The Jackpod: Casualties of war
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I'm Meghna Chakrabarty, and this is The JackPod, where On Point news analyst Jack Beattie helps us connect history, literature, and politics in a way that brings his unique clarity to the world we live in now. Hello there, Jack, and Happy New Year to you. Happy New Year to you. Okay, so let's get JackPod 2025 off to a strong start. We're at episode 62. What's your headline? Casualties of War. Casualties of which war, Jack?

Well, I want to quote General Russell Honore, who was interviewed on CNN. He was the general who oversaw the distribution of federal aid to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. He was talking about the atrocity there. And he said, quote, the United States is at war with ISIS.

And the Americans who were killed in New Orleans in the first hours of this year, they were casualties of that war. Through the last year, the United States made 200 separate attacks on ISIS bases, bases

and so on scattered in eastern Syria. And that followed on a longer period

period of really since 2014, we have been consistently at war with ISIS. And ISIS, while it can't, it has not struck directly at the United States, it's not thought to have that capability as Al-Qaeda, its predecessor, did.

It has inspired several attacks on the United States. Before the New Orleans incident, in 2017, there was another truck, a lone wolf attack in Times Square, New York, which killed, I think—

Eight or ten. It was a horrible thing. A truck. Same motive. So we have been at war. And then the question is, well, how is it that we are at war with ISIS? And as you read the research on this, one question.

conclusion comes out. I'm quoting from a paper in a security journal. The general consensus is that without the Iraq invasion of 2003, ISIS would not exist. That is, ISIS was created by our invasion of Iraq and the further mismanagement of SAME.

So it's a variant, really, of what we have in an earlier broadcast called – quoting from a paper in International Security – we call the meddler's trap. You intervene – we intervene to topple Saddam Hussein.

And in that intervention, we created another enemy, ISIS. And, you know, there's just no doubt about that. And this really happened under President Obama that ISIS had its fluorescence. It controlled at one point a third of Syria, a quarter of Iraq, and it was –

It was on a roll until Obama reinforced U.S. forces in Iraq and drove it back, and Trump continued that with

a successful military campaign there that killed one ISIS leader after another. So we have been at war with ISIS, and that war was created by an earlier, the earlier war against Saddam. So sort of a kind of chain of fatality. And that was a pattern really set by the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91.

Recall, you know, basing more than 5,000 U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. That was what provoked Osama bin Laden's declaration of war against us, which led to the casualties of war on 9-11. So there's the pattern. Jack, actually, can I jump in here? Because I would even stretch that pattern further back. Because if, you know, we look at the U.S.,

support of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, right, in the 80s and their fight against the Soviets.

U.S. support of that helped the Mujahideen win in Afghanistan. And the Mujahideen, of course, thereafter became the Taliban who gave safe harbor to Osama bin Laden. Right. So just another sort of little data point on your the fatal pattern here that you're describing. I mean, back in the day, Jack, you remember as well as I do. It was called blowback. We're still we're still experiencing that blowback. Yes. Yes.

We are, and it sort of underlines the peril of any U.S. intervention abroad and the effects of which the shadow of these wars, it just lengthens and lengthens. And another possible casualty of this war, this may sound like hyperbole, but I think I can support it, is American democracy. Now you say, well, how can that be? How can a war...

against ISIS, against wars in the Middle East, undo American democracy. Well, if Donald Trump governs as he promised in the campaign, American democracy will be considerably abridged. There's just no question about it. We don't have to even go into the details. But if he follows through on his plan of revenge using forces of the federal government to wreak havoc

vengeance on his political enemies, we will be into an authoritarian state. Now, what's the connection to war? Well, there is new evidence from the 2016 campaign that suggests that

that Trump won that election, which was the foundation of everything, on the basis of his anti-war rhetoric. He attacked the wars, the Obama, the Bush-Obama wars as stupid. He denounced them. And he ran against Secretary of State Clinton. She embraced globalism. As Secretary of State, she was a vocal advocate for

for the troop surge in Afghanistan, which got us, I think we stayed another nearly 10 years after that. And she was for the military interventions in Syria and Libya.

And Trump, on the other hand, he denounced these wars. He said, actually in his first speech, he said, we spent $2 trillion in Iraq. $2 trillion. We lost thousands of lives, thousands in Iraq. We have wounded soldiers all over the place.

Thousands and thousands of wounded soldiers. Then in a debate, he said, speaking of Bush and Cheney in the war in 2003, they lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none, and they knew there were none. And he called for the use of, he said, the United States needs to be strong.

stronger than anybody else. And he talked sometimes ferociously about bombing, you know, we'll obliterate ISIS with bombing and so on. And he certainly did talk, could talk a hawkish game. On the other hand, he said, unlike other candidates for the president, I will, going to war will not be my first instinct. Trump said a whole lot of other things, right, in 2015, 2016. But you had said that

that there may be evidence that it was his talk, his anti-war talk, essentially? But I mean, prove it to me. Yeah. His campaigns have focused on people who were ignored, on, you might say, people left out of the American feast, either literally left out or who think they were left out. No group more than those who served. Less than 1% of the nation served in these wars. As for casualties, deaths,

that was less than one-tenth of 1%. And survey research has found that counties where war casualties, war deaths were higher than the rest of the country went heavily, heavily for Trump. And in fact, they had gone against George Bush in 2004. People who had been directly affected by the worst of the war

People who had lost loved ones voted strongly for Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton. But was it more strongly than other Republican counties?

Indeed. And the research does the regression analysis and controls for rural, controls for Republican, controls for high school graduates, controls for all those factors, and comes out.

Let me put it this way. He won the election on the basis of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. If the ratio of combat deaths in those states had been what they were in New York State, which were relatively light, Hillary Clinton would have won that election according to one paper.

Because the – if each state – if it had a lower casualty rate, for example, like in New York, Trump could have lost between 1.4 and 1.6 percent of the vote there.

quoting now from a scholarly paper, such a shift would have changed all three states from red to blue and sent Hillary Clinton to the White House. So there was a hidden anti-war vote from the people who had suffered most in the wars of Bush and Obama for Trump.

that put Donald Trump in the White House. Well, I mean, that is a I think this is a compelling correlation for sure. And your overall thesis I am on board with about how we are continuing to suffer domestic casualties of our foreign wars is

I will just say I'm not having read the papers myself, Jack, so forgive me, but I'm a little concerned about the correlation causation conundrum here because I think you could switch. You could you could moderate any set of levers in terms of, you know, income, race, this, all of this, that and the other to say, well, if only 200000 people in three different states had voted differently, Hillary Clinton would have gone to the White House. Do you take my point?

I do take your point, but this is an unexpected one. And as I say, there have been at least several papers on this and a good deal of research, which has established the pattern in the 2004 election. These counties went heavily against George Bush. In the 2006 congressional elections, they went heavily against Republican candidates. A sort of sleeper factor is

in the gumbo of factors that produced an election victory for Trump. Now, this has some pertinence to what we're facing now and to what Trump will be facing. That is a crisis with Iran. Officials from...

The U.S., E.U., and Israel have told Axios they expect Trump will face an Iran crisis early this year. And we recall Trump pulled out of the Obama-negotiated deal with Iran. And in the wake of that, Iran sped up its nuclear program. Now it's a nuclear threshold state.

Some people think just days away from having a nuclear bomb capability, just days or maybe weeks at most away. They're that close. And so Trump's position in his first administration was one of maximum pressure with sanctions against Americans.

Iran to prevent this. It's too late for that now. It's too late for sanctions. So the question now is diplomacy, which she said he would be

He'd be loath or force, which he said he would not be quick to use in 2016. And the problems of a war with Iran, I mean, it's just beyond imagination. If you think the war in Iraq was hard, says Robert Gates, the former defense secretary, Iran would be a catastrophe. One estimate is that even a limited military action against Iran –

could cost as much as $60 billion to $2 trillion in the first three months alone of such a war. And, of course, part of that would be the effect on oil prices. You know, the Iraq War saw oil prices go from $23 to $140 a barrel in 2008. Experts say that war with Iran, which is a much bigger producer of oil,

would cause a spike in oil prices as high as $250 a barrel. Staggering. Wow. Staggering cost to the American economy. So the question is, will Trump...

Remember the people who, at least in one scenario, he owes his election to. Remember it was 11,000 votes or 20,000 votes in Wisconsin. Yeah, you know, it was slivers everywhere. Will he remember that, the people who construably put him in office—

and honor their sacrifice and just remember, wait a minute, it was my anti-war credentials that got me here, or will he attack Iran? And, you know, in that regard, Ron Dermer, who's an official of the Israeli government, met with Trump in December, and he came away saying he believes Trump gave Israel the green light to attack Israel.

And he said perhaps the United States will attack itself. That was his construal of his discussion with Trump. Anyway, this is going to be right on Trump's plate as soon as he takes office shortly. And we are going to see whether there's going to be a return of the repressed, whether this fatal pattern of war, intervention and casualties continues.

in the United States and beyond, whether that's going to be repeated with the much bigger country, 80 million population, Iran, whether that's going to be repeated under Donald Trump. Just can I make a couple of quick points, Jack? I'd love to hear you on these. So first of all, I'm glad you brought up the potential Israeli scenario, right? Because

I mean, one could imagine that Trump would see that as his best option because then he gets to keep his promise, as you said, about not having U.S. troops in.

Not being the person to start a war with U.S. troops, but then also ostensibly eradicating Iran's nuclear capabilities. On the other hand, that wouldn't make it any less of a catastrophe, right? War would still be unleashed across that region even more so. And then who knows what would happen next? The other thing I wanted to ask you about or just get your thoughts on is,

I think you give Trump a lot of credit for remembering his promises, right? I mean, my examination of the president-elect is that he doesn't remember or care what he said five seconds ago. He's going to do what suits him in the moment. And one wonders, one can only conjecture what he would do with knowing that he had the power of the entire United States military at his fingertips, essentially, as commander-in-chief. So...

I don't know. Do you have any thoughts about that? Because you are presenting a very important question about will we continue this chain of this fatal pattern that you talked about? Well, I guess I think Trump has a sort of feral instinct of survival. Mm hmm.

And he's got to understand, and by now he has to understand, how being against these stupid wars helped him. Against Hillary Clinton especially, who was clearly some kind of hawk. I attended a rally of hers up here in New Hampshire in 2015. I couldn't believe how—she was going out of her way to cast—throw sand on the Obama nuclear deal with—

With Iran. And she, oh, we got to be careful. And I said to people there, my God, she sounded like a hawk. And she sounded that way to lots of people in the country. And Trump has to sense that, at least, that that war weariness is

from what, by then it was 16 years of war, now, God, 20-odd, that that war weariness helped get him going. So I'm counting on, I'm not counting, I'm just saying that he's torn. He'll be torn between his

You know, the bellicosity and his blood-curdling rhetoric. He's already said about Hamas that unless they come to an agreement, you know, all hell, there'll be hell to pay, however he put it. Which Trump will show up on that? Which?

We don't really know. I'm just saying that, you know, if he's aware of his political sort of the etiology of his success, he will say that being against wars was a real help. Yeah. One more thing, Jack, because this is such a compelling and important line of analysis that you're bringing this time because my mind keeps coming back to it.

where you started, which is not only have these wars caused many, many military casualties, but we're talking about domestic casualties of these foreign wars. I mean, give Trump, as you've done, give Trump credit for being basically the only person on the stage in 2015, 2016 who denounced Trump.

the Iraq War, because I recall it wasn't a Republican position. It was a Trumpian position, right? Everyone else on the stage, on the Republican stage, was in line with the establishment, the Republican establishment, which was blind support for the Iraq War. But when you pointed out Hillary Clinton, I think this is really important. It wasn't just that Donald Trump said these were terrible wars that we shouldn't have fought, but no one on the Democratic side

had their finger on the pulse of many Americans and was courageous enough to say the same thing. No one that I can recall. Because I remember when Trump was saying those things, lots of Democrats that I know who otherwise found everything else that he said to be completely odious, nodding their heads in agreement. Somehow the Democratic establishment was completely out of touch with that reality. And that's as much a part of this story as Trump's, you know, cottoning on to that truth. Yeah.

Yes, Trump was discovering a new terrain, the American voter. The people behind the rhetoric. And I'm afraid Hillary Clinton and...

All the king's horses and all the king's men, they were all just talking Washington and, you know, standing up and intervening. Biden, look at Biden. He talks about NATO as a solemn, holy commitment. That's not how ordinary people think about these things. And Trump discovered that and exploits it. And when he says America first...

I think that's what he means. Let's just be really calculating here and only do things that advantage us. And, you know, it's of a piece that

With his disparagement of U.S. casualties in war, he called people who were killed at Belleau Wood, the Marines, suckers. I mean, that's disqualifying for any office in the country, I think. But on the other hand, it shows a man who's not misty-eyed about war and casualties and the, oh, we owe so much to so few and all that dreadful rhetoric.

whereby, you know, Bush and Biden and Clinton and Obama have, you know, sort of tried to latch themselves onto the sacrifices made by our troops, the people who ordered them to sacrifice themselves.

There's none of that with Trump. He's cynical about all that. And that darkness in his nature, and I think it is a darkness, not to be, to say something like that about people killed in combat. Nevertheless, it shows he's not patriotic. You're not going to wave a flag in front of him and say, let's go to war because there's something glorious about it. He doesn't see it that way.

So here is what I want you jackpotters to respond to, because going back to the place where Jack began with remembering the victims of the horrible attack at the beginning of this year on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. So the question is, how can we reduce domestic casualties?

of America's foreign wars, right? Within that question, is it Trumpian isolation? Is it honoring our, let's say, our international alliances, but not deploying troops? Is it continuing on with a willing bellicosity when necessary, not just to protect our allies, but to protect assets and resources across the world, which is what the United States military is often asked to do? So

What, though, can be done to eliminate that blowback, reduce those domestic casualties of America's foreign wars? So that's my question for you, Jack Potters, starting 2025 with a big one. You know the routine.

And if you don't, actually, and if this is your first time listening to Jack, welcome, welcome, welcome. Grab your phone and get the On Point VoxPop app. If you don't already have it, go to wherever you get your apps and look for On Point Vox, with an X, of course, Pop.

And we would love to welcome you into the conversation, which, Jack, continues as robustly as ever. And when we come back, we're going to hear folks' thoughts from the last podcast that we did, which was the last one of 2024. So we'll be right back.

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And we're back, Jack. Of course, this is the first Jackpot of 2025. The last one was just a couple of weeks ago at the end of 2024. And you really left us last year with a beautiful one, Jack. You remember you talked about finding a sense of

Of fullness in life. Let us hand the mic over to your listeners, Jack, who they will tell us all about how they feel or how they touch a sense of spiritual fullness. And you won't be surprised to hear that nature was a huge theme.

Let me tell you a little bit about what gives me a sense of fullness in my life. It's always been spending time in nature, outdoors, and it doesn't have to be a national park. It can be my backyard, just encountering the sun in the morning, saying good morning to nature, and breathing in that fresh air.

Greetings from my favorite spot in the woods. Well, I'm standing in the woods with the vultures and the deer and all the songbirds in Central Texas. I love hiking, and it always gives me a profound sense of gratitude when I hike up a mountain and look out across the vast landscape and feeling that sense of pride to be able to live here, but also feeling that sense of wonder and fulfillment

because you climb a mountain and you look down upon everything, and it's all so small. And that includes sometimes our problems. Okay, so at the beginning there you heard Robin Brooks in Tops, Maine. You'll hear more from Robin in just a second. There was also Patricia Roberts in Lowell, Massachusetts, Nancy Rett in Georgetown, Texas, and Kyle Joyner, the Helena Heckler from Big Sky Country in Montana.

So here's a little bit more from Robin Brooks on what brings her that spiritual fullness. I've been exploring Tai Chi and Qigong for about 10 years now, and it is just the most phenomenal experience to integrate mind and body through the breath.

and to move with ease and connect to the earth below and the sky above. So let me just give a shout out for Tai Chi as a marvelous way to come into a sense of fullness. And when we breathe and we can leave behind the complexity of the world or what the Taoists call the world of 10,000 things, we can really embrace our own internal fullness and appreciate what nature has to offer. What do you think, Jack?

Oh, that's a lovely picture that she draws. There's a series of books by Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China. And one of the points he makes is that the ancient Chinese

Chinese way of looking at the world deals with it as a living entity. The split between mind and matter that we get with Descartes and we get with science is not how they look at it, not how the ancients looked at it. We're all part of the same organism. And the separation from nature, the estrangement, what we called in that earlier program the disenchantment of the world,

It's not disenchanted for the ancient Chinese philosophers and Chinese science even followed up on a lot of this and made some basic technological discoveries from it that were exploited by the West but developed in China. So there's some real wisdom even in those physical exercises that come out of this Taoist vision.

Jack Potters, you're all familiar with the man I love to call our man with the view from Elkhart, Indiana. Of course, it's Howard, Howard Turner. He listens all the time and sends us some of the most thoughtful comments that we play in this portion of the jackpot. Well, he did something I just love to death. He shared that last episode about fullness with his eldest daughter, Samantha.

And Samantha has left us her thoughts. I'm eager to hear them because, Samantha, you got a pretty big hill to climb to match your dad there in terms of contributions to the jackpot. But here's what Samantha said.

She believes in seeking out spiritual fulfillment as a daily practice. I do take the time every day to pay attention and to reflect on myself and the things going on around me so that I can feel more connected to everything and more understanding of everything around me. And it has allowed me to live more

more fuller, connected, mindful life, I would say. And it's very fulfilling to me just that I can be really that connected with my environment. Well, thank you so much, Samantha. I want you to also keep sending us thoughts just like your dad. And what I really enjoy about what she just said, Jack, was that this has to be an active practice, right? To seek out fullness and to sense it. That's

That it's not a passive experience in life. Right. You know, it reminds me of an essay of Kierkegaard's actually where he writes, attentiveness is the rarest form of generosity. That just being attentive to others but also just to our surroundings is a –

There's grace in it. There's generosity in it. You open yourself to what could be rather than simply being in your being pent, as Hamlet says. So, yeah, amen to Samantha's vision. Well, I'll take your Kierkegaard and raise you a Karl Barth. Who?

who said, joy is the sincerest form of gratitude. So there, take that, Jack. Punchy at the beginning of the year I am. Here's Mark Knotts, or Notes Mark, forgive me if I've pronounced your name incorrectly, but he's in Providence, Rhode Island. My profound sense of soulful, spiritual fullness is being fully in the present.

As an older man, I have discovered the power of prayer. It's both being in the moment as well as being in the power of words, as Jack so eloquently demonstrated with his examples of poetry. The real magic comes from when people pray

The same words at the same time in space. And along those lines, here's Torley Bush, who's in Webster Springs, West Virginia, who also finds spiritual fullness in religious communities.

Something that has kept me spiritually full throughout this past year has been my continued involvement with the church and hearing the gospel in ways that have been spiritually unifying and towards the service of others rather than in ways that are dividing, as has been so prevalent in the political season that we've had. Jack, what do you think? Yeah.

Yes, I mean, I think we're all seeking for that, for that sort of kind of right relation with the world where, yes, all the problems are there, but the sense of things not – of events still being plastic to goodwill, to change, that has to be part of our sense of the moment. Yeah. Yeah.

You remember when you did that episode about now Vice President-elect J.D. Vance and Hillbilly Elegy and Torley left us a message after that, being from West Virginia, having a very strong reaction. He did not think Hillbilly Elegy was a good book. But that's when he also first mentioned to us that he's

A poet himself. And this is very cool because he just recently published a first anthology of his work in October of last year. And he's finished a second manuscript, which includes a poem, Jack, that he wrote in response to

to a jackpot prompt. Okay, so it's a post-election prayer for the nation, and he has shared it with us. So here's Torley Bush reading A Grounding Prayer. A Grounding Prayer after Joy Harjo.

That your hope remains as rooted as the Appalachian mountains that I call home. That your persistence is as steadfast as the Elk River, abiding even in drought and swelling with the good rains. That you would know your gratitude is to your lost loved ones.

Their hymnal song piercing your political silos, your duty to your fellow human beings clear as the reflection of deer eyes breaking the night. For though you cannot overcome every evil of the world, you can sing against its deafening roar. A meal, a donation to rebuild, a book to the inmate, a listening ear and kind word to the stranger, a voice to defend the immigrants and those persecuted. We, a chorus declaring to this madness...

Enough. Oh, Torley, that is a gift. Oh, oh, your duty to your fellow human beings clear as the reflection of dear eyes breaking the night. Isn't that something? What an image. What an image of singing against the evil's deafening roar.

Oh, yes, yes. I mean, there's a Dylan Thomas feeling in there. We're not going quiet into this night. Oh, just lovely. Just moving. Well, Toralee, you have helped me feel a sense of fullness right now with offering us the present, the gift of...

of your verse there. So thank you so very much. And thank you to all the jackpotters for participating as you usually do. And looking forward to your thoughts on this jackpot, the first of 2025. And Jack, thank you to you, as always. Thank you very much. I'm Meghna Chakrabarty, and this is The Jackpot from On Point.