Mike Huckabee wants to spend 6% of GDP on defense to fight war on terror

Right now, we spend about 3.9 percent of our GDP on defense, compared with about six percent in 1986, under President Ronald Reagan.  We need to return to that six percent level.

~ Mike Huckabee, "America's Priorities in the War on Terror: Islamists, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan," Foreign Affairs, January/February 2008

Ian Bremmer on the superficial treatment of the Israel-Palestine conflict by the mainstream media

The problem is that you can't have this conversation on CNN or FOX.  You can't do it because it's the headlines.  And so you can do a minute of it, you can do two minutes of it, then you move on to the next thing.  If you are only talking about how the Israeli Defense Forces are responsible for these brutal killings, or if you're only talking about what Hamas did on October 7th, and you don't talk about the broader context, you are absolutely not understanding what's happening in this war right now.

~ Ian Bremmer, 26:30 mark, November 9, 2023

Ian Bremmer on the emotional response of the Israeli people to the October 7 Hamas attack

It is very hard to say that Hamas actually expected the kind of success that they experienced on October 7th.  There were some 2,000 Hamas fighers, terrorists, that managed to get across one of the most well-defended borders with some of the best intelligence out there - human intelligence, signals intelligence - managed to get across the border, kill Israelis with reckless abandon and capture some 250 hostages and bring them back into Gaza.  I have a hard time believing that Hamas expected that they would have that kind of success, that they would be able to kill more Jews in one day than had happened anywhere in the world since the Holocaust.  I have a hard time with that.  

I think it turned out that Netanyahu and the Israeli government was dramatically weaker and less focused on defense than Hamas could have anticipated because the level of success that Hamas has had is a death sentence for those leaders and for those fighters.  There really is no choice.  There is no one in the Israeli political leadership - the entire spectrum from left to right that would say, "Oh, we can now leave Hamas intact.  We've hit 'em for a few weeks and that's enough."  The idea that Israel, after what they experienced on October 7th, would have a few weeks of attacks, but then could still live neighboring to Gaza, which is being run and controlled by Hamas, no country in the world would live with that.

And let's also remember that the people that were killed by Hamas, the people that are hostages, those that are Israeli, by the way, this is not a settler population, this is not a hard-right population, this was a progressive population!  These were the people in Israel that were most interested in making peace with the Palestinians.  And so you now have a situation where people that I know, friends of mine in Israel that I would consider to be very thoughtful, moderate politically, that are saying, "I wanna level this place.  I wanna make it a parking lot."  Not differentiating between Hamas fighters and Palestinian civilians and Palestinian women and children.  To you and I, that sounds insane, but on the back of what the Israelis have just experienced, that is the emotion that is coming out.

~ Ian Bremmer, 20:00 mark

Ian Bremmer on recent peace and trade talks with Israel and the Middle East breaking down after October 7 Hamas attack

Israel had benefited from being seen as an economic juggernaut, a security juggernaut, a technological juggernaut.  And a lot of the countries in the region wanted to work more closely with Israel as a consequence of that.  That's why you had the UAE and Bahrain and Morocco signing the Abraham Accords, not just normalize diplomatic relations, but also to dramatically expand trade and investment with Israel.  That's why the Saudis were improving their informal relations and were moving towards normalization.  Even though the Saudi populatio is going to be quite cautious and conservative on the Palestinian issue, they say, "No, the priority is we gotta find a to work with Israel."

But once you have Israel, in response to there terrorist acts, going after Hamas, and as they're doing so killing all of these Palestinian civilians, well then there's a freeze on everthing.  Then if you're Jordan, you say, "We can't work with, we can't engage with Israel."  If you're Turkey, Turkish President Eedogan, who has said that Hamas is not a terrorist organization, he has said that Hamas is a liberation movement...  So they've thrown out the Israeli diplomats on the ground as well.  And when that's happening across the region and the Arab Street is demonstrating in solidarity with the Palestinians, then even if you have a number of wealthier Arab countries that want to continue to work with Israel, they can't because of the domestic pressure. 

~ Ian Bremmer, "Political scientist Ian Bremmer on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," Big Think, 15:10 mark, November 9, 2023

Ian Bremmer on resolving the land dispute between Jews and Palestinians

Both the Jews and the Palestinians have long, long running and legitimate claims to live on this territory.  Palestinians, some 700,000 plus, were kicked off these territories after 1948 post-Holocaust.  The Jews had lived on these territories for millennia and a number of empires have kicked them off.  We can talk about that.  There are people that are far more expert on those histories than I am, but the reality is that for the Jews and the Palestinians that are fighting over this land today, they've been living there for their lifetimes.  And so it's really not about who has a right to live on the territory.  It's rather that they need to find a way to live together in peace.

~ Ian Bremmer, "Political scientist Ian Bremmer on the Israel-Palestinian conflict," Big Think, November 9, 2023

Osama bin Laden on U.S. sanctions on Iraq

You have starved the Muslims of Iraq, where children die every day.  It is a wonder that more than 1.5 million Iraqi children have died as a result of your sanctions, and you did not show concern.  Yet when 3000 of your people died, the entire world rises and has not yet sat down.

~ Osama bin Laden, "Letter to the American People," November 2002

Osama bin Linden on America's use of nuclear weapons against Japan

That which you are singled out for in the history of mankind, is that you have used your force to destroy mankind more than any other nation in history; not to defend principles and values, but to hasten to secure your interests and profits.  You who dropped a nuclear bomb on Japan, even though Japan was ready to negotiate an end to the war.  How many acts of oppression, tyranny and injustice have you carried out, O callers to freedom?

~ Osama bin Laden, "Letter to the American People," November 2002

Radioactive plume from the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, as

seen from 9.6 km away, in Koyagi-jima, Japan, August 9, 1945