Overtime - Episode #352 (Originally aired 5/1/15)

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night Series, Real Time with Bill Maher.

We're overtime overseas.

Jane, does the U.S.

do more harm or good with its drone policy?

The use of domestic drones is doing a lot of harm, by the way.

Domestic?

I don't know.

Domestic.

I know, but let me go to both parts.

We're not really killing people with the drones.

Well, that's a possibility.

I think it's really out of control, and we're going to shred our Fourth Amendment.

You heard it here.

The use of drones internationally is a mixed bag, and we should reduce the use of drones.

And our foreign policy should be much more about economic trade and aid and helping educate people all over the world so they have opportunity.

On balance, and I was a supporter of the drone program.

I believe today it is doing more harm than good overseas.

The reason is, is because

it's the sole tool, basically, of our war on terrorism.

When we take out al-Qaeda safe houses, we wind up taking out the spouses and the children.

Hundreds, sometimes thousands of people have been killed over the years in places like Yemen and Somalia and Pakistan.

And we generate this resentment from these populations for that.

And we also lose valuable intelligence because instead of capturing these guys and getting information out of them to prevent a future attack, we wind up vaporizing them.

We vaporize them and their entire community.

So you would agree with what I was just saying.

It's because we're there.

No.

If we weren't there,

no?

Should we be there?

It depends how we're there.

America is.

We have an empire.

No, we we don't have an empire.

We don't have an empire.

We don't have an empire.

We were America before

Putin may be built.

But we're not.

Before nothing in like 150 different countries in the world.

Are you crazy?

We have like 760 bases around the world.

No, and we really have our bases.

We have 50,000 troops in Germany.

I think we got hit by now.

By 2013, there was no single American tank in Europe.

And by the way, if you were praising Obama's peace record, because of this weak policy now, he had no choice but to bring American soldiers, a small detachment, 100 soldiers, 10 tanks, at the Russian border.

First time in my living memory.

American troops are facing Russian troops in Estonia and Latvia because those small countries are NATO members.

And by 2013, there were no American tanks in Europe at all.

Wake me when he takes Poland.

Anyway.

I mean, yes, we'd moved 100%.

Are you making jokes about it?

Yes, obviously that was.

Police jokes.

Poles suffered from.

I hope now Poles in the world.

It's a comedy show, Gary.

We make jokes about everything.

Okay, if I have to watch out.

It's about the Holocaust or the Polish.

It's not about the Holocaust.

You made it about the Holocaust.

But for Poles, it's tough.

For Poles, it's tough.

Millions of Poles have been killed by Russians and Germans.

Gary, shut up.

This is a stupid thing to say.

I'm sorry, I'm a big fan of yours.

But to say that I was making a Holocaust joke when I said, wake me when Polish.

You said you make jokes about everything.

I do.

But that was not a Holocaust joke, and I don't think I've ever made one.

Now's a good time for a motherfucker.

That's optimistic.

Get in your answer, Bill, to get to your

end of the show there, when you talked about

the Obama model versus the Bush model.

Right.

four-year anniversary of us getting bin Laden was fantastic.

And yet, after that, President Obama said, Al-Qaeda's on the run.

Al-Qaeda's been decimated.

Wow.

Look at Yemen.

Look at Somalia.

Look at Nigeria.

Look at what's going on throughout the Middle East.

Terrorism is not on the run.

It hasn't been decimated.

It's a very 2003 when we should never have gotten into a bad thing.

That may or may not be.

I'm simply saying, no, no, no.

We're celebrating a SEAL team operation that

took out bin Laden as though

that is the strategy that can solve our problems around the world.

That's the model, I think,

in

There were attacks on the coal, and there were attacks

around the Middle East in the 90s, and we didn't see the signals.

And it's

far from the world.

That's right.

I think what we were saying there is that the model of going after terrorism as a law enforcement and spy agency issue, as opposed to sending invading armies into Arab lands is the model.

And by the way, that is the model because Iraq didn't make us safer in any way.

Every time we've stopped a terrorist attack, it's because they did some good police work.

We were able to get bin Laden for two reasons.

One, we captured a lot of bad guys and got information out of them in ways that made people like you uncomfortable.

And second of all, we had a presence.

We had a presence in the Middle East.

You're saying that like a fact, and it is hard to believe.

I'm happy to debate it with you.

And we had a presence in the Middle East that got us a lot of human intelligence.

The cumulative effect

allows us to do a lot of things like the bin Laden operation.

It's not like we just send a team in and they go and knock the guy off and they get secured.

We secured democracy for the Middle East after that night in 2003.

Was that the great trick?

Of course we didn't do that.

Of course we did.

I believed in intelligence on Iraq.

I did.

And I was wrong and going into Iraq was wrong.

But we've done a lot of things right.

Let's look at three countries.

There's Iraq where we went in big and it's a mess.

There's Syria where we actually deliberately stayed out of it, starting in 2011.

There's chemical weapons being used against Syrians.

Hundreds of thousands of people are dead.

More than a million are displaced.

There's Libya, where we went in and got right out and left it open, and now it's completely being taken over by militant Islamists.

So the idea that us just going into Iraq is a model for disaster is absurd.

There are places where we haven't engaged at all that are on fire right now.

Even if it didn't cost us American lives and trillions of dollars, there's always going to be places in the world that are on fire.

Yeah, but we're arguing two different things.

I'm simply saying what Joe is saying is we went in and we got a mess.

And I'm saying

we went in and we got a message.

And there is a mess there.

There are places we haven't touched and they're even more of a mess.

But don't you think that the people in the Middle East have to have a war amongst themselves?

Some of them want to live in 21st century.

They are right now.

They're having a warmer.

And some of them want to live in the seventh century.

Yeah, you know what?

You don't want to?

They need to have that out.

They are having

a lot of people.

Let me argue.

it is happening.

Look what's happening in Yemen right now.

It's basically a Shiite-Sunni proxy war.

Sure.

You have the Saudis arming one side and the Iranians arming the other.

Well, guess what?

President Obama just signed this framework agreement with Iran that will give Iran a nuclear program.

We can debate how quickly it'll lead to a nuclear bomb.

Let me finish.

Let me finish.

But they got a nuclear program.

The Saudis are already saying, all right.

Well, if the Iranians get one, we get one.

And the Qataris are saying the same thing.

And the Egyptians and the Turks aren't going to be far behind.

So you want that Sunni-Shiite civil war in the region?

Fine.

Guess what?

It's about to be thrown in, a nuclear arms race is about to be thrown into the mix when all these countries want to be too.

That's a lot of leaps you're taking.

It's not a leap.

They're saying that right now, the Saudis are saying that.

Well, you leapt from Obama's Iran treaty to Iran has a nuclear weapon.

No.

And now Saudis are in terms of the USA.

I'm leaping from Obama's announcement of his deal to what the Saudis and the Qataris are saying in response now.

They're saying if you're going to legitimize Iran's nuclear program, we get one too.

But he's not legitimizing it.

How is he not?

He's saying they should keep their nuclear program.

Nuclear program.

Yes.

Nuclear weapons.

It's a nuclear program.

And so the Saudis are saying, great, we get one too.

Okay, but a nuclear program is not nuclear weapons.

And it quickly, with a little bit of RD, becomes a nuclear weapon.

It will much more quickly become one if we don't have the inspectors in there.

When the first time, the United States President raised the issue about the Iranian nuclear program, it was Bill Clinton in 1995 asking Boris Yeltsin to stop supplying Iran with Russian nuclear technology.

Yeltsin gave a very vague promise, and Clinton hasn't pushed him.

Twenty years ago,

American president already knew about the potential problem, but again, we have to be aware of that.

Congress tried to block that.

We did try.

And Clinton vetoed it, as I remember.

And I think we passed it over as veto.

You said something that I am shocked to to believe I kind of agree with you on okay you I mean it's I'm still it's like I'm hallucinating here, but you said you said it wouldn't it be great if we had inspectors in there to prevent Iran from getting its breakout nuclear weapons capability.

I completely agree the problem is the Iranians don't agree right the commander no no no hold on the commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran has said you cannot inspect military facilities in Iran.

Yet that's to win his base.

That's the Tea Party of Iran.

That doesn't mean that's what the final deal is.

And you know,

you tell me what the deal is.

The moment the U.S.

came out,

make it, maybe they will.

The moment the U.S.

came out, the P5 plus 1 came out with its interim agreement.

The foreign minister of Iran said, that fact sheet is spin, it's not real.

The Supreme Leader of Iran said sanctions will be removed right away, not the way President Obama is saying.

Let's go back to the city.

So, yes,

there's like a Persian version of this document, and then there's an American version of this document.

And the deal isn't cut, and if there is no deal, the other five of the P5 plus one are going to walk away from the sanctions and trade with Iran, and there will be an arms race in the Middle East.

And the hope is that it will be a good enough deal, and we'll all stick together.

And one of the other beneficiaries of a good enough deal, even though they don't see it that way yet, is Israel.

I would love a good deal.

I do not think this is a good deal.

And I think we could get a better deal.

This deal was negotiated when Iran's economy was strangled and oil was being traded at $100 a barrel.

Today it's under $50 a barrel.

They're under more economic pressure.

We can negotiate.

I don't think so.

Yes, Dean Hugo.

Isn't hearing somebody who was so wrong about a war lecture you about what's going on now, like Kim Kardashian telling you how to be a wife?

It's kind of like that.

I just know there's so many mistakes were made, and they were argued just like with so many points and facts and figures and it was so wrong-headed that we will suffer for that for decades.

And how do you, how are you so,

you all speak with such certainty, and if you were right, then we wouldn't be in the situation we are in now.

I mean, it's.

I mean, I could ask you the same question I asked Professor Stiglitz out there.

I mean, 60 billion was the estimate from Rumsfeld and George Bush, and it's costed over $4 trillion.

What else can you be that wrong about?

Where else can you be even close to that wrong?

You can say we've won the war against al-Qaeda when we haven't.

Wow.

Is that really

cool?

It's a big deal.

I don't know if it's comparable.

It's a big deal.

Wow.

You know that it's not comparable.

It's so not comparable.

It's not a big deal.

It's just what he said.

It's not money.

It's not lives.

It's just the guy.

It actually is lives.

No, no, no.

It's all that's going on in Syria.

No, but we move.

They don't think this war is over.

Hundreds of thousands of people slaughtered.

Chemical weapons.

I'm just arguing the red team.

It's not really realistic.

I mean, this is your team.

This is what's wrong with America.

Nobody ever argues the truth.

This is my team.

So I argue that I have the red flag behind me.

So I argue the red position.

Hey, hey, hey.

And I'm the first to admit, because I saw it firsthand, that our country and the Bush administration made huge mistakes, huge in the Gulf War.

I mean, huge.

So, and I was advocating for things, and others who were working with me were advocating for things that frustratingly our government didn't do to fix things.

All right, we finally did turn things around gradually, but to suggest that this is just some partisan talking point is a little absurd.

But to suggest that it's equally a mistake to send thousands of people to their death, cost trillions of dollars with a president prematurely saying that this one terrorist group is on the run and they're simply saying is just absurd.

It's absurd.

And you know that it's absurd.

Jane is not on the red team.

But I take your

little bit.

I'm trying to get these things, trying to help get these things right.

I think it's a dangerous world.

I agree with what Gary said about Putin.

I think if people don't stand up to Putin,

what lesson are we not learning?

We have to stand up to Putin, and we have to figure out a way to help him.

How are we standing standing up to help sanction using the pressure?

With massive sanctions, what sanctioned to what?

What about arming Ukrainian troops?

What about giving lethal weapons to the Ukrainian army?

It's not clear that that would

cause more harm to the U.S.

Congress and Senate almost unanimously supported.

Almost all Democrats and Republicans support arming Ukraine.

By the way, in 1994,

under pressure from Bill Clinton, Ukraine has been disarmed.

Ukraine had the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world, bigger than China, France, and UK combined.

US demanded this arsenal to be dismantled.

UK gave it up for the guarantees of its territorial integrity.

It's a signature of US President, and by the way, UK Prime Minister.

I mean, you have to stand by your signature.

But would it be better if all the former Soviet republics had nuclear weapons in them?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Is that what you said?

It was a good idea that they did it, but there were guarantees in exchange for removing them back to Russia.

Okay, well.

I take your point seriously.

Why can anybody here talk with certainty about what should happen in the world?

There's such certainty.

Like, it's absolutely.

I don't think there are any.

I think there are the least bad options in a lot of these places.

There are no

good options.

And figuring out a way forward is important.

But this is a point that

maybe we disagree, Bill.

I think withdrawing from all this and letting them all fight it out and seeing where it ends up is not something we should do.

I think America's responsibility.

We don't want to fight it out with each other, but we should get in the middle so they have a current.

That would be my comment.

I think we should, I mean, we are not the indispensable power.

We are the indispensable partner in the world.

We have wealth.

We have history.

Maybe we should stop thinking of ourselves as so fucking indispensable.

You know what?

Maybe we're not that indispensable.

I don't think we we should pat ourselves on the back.

I don't think our

beautiful

sensible

structure better.

Millions of people are willing to enter America.

Why?

What's that?

Why millions or tens of millions of people in the world are trying to enter the United States?

I'm not saying other countries aren't bigger shitholes.

I'm saying why do we have to go there?

I think our influence would be a lot greater if we actually fixed America more.

Right.

I think we should do that for money.

That was my original

question.

Opportunity cost.

What if we took that $4 trillion and just the infrastructure?

Our country is crumbling.

Do you believe it would go to infrastructure stock markets?

Well, we have a choice.

We have a choice.

Yeah, our political system.

Our political system hasn't been working in the right way, and that's partly because of the Republicans.

Really?

You know what's interesting, Joe?

You know what's interesting, Joe?

That it's the Democratic White House that feels so strongly about maintaining a federal guarantee for our big investment banks.

And so if they ever implode again, the taxpayers have to bail them out.

And I am for completely untangling that guarantee, and a lot of Republicans are.

I agree with you on that.

That was a big mistake, the way we bailed out the banks.

We had to save the banks, but we didn't have to save the bankers, the shareholders, and the bondholders.

So who's holding that all together today?

That's right.

Hold on.

It's not Republicans in the White House who are holding all that together today.

They are investment banking lobbyists that are very close to this administration that are making sure that guarantee stays in the country.

But can I get that court decision on this?

Fixing infrastructure is a no-brainer.

It's a no-brainer.

And let's be honest, when Obama was trying to get the economy back on its feet, he begged the Republican Congress to spend some money on infrastructure.

He said, look, we have millions of people out of work.

They could fix this.

It's

away from

the business.

He had control of the Congress in the first two years of administration.

Hold on.

Yes, he did.

He did.

He had majorities in the House and the Senate.

And he got a stimulus, a trillion-dollar stimulus passed.

He got Dodd-Frank passed, which has a too big to fail guarantee built in to protect the investment banks.

He got Obamacare passed.

He got a bunch of things passed.

So why didn't he push exactly what you're saying?

Well, he was working on those first.

You're correct.

And a lot of people said he should work on the economy first.

And he said, you know what?

America is going to...

What's this?

It's infrastructure, you know.

The last construction of the East River in New York was in 1909.

Right.

We're agreeing.

Shocking.

I think we all agree.

Yes.

No.

Yes.

On that.

And if people go across that bridge and they die, it'll be a holocaust.

Oh, Gary, that's so.

I didn't mean it that way.

Okay, so my point is, yes, a lot of people said he should work on the economy first.

And I think what he was saying is our health care system is the economy.

And it is.

Because we have been...

That was, everybody agreed before he did health care.

Everybody agreed that this is a thing that's going to break the budget.

Remember where the curve was going?

Now we have Obamacare and it bended the curve.

And we're not going to go broke because of that.

But I never brought that argument.

I don't know about what you think about this, Professor.

I never brought that argument that by doing health care, he wasn't doing the economy.

By doing health care, he was doing the economy.

But there's more people on food stamps than there were when Obama came to power.

There are more people dropping out of the labor force.

That was because

there was 30 years of deregulation.

And, you know, it was bipartisan, but there were 30 years of mistaken policies that began under Reagan, but got worse and worse and worse.

And the result of that is, in 2008, we had audience, just to be very clear,

there was also Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

They're only applauding when you mention Reagan.

I just want to make sure they know that Clinton and

the economy went into the deepest downturn that we've had in 80 years, and we pulled back now, but it wasn't done as well as it could have been if we had the right investment.

But it would have been a lot, you know,

I think he had hoped that if the economy didn't turn around when it came to 2011, we would have another dose.

I thought that was a political misjudgment.

In 2011,

he no longer controlled Congress.

He couldn't get the second dose that the economy needed of stimulus.

And that's why we've had a lingering recovery with 91%

of the benefits going to the upper 1%.

But it was a problem that was presented to him,

unfortunately,

in 2008.

All right.

I think everyone's talked out.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

Thanks for checking.

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