Tucker Carlson brings the pain to Ralph Peters and Max Boot. First, Peters, who has never gotten over the Cold War:
Peters leaps into overstatement, as is his wont: “We can’t have an alliance with terrorists, and the Russians are terrorists. They’re not Islamists, but they are terrorists.” He then alleges that the Russians aren’t really fighting ISIS, but instead are bombing hospitals, children, and “our allies” (i.e. the radical Islamist Syrian rebels trained and funded by the CIA and allied with al-Qaeda and al-Nusra). The Russians “hate the United States,” and “we have nothing in common with the Russians” –nothing!” The Russians, says Peters, are paving the way for the Iranians – the real evil in the region – to “build up an empire from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean.” Ah yes, the “Shia crescent” which the Israelis and their amen corner in the US have been warning against since before the Iraq war. Yet Tucker points out that over 3,000 Americans have been killed by terrorists in the US, and “none of them are Shi’ites: all of have been Sunni extremists who are supported by the Saudis, who are supposed to be our allies.” And while we’re on the subject: “Why,” asks Tucker, “if we’re so afraid of Iran did we kill Saddam Hussein, thereby empowering Iran?”
“Because we were stupid,” says Peters.
Oh boy! Peters was one of the most militant advocates of the Iraq war: we were “stupid,” I suppose, to listen to him. Yet Tucker lets this ride momentarily, saving his big guns for the moment when he takes out Peters completely. And Peters walks right into it when Tucker wonders why we can’t cooperate with Russia, since both countries are under assault from Sunni terrorists:
“PETERS: You sound like Charles Lindbergh in 1938 saying Hitler hasn’t attacked us.
“TUCKER: I beg your pardon? You cannot compare me to somebody who makes apologies for Hitler. And I don’t think Putin is comparable.
“PETERS: I think Putin is.
“TUCKER: I think it is a grotesque overstatement actually. I think it’s insane.
Wait, I thought Assad was Hitler today? Or is it Milo Yiannopoulos? It would be helpful if there was some sort of Hitler du jour mailing list to which we could all subscribe and thereby be assured of remaining up to date on the current Hitler. But Peters was merely the appetizer for the meal Tucker made of the hapless Max Boot:
Perhaps the neocons, having been trounced in round one, thought Boot could do better: they were mistaken. Tucker took him apart simply by letting him talk: Boot didn’t answer a single question put to him, and, in the course of it all, as Boot resorted to the typical ad hominems, Tucker made a cogent point:
“[T]o dismiss people who disagree with you as immoral – which is your habit – isn’t a useful form of debate, it’s a kind of moral preening, and it’s little odd coming from you, who really has been consistently wrong in the most flagrant and flamboyant way for over a decade. And so, you have to sort of wonder, like –
”BOOT: What have I been wrong about, Tucker? What have I been wrong about?
”CARLSON: Well, having watch you carefully and known you for a long time, I recall vividly when you said that if we were to topple the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq, the region will be much safer and the people who took their place would help us in the global war on terror. Of course it didn’t happen –“
Boot starts to completely melt down at this point