America First - Nicholas J. Fuentes - Why We're Still in Afghanistan | America First Ep. 101

00:00:04.000 Good evening, everybody.

00:00:05.000 You are watching America First.

00:00:07.000 My name is Nicholas J. Fuentes, and we have a great show for you tonight.

00:00:11.000 A very exciting week ahead of us here on America First.

00:00:16.000 Tonight is a big episode, lots to talk about.

00:00:19.000 We have what appears to be a little bit of a financial meltdown, a mini financial meltdown on the stock market, and also for a lot of our crypto investors with Bitcoin.

00:00:31.000 We have the withdrawal of troops from Iraq this weekend, or the beginnings of it, which is Big news, of course, and a redeployment, it looks like, perhaps in Afghanistan.

00:00:41.000 Things possibly heating up in Central Asia for the United States.

00:00:46.000 We have another government shutdown, which may happen this week if an immigration fix is not passed, and the Democrats may not even be here for that. 0.71

00:00:56.000 And, of course, last night was the big game.

00:00:58.000 Last night was the big football contest.

00:01:01.000 Patriots, Eagles chucking the old pigskin around the field, and don't we love it?

00:01:07.000 Big American tradition, big American tradition.

00:01:11.000 Fun.

00:01:12.000 The commercials were there.

00:01:14.000 They were what we expected.

00:01:16.000 And so lots to get into.

00:01:17.000 Very exciting show.

00:01:19.000 And then, of course, tomorrow we have our one year anniversary call in special.

00:01:23.000 I went in, I know, last Friday the tech left some things to be desired.

00:01:29.000 I know last Friday we were grappling with the technical difficulties, but I assure you tomorrow we'll have that back on track for you.

00:01:39.000 We botched the 100 episode anniversary, I guess, but the one year anniversary tomorrow should.

00:01:45.000 Make up for it.

00:01:46.000 We have a very special pre recorded video prepared for you.

00:01:49.000 Big surprise for the audience in that regard.

00:01:53.000 And then a very exciting call in show.

00:01:55.000 We can reminisce about our favorite episodes, our favorite moments on America First.

00:02:00.000 Was it the time that Nick Fuentes got a call from CNN because he told people that we should hang the globalists?

00:02:08.000 Was it the time he went to Charlottesville and then he never showed up to work again at RSVN?

00:02:13.000 Was it, I mean, there are just so many countless memories.

00:02:16.000 And I can't wait to relive them all with you tomorrow.

00:02:19.000 And then Wednesday, this I have not announced on the show, but I announced earlier on Twitter, we have a very special guest coming with us, Ricky Vaughn, one of the top influencers during the 2016 election on Twitter.

00:02:32.000 He had something like 65,000 followers, and the engagement was well beyond that.

00:02:37.000 He'll be joining us on Wednesday for a little talk about the alt right, the dissident right, what direction we're headed, and that should be good.

00:02:44.000 But with all of that out of the way, with all of that, Exciting stuff out of the way.

00:02:49.000 Introducing the show.

00:02:51.000 What to sink our teeth into first on this very exciting day.

00:02:55.000 I have to say, it's a little bit unfortunate that I did not shave here.

00:03:00.000 Is that a good look?

00:03:00.000 I don't know.

00:03:01.000 Is this a Castizo look? 1.00

00:03:03.000 Am I pulling it off? 1.00

00:03:05.000 Should I keep going with this or should I take it off?

00:03:07.000 I'm not quite sure.

00:03:09.000 I'm not going to tell you if I kept this because I was lazy or because it was a deliberate style choice.

00:03:15.000 Not going to let on.

00:03:16.000 But what do you think?

00:03:17.000 What do you think?

00:03:18.000 Does it work?

00:03:19.000 Is it.

00:03:19.000 Is it masculine?

00:03:20.000 Does it look like a trendy thing?

00:03:22.000 I personally am always in favor of the clean shave, and I think we'll do that tomorrow.

00:03:25.000 But so last night we had our Super Bowl game, the Eagles versus the Patriots.

00:03:32.000 And, you know, there were a lot of hot takes about this.

00:03:35.000 A lot of hot takes about football on the dissident right.

00:03:39.000 I know a lot of people have a problem with football on the dissident right.

00:03:42.000 I certainly have personal problems with football.

00:03:44.000 I just don't enjoy it.

00:03:46.000 I don't see the appeal. 1.00

00:03:48.000 I watch the game, I watch these big, you know, black athletes running around, throwing the ball around. 1.00

00:03:53.000 I don't know. 1.00

00:03:54.000 I don't get the entertainment value.

00:03:54.000 I don't get it.

00:03:56.000 That's my own personal opinion.

00:03:58.000 I think a lot of people read a lot into it that it's this expression of where our society is at.

00:04:03.000 I don't know if that's necessarily the case, but I look at the NFL, I look at the Super Bowl yesterday, and I think my overall, I think my prevailing problem when you watch programming like the Super Bowl last night is not so much that people are using their leisure time, not so much that they're watching something that is purely recreational and not maybe serious, not political, not that people have passions about it, that they take pride in their team and pride in their city and their mascot and all of that.

00:04:33.000 But I think in particular, if you look at the NFL, what was disturbing about the Super Bowl last night was not that people are having a good time with their friends and family, but look at this institution in particular, where you have this monstrosity.

00:04:46.000 First of all, you look at the scope of the NFL in terms of the money, in terms of the infrastructure there.

00:04:53.000 You look at how the stadiums are built, for example, how these stadiums are billions of dollars, and they're built in a lot of ways using taxpayer money, a lot of how they're constructed and how the NFL is.

00:05:05.000 Builds their stadiums is crony capitalism, and so you have that.

00:05:08.000 Then on top of that, you look at the actual programming, and what is it?

00:05:12.000 When it's not commercials, which are these neoliberal, corporatist, social engineering projects, you watched the T Mobile commercial yesterday, it's just outright brainwashing.

00:05:23.000 We believe in equality, and looking at all these babies and everything, and how many of them had either an interracial couple or a homosexual couple or this or that.

00:05:33.000 When it's not the commercials, then it's the football, and who's playing in the football games? 0.99

00:05:37.000 It's these degenerates. 1.00

00:05:39.000 Wife beaters, dog fighters, drunk drivers, drug abusers. 0.99

00:05:44.000 I mean, are these the people that our youth are going to look up to?

00:05:47.000 So I watch a program like the Super Bowl last night, and I am hard pressed to find a single redeeming quality about this kind of programming, which they say is family friendly, which they say is for the youth, for the kids.

00:06:01.000 This is the American way.

00:06:03.000 I don't think so.

00:06:04.000 And I don't think it's football.

00:06:04.000 I don't think so.

00:06:05.000 I don't think it's necessarily sports.

00:06:08.000 I think it's this kind of sports.

00:06:10.000 I think this.

00:06:12.000 As sort of a peak manifestation of many things wrong in the country, sort of peak modernism.

00:06:17.000 And then, of course, we saw the riots in Philadelphia last night.

00:06:22.000 Of course, it's the Philadelphia Eagles, right?

00:06:25.000 I don't even know what city they come from, technically.

00:06:27.000 I know that was where the riots were.

00:06:30.000 But Eagles win, and I understand that their quarterback is a good Christian man, going to become a pastor.

00:06:35.000 God bless him and start a family.

00:06:37.000 Eagles, worth mentioning, were one of the only teams in the NFL that they didn't have a single incident of people kneeling.

00:06:45.000 Where the Patriots, I believe they had quite a few.

00:06:47.000 I think they had a couple dozen incidents of the kneeling during the anthem.

00:06:51.000 The Eagles, fun fact, this is not really pertinent to my judgment of them, but they're also the whitest team in the NFL. 0.67

00:06:59.000 And so they win last night. 0.63

00:07:00.000 Big, big game.

00:07:01.000 You know, Tom Brady, I guess he's getting older, I guess.

00:07:04.000 He's played in a couple of Super Bowls, I hear, before.

00:07:07.000 So it was a big upset.

00:07:09.000 And last night, we see the rioting across Philadelphia.

00:07:12.000 We see people, and they're climbing the gates of City Hall, they're jumping on the awning.

00:07:17.000 Of the Ritz Carlton.

00:07:19.000 They're tipping over cars.

00:07:21.000 You have cars set on fire, people climbing on police cars, looting stores, breaking windows.

00:07:28.000 And I tweeted about this a little bit this morning.

00:07:30.000 And I promise we're not going to spend too much time on the Super Bowl because there's so much news to get into politics.

00:07:36.000 But it is worth mentioning because this is such a cultural phenomenon.

00:07:39.000 You think about football and the cultural influence that it has or that it had, maybe formerly the place that it occupied in the American zeitgeist.

00:07:49.000 This is important stuff.

00:07:52.000 I watched the riots unfold last night in Philadelphia.

00:07:55.000 You know, they call it a celebration.

00:07:56.000 I call it a riot.

00:07:58.000 I don't see how destroying streetlights and things, how is that a celebratory thing?

00:08:03.000 When I have a birthday party, I'm not punching holes in the walls.

00:08:06.000 Maybe I'm punching the holes in the walls, depending on what I get, depending on what kind of cake is there.

00:08:11.000 But you don't typically celebrate things by bringing buildings down and whatever.

00:08:16.000 But I think that that kind of episode, I think when we see these things, and we all want to see these things, right?

00:08:24.000 I mean, we may look at these riots and we may be moralizing and say, oh, this is terrible.

00:08:30.000 This is not a celebration.

00:08:30.000 Terrible.

00:08:32.000 Bah, humbug.

00:08:33.000 Look at these people.

00:08:35.000 But there is something inside all of us where we see these things.

00:08:38.000 Maybe it's just me.

00:08:39.000 Who knows?

00:08:40.000 But we see these things on television, and there's a certain element, I think, inside all of us.

00:08:44.000 There's a certain impulse.

00:08:46.000 There's a certain unholy appetite inside of us that wants to see this kind of a thing, that wants to see these surreal, absurd scenes of a man eating horse excrement, for example, that we saw last night, or the fires.

00:09:02.000 The explosions.

00:09:04.000 And of course, we understand this is tragic.

00:09:06.000 We understand these are sad things.

00:09:08.000 But I think there is this primal, there is this sickness in us where we see chaos unfold these days in the news media, whether it's a car chase or it's a shooting or something like this.

00:09:20.000 And there's an appetite for that.

00:09:22.000 And I think that betrays inside of us a deep seated resentment for the modern world, for this urban decay that we see around us.

00:09:33.000 You know, I think it's a striking difference between people's reactions to, say, the controlled demolition of a cathedral in Europe.

00:09:40.000 And we see this all the time when they have to destroy an historical cathedral or an historical building that stood for centuries or in some cases millennia to clear the way for a parking lot or a mall.

00:09:51.000 We see that kind of a thing, and there's similar impulses like, oh, oh no, something's being lost.

00:09:57.000 And then when we see, you know, a modern building being set on fire, a Macy's storefront being destroyed, You know, people in the Walmart or the 7 Eleven throwing products everywhere, and there is kind of this sick desire for that.

00:10:10.000 And I think that betrays this deep seated angst.

00:10:14.000 We want to see the modern world burn, I think, in a lot of ways.

00:10:19.000 I think this structured, Apollonian, rigid world, it's choking us, strangling our animal impulses, it's not giving us productive channels to direct those energies.

00:10:31.000 I think it tends to create these excesses.

00:10:33.000 It tends to create these.

00:10:34.000 These wild excretions from time to time.

00:10:37.000 And I think that's what we saw last night.

00:10:39.000 Maybe I'm reading too much into that.

00:10:40.000 Maybe it was unconscious.

00:10:41.000 Maybe I'm reading too much into that.

00:10:43.000 Maybe you could look at the demographics and explain what happened in Philadelphia.

00:10:47.000 I don't know.

00:10:48.000 But I see these things and I can't help but wonder is there something more going on there?

00:10:52.000 Because we do see this nihilist, surrealist, destructive streak in the American people in the 21st century and really in the past 30 years.

00:11:02.000 And I think that's what it comes down to in a big way.

00:11:05.000 So.

00:11:06.000 Just some thoughts on the Super Bowl.

00:11:08.000 I, of course, didn't watch it this year.

00:11:11.000 I've never watched it.

00:11:12.000 I don't think I've ever sat through a whole football game.

00:11:15.000 But God bless them.

00:11:16.000 Go, Eagles, I guess.

00:11:17.000 Congratulations on a big win.

00:11:19.000 And if that's your thing, I don't know.

00:11:21.000 I guess that's your thing.

00:11:22.000 I personally, you know, if people are watching baseball, that would be one thing.

00:11:25.000 But the NFL is something else.

00:11:28.000 The advertisements, which are propaganda, you know, the T Mobile commercial, that's the one that set me off.

00:11:33.000 And I don't have it prepared here.

00:11:35.000 But it's a one minute ad, essentially.

00:11:36.000 And mind you, may I remind you that T Mobile is a phone company?

00:11:40.000 I think it's worth.

00:11:41.000 Maybe it's worth mentioning that T Mobile's business is to sell telephones, to sell telephones, to make telephones work.

00:11:49.000 I don't know how they work, but you're supposed to dial up a number, you call someone, they pick up, they say hello.

00:11:53.000 That's T Mobile's job.

00:11:54.000 So I don't know what this advertisement has to do with that.

00:11:56.000 I don't know what it has to do with that.

00:11:57.000 Do is selling phones, but they do this one minute spot for the Super Bowl, and it's an overhead.

00:12:04.000 You know, they're panning over like a bunch of little babies in a crib, and you got your white baby, and your black baby, and your Asian baby, and your Hispanic baby, and you have this weird like nursery rhyme in the background, and this mother saying something like, it just is very creepy stuff.

00:12:22.000 Basically, this John Locke blank slate stuff like, babies have not been taught to hate yet.

00:12:28.000 We are all equal, and that's how it's going to be, and we're not going to let our differences get in the way of each other.

00:12:35.000 And I just see an ad like this where it's pink and they do this baby stuff, and there's a woman talking, and it's this very manipulative type of ad, and the message is about equality, you know, racial egalitarianism.

00:12:48.000 And I just got to think to myself, what does this have to do with selling phones?

00:12:52.000 How does this help T Mobile sell phones?

00:12:55.000 You got to wonder, do they put an ad out like this, and do they sell more phones?

00:13:00.000 You know, what was the company that used the Martin Luther King speech to sell trucks?

00:13:06.000 I got to think, what is the response to these things?

00:13:09.000 Because you know that people are pulling their plans today in response to this.

00:13:12.000 You know that conservatives, Republicans, Trump voters, maybe they read too much into it.

00:13:17.000 Maybe they see it for exactly what it is.

00:13:19.000 But they pull their plans.

00:13:21.000 So if anything, maybe there's a net negative, and yet they persist.

00:13:25.000 Why with these ads?

00:13:25.000 Why?

00:13:27.000 It doesn't help them sell phones. 1.00

00:13:29.000 It doesn't make them more money.

00:13:30.000 And yet they always do this.

00:13:31.000 They say it's about their values.

00:13:33.000 You really think.

00:13:35.000 You really think these soulless technocrats, you know, the managers and the CEOs and the owners of T Mobile, you think they're so concerned about, oh, my values.

00:13:44.000 You know, they're getting their phones constructed in China using slave labor, and they care so much about getting racial egalitarianism to be the number one thing in the country, to be our default position here.

00:13:58.000 It just strikes me as very peculiar.

00:14:00.000 These are questions that people have to ask themselves.

00:14:03.000 I point these things out to people, and they say, You know, well, maybe that's the sign of the times.

00:14:09.000 That's the sign of the times.

00:14:10.000 They're trying to appeal to liberals.

00:14:11.000 Or maybe there's liberals that are working in their advertising department.

00:14:15.000 That's what we call them these days.

00:14:15.000 Liberals, right?

00:14:17.000 The rootless transnationals who make the advertisements. 1.00

00:14:20.000 There's something else going on there. 0.93

00:14:22.000 And you just got to ask yourself T Mobile pays millions of dollars to advertise during the biggest television event of the year.

00:14:31.000 And what do they do?

00:14:31.000 They don't introduce their new phone.

00:14:33.000 They don't talk about telephones and look at this plan, look at our coverage. 0.95

00:14:37.000 But they show babies talking about racial differences, really. 0.95

00:14:41.000 Something's going on there.

00:14:42.000 So that's the Super Bowl.

00:14:44.000 We got to read the politics into it because culture is politics.

00:14:46.000 It's all politics these days, tragically.

00:14:49.000 But that's the reality of the situation.

00:14:51.000 The story I want to get into this is the big story of the weekend that nobody's talking about.

00:14:55.000 Everybody's talking about the Super Bowl, everybody's talking about the stock market crashing, which is big.

00:15:01.000 But we'll see how that develops over the week.

00:15:04.000 But the big story that I saw yesterday was this kind of quiet announcement on the Associated Press.

00:15:11.000 Right after the Super Bowl ended, it's kind of weird timing because everybody's in this jubilation.

00:15:16.000 Wow, the big games concluded.

00:15:18.000 Look at what's going on in Philadelphia.

00:15:20.000 And then, right snuck in there last night, was this announcement by the Associated Press from Western contractors and an American led coalition base in Iraq that American troops are starting to be withdrawn from Iraq and that a deal has reportedly been reached between the Iraqi government and the American government to start pulling.

00:15:42.000 U.S. boots out of Iraq, which is a very big announcement, right?

00:15:46.000 Which is a very big deal.

00:15:48.000 And I'm sure this is part of President Trump's broader strategy not to telegraph our moves in advance to the enemy or to the world.

00:15:56.000 So that's probably why we haven't seen a more public, a more loud announcement.

00:16:00.000 And I wouldn't be surprised if there was some kind of denial about this later in the week if the DOD or the State Department were asked about this and they said, you know, that's not happening or this is not a total withdrawal because that has been the policy of this administration to not telegraph, to not reveal what we're doing in advance.

00:16:19.000 Because what happens is you tell Iraq or you tell the world that we're pulling out, we're going home, we're sending our troops home.

00:16:27.000 And then what happens?

00:16:28.000 ISIS.

00:16:29.000 Other rebellious elements, other Sunni radicals or Shiite radicals say, okay, well, we can wait. 0.82

00:16:36.000 We'll wait for the Americans to go home and then we'll make our move. 0.66

00:16:36.000 We can wait a month. 0.66

00:16:40.000 You know, why would they continue fighting?

00:16:42.000 Why would they continue resisting now if they were guaranteed in a month or whatever the timetable would be, whatever a reasonable timetable would be, they could expect to encounter no American led resistance in the region?

00:16:54.000 So that's probably why you don't see a big announcement.

00:16:56.000 But this is significant nonetheless.

00:16:58.000 We have.

00:16:59.000 About 5,000 U.S. boots on the ground in Iraq right now.

00:17:03.000 4,000 of those are deployed to assist and to support the Iraqi government forces against ISIS.

00:17:11.000 The remaining 1,000 are special forces, logistics, military base workers generally, people like that.

00:17:17.000 But people are starting to be sent back home on flights, and that's a very good thing.

00:17:21.000 This happens at the same time, and this is really the broader announcement.

00:17:26.000 This is happening at the same time that the same troops being pulled out are being then deployed.

00:17:31.000 Deployed to Afghanistan.

00:17:32.000 We're seeing the focus switch from Iraq and Syria and the defeat of ISIS, now shifting the focus over into Afghanistan and the fight there.

00:17:42.000 And I think this is a really important topic, and so I wanted to do kind of a deep dive on Afghanistan tonight, and we can really get to the bottom of it because I look at an announcement like this where they say we're bringing troops home from Iraq, and I say, wow, what a great thing.

00:17:56.000 What a really tremendous thing.

00:17:57.000 We've been at war in Iraq since 2003. 0.95

00:18:01.000 And how many thousands of people have had to die?

00:18:04.000 How many trillions of dollars have we spent there?

00:18:06.000 And to achieve essentially a stalemate, to achieve something that we basically had in 2008, we really snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the sense that where we are now in terms of stability, in terms of where the Iraqi provisional government is at, we are about as stable as we were in 2008, right?

00:18:25.000 Maybe a little bit more so.

00:18:27.000 And because of our preemptive withdrawal and the Israelis and some of these other dubious actors funding religious extremists in Syria and in Iraq.

00:18:36.000 That all fell apart. 0.78

00:18:37.000 We had to re enter. 0.85

00:18:39.000 So it's a great thing on the one hand to see that we're pulling back out of Iraq and not like we have a major presence there.

00:18:44.000 It's worth noting that we have something like 20,000 troops in Iraq, 20,000 troops in Germany.

00:18:50.000 The numbers are much higher and we'll be talking about that in a moment.

00:18:53.000 But 5,000 is really not a wild number. 0.96

00:18:56.000 But nonetheless, it's good to see that we're pulling people out of Iraq because it was a wasteful war, it was one that shouldn't have happened. 0.97

00:19:01.000 It was a big mistake. 0.98

00:19:03.000 Of course, we went in there in 2003.

00:19:05.000 And for people that don't know about this, I'm always amazed to.

00:19:08.000 To look at millennials, Generation Z, younger people who we've been at this war, in some cases for people their entire lives, we've been at war.

00:19:18.000 For people that have been born in 2003, we've been in these countries for their entire lives.

00:19:23.000 And many young people don't even know why they're there, why we're fighting there.

00:19:27.000 In the case of millennials, we've technically been in conflict with Iraq as far back as 1991, even a little bit further back.

00:19:34.000 So it's really been a prolonged engagement, even though the invasion's only lasted since 2003.

00:19:39.000 We've really been at it since 1991.

00:19:42.000 And I'm still amazed at how many people just simply don't know why we're there, why we invaded, what year we invaded, what was the cause.

00:19:48.000 You know, a lot of people still seem to think that we're in Iraq because of 9 11.

00:19:53.000 When, as a matter of fact, we went in in 2003, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and we deposed Saddam Hussein in a relatively quick amount of time.

00:20:01.000 And it was because there were rumors that he was developing weapons of mass destruction.

00:20:04.000 And we went in there in 1991 with 750,000 troops.

00:20:09.000 This was a massive invasion.

00:20:12.000 And we went in there with coalition forces to stop Saddam Hussein, who had invaded the neighboring country of Kuwait.

00:20:19.000 And of course, the danger was that he could have kept going into Saudi Arabia.

00:20:23.000 Kuwait is a major supplier of oil for the world, as is Saudi Arabia. 0.62

00:20:27.000 Saddam Hussein was in clear violation of the United Nations and really the entire Westphalian world order that he invaded a sovereign state. 0.60

00:20:36.000 And so we went to war against Saddam in 1991 with a broad coalition to repel him from his invasion in Kuwait. 0.75

00:20:42.000 And there were bombing campaigns throughout after that.

00:20:46.000 We got out relatively briefly.

00:20:48.000 The first President Bush had very high approval ratings because this war was so clean, so successful.

00:20:54.000 So few casualties, so short, so limited in its objectives and successful in achieving them.

00:20:59.000 We went in, we went out, and the problem wasn't solved. 0.92

00:21:02.000 Of course, Saddam Hussein remained. 0.93

00:21:04.000 He was a rogue actor, a provocateur, causing all kinds of trouble. 0.96

00:21:08.000 And so we bombed him for 12 years until 2003, when there was good intelligence from people like the Israelis, which we give them $3 billion a year at the time. 0.97

00:21:21.000 I think it was about $3.5 billion a year for this kind of intelligence that told us. 0.77

00:21:25.000 Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. 0.50

00:21:29.000 He had nuclear weapons.

00:21:31.000 And of course, that was a bad thing because you have one country who gets nuclear weapons, and then you have countries like Libya, Syria, Iran, Egypt, who also start looking into their own nuclear weapons, and you have a real problem.

00:21:44.000 Then you have nuclear proliferation.

00:21:46.000 And then maybe one of those states doesn't use them, but maybe they give them to a non state actor.

00:21:51.000 Maybe they give them to a terrorist group.

00:21:53.000 Maybe there's tactical nukes being employed in warfare in the Middle East, and so then you're in trouble.

00:21:58.000 You understand why this is an issue. 0.74

00:22:00.000 So, we got intelligence from Israel.

00:22:02.000 We got intelligence from Russia and from Britain and from our own CIA, a lot of faulty, flawed intelligence. 0.64

00:22:08.000 Who knows if it was deliberately misleading or not, but that basically told us they have nuclear weapons in Iraq. 0.70

00:22:13.000 We got to go. 0.71

00:22:14.000 We got to go in and take out Saddam. 0.90

00:22:15.000 And so, we went in there. 1.00

00:22:16.000 We took them out.

00:22:18.000 And then it got very ugly. 1.00

00:22:19.000 It was a very big success in terms of the invasion. 0.96

00:22:23.000 You know, we're talking about a third world army here, a third world Arab despot who did not have. 0.90

00:22:31.000 An army that could contest America's conventional military might in any way, shape, or form. 0.96

00:22:37.000 So we went in there, we took them out very quickly, and then we saw that the real problem was going to be well, okay, now what? 0.90

00:22:42.000 We took out Saddam Hussein, now what's the problem? 0.60

00:22:45.000 And that's what we've been essentially doing in Iraq for the past 15 years now what? 0.72

00:22:51.000 We battled a pretty terrible insurgency for the first five years of the war, where you had car bombings, you had people going home in body bags, IEDs. 0.89

00:23:01.000 We were not prepared for a prolonged urban insurgency like there existed in Iraq.

00:23:05.000 We didn't expect it.

00:23:06.000 We thought we would be greeted as liberators.

00:23:08.000 And instead, we got the Viet Cong treatment, essentially.

00:23:11.000 And so we took heavy casualties for the first five years.

00:23:14.000 Our heart wasn't in the conflict.

00:23:16.000 We had the troop surge.

00:23:17.000 I believe that was starting in 2007.

00:23:20.000 And we got a lot of reinforcements in there.

00:23:22.000 They went in there.

00:23:23.000 They retook a lot of the cities.

00:23:25.000 They really laid down the law.

00:23:27.000 There was the Anbar Awakening, where we had cooperation with some of the Sunni militants and other elements in Iraq to stabilize the country.

00:23:35.000 And then, of course, it all started to fall apart when Barack Obama withdrew the residual forces that were supposed to remain as a stabilizing force in 2011.

00:23:44.000 ISIS came around in 2013, and here we are today after we destroyed ISIS.

00:23:50.000 So now we're getting our troops out.

00:23:51.000 We're putting them in Afghanistan. 0.50

00:23:53.000 We're shifting our focus from Iraq to Afghanistan. 0.95

00:23:56.000 Been in war in Iraq for a long time.

00:23:58.000 We're glad it's over.

00:23:59.000 But then we come to the same question what's the deal with Afghanistan?

00:24:03.000 And a lot of young people are asking, we've been in this war for a lot longer or two years longer than in Iraq.

00:24:09.000 We've been in this war since 2001 and no end in sight.

00:24:12.000 And this one, with a lot less of an explanation, by the way. 0.97

00:24:15.000 I think this is why people don't like Afghanistan. 0.96

00:24:18.000 You know, Iraq, we can point to.

00:24:20.000 The Casa's belly. 0.88

00:24:22.000 We can point to the cause of war and we can say it was just or was unjust.

00:24:26.000 We could say the cost in blood and treasure was either worth or not worth these objectives.

00:24:32.000 Were these objectives clear enough?

00:24:34.000 Were they limited enough?

00:24:36.000 Did we exceed the scope of them?

00:24:37.000 Did we not know what we were getting into? 1.00

00:24:39.000 This is all fair game when we talk about Iraq because it's pretty cut and dry. 0.84

00:24:43.000 We went in for the nuclear weapons and there weren't any. 0.83

00:24:45.000 Well, now what do we do?

00:24:47.000 Afghanistan, not so much the case.

00:24:50.000 The reason we went into Afghanistan was because. 0.96

00:24:54.000 And this was in response to the.

00:24:55.000 And actually, it's worth noting.

00:24:57.000 People say this was in response to the 9 11 terror attacks, and in large measure it was.

00:25:02.000 But it's worth noting that the plans for a U.S. ground invasion of Afghanistan arrived on the desk of George W. Bush on September 10th, 2001.

00:25:13.000 And you can look this up. 0.97

00:25:15.000 I didn't believe it myself, but this is actually true. 0.99

00:25:18.000 George W. Bush got plans for an American invasion of Afghanistan the day before 9 11, which I don't know. 1.00

00:25:25.000 Does that make any sense?

00:25:26.000 Does that activate the almonds?

00:25:26.000 Think?

00:25:27.000 Maybe it does.

00:25:29.000 But he got those war plans a day before 9 11.

00:25:31.000 So we were considering this even before the first plane hit the first tower, right?

00:25:36.000 Or any plane, I guess, hit World Trade Center 7, right?

00:25:39.000 Or did a plane hit World Trade Center 7?

00:25:41.000 I guess that one just collapsed because it got a little too hot.

00:25:45.000 But we did invade in the weeks after 9 11.

00:25:48.000 And the purpose, the stated purpose, was that we would go into Afghanistan where the Taliban government allowed terrorists. 0.66

00:25:56.000 Like Al Qaeda and Saddam, or excuse me, Osama bin Laden, to use their country as a safe haven.

00:26:02.000 They said that the 9 11 terror attacks were planned in Afghanistan.

00:26:06.000 They built training camps, terrorist training camps.

00:26:09.000 Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda were gaining strength there. 0.92

00:26:12.000 And they were able to do that because this is a feudal, illiterate, backwards country. 0.91

00:26:18.000 This is like a Stone Age country that was not properly governed, that was at the time governed by the Taliban, which allowed this kind of thing to happen. 0.97

00:26:26.000 And we needed to go into Afghanistan.

00:26:28.000 We needed to take the fight to the terrorists. 0.92

00:26:31.000 To eliminate their base of operations.

00:26:33.000 And that's why we went in in 2001.

00:26:36.000 And you'd be surprised to know that when we went in in 2001, we went in with about 1,600 troops.

00:26:42.000 We went into Afghanistan in 2001.

00:26:45.000 People think this was like this dramatic invasion with a very small amount of troops, with less than 2,000 troops initially.

00:26:51.000 And gradually this built up over time, astronomically, until.

00:26:55.000 And let me get the figures up in front of me now.

00:26:57.000 I rely almost entirely on memory, but when it gets to some of these numbers, and I'm on a little sleep.

00:27:03.000 So it went up to.

00:27:05.000 Eventually, 100,000.

00:27:06.000 This was the peak deployment in Afghanistan, 100,000 troops in 2011.

00:27:11.000 So we started in 2001 with 1,600, and we built all the way up to 100,000 by 2011.

00:27:20.000 And the problem that we saw in Afghanistan was the fact that from the time we got in there, we were trying to get this war off of our hands in the sense that we never really wanted to win it.

00:27:31.000 We never really wanted to overwhelmingly decide the fate of Afghanistan.

00:27:36.000 We never really knew what our victory conditions would be.

00:27:39.000 We never really knew how to achieve them.

00:27:41.000 I don't think we really even wanted to achieve them.

00:27:42.000 I think we wanted to go in there, kill the terrorists, take out the Taliban, but I don't think there was ever the political will to really lay down the law.

00:27:50.000 George W. Bush eventually got us there to the kind of troop deployment we would need to start making some gains and start winning.

00:27:56.000 But of course, once Obama got in and he started announcing timetables to wind down our engagement and wind down our involvement, what happened in Afghanistan is the reason why President Trump doesn't telegraph his moves today.

00:28:09.000 You announce your timetable for withdrawal, and the terrorists bide their time.

00:28:13.000 The Taliban waits them out, and we are at Where we are in the present situation.

00:28:18.000 So that's a little bit of a brief history.

00:28:22.000 President Trump, during the course of his administration, has almost doubled the amount of troops in Afghanistan since the beginning of his presidency.

00:28:31.000 We started out in early 2017 with about 8,500 troops in Afghanistan, so slightly more than in Iraq, and we've gotten up to about 14,000.

00:28:40.000 And we don't know the exact numbers, but these are reasonable estimates from various sources.

00:28:45.000 We've gotten up to about 14,000.

00:28:48.000 And a lot of people say that this is.

00:28:51.000 Donald Trump being a neocon.

00:28:53.000 They say that Trump promised to end the wars.

00:28:56.000 Trump promised to bring the troops home and end the American empire and put America first.

00:29:01.000 And when he is putting more troops in Afghanistan, he's betraying those promises.

00:29:07.000 And I could sit here, I could so easily sit here and tell you that that is the case.

00:29:13.000 It would be the easiest thing in the world for me to get on this show or to go on Twitter.

00:29:20.000 And when I say the easiest thing in the world, I mean this is like I could do this.

00:29:24.000 With my eyes closed. 0.51

00:29:25.000 And I could tweet, Donald Trump said in the campaign that he was going to make America great again, but he's invading Afghanistan, more like George Bush 3.0.

00:29:34.000 I could get on the show and I could rail and I could yell and scream about Trump is a puppet for the Israel lobby and he's sending these troops in.

00:29:44.000 It's not putting America first.

00:29:47.000 And I could do that.

00:29:47.000 That would be the easiest thing in the world.

00:29:49.000 And a lot of people are doing that right now.

00:29:51.000 And it's very easy to do that.

00:29:53.000 I think it's a lot more difficult to actually get an understanding of what's happening on the ground.

00:29:58.000 Why it's happening, and why this is the least bad option here.

00:30:02.000 You know, we're not wild about the fact that we have to have troops in Afghanistan.

00:30:07.000 We're not wild about the fact that this engagement is happening.

00:30:10.000 And President Trump has said that he wanted to end the war in Afghanistan when he got into office, but then he reviewed our security situation.

00:30:17.000 He reviewed our defensive posture there.

00:30:19.000 And he found that after looking at classified intelligence, that actually it'd be much more prudent to leave some kind of a residual force or to have more troops.

00:30:27.000 Now, it's important before we get into the what and the why.

00:30:31.000 How this is a good thing, why this is not going back on Trump's word.

00:30:35.000 I think it's important to look at the scale of things.

00:30:38.000 I think it's important to keep a sense of proportion.

00:30:41.000 People talk about Afghanistan like this is the Iraq War, this is global military engagement.

00:30:48.000 To give you a sense of scale, to give you a sense of proportion, when we're talking about deployments, when we're talking about troop numbers, there's 14,000 troops in Afghanistan right now.

00:30:57.000 And that sounds like a big number.

00:30:59.000 We can't really fathom what 14,000 men looks like, what that might be.

00:31:03.000 I think for people that don't engage with this stuff on a more, you know, a deeper level beyond the surface, people that are watching the nightly news are not getting the numbers here.

00:31:12.000 But to compare this with previous wars, as I said earlier in the show, there were 750,000 troops in Iraq in Desert Storm.

00:31:21.000 So in 1991, that big war that was so popular, at least at the time among a mainstream audience, 750,000 U.S. troops in Iraq in Desert Storm.

00:31:32.000 That's almost a million, right?

00:31:34.000 200,000 in Iraqi freedom, 200,000 during the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003, and a very large residual force after that.

00:31:44.000 100,000 at the peak of the invasion of Afghanistan in 2011.

00:31:48.000 So you're talking 14,000 there now.

00:31:51.000 Compare that to the most recent major invasions, major ground wars, you know, the 1991 desert storm, the Persian Gulf War, that was 750,000 compared to 14,000.

00:32:04.000 Compared to Iraqi freedom in 2003, 200,000.

00:32:07.000 Compared to 14,000.

00:32:09.000 The peak of the war in Afghanistan, 100,000 versus 14,000.

00:32:14.000 That's a very, relatively speaking to other military conflicts, for people that are saying Donald Trump owns this war, this is Donald Trump's war, he's a neocon, it's really not quite the same.

00:32:25.000 If Donald Trump were launching new invasions, I would be losing my mind.

00:32:30.000 If Donald Trump were ratcheting up the amount of troops in both countries to 50,000, 60,000, I would say this guy's out of his mind.

00:32:38.000 But you're talking about in Iraq, in Syria.

00:32:40.000 In Syria, you have maybe 2,500 people.

00:32:43.000 In Iraq, you have 5,000, and they're winding that down.

00:32:46.000 In Afghanistan, you have, they're building it up dramatically, and you're only at 14,000.

00:32:50.000 And not like we're taking American lives for granted, but we have to have a sense of proportion here.

00:32:55.000 It's simply not the same sport.

00:32:57.000 They're not in the same ballpark as George W. Bush or even Barack Obama, for that matter, in the beginning of his tenure.

00:33:05.000 It's also important to look at other countries where troops are deployed.

00:33:08.000 We compare this to other ground wars.

00:33:10.000 And maybe that's not fair because we're talking about major invasions against large conventional militaries in the case of Persian Gulf and Iraqi freedom. 0.71

00:33:19.000 We're going against Saddam Hussein, who has tanks and planes and modern weaponry, which is not the case for the Taliban. 0.62

00:33:26.000 And it's not the same kind of conflict with Afghanistan and the Taliban.

00:33:30.000 Iraq is a lot of desert.

00:33:32.000 Iraq, you're fighting people that are waving flags, you're fighting armies.

00:33:36.000 In Afghanistan, you're fighting tribes with flags.

00:33:38.000 You're fighting people in mountains, you're fighting people in hillsides, you're fighting people in the desert.

00:33:43.000 Poor people with rockets and caves and rags.

00:33:46.000 It's a very different kind of conflict.

00:33:48.000 But you also compare this to any of the other deployments of the U.S. overseas.

00:33:52.000 There are 1.3 million U.S. military personnel overseas at any given moment.

00:34:00.000 And currently, 49,000 stationed in Japan.

00:34:04.000 Remember, 14,000 in Afghanistan fighting a neocon war.

00:34:09.000 There are 49,000 in Japan, 38,000 in Germany, 28,000 in South Korea, 12,000 in Italy.

00:34:17.000 So, you have about roughly the same amount of troops, a little bit less, in Italy right now as you do in Afghanistan.

00:34:24.000 Also, worth noting, and this is again not to trivialize, I almost hesitate to use this figure because any American casualty overseas has to be meditated on.

00:34:36.000 And I'm so serious about that.

00:34:37.000 Any American life that is lost in a desert, any American life that is lost in the Pacific or in the European theater or in Africa, you know, in Nigeria or in Yemen, like we've seen earlier this or earlier in the last year.

00:34:51.000 It has to be seriously meditated.

00:34:53.000 Why did a good American die?

00:34:55.000 Why did a good American volunteer, a good American serviceman die overseas?

00:35:00.000 Was his life justified?

00:35:01.000 And so on and so forth.

00:35:02.000 And so I hesitate to say this, but again, we have to have a sense of proportion.

00:35:07.000 If you're talking about casualties in Afghanistan, whereas in the early stages of Iraq, in Afghanistan, you had casualties in the hundreds or in the thousands, and it was this major bloody conflict, again, you simply have to have a sense of proportion.

00:35:22.000 In the past, Two years, two and a half years since 2016, the number of casualties in Afghanistan is 30.

00:35:31.000 So, you have more casualties, I believe, in Navy ship crashes, in accidents, in mishaps on bases, I think in shootings on bases, than you do in Afghanistan in the past two years.

00:35:47.000 About 15 in 2016, about 15 in 2017, one this year.

00:35:52.000 And so, again, you look at the numbers here, and it's just simply not the same order of magnitude.

00:35:58.000 It's simply not the same scale as a major ground war, as a major ground invasion, and things can certainly change.

00:36:04.000 But I think.

00:36:05.000 Before we get into why we're on the ground, why we're on the ground there now, why we continue this war, why we're still at it 17 years later, no end in sight, it appears like we're losing.

00:36:16.000 First, to get a sense of the proportion, what we're talking about when we talk about Trump's mini troop surge in Afghanistan, it really is not, this is not a massive engagement, this is not a massive conflict.

00:36:27.000 The proper way to look at our involvement in Afghanistan is like simply another U.S. military commitment overseas.

00:36:36.000 You know, people who are outraged about Afghanistan, but not outraged about our involvement in South Korea or Germany or Japan or Italy, they're simply not being consistent. 0.98

00:36:46.000 And I know many people would say, bring them all home, bring them all back.

00:36:50.000 And then I would say, you know, you're being unreasonable there. 0.65

00:36:52.000 Then, you know, you're kind of caught in a trap where if you say, well, it's okay that we have them in Germany, you know, you're being inconsistent. 0.57

00:36:59.000 If you say, bring everybody home tomorrow, this is not totally a reasonable position to have. 0.60

00:37:05.000 So let's get into why we are there.

00:37:07.000 People might say it's because of.

00:37:09.000 Taliban.

00:37:10.000 People might say it's because of terrorism.

00:37:12.000 Can't have a safe haven for terrorism.

00:37:14.000 And certainly I would agree with this. 0.59

00:37:16.000 Certainly in a big way I would agree with this in the sense that when ISIS took control of a third of Syria and half of Iraq, I think that's right, or vice versa, maybe. 0.74

00:37:28.000 I don't know.

00:37:29.000 But they had an area the size of Great Britain at the time of their peak, I believe in 2014 or 2015, in Iraq and Syria.

00:37:37.000 And what they were able to do when they had territory, when they had land, was they were able to sell oil.

00:37:43.000 They were able to sell drugs.

00:37:45.000 They were able to sell sex slaves on the human trafficking market.

00:37:49.000 They were able to manufacture.

00:37:50.000 ISIS was able to manufacture chemical weapons.

00:37:54.000 And that is a big problem when you have terrorists manufacturing chemical weapons.

00:37:58.000 You need resources.

00:38:00.000 You need space.

00:38:01.000 You need the government to give you a pass, essentially, on that.

00:38:05.000 And so when we're talking about terrorists getting a safe haven, that is not a laughing joke.

00:38:10.000 That is not a neocon myth that terrorists should not have land, should not have a government.

00:38:16.000 To be able to subsidize these activities or get away with these activities.

00:38:20.000 So I would say that that's not the strongest argument, but I still think that's a very solid argument that if Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, if it fell to ISIS, which they have a presence there, and Al Qaeda certainly operates in the Arabian Peninsula and other places as well, but they do have a presence here, there would be a significant risk to the United States and to Europe even.

00:38:42.000 So that's one reason.

00:38:43.000 But I think the broader reason here, and this is why it's important to think of Afghanistan like a strategic.

00:38:50.000 Deployment like Japan, like South Korea, like Germany, is because of where Afghanistan is situated geographically.

00:38:58.000 And we have another nice map presentation for you here on the show.

00:39:03.000 And let me check on my OBS.

00:39:05.000 We'll see how the lighting is.

00:39:07.000 And this always happens.

00:39:08.000 Our lighting always gets all jazzed up when we open up the whiteboard and messes with the white balance.

00:39:16.000 Let me try and adjust this while we're doing it live on air.

00:39:21.000 Because I am smart, because I am good with computers.

00:39:28.000 Okay, that looks a little bit better, right?

00:39:31.000 That's not great, but it's a little bit better. 0.74

00:39:33.000 So, this is the real reason why we're at war in Afghanistan. 0.92

00:39:36.000 Did it turn the autofocus back on?

00:39:39.000 If it did that, I'm going to be an angry camper here.

00:39:43.000 Okay, I guess it didn't.

00:39:45.000 Whatever.

00:39:47.000 Okay, so this is your map of the region.

00:39:51.000 This is your map of the Middle East.

00:39:54.000 I don't know if you could totally see it very well.

00:39:57.000 Let me turn up the gain on my mic here so you can still hear me well.

00:40:01.000 This is your map of the Middle East. 0.70

00:40:02.000 This is Afghanistan right here.

00:40:04.000 And the real reason why we're in the region, if you're looking at it from a geostrategic perspective, geographical strategic perspective, you look at the countries that surround Afghanistan, why it might be important that the United States has boots on the ground, why they might have military bases, a base of operations in here.

00:40:23.000 You look at where it is situated, and it's neatly situated between Iran, Which is on its western border, Pakistan on its eastern border, China on its northeastern border, and this is western China.

00:40:36.000 And in the north, you have the Central Asian stands.

00:40:40.000 You have Turkmenistan, not to be confused with Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, or excuse me, Kyrgyzstan up here. 0.60

00:40:51.000 And so you see where Afghanistan is situated, and this is actually a very ideal place for the United States to project power.

00:40:58.000 If you look at the map, More broadly, and you can pull up a map of the world.

00:41:02.000 You look at where Afghanistan is situated, really in between the eastern Middle East, this Indo Pakistani region, and also Central Asia.

00:41:13.000 This is probably one of the most dynamic regions.

00:41:16.000 This will be one of the most strategically important regions to come in the next 20 to 50 years.

00:41:23.000 This provides not only a check on China, Western China, where the United States has a base of operations in Japan.

00:41:31.000 In South Korea, in the Philippines, and all over the Pacific, in Eastern China, in East Asia, this affords them a base of operations against China in the West, in Central Asia. 0.63

00:41:42.000 And now Russia and China are competing for the Central Asian countries.

00:41:47.000 Russia has this economic confederacy with these countries, sort of this currency alliance with these countries to keep them in their orbit.

00:41:56.000 These are all former Soviet colonies right here, these stands.

00:42:00.000 These were not countries prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, these were part of the Russian Empire.

00:42:06.000 For a long time, they were considered Russian, and that is an economic way of keeping them in their orbit.

00:42:11.000 Russia is now contesting China over these countries.

00:42:14.000 China is competing for influence, they're building up infrastructure in these countries, and so this is going to be a theater of a 21st century kind of economic conflict, proxy conflict between China and Russia, and an important region, I think, a growing region that'll be important in the next couple of decades.

00:42:34.000 Then you have, of course, Iran, where Iran has their influence growing.

00:42:38.000 A military base now south of Damascus in Syria.

00:42:41.000 They have Hezbollah in Lebanon.

00:42:43.000 They have Shiite supporters, which they frequently have mobilized in places like Qatar, Bahrain, eastern Saudi Arabia, the eastern province in particular.

00:42:52.000 And they have influence now in Iraq and Syria as well because the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps was out there putting down ISIS.

00:43:00.000 And some might say that that's in violation of the United Nations or whatever.

00:43:04.000 Who knows? 0.73

00:43:05.000 That's a good thing. 0.92

00:43:05.000 They killed ISIS. 0.92

00:43:07.000 They have the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

00:43:09.000 And so this is one way of having. 0.90

00:43:11.000 American presence to counter Iran over here. 0.96

00:43:13.000 We have an American presence on Iran's western border, which would be about over here in Iraq, and we have one on their eastern border in Afghanistan. 0.97

00:43:23.000 So, this assures that Iran is contained, that there is some semblance of an American hand here on Iran, that they can never really get too out of hand. 0.90

00:43:32.000 They can never really fully develop maybe a nuclear arsenal. 0.91

00:43:35.000 They can never really fully achieve their ambitions of regional hegemony when they have the United States boot on their neck right here in Afghanistan.

00:43:43.000 And then, of course, this region, which is very important Pakistan and India.

00:43:48.000 Of course, it's important not only because you have a conflict between Pakistan and India in the Hindu Kush.

00:43:54.000 In the Kashmir regions, which has the potential to spiral out of control. 0.52

00:43:59.000 God forbid, it could even spiral into a nuclear exchange.

00:44:02.000 That would be a very bad situation.

00:44:04.000 But also, these two powers, the Indo Pacific region, will be a very decisive strategic region in the next 50 to 100 years when we're talking about China.

00:44:17.000 As China rises, as India rises, as Pakistan rises, as the world sort of shifts away from. 0.85

00:44:25.000 Europe and from Russia and from the United States and over to a more Pacific focus, we will see these countries, China, India, dominate the world order.

00:44:37.000 These will be your new hegemons here in the Pacific, in the Indian Ocean region, and it'll be important for the United States to have some kind of power projection capabilities because, at the end of the day, when you talk about American power, when you talk about American might militarily, fundamentally what you're talking about is The projection of military force.

00:44:59.000 And what that comes down to, a lot of people don't think of it this way, but what it comes down to more often than not is how far can their planes fly without having to be refueled? 0.99

00:45:08.000 How long would it take them to establish a beachhead in a country with ground troops?

00:45:13.000 How often could you mobilize ground troops in secret or in some clandestine way?

00:45:17.000 How could you assemble them on a border?

00:45:19.000 How could you get a plane to fly over certain countries?

00:45:21.000 How could you get permissions to get rights to fly in a country's airspace?

00:45:26.000 This is one of the major complications with.

00:45:29.000 A war in Iran, for example, for a nation like Israel.

00:45:33.000 Israel could not project power against Iran because the distance between Israel and Iran is very great.

00:45:40.000 And of course, if they were going to send a ground force, it would have to go through a number of countries.

00:45:44.000 If they were going to do any kind of Air Force raid, they would have to get rights to fly over a number of countries, and there would be refueling and all kinds of other logistic complications.

00:45:54.000 So when we talk about American power projection, to have a base of operations in Afghanistan, If costly, maybe there are 14,000 troops that are stationed there indefinitely.

00:46:04.000 Maybe it costs a little bit of money indefinitely.

00:46:07.000 Think of it as no different than having a base of operations in Estonia, in Germany, in Italy, in Japan, in South Korea.

00:46:14.000 They fundamentally serve the same purpose.

00:46:16.000 And that's why when people talk about.

00:46:18.000 I think that's enough with the map.

00:46:20.000 We can get back to our.

00:46:22.000 Now it's a little bit too bright.

00:46:23.000 I'll have to go in and fix it. 0.97

00:46:26.000 When people talk about Iraq, like this is a war to be won, like this is a war where one day we'll have. 0.97

00:46:33.000 Mission accomplished, great job. 0.57

00:46:35.000 We won the big war, we defeated the big enemy. 0.91

00:46:38.000 That kind of a victory won't happen, and that's simply because that is not the objective in Afghanistan. 0.79

00:46:43.000 The objective is to stop it from becoming a haven for terrorists, but also to project power against China, against Pakistan, against Iran, Central Asia, which is in some capacity a proxy for Russian influence. 0.56

00:46:57.000 Russia has military bases, I believe, in Uzbekistan and in Kyrgyzstan.

00:47:04.000 I could be wrong about that.

00:47:05.000 I believe they're only.

00:47:06.000 Military bases outside of Russia are in Kyrgyzstan, and it's either Tajikistan or Uzbekistan.

00:47:12.000 I'm not quite sure on the second one there.

00:47:14.000 So that's why we're in Afghanistan.

00:47:17.000 That's why it's worth it.

00:47:18.000 And, you know, look, if this turns into a nation building thing, I'm out.

00:47:22.000 If this turns into a major 100,000 troop occupation, I'm so out.

00:47:28.000 But if we're talking about a 14,000 troop station there to have a less than, you know, we don't get humiliated in the region. 0.60

00:47:39.000 We don't cede this country to China and Russia.

00:47:41.000 We keep this base of operations.

00:47:43.000 We use it as a forward base to project American power.

00:47:46.000 I think that's a good strategic investment. 0.50

00:47:48.000 And this is how America has to play.

00:47:51.000 We can't.

00:47:52.000 Turn off, we can't flip a switch one day and decide to stop being the global hegemon.

00:47:57.000 Unfortunately, it simply doesn't work that way in international relations.

00:48:02.000 People would like to see that.

00:48:03.000 I understand why.

00:48:04.000 There's a good reason to do that.

00:48:07.000 But if you're looking at it pragmatically in terms of money and pipelines and all these other things, currency, it simply can't happen in a matter of years or months or any kind of timetable like that.

00:48:19.000 I think it'll be negotiated eventually.

00:48:21.000 America's role will be negotiated down with China, cooperatively with China and Europe and Russia.

00:48:27.000 And other growing powers in the world, but that's not something that's going to happen anytime soon.

00:48:31.000 So I think it's all right.

00:48:33.000 I think we've got to keep an eye on it.

00:48:34.000 If it escalates into a major thing, we will revisit it.

00:48:40.000 And I think I'll have a different approach.

00:48:42.000 But for now, I think it's worth considering.

00:48:45.000 If you're not sold on it, by all means, I don't mean to sell anybody on it.

00:48:50.000 People have a right to be dubious about war and our involvement overseas.

00:48:54.000 But this is just kind of the reason why we're there.

00:48:57.000 This is just to make the case for it, because I know it is seldom made anymore.

00:49:02.000 But it looks like we're running up against our time here.

00:49:04.000 We're at 7 52.

00:49:06.000 Will we even have time for all of our super chats?

00:49:09.000 We'll make time.

00:49:10.000 Unfortunately, we don't have time for stuff about the government shutdown, which I guess that's okay because we'll be talking about it all week.

00:49:15.000 But we have to get to your super chats here.

00:49:19.000 And we'll see what is being said here in the super chats.

00:49:22.000 Rata Punks says Nick, Renegade Broadcasting, check out their documentaries.

00:49:29.000 Let me turn down the gain here now that we're back.

00:49:31.000 I'm probably blowing people's ears out here.

00:49:34.000 Check out their documentaries on their YouTube channel.

00:49:37.000 Need to have Kyle Hunt on.

00:49:38.000 He's been doing this for longer than most in the alt right.

00:49:41.000 By the way, I'm Nacho Gorona on Twitter.

00:49:43.000 Well, I'll look into it.

00:49:45.000 Bennett Bressman.

00:49:46.000 Nick, will you put milk in the mug for the one year special show, or did you sign a non compete with Big Water?

00:49:52.000 I signed the non compete.

00:49:54.000 And also, I will say, I don't even like the taste of milk.

00:49:56.000 I don't even like it.

00:49:58.000 I don't drink milk straight up.

00:50:00.000 I don't like it.

00:50:01.000 I don't enjoy it.

00:50:02.000 I don't like the taste.

00:50:03.000 It doesn't really have a taste to me.

00:50:05.000 I eat it in cereal.

00:50:07.000 I like ice cream.

00:50:09.000 But I don't drink milk straight up.

00:50:11.000 Chocolate milk, maybe.

00:50:13.000 Milkshake, maybe.

00:50:14.000 But not straight up milk.

00:50:15.000 I'm a big water guy.

00:50:17.000 Water, Pepsi, Coca Cola, Mountain Dew.

00:50:20.000 I'm a red blooded American.

00:50:23.000 Stell Bell, I was typing this to tell you to shave.

00:50:27.000 Then you mentioned a clean shaven is my fave. 0.97

00:50:29.000 I think beards are dumb unless you're covering up a double slash weak chin. 0.89

00:50:33.000 I tend to agree with this. 0.99

00:50:34.000 I tend to agree that generally beards are wrong unless you have.

00:50:38.000 Unless you have a bad physiognomy and you're walking around with no chin or you're fat, you know, or something like that.

00:50:46.000 So, yeah, I do need to shave.

00:50:47.000 It's getting a little prickly.

00:50:48.000 It gets itchy, too.

00:50:49.000 I grew it out when I took a week off for Christmas.

00:50:52.000 I grew it out and it was not fun.

00:50:54.000 It was very itchy.

00:50:55.000 So, I'll be clean shaving for tomorrow.

00:50:58.000 I've been very busy.

00:50:59.000 Lots of new content coming.

00:51:00.000 So, you know, there's a lot of things in the works.

00:51:02.000 You'll see.

00:51:04.000 Joe the Serb, vile rumors have spread about me, Nick.

00:51:07.000 All lies.

00:51:08.000 I was hacked.

00:51:09.000 Do not believe, Nick.

00:51:11.000 Also, it is photoshopped.

00:51:12.000 I'm a good boomer.

00:51:13.000 I didn't do nothing.

00:51:15.000 Much love, Nikki.

00:51:16.000 Much love to you too, my man Joe.

00:51:18.000 Much love to you too, Joe the Serb.

00:51:21.000 For those that don't know Joe, for those that don't know Joe the gentle boomer giant, you got to get in the America First Discord.

00:51:21.000 You got it.

00:51:28.000 We have a great time.

00:51:30.000 We play Fortnite.

00:51:31.000 We play Minecraft.

00:51:32.000 We play Civ. 0.90

00:51:33.000 We post about Milky's. 0.80

00:51:35.000 We post about Catboys.

00:51:36.000 Post about politics.

00:51:37.000 If there's any postings about Catboys, please let me know.

00:51:41.000 It means we were hacked.

00:51:42.000 It means there were Photoshop jobs done.

00:51:44.000 It means the Irony Bros are trying to subvert us again.

00:51:48.000 But really, we have a great time.

00:51:49.000 It's a lot of fun.

00:51:51.000 And also, if you join us on Maker Support, you can be a premium member there.

00:51:54.000 So, something to think about. 0.73

00:51:57.000 Spoiler alert says the ads Black Baby gave the Black Power sign.

00:52:01.000 Black Power, my brother. 0.83

00:52:02.000 Isn't it funny how, in this day and age, you could say Black Power?

00:52:05.000 Totally uncontroversial. 1.00

00:52:07.000 White Power?

00:52:08.000 Call the police!

00:52:09.000 Call the SPLC!

00:52:11.000 Call the ADL. 1.00

00:52:12.000 Black Power. 1.00

00:52:14.000 Oh, well, that's cool.

00:52:15.000 Malcolm X, cool. 0.51

00:52:16.000 I know I'm a lame white guy, but Malcolm X is cool. 0.95

00:52:19.000 Black Power, brother. 0.97

00:52:21.000 But you say white power and you get put on a watch list. 0.98

00:52:23.000 You say white power, you get put on the no fly list.

00:52:26.000 The FBI starts tracking your phone calls.

00:52:29.000 So I don't know what that's all about.

00:52:30.000 Makes you think. 0.83

00:52:32.000 Problematic White Knight says Nick Braving Ruins said he'd help you with the boomer tech. 0.92

00:52:36.000 Much appreciated, my guy. 0.54

00:52:37.000 Would appreciate that.

00:52:39.000 Daniel G.

00:52:40.000 A Rothschild Austrian hunting lodge was just sold for $100 million a couple of days ago.

00:52:46.000 January 31st, a helicopter crashed in an NP beach with three hotel executives.

00:52:51.000 I'll have to look into that.

00:52:53.000 I heard about the helicopter crash at the Rothschild estate, but I did not hear about this hunting lodge and all that, so I'll have to look into that.

00:53:04.000 Right from wrong, don't forget the importance of pipelines here.

00:53:07.000 Well, yeah, I mean, that's the other thing with Afghanistan, a mineral rich country, natural gas rich country.

00:53:14.000 And also, you have to look at it from the perspective that China and Russia are now vying for control of Kabul, where Russia and China have gone in and they've offered their support. 0.53

00:53:24.000 And if We allow Russia and China to take over our position in Afghanistan.

00:53:30.000 Not only do we lose an important strategic base and country, but also China and Russia are emboldened to consume more, to consume more allies and colonial holdings, neo colonial holdings of the United States, which is not great.

00:53:47.000 Daniel G., all three executives worked at the Standard Hotel.

00:53:50.000 It's a very high class boutique hotel chain, probably where child sacrificeslash trafficking occurred.

00:53:56.000 Probably. 0.95

00:53:57.000 You know, and also Afghanistan, you know, speaking of trafficking and things, Afghanistan is responsible for 90%, 90%, excuse me, of the world's opiate production.

00:54:09.000 So, you know, you want to solve the opioid epidemic. 0.59

00:54:13.000 A lot of it, 90% of it comes from Afghanistan.

00:54:17.000 So it looks like that's all of our super chats here.

00:54:20.000 And remember, if you want your questions asked, you got to post them up on the super chat, throw some shekels our way, throw a little dough our way, help support the show.

00:54:28.000 Helps us keep going.

00:54:29.000 But no, I think we have a very exciting week ahead of us.

00:54:33.000 Remember, tomorrow is a big anniversary show.

00:54:36.000 And you can keep posting questions.

00:54:38.000 I just got to plug this real quick before we totally go out here.

00:54:42.000 Remember, tomorrow is our anniversary show.

00:54:44.000 Very big show.

00:54:45.000 Wednesday we got Ricky Vaughn.

00:54:46.000 So a very exciting lineup.

00:54:48.000 We got another super chat here from Ari Shekel.

00:54:52.000 Okay, yeah, we'll just leave it at Ari Shekel, who says, I can make you a big Hollywood star, Nick.

00:54:58.000 Just need you on my casting cot.

00:54:59.000 Isn't that how it always works?

00:55:01.000 Well, you know, it's funny.

00:55:02.000 I mean, people. 0.98

00:55:03.000 People give me a lot of shit for a lot of stuff, but I've sacrificed a lot to do this. 0.98

00:55:09.000 You know, people come at me like I'm rich or I come from this position of privilege or I have no stake in the movement or something. 0.99

00:55:17.000 And, you know, I worked, I almost got a job at the Leadership Institute.

00:55:21.000 You look at my level of intelligence, the things that I know, my appearance, how articulate I am, my raw talent.

00:55:31.000 And I could have easily gone to Boston University, I could have gotten my degree.

00:55:36.000 What is going on?

00:55:37.000 And we got snow blowing, I guess.

00:55:44.000 I guess they've parked the snowblower right outside the window.

00:55:47.000 That's great.

00:55:49.000 But it's very distracting.

00:55:52.000 What was I saying?

00:55:53.000 Can you hear that?

00:55:54.000 Very loud.

00:55:57.000 It's stalling right outside.

00:55:58.000 But anyway, what was I even saying?

00:56:01.000 I completely lost my train of thought.

00:56:03.000 Right.

00:56:04.000 Leadership Institute.

00:56:05.000 I could have been on Fox News.

00:56:07.000 I could have had the Fox News internship.

00:56:08.000 I could have had the Marco Rubio internship.

00:56:12.000 I could have been the political guy.

00:56:13.000 I could have been making a lot of money.

00:56:14.000 I could have been at Boston U.

00:56:16.000 And this is not to complain.

00:56:17.000 This is not like a sob story.

00:56:18.000 I would choose this any day of the week, but it is simply to say people say I come from a position of privilege.

00:56:23.000 I've sacrificed a lot to do the show.

00:56:26.000 But it looks like those are all of our super chats here.

00:56:29.000 I think we're going to call it a night.

00:56:30.000 It is 8 o'clock.

00:56:32.000 Remember, if you would like to support the show, if you'd like to help us out, we have America First Premium now on Maker Support.

00:56:40.000 It's $5 a month.

00:56:42.000 And you get all kinds of goodies, but also, even if you're not going to use those, please do support the show.

00:56:47.000 It's $5 a month.

00:56:49.000 I mean, this is a cup of coffee a month.

00:56:51.000 This is a Big Mac a month.

00:56:53.000 Even if you don't use the goodies, it does help us out if you support the show.

00:56:57.000 It helps us get new stuff, which we're planning on making some significant investments here in terms of camera, microphone, set, some other things that we would really like to invest some money in now that we have our stuff together, now that we don't have dubious partners and things, funneling money or whatever.

00:57:15.000 Or I don't know, maybe just not spending it wisely.

00:57:18.000 So it does help us out.

00:57:19.000 But if you get the America First Premium on Maker Support, remember, you get the.

00:57:23.000 Special role in the Discord server.

00:57:26.000 You get priority on our bi weekly call in shows, and we'll have a makeup for that tomorrow.

00:57:31.000 A majority of the show will be call in.

00:57:33.000 And also, you get the audio only format of the show on SoundCloud, and that's only for our premium members.

00:57:39.000 That's going to do it for us tonight.

00:57:40.000 Remember to subscribe, click the like button, leave a comment if you like what you saw.

00:57:44.000 You got to support it in the best way to do it, I guess, the most basic way.

00:57:49.000 Click the subscribe button, click the like button, work the algorithms.

00:57:53.000 I hope everybody enjoyed the analysis of Afghanistan and all the rest tonight.

00:57:57.000 We try to provide the hard hitting commentary, the stuff you're not going to hear anywhere else.

00:58:02.000 You can listen to Ben Shapiro, and Ben Shapiro can give you the talking points and he can give it to you at a surface level.

00:58:06.000 But only on America First do you get the deep dive.

00:58:10.000 But that's all for us tonight.

00:58:11.000 We're on the air Monday through Friday, 7 p.m. Central, 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

00:58:15.000 I'm Nicholas J. Fuentes.

00:58:16.000 This was America First, as always.

00:58:18.000 Thank you so much for watching.

00:58:20.000 Thank you to our super chatters for asking their questions, giving, donating their money.

00:58:26.000 Thank you to our premium supporters.

00:58:28.000 We could not do it without you.

00:58:29.000 Every show.

00:58:30.000 Is in dedication, is in debt to you.

00:58:32.000 And thank you to all of our viewers, people that engage on the live chat and are not trolling me about other things.

00:58:39.000 But we do appreciate everybody who watches the show every night.

00:58:42.000 And we will see you tomorrow, as always.

00:58:44.000 Have a great rest of your evening.

00:58:46.000 Remember, tomorrow is the big anniversary special, a celebratory occasion.

00:58:51.000 And on Wednesday, we have Ricky Vaughn and big things coming up for us here on America First.

00:58:56.000 But we'll see you tomorrow.

00:58:57.000 Have a great rest of your evening.

00:59:00.000 Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo.

00:59:08.000 To be only America first, America first.

00:59:16.000 The American people will come first once again. 0.98

America First - Nicholas J. Fuentes - February 05, 2018

Why We're Still in Afghanistan | America First Ep. 101

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