Memorial Day: The War on Terror Was Not Fake | Ep. 26

Last June, former Navy SEAL and podcast host Shawn Ryan tweeted, "I've fought in enough fake wars. I think I'll sit this one out." That phrase — "fake war" — is doing more damage to American veterans than anyone has been willing to say. It's Memorial Day. The 2,500 Americans who died in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the men and women who came home carrying what they did there, deserve better than a culture that has decided their cause was invented, their sacrifice was foolish, and their service was, at best, a mistake — and at worst, evil. Jeremy Boreing argues otherwise. Jeremy gets into: Shawn Ryan's "fake wars" tweet and the audience capture behind it; the Yale / University of Amsterdam study on how China launders its positions through TikTok influencers; the 2023 moment Osama bin Laden's "Letter to America" went viral on TikTok; the polling showing nearly 1-in-3 Gen Z voters now describe Osama bin Laden's views as a force for good; why Afghanistan was justice, not a war of choice; the lie of "forever war" and what 80 years of American troops in Germany, Japan, and Korea actually bought the West; how Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and the soldiers who defeated Imperial Japan are being retroactively villainized by the same voices; the 9/11 conspiracy industry's strange second life; Saddam Hussein's torture chambers, the chemical attacks on the Kurds, and why every major Western intelligence service believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction; President George W. Bush's 2007 surge and the Sunni Awakening that broke the back of the insurgency; President Barack Obama's 2011 withdrawal and the ISIS caliphate that rushed into the vacuum; the February 2016 South Carolina primary debate where Donald Trump dropped the phrase “forever wars” to take down Jeb Bush; President Joe Biden's $85 billion in American military hardware now in Taliban hands; Richard Nixon, the Christmas bombings, and how a Democratic Congress in 1975 gave away the Vietnam victory the military had already secured on the battlefield; how President Donald Trump destroyed ISIS, killed Qasem Soleimani, removed Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela, and authorized strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities; how Vladimir Putin can sustain a meat grinder in Ukraine while America's two-party system can't sustain political will past one election; the 2023 survey in which 73% of veterans said it was the withdrawal, not the war, that changed how they view their service; and the just war doctrine of Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas — and how rewriting a war as "fake" manufactures moral injury that never had to exist. This is one of the most important monologues Jeremy Boreing has delivered. 00:00 The Origin of Memorial Day 02:19 "I've Fought in Enough Fake Wars" — The Shawn Ryan Tweet 04:28 China, TikTok, and Bin Laden's Manifesto Going Viral 06:04 Vietnam, Yellow Ribbons, and the Lesson We Forgot 07:49 Afghanistan Was Not a Mistake 12:31 The "Forever War" Lie and the 9/11 Conspiracy Industry 15:57 Iraq: Saddam, the Surge, and the Win That Was Squandered 22:29 Obama Threw It All Away — and ISIS Filled the Vacuum 28:58 How Trump Won the GOP by Attacking the Wars 34:14 Just War Doctrine and Manufactured Moral Injury 38:12 Thank You, Veterans: WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Global War on Terror 43:24 At 3 PM Today, Stop What You’re Doing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices