is President Trump's National Security Council director, and you look at what's happening in Venezuela, almost the very same playbook being used, where they're selling this regime change effort, threatening to use U.S. military force to go in and topple a regime under the guise of humanitarianism, when in fact, and Bolton has said this on national television, that, well, we really want to make sure that American oil companies are able to go in and access that oil-rich country in Venezuela. So do you think that's why there's so much turmoil in that country right now, this battle over regime change because of the fact they want to control the oil? I think the U.S. coming in and trying to insert itself into what is happening in Venezuela is what is the problem. So they're doing that through very, very heavy sanctions. They're doing that through various means and threatening to use our military to go in and topple the regime there, rather than taking the approach that I would take as president, which is to recognize that the people of Venezuela, like people in other countries in the world, need to be the ones to determine their governance and their future. Just like we wouldn't want any other country to come in and threaten to use their military to topple our government or to tell us who should or shouldn't be the leaders in our country, we shouldn't be doing that in their country. There are serious issues that are causing a lot of suffering for the Venezuelan people. If we really want to be helpful, we should be a force to help move towards reconciliation and peace rather than what this administration is doing, which is throwing fuel on the flames of a civil war that will be devastating, devastating. When you say move towards reconciliation and peace, how so? Well, you see there's differences, right? There's the people who are with the current government in Venezuela and there is the opposition. Clearly, they have differences on what kind of future, what kind of governance and who should lead that government going forward, rather than threatening to use the United States. The United States coming in and trying to act once again as the world's police, which, by the way, throughout history has not had good results, not for the people in those countries, what to speak of the cost that we, the American people pay, rather than saying, hey, let's work towards peace, try to push forward diplomacy and find what are the conditions that would make some form of reconciliation going forward. Is there an argument, and I really don't know the answer to this, but is there an argument that these regime change wars, although terrible, we would be way worse off if those weren't in place? I think that's an argument that proponents for regime change wars try to make, but history shows and proves that the very opposite is true. Look at Iraq, you can look at Libya, you can look at Syria, you can look at Guatemala and Ecuador, you can look at other countries, Iran, where in the past we have either overtly or covertly through the CIA gone in and toppled leaders of countries or dictators or regimes, and the result has been more suffering for the people in those countries. Their lives have been made worse off, not only in the short term, but in the long term, and the cost once again to the American people has also taken a toll as we see more and more of our hard-earned taxpayer dollars going to pay for these wars, these regime change efforts that are counter to our national security interests, counters to the interests of the American people and counters to the interests of the people in those countries. So is this one of those things that's just a counterintuitive thing where you would think that getting rid of someone like Qaddafi would be a good idea, he's a terrible evil person, but they get rid of him and now Libya is a failed state. It's horrible what is happening in Libya as a result of that. You can watch slave auctions on YouTube. It's insane. It's hard to imagine that an era of YouTube and slave auctions exist in a place that at least some part of the blame has to be on us supporting the rebels that went in and took out Qaddafi. It's one of those counterintuitive things where it's not good to have an evil person in control of a country, but it's also not good to kill him, to get rid of him, and then this power vacuum, right? Yeah, it's that it's hard to accept sometimes the reality that there are bad people in the world. There are leaders of countries who are doing bad things against their people. What the real question is, is we recognize this is the world that exists in reality, not the world that we wish existed. And then the question is for the leaders of our country is what role should the United States play? Does it make sense to try to act as the world's police as we have been for far too long, both as we look at what is in the best interest of the American people, what's in the best interest of our national security, as well as what impact will our actions have on the people in these countries? And with Libya, not only do we see strengthened terrorist groups, there are terrorist groups all over Libya now, failed state, the Libyan people are suffering now far more than they were before, but we see the ramifications of that in countries like North Korea, where, again, John Bolton and the Trump administration is talking about using the Libya model with North Korea as we work towards this objective of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula. One of the leaders in the North Korean government just said the other day, the United States government is talking about using the Libya model with North Korea to get them to get rid of their nuclear weapons. They don't want to end up like Libya or Iraq, where in Libya, as you remember, the United States went in and told Gaddafi, hey, get rid of your nuclear weapons program, and we're not going to come after you. And he did, he got rid of it. And what happened? A very short time later, the United States and other countries went in and took him out. So that action and that decision, that policy is directly undermining our national security and our efforts to make us and the world more safe to denuclearize the Korean peninsula. So would the argument for regime change wars being that, would it be that if we didn't go over there and if we didn't have a military presence and we didn't make them fight against us, that they would somehow or another gain more power and we would deal with this evil superpower? Is this like the worst case scenario for the pro-interventionalist foreign policy? I wouldn't even go that far. I mean, the argument that's made by people who are advocating for these regime change wars is we've got to do something to help people who are suffering. That's generally the argument that's made. And they sell this to the American people knowing that, hey, we have good hearts and we want to help people if we can. But what they fail to do is to tell the truth and be honest about what they are hiding behind this guise of humanitarianism. I mean, if you look at Saudi Arabia, for example, and you look at the kinds of atrocities that that theocratic dictatorship is conducting against its own people, decapitating LGBTQ people, persecuting religious minorities, being the biggest propagator of this most extreme intolerant ideology of Islam that is fueling terrorist organizations like ISIS and al-Qaeda, waging a genocidal war in Yemen, killing tens of thousands of people, you know, that murder of the journalist in Turkey, the list goes on and on and on. Yet what are we hearing from leaders in our government, both Democrats and Republicans? Saudi Arabia is a great ally of the United States. But then you look at what's happening in Venezuela, ready to launch our military to go in and take out another dictator, ready to go in and launch our military, ready to go and wage a war against Iran. So this is this is evidence of the hypocrisy that exists between those who are waging regime change war in some countries, by the way, usually countries that don't have nuclear weapons and usually countries where they have some other underlying interests and ulterior motive, which is not helping the people of those countries. And then when it's convenient for them, countries like Saudi Arabia sidling up to a country whose leadership directly and indirectly supports al-Qaeda, the very terrorists who attacked us on 9-11, who we are trying to defeat.