Can You Fight a Moral War in a Tight Space?
Angry Planet
Matthew Gault
4.3 • 882 Ratings
🗓️ 15 February 2024
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Retired Colonel John Spencer, who is a combat veteran who now teaches at West Point, joins Matthew and Jason for a second time. This time we're not talking about how to carry out urban warfare, but we're looking at how you fight morally under impossible circumstances. John recently wrote a piece for Newsweek (Jason's day job), making the controversial case that the Israelis are doing more than any other modern military to limit civilian casualties. You can see if he's persuasive for yourself.
Angry Planet has a Substack! Join to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.
https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribe
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Love this podcast support this show through the a cast supporter feature |
| 0:05.1 | It's up to you how much you give and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. We've actually gotten some really nice feedback, which you know, whoever is used to that on the internet, actual nice feedback. |
| 0:28.0 | Yeah, I'm not, that's for sure. |
| 0:32.0 | I don't know if you saw my most recent post you know the Prime Minister mentioned me in a speech and there's 400 comments to that post and then not all of them are good. |
| 0:45.0 | No, I would imagine that you're probably not having a great time on the internet right now. |
| 0:49.0 | Because you're telling people things that maybe they don't want to hear. |
| 0:52.0 | Well, hold on. Okay, let's just do the formalities, if you will. |
| 0:56.3 | This is Angry Planet, I'm pretending to be Jason Fields. |
| 1:00.3 | I'm Matthew. |
| 1:01.4 | And John Spencer, explain who you are to the lovely people. |
| 1:06.0 | I'm John Spencer I'm the chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute |
| 1:10.8 | which is a research center at the United States Military Academy at West Point. |
| 1:15.6 | And you wrote a very, very interesting piece for Newsweek where my day job apparently still lies. |
| 1:23.7 | And yeah, I thought it was really good. |
| 1:26.9 | It's not what people want to hear. |
| 1:28.6 | So can you sort of summarize what it's about and what you sort of, |
| 1:32.4 | what you know |
| 1:33.4 | know discovered sure so based on my actual visit to the war last month and |
| 1:41.1 | studying it day to day, of course the narratives are out there, but I've found them |
| 1:47.6 | surprisingly counterfactual, everything from the war being the most destructive, the most deadliest, |
| 1:55.0 | to Gaza being the most densest place on the earth. |
| 1:58.0 | And then about this, really what Israel has done to prevent civilian casualties because there is no such thing as a bloodless |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in -364 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Matthew Gault, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Matthew Gault and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.