Ep 472 ｜ Biden’s Afghanistan Disaster & How We Can Help ｜ Guest： Morgan Ortagus
Episode Stats
Summary
Morgan Ortega is a spokesperson for the State Department, working with Mike Pompeo in the Trump administration. She has been in Afghanistan several times over the past 20 years and in the Middle East at least several times since 9/11. In this episode, she gives us some context about why we re here, what s going on, and what we need to be praying for.
Transcript
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Tuesday. Hope everyone is having a good week so far.
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Yesterday, we kind of took a break from the new cycle and I gave you some encouragement
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and a lot of you guys said that that was really helpful. So if you are feeling like you're
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in a pit of despair or you're feeling really hopeless, especially about what's going on in
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the world, I really encourage you to listen to or watch yesterday's episode if you haven't done
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that. And as promised today, we are talking about Afghanistan. We are talking to Morgan Ortegas.
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She was spokesperson for the State Department, working with Mike Pompeo in the Trump administration.
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And she has been in Afghanistan several times over the past 20 years or in the Middle East,
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at least several times since 9-11. So in a few minutes, she's going to give us some context.
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She's going to set this all up for us and back us up and remind us, okay, why we're here?
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What's going on? How did this unfold? Because a lot of us, you know, we vaguely know, of course,
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there have been wars in the Middle East and we know about 9-11. Some of you, as I will say with Morgan,
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were not even alive when 9-11 happened, but you kind of understand, okay, we've been there for a
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long time. It's been very popular among the American people to get out of Afghanistan,
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but it's a lot more complicated than just, okay, let's leave. And that's what we are watching
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unfold. So Morgan's going to talk about that and talk about some of the implications and the
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consequences and how we need to look at how, you know, China and Russia play into all of this and
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what we need to be concerned about and also what we need to be praying for. Then after that conversation,
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I'm going to give us, once again, a little bit more perspective and encouragement. I'm just going
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to continue to do that a lot because I feel that many of us are carrying this heavy burden of wanting
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to know so much and do so much and feeling incapable and just kind of powerless. On top of all the things
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that are going on in this country and in your own personal life, it can be a very stressful and
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just a very exhausting time for a lot of people right now. So I want to try to refresh us with
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that eternal perspective as much as I possibly can. But first, before we get into the conversation
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with Morgan Ortegas, I want to talk about what's been going on for the past few days. So if you just
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haven't been paying attention quite yet, I don't blame you. There's a lot of news out there and it
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can be very overwhelming. I really didn't look into all of this over the weekend because I just said,
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you know what, I'm going to start looking at this on Monday because it's just too much. People who
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know a lot more than I do can kind of give me a rundown of what's been going on. And so that's
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kind of how I spent a lot of my day yesterday, really trying to understand. So this is from the
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AP. The Taliban have seized power in Afghanistan two weeks before the U.S. was set to complete its
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troop withdrawal after a costly two-decade war. So this is something that President Trump promised
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to do. And this is something that Biden said that he was going to follow through on. And he promised
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that troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan by 9-11, by the 20th year anniversary of 9-11.
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the insurgents stormed across the country, capturing all major cities in a matter of days as Afghan
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security forces trained and equipped by the U.S. and its allies melted away. So we've spent the past
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20 years trying to train these Afghan forces, arming them. And so that when we did actually
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withdraw, that the Taliban wouldn't take over because these 300,000 troops that we have spent
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so much money and so much time and so much energy and so many lives training and fighting with and
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fighting for, they would be able to fight after the Taliban. And obviously that has not happened.
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And it's, you know, it's very strange. I saw some videos across social media that
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made me feel, I don't know if it was like a cringy feeling, a sad feeling, like a pitiful feeling,
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but there were videos of American troops trying to train the Afghan forces over there. And it's just
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a completely different world. It's a completely different
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setting and a completely different visual of how you see American troops being trained. Like,
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I think that one of the faulty premises that we have had, America has had a nation building,
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is thinking that all people are basically the same, which of course, as Christians,
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we know that everyone is made in the image of God and has the same value, but not everyone has
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the same values. Like not everyone has the same worldview, the same desires, the same commitment
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to fighting for individual liberty and all of that, that people in the Western world and particularly
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people in America do. And so it just didn't, our vision for Afghanistan and the Western world's vision
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for Afghanistan that has really been driving foreign policy in the Western world for the past,
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not 20 years, but 200 years. It just failed to manifest in the way that I think a lot of idealists
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in the United States thought that it would. So that's part of the disappointment and part of the
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disarray that we are seeing right now is that the vision that a lot of Americans had of how things
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would kind of settle themselves after 20 years of what's typically called nation building.
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It just has been a shock, I think, to a lot of people, and maybe it shouldn't have been, but Morgan
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will answer that question for us. So here's a little bit more about what's going on right now.
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So people are fleeing the country. The Taliban took over and they, so basically what's happening
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right now is that if you are a man left in Afghanistan, you will be forced to join the
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Taliban. If you are a woman or a girl that's left in the Taliban, you will be, and this is explicit,
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I'm just warning you, you will likely be raped. You will likely be taken in as a sex slave. You will
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not be allowed to be educated, so you won't go to school. You will not be allowed to have a job unless
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it's in healthcare, which is just an interesting caveat that they have. They will be forced to wear full
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burqa, so really only their eyes through like a very thin window will be able to barely be seen.
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And so these are the most extreme of extreme Islamists. They have a sincere hatred for women
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and girls. They don't have the same perspective on human life, certainly not the same perspective
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of equality. And it's just silly for anyone to imagine that they do, but they truly don't have
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the same idea of human value. People really are, especially women and girls, are just treated as
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objects. And there are Afghans who are left there right now who have absolutely no hope of anything
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else except to be subjugated by this terrorist regime. There were thousands of people who have been
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trying to get out of Afghanistan. The scenes that we've seen on Twitter of people literally trying
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to cling to American airplanes that are leaving are just devastating. I'm going to play a few of
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those clips. I encourage you to watch on YouTube so you can see this for yourself. It really is
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A video that I did not play, which was just, I mean, it reminded me so much of 9-11. So that plane
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that you watched that Afghan men were clinging to, I don't know what they assumed would happen. I mean,
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of course, you're just desperate in that case until you're not necessarily thinking rationally,
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and I can't blame them for that. But there were people who, there were men who managed to hold
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on to the plane as it was taking off. And there are videos as the plane is going into the sky of
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these people falling to the ground. At least seven people fell to their deaths as they were trying to
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cling to the side of the plane. So desperate were they to get out of Afghanistan and out from under
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the Taliban rule. And one thing that you'll notice in these videos and in some of the pictures that
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you see of these planes that are full of Afghans trying to escape is that the vast majority of these
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people are men. And the question that a lot of people ask is like, where are the women and children?
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Like, why are the women and children out first? And we don't know completely the answer to that
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question. But again, I would remind us that not every worldview is the same. Not every culture is
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the same. I think we think here in the West that everyone has the same kind of chivalrous mentality
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that, of course, you allow the most vulnerable to go first. And of course, the men stay back and they
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fight and they allow the women to escape. That's not how it is everywhere. And certainly America is not
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like the exemplar of chivalry these days. But that mentality that we have of trying to protect the
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most vulnerable, which in this case, of course, is women and girls, almost in every case is women and
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girls. But especially in this scenario, they just that's not their priority. That's not necessarily
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their value. Now, I don't blame these men for wanting to get out at all. Of course, they would be
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forced to join the Taliban. Like, they would have a very hard life. Like, they would also be subject
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to abuse. So I don't blame them at all for wanting to get out. But I would be lying if I said it didn't
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break my heart that the women and girls apparently, obviously, were left behind in many of these cases.
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America has, and we'll talk about this with Morgan, they have agreed to accept 30,000
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of these Afghan refugees, and I'm sure that it will be a lot more. Now, as a Christian,
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we have hearts of compassion for people that are fleeing torture, that are fleeing the threat of
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murder. We especially have compassion for our brothers and our sisters in Christ who are facing
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persecution. Some of the pictures and the videos and the testimonies that we've seen from Christians
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there literally being tied to what look like crosses and blinded and beaten, I'm sure they will
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be slaughtered as is so prevalent among Christians in the Islamic world. We want those people to be
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able to escape. Like, we want them to come here. Like, that is our instinct. I think that's a good
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instinct. And I, by the way, I think it's good policy to accept especially the people that are facing
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religious persecution, especially our allies, especially the people that worked with us there.
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It's good policy to accept those people into the United States. It's not good policy. And this is
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just true. Like, it's not lacking empathy or compassion to say this. It's not good policy to just
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make a blanket number and say, we're accepting this many refugees no matter what. Because what I worry
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about, and I think what a lot of people worry about, is that these people are going to be vetted.
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How do we know there aren't Taliban sympathizers that are coming in with this group of refugees?
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Like, do we have any confidence at this point in this administration that they will be vetted,
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and that this will be a process that is characterized by integrity and safety and security? I don't have
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any confidence in that. And it is absolutely the job of this administration to think about that.
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Like, it's not, we can't just have such narrow compassion that we only have compassion for the
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people that are fleeing Afghanistan. You have to also have compassion for people here that are
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impacted, especially the most vulnerable people here, that are impacted by these kinds of public
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policy decisions. You've already seen Emmanuel Macron, the leader of France, say that he said,
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you know, it's not France's responsibility to accept a bunch of these, accept a bunch of these
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refugees. The reason why he's saying that is number one, I mean, this is kind of America's mess at this
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point, at least mostly, primarily. But he's also saying this because of this very inconvenient fact
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that Afghan refugees, unfortunately, around the world have a much higher or a disproportionate crime
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rate than refugees from other countries. So Emmanuel Macron said that. I mean, this is a guy who is
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certainly seen as a progressive. France is battling, though, Islamist extremism, and has been for quite a
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while because of much more liberal immigration and refugee policies that they've had in the past.
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They've really tightened that up. A bunch of these Scandinavian countries have extremely tight
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controls on immigration. It's really America is very unique in its willingness to simply basically open
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the borders and open the doors for people without a whole lot of conditions. On the one hand, that can be
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seen as compassion. And I think it is in a lot of cases. On the other hand, it can be seen as a lack of
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prudence. And even you could see it as just a bad, irresponsible, even wicked leadership to put the interest in the
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safety and the security of your own people last. And that, of course, is what we have seen from this
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administration and other administrations in the past. So there has to be a balance. Like there has
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to be a balance of looking at and prioritizing first and foremost our own national security and then
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looking at ways, OK, how can we help the refugees that are fleeing this violence and fleeing this danger
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while still keeping our country safe? Hopefully there's a way to do that. Like I would like to
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prioritize the women and the girls and the babies and the children, the Christian refugees, the religious
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refugees that are fleeing that kind of violence. We have to prioritize our allies, people that helped
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us there. Of course, we have to prioritize the American citizens. There are American citizens still left
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there right now. So we have to prioritize that. And maybe this administration will do that.
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I'm not really sure. This is Joe Biden and his administration's fault. It's not entirely his
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fault. This has been going on for a long time. But the fact that not that we left every most people
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wanted to leave Afghanistan at some point, the so-called forever wars, people were over that.
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There are different perspectives on that, of course, within conservatism, within progressivism.
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But I would say most people, this is kind of a bipartisan issue and didn't want to have such a
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large presence in Afghanistan anymore. People understood that. People did not think that we
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would leave in this way. And Morgan's going to talk to us more about that, completely haphazard,
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going to talk about, and you've probably heard about this being Joe Biden's Saigon, that the same
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thing happened when America left or ended the Vietnam War and left in such a haphazard and chaotic
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way. That's what we're seeing now, except worse. I mean, left billions of dollars of weaponry for the
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Taliban to take over. It is an absolute mess. It's an absolute mess. And Joe Biden responded to this.
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Another big thing about this is that Joe Biden was he wasn't talking about it. Like all of this was
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unfolding over the weekend due to Biden's decision making, or at least whoever makes the decisions in
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the Biden administration. I have my doubts that it's Joe Biden himself. He was absent. Like he wasn't
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making his statement. The press secretary was on vacation. So Joe Biden was at Camp David.
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And we finally heard yesterday that he was going to make a statement at 345 Eastern time. It was a
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it was a little late. And he made his speech. And it was, in my opinion, disappointing, to say the
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least. Let me play just a few clips of that. And then I'll explain what I'm talking about.
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When I came into office, I inherited a deal that President Trump negotiated with the Taliban.
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The choice I had to make as your president was either to follow through on that agreement
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or be prepared to go back to fighting the Taliban in the middle of the spring fighting season.
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So what's happened? Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country.
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The Afghan military collapsed sometime without trying to fight. American troops cannot and should not
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be fighting in a war be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight
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for themselves. We gave them every chance to determine their own future.
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We could not provide them was the will to fight for that future.
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So here's where I agree and disagree with Joe Biden. If you listen to the whole speech,
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you watch the whole speech. It's not very long, so I encourage you to do that.
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It doesn't sound all bad, and it's not all bad. And what I mean by that is that the thing that I
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found that was bad is that he created straw man arguments. So basically, he spent however many
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minutes the speech was defending his decision, his administration's decision to withdraw from
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Afghanistan and talked about how this has been going on forever. He blames Trump, basically said,
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look, this was Trump's plan, and we just executed on it. Morgan is going to bust that myth, though,
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once we talk to her. And he even went on to blame, we didn't play it in this clip, Obama and past
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administrations. And then, of course, you heard him blame the Afghan army. And the problem is that
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no one is arguing. Like I said, that's a straw man. No one is arguing that we should not have
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withdrawn. Like no one is saying that we needed to stay there forever. We're saying that maybe we
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could have done it in a more responsible way. Like maybe we could have planned for contingencies.
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Maybe we shouldn't have left our millions of dollars of weapons there. Maybe we should have
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gotten our American diplomats and the allies out first. Like maybe we should have had a better plan
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in place. Of course, he knows that, though. He's setting up a false dichotomy, and he is trying to
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defend something that no one is arguing against. Like no one is saying that we should have stayed
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there forever. And yet that's what he spends his speech saying, defending that we shouldn't have
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stayed there forever. No one's saying that. He knows that, though. He doesn't even want to address
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the fact that this was an absolute failure of his administration. It wasn't the Trump administration
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that executed this. It wasn't Obama. It wasn't Bush. And maybe all of them, I would say definitely
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all of them have blame to take 100 percent. But this is very different than the foreign policy,
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the successful foreign policy that we saw under Donald Trump. That is an objective fact.
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That's not partisan politics. That is just true. Even if you like Joe Biden, you can see that how
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this was handled was a failure. And he does not own this. Brian Williams on MSNBC tried to say,
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oh, yeah, he owned this. He didn't run away from it. It was awesome. His guest,
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who is a veteran, immediately pushed back and said, I feel like I was watching a different
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speech than you because he did not own anything. And that is absolutely true.
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Now, where I agree with Joe Biden in this speech and in just the couple clips that we just played
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is that Americans should not be dying in a war, that the Afghans are not willing to fight for
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themselves. And that is true. They at the end of the day, I don't think the Afghan army was prepared.
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Like I said, there were videos of training the Afghan army. They didn't look prepared. And also like
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the American troops ran into a lot of problems in trying to train the Afghan army. This is a
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completely different place. Many of many of the Afghans that they were working with could not read.
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They could not count. They did not know their numbers. They were illiterate. They didn't know
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their colors. In a lot of cases, it's being reported. And so think about the challenge that
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the American troops are faced in trying to train these people that they really kind of have to go
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back to the basics of just elementary education. And then on top of that, like teach them military
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strategy, teach them how to use weapons. And it was just our idealistic view of what was going to
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happen, like I said a few minutes ago, just was never, was probably never going to pan out how we
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thought that it would 20 years ago. And also, like there was a lot of corruption. According to the AP,
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the U.S. and its NATO allies spent billions of dollars over two decades to train and equip Afghan
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security forces. But the Western backed government was rife with corruption. So the Afghan government
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was rife with corruption. And this is the government that, again, the West, the West helped
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to install. Commanders exaggerated the number of soldiers to siphon off resources and troops in the
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field often lacked ammunition, supplies or even food. There is also reported by several outlets,
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there was rampant sexual abuse of young boys by the Afghan troops that the United States was told not
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to report and just to ignore. And so certainly I think that the United States could have had at least
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enabled some of some of this corruption. So so much of this was ill-advised. And then there, of course,
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is the concern that our enemies are going to seize on this, as Morgan will talk about, and it's going to
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spell trouble for us. And for anyone who thinks that, OK, you know, this is they just want to be they
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just want to, you know, deal with their own problems. They just want to live by their own values and be
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left alone. CNN did in did an interview and Michael Knowles pointed out that the Taliban has actually
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done more interviews with with the press than the president of the United States has about the
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Taliban takeover. After Joe Biden did his speech, he he didn't say anything to the press like he
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ignored the press and he went back to Camp David. So we've got an absentee. I mean, a complete failure,
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a complete failure of leadership. But one of the one of the people in the Taliban talked to CNN
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and he said this. It's our belief that one day Islamic law will come not just to Afghanistan,
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but all over the world. Jihad will not end until the last day. And so you've probably heard this
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phrase before, like you have all the watches we have all the time. Like this is a this is a goal,
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this worldwide jihad, this worldwide takeover by Islamic law, Sharia law is generational. It has
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been around for a long time. And the people in the Taliban don't see themselves as necessarily
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wanting to see themselves the takeover of the world. They see themselves as one part of a grand
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collective and a grand narrative that they are just helping move along. They're absolutely willing
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to give their life for that. And so this is not just about them wanting to be independent of
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American rule. This is they want worldwide, worldwide domination. And so that's where we are.
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This is a very scary time for a lot of people over there. It's a scary time for people here. I hope
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that it's a wake up call for people to see not just the failures of this administration,
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but the failure of a particular worldview that clings to cultural and moral relativism that says,
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you know, everyone has a basically good value system. Every set of beliefs is basically morally
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equivalent. There's no culture that's better than another culture. There's no worldview that's better
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than another culture. There's no set of politics or set of beliefs that's better than another.
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And that is simply not true. That kind of cultural and moral relativism, that kind of
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postmodernism, that there is no objective morality, there is no objective higher good, there is no
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objectively good or bad worldview. It's part of what has gotten us into this mess and has led to bad
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foreign policy and naive foreign policy decisions. So I hope that this just shakes us of that. And I hope
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it also reminds us that so many of the things that we complain about here, so many of the things that
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we call injustice here, which are really just things that we don't like, so many of the things that we
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are offended by and riled up by here are such small potatoes compared to what most of the people in the
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world suffer through. And so allow that to give us a little bit of perspective as well.
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We're going to get into this conversation with Morgan Ortegas, and she's going to give us some
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Morgan, thank you so much for joining us. For everyone who may not know, can you tell us who
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you are and what you do? Sure. Well, I was just recently Mike Pompeo. I'm President Trump's
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spokesperson at the Department of State, but I've been in the intelligence community defense
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foreign policy for like the past 15 years or so, lived a lot in the Middle East, been in and out
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of Afghanistan a lot. And now I'm in Nashville, hence the sign, and working in investment private
00:26:47.620
equity. Okay, I gotcha. And you are the perfect person to give us all the context of what's going
00:26:52.720
on, because a lot of people listening, they feel like they have a vague idea of why we're there and
00:26:58.680
what's happening. But some people may not know. Some people listening to this podcast may not have
00:27:03.200
even been alive at 9-11. So can we back up a little bit? And can you just start from the
00:27:09.040
beginning? Tell us why we're here and why is all of this happening right now? You know, it is amazing
00:27:15.240
to think that there's plenty of people listening to this podcast that were born after or watching
00:27:19.660
this who were born after 9-11. It is kind of amazing. So I think we all who are old enough
00:27:24.460
remember that dark day. I was in college. I was a sophomore in college, actually.
00:27:28.680
When 9-11 happened, and quickly switched my major to start studying these sorts of things. But back
00:27:34.820
then, Afghanistan was mostly controlled by the Taliban, but not entirely. I think, sadly,
00:27:41.580
actually, they have probably, in many ways, more control today than they did have in 2001. And we
00:27:47.600
have the Northern Alliance and various factions within Afghanistan that would fight with the Taliban.
00:27:53.820
Of course, why would any of this be our problem? The reason why it was our problem is because,
00:27:58.420
of course, the Taliban offered a safe harbor to al-Qaeda. They let them plan, execute plots against
00:28:06.100
the United States from Afghanistan. So when we went in in 2001, President Bush said, you know,
00:28:12.100
we are going to make sure that we root out this terrorist group, that they are never a threat to
00:28:15.860
the homeland again. And fast forward, here we are 20 years later. I think we had, we obviously,
00:28:21.560
there's no doubt, we had a lot of mission creep. We got into nation building, into counterinsurgency,
00:28:27.200
and a lot of things that went beyond the scope that I think President Bush and his team imagined.
00:28:33.440
And so that's why in the Trump administration, President Trump asked Mike Pompeo how we start to
00:28:39.780
responsibly draw down from Afghanistan. And that is the effort that I worked on, or that Mike Pompeo
00:28:47.020
worked on very closely with President Trump. Of course, the way that we were planning on exiting was
00:28:52.500
very, very different than the chaos that you've seen over the past few days.
00:28:56.480
Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit. Because in President Biden's speech, which we'll play a
00:29:01.720
couple clips from it in a couple minutes, he talked about, you know, defending his position that we
00:29:07.760
needed to leave Afghanistan. Of course, that's besides the point. President Trump wanted to do that. I think
00:29:12.440
that's backed by the majority of Americans. What we saw, though, was a lot of recklessness
00:29:16.940
and a lot of chaos. What would the Trump administration have done differently to try
00:29:24.500
to avoid some of the just anarchy that we're seeing right now?
00:29:29.340
So first of all, it starts with who are the negotiating partners at both sides of the table?
00:29:35.920
So you have to remember that President Trump, I think this is quite obvious, is very different
00:29:40.380
than President Biden. And President Trump's, I think it was the first year in office, he released
00:29:46.360
what we have nicknamed the Moab, the mother of all bombs in Afghanistan. And whenever General Miller,
00:29:53.120
who was the last commander in charge in Afghanistan, when he took charge, he really took the fight to
00:29:58.700
the Taliban. So whenever we came to the negotiating table, the Taliban knew a few things. They knew it was
00:30:05.180
a president who was willing to use Moabs if necessary. And they knew it was a president that had empowered
00:30:10.520
a general to go after them. And they were seeing casualties under General Miller that they had not seen
00:30:16.100
in a very, very long time. So why does that matter? It matters because who is at the negotiating table
00:30:23.940
determines the outcomes. So we were there with a credible threat of force. During this whole process,
00:30:30.600
they saw that we took out Qasem Soleimani, who was the head of the IRGC Quds Force in Iran,
00:30:35.640
the world's leading terrorist. And they knew that we were serious and that we meant business.
00:30:40.980
So when President Trump gave Mike Pompeo this directive, Pompeo said, you know, we have to
00:30:46.380
withdraw responsibly, but we have to do it in a way that Afghanistan cannot be a place where al-Qaeda
00:30:52.800
is given safe harbor to plan terrorist attacks against the United States. That was our number one
00:30:58.340
guiding principle, is how do we ensure that America is safe? So we put provisions in the deal
00:31:05.400
that we negotiated with the Taliban, that Mike Pompeo and the team did, that said, you know,
00:31:11.340
that the Taliban had to break with al-Qaeda. Now, everybody was really skeptical. If the Taliban
00:31:17.560
was actually going to do it, that's fine. We were very skeptical as well. It's not like we trusted these
00:31:22.160
guys. But we knew that they had to abide by all of the conditions of the deal for our drawdown.
00:31:29.220
Now, the thing that we were really, you know, very, very focused on, obviously, is do we need to keep
00:31:35.140
a residual force, a small counterterrorism presence? So it's good to think about Iraq, right? So right now
00:31:41.140
in Iraq, we have a small number of troops. We are not at a war in Iraq. We are not facing American
00:31:46.180
casualties, but they are there and advise, train and equip mission. And I think that that's something
00:31:53.320
that we probably could have responsibly done in Afghanistan. President Biden had a very, you know,
00:31:59.080
he wanted to review the deal. He wanted to come up with his own plan. Fine. Totally understand.
00:32:03.900
You're the new president. You've got a new team. You want to do it your way. And I have no problem
00:32:08.380
with that. But if you were going to review that and make a decision about withdrawing from Afghanistan
00:32:13.680
or not, why did you not keep your foot on the neck of the Taliban during the process? Why did you
00:32:20.260
disengage during the height in the middle of the summer during fighting season? Why was there no
00:32:25.760
plan? I mean, there's a lot of unanswered questions, but probably would have made a little
00:32:28.900
bit more sense as for President Biden and his team to say to the Taliban, listen, you guys have not
00:32:33.780
totally abided by the terms of this deal. We're going to keep a small presence here. We're going to
00:32:38.000
continue to negotiate with you. And if you start following the terms of the deal, if you start
00:32:42.520
negotiating with the government of Afghanistan, then we will consider drawing down. But President
00:32:47.540
Biden wanted out no matter what. And so when you set a timeline, when you say you want out no matter
00:32:52.920
what, when you say, you know what, we're not leaving any troops at all. Well, what, you know,
00:32:57.520
what incentive does the other side have to abide by anything? They don't. Yeah, right. There were media
00:33:02.940
reports. I think there was something in the Wall Street Journal. I believe it was Friday.
00:33:08.000
So as this was kind of starting to unfold, saying, look, if we pull completely out of
00:33:13.540
Afghanistan, it looks like the Taliban could take over. And so we knew that. I mean, there were people
00:33:19.460
in the media who knew that. Surely there were people in the Biden administration that knew that
00:33:22.940
was a possibility. I think Blinken said that, you know, it could happen within maybe 30 to 90 days.
00:33:29.480
Joe Biden said that this is not a foregone conclusion. We've equipped the Afghan army,
00:33:33.780
300,000 of them. You know, they're going to be able to push back on this if it happens. Obviously,
00:33:39.660
it actually happened really in a matter of just a few days and maybe 30 to 90 hours.
00:33:47.280
Where where do you think that where do you think that maybe naivete came from
00:33:53.220
in the Biden administration that didn't allow them to see what even some people in the media seemed
00:34:00.100
seemed to see? I mean, surely they've got the intelligence to know that this kind of thing
00:34:04.880
was a possibility. And just trying to be as charitable and giving the benefit of the doubt
00:34:09.460
is as much as possible. Like, surely, I mean, surely they thought that something else was going to
00:34:17.400
happen and they thought that they had planned for every contingency. But obviously, that wasn't the
00:34:21.300
case. So, like, where did they fumble the ball in this is what I guess I'm trying to ask.
00:34:25.780
Sure. So it's funny that you mentioned what Secretary Tony Blinken, the Secretary of State
00:34:32.260
said about how he thought it would take longer. I think he said 60 to 90 days. One of the things
00:34:38.200
that he quoted and he was quoted as saying in congressional testimony, it could have been
00:34:43.160
congressional testimony or an interview. Anyway, he said it's not going to happen from a Friday to
00:34:47.740
a Monday. And it literally literally did Friday to a Monday. Right. So we've got a little thing that,
00:34:53.340
you know, we're going to need to get through this crisis. But we have a few things I think
00:34:57.700
that Congress is going to need to investigate and take a look at because you have people in
00:35:01.540
the administration trying to blame the intelligence community saying, oh, they gave us, you know,
00:35:06.660
they gave us wrong estimates or we weren't alerted. But you have people in Congress like Congressman
00:35:11.860
Mike McCall from Texas and others who are also breached by the intelligence community. And they're
00:35:17.180
saying, whoa, whoa, whoa. The intelligence community painted a very, very stark picture for us. So if the
00:35:24.560
intelligence community briefed one thing to Congress and then one thing to the president, that would be
00:35:30.300
really, really bad. And we need to know if that happens. I'm a little skeptical that that's what
00:35:34.580
happened. I would think what makes more sense is that they were briefed the same things by the
00:35:39.060
intelligence community and this administration did not listen to the intelligence. That's my gut.
00:35:43.840
We'll see what happens. I'm sure all of this will be investigated. But you have to understand if you
00:35:48.140
step back and you look at the worldview of this administration, remember, these are the same people
00:35:53.400
that were in the Obama administration. Same exact people. Tony Lincoln was deputy secretary of state.
00:35:59.500
Wendy Sherman, the current deputy secretary of state, is the person who is the lead negotiator on the
00:36:04.700
JCPOA, the deal, the Iran deal, as it is popularly known. So if you remember, these are the same people
00:36:10.900
that thought that Iran was actually going to abide by their deal and become a responsible international
00:36:17.340
actor. Right. So they negotiated the JCPOA. They gave away billions of dollars in sanctions relief to
00:36:23.700
Iran. They put no limits on their terrorist activity in the region. They put no limits in this deal on
00:36:30.900
ballistic missile expansion. For example, it was only focused on the nuclear deal. And so because it
00:36:36.880
wasn't a broad deal, they get billions of dollars of sanctions relief, pallets of cash, as we all
00:36:41.940
famously know about. And what do they do with it? Well, they do what any, what the world's leading
00:36:47.620
state sponsor of terrorism would do, which is they foment more terrorism. They fund their groups. They
00:36:53.860
build more ballistic missiles. So why do I bring that up? Why is that relevant to Afghanistan? Because
00:37:01.740
it's the same group of people that really believe that the Taliban and Iran and other actors, they
00:37:08.500
just want to be liked. Yeah. Right. They want to be recognized by the international. So they say a lot
00:37:13.040
of things like in diplo speak, the way we talk saying, you know, that they want to be recognized by the
00:37:18.520
international community, that they want to be in good standing. No, they don't. They want power. They
00:37:23.480
want hegemony. They want control. They're terrorists. Yeah. I mean, you've seen the UN. I think it was also
00:37:30.800
the leader of New Zealand who came out and said, you know, we are really urging the Taliban to have
00:37:37.280
an inclusive representative government and to recognize the rights of women and girls. And I
00:37:43.100
shouldn't be laughing at that, but it is laughable. It's funny in a very sad kind of way that anyone has
00:37:52.420
that kind of mentality when it comes to a group of people that is only bent on destruction. And
00:38:00.760
is that what's going to happen to Afghanistan? I mean, will it completely be dominated by the
00:38:06.980
Taliban forevermore until, I don't know, another group tries to come on? Until the next invasion.
00:38:11.580
Yeah. Tries to dominate. I mean, what's going to happen? And also within that question,
00:38:17.240
where do China and Russia play a part in all of this?
00:38:21.300
Well, let me answer that part first, because that's easy. They have kept their embassies open
00:38:26.200
in Afghanistan. They have decent relationships, you know, good relationships. Some of the Taliban
00:38:32.220
have already met with the Chinese publicly. They've talked about this with the Russians.
00:38:36.580
So a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan is a win. There's no two ways about it. A win for China and
00:38:42.680
Russia. We no longer control Afghanistan, which does actually share a tiny border with China. So that
00:38:50.080
opens up part of the Belt and Road Initiative, which is their Chinese trade initiative to,
00:38:56.800
that's a whole other thing that I could go into what the Chinese are doing there.
00:38:59.960
Right. So, so yeah, so the Chinese Russians, even the Iranians, they're keeping their embassies open.
00:39:05.400
They're talking to the Taliban. Big win for our enemies. I think the question that you're getting
00:39:11.180
into is, you know, why would this administration, you know, think, or the UN think that the Taliban
00:39:15.740
could have a representative government? I do think that one's a little bit more complicated,
00:39:20.240
because I will say, in our administration, in the Trump administration, what we were trying to do
00:39:26.300
was to end America's longest war. And we knew that there was no military end to the war. So what we
00:39:33.660
were attempting to do, but again, this is the crucial point that this administration is missing. You have
00:39:38.260
to do this from a position of strength. And that's what they miss in all of their negotiations.
00:39:42.420
But we were trying to get the government of Afghanistan. So that was until he fled a few
00:39:48.520
days ago, led by President Ghani. We were trying to get the government of Afghanistan, the Taliban,
00:39:53.920
women, human rights. We were trying to get everyone at the table to negotiate what the future of
00:39:59.580
Afghanistan looks like for their people. So that was a goal we had. Some people may have said that
00:40:07.360
was a naive goal. But the bottom line is that the Afghan forces, with our support, were never able
00:40:14.900
to fully defeat the Taliban. So we were trying to bring everyone to the table. But again, it's hard
00:40:21.000
to compare apples and apples, in my opinion, to the effort that Mike Pompeo led at the State Department
00:40:26.540
versus the Biden effort. Because again, we felt like we were very much negotiating from a position of strength.
00:40:33.040
I think that the world sees this, obviously. I think Americans on both sides of the aisle sees that
00:40:48.440
this was fumbled. Now, I think we probably disagree on the why behind it. And it's that worldview piece
00:40:54.960
that you very well brought up a few minutes ago that I think really kind of divides us of really what
00:41:01.120
should have been the tactics leading up to this that would have at least mitigated some of the chaos
00:41:07.480
and the loss of life that we're seeing right now. And this doesn't all lay at President Biden's feet,
00:41:15.160
of course, as you started out saying, you know, this has been a longstanding failure of policy in
00:41:22.040
some ways for the past 20 or so years. Do you think that there's a way for the Biden administration
00:41:28.760
to fix this in any way? Like, are we going to be able to regain any kind of good reputation on the
00:41:35.640
world stage? Are we going to be able to regain the trust of our allies and the respect of our
00:41:40.780
enemies? Or are we done for at least for the next couple decades?
00:41:45.460
So that's that's a big, very big question. I would say in Afghanistan, it is going to be very,
00:41:53.940
very dicey over the next few days. And in the coming weeks and months, right? It's going to be
00:41:58.500
dicey for a long time. One thing that I think that we should pay close attention to is what happens to
00:42:03.560
all of our equipment that was left behind, right? We're seeing multiple planning failures by this
00:42:08.460
administration. We're seeing a lack of a plan to get the people who were interpreters with us,
00:42:14.060
we call them civs, SIV, people who actually worked with us. We have, they didn't get visas in time.
00:42:20.340
Whenever Ghani left, there was a scramble to get to the airport. So you've got a humanitarian
00:42:24.400
situation on top of everything else. And by the way, these, everything does need to be carefully
00:42:29.860
vetted. I want all of our civs and interpreters and people who were crucial to the fight to come
00:42:35.900
over, but we have no clue how this administration is vetting extended family members. Are they,
00:42:43.700
are they letting extended families? Is it just immediate, immediate family? There's a lot of just
00:42:47.700
process questions and things that should have been planned out and explained to the American public
00:42:52.320
and to the Afghans ahead of time. I think one of the reasons it wasn't planned out is because they
00:42:57.320
just didn't think Afghanistan would fall right away and they didn't think it was going to be an issue
00:43:00.680
right away. But that's why you have contingency plans in place just in case things happen that you
00:43:07.840
don't expect. I'm very concerned about our equipment. Not that I think that the Taliban necessarily has
00:43:13.660
the capability to, to use the equipment over the long run, but we have some of America's most
00:43:18.760
expensive and precious machinery. And why wouldn't they turn it over to the Iranians or the Russians
00:43:25.380
or the Chinese, right? Like, or to the highest bidder, whoever, whoever wants it. So all of that
00:43:30.840
is very concerning. Then as it relates to getting our reputation back, I think, you know, it was funny
00:43:36.360
just a few weeks ago, maybe a month ago, I think it was in June, Biden was at the NATO summit and he was at
00:43:42.840
the G7. And there was all of this talk about how America was back. Diplomacy is back. Adults are in
00:43:48.480
the room. I think it will be a long time before the Europeans say that again. This is not, you know,
00:43:54.980
what they expected. I think that it's funny, the behavior that Biden is doing right now is what they
00:44:00.040
expected from Trump, but he didn't do. And so it is going to be, you know, it's going to be tough, not just
00:44:07.540
for Afghanistan, but if you think about the countries, here's what I think is like key. And this is what
00:44:11.860
I get, you know, in my nerd world, the things that I focus on, uh, the countries in central Asia, like
00:44:17.380
Tajikistan and Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, all of these countries, um, are in between Afghanistan and
00:44:24.720
China, right? And these countries are crucial, crucial to, in my opinion, to being a part of the
00:44:31.820
alliance that we build of democratic countries, um, of, of pro-Western countries, uh, that are going to be a part of
00:44:39.500
the alliance that we should be building to counter China. I think that the argument for all of those
00:44:44.780
countries in central Asia, uh, that we have been, you know, courting and then trying to get them not
00:44:50.700
to take all the money from the Belt and Road Chinese program, not to let the Chinese, you know, in own
00:44:55.940
ports and own their critical infrastructure. You know, we've, we've been trying to get them not to
00:45:00.520
have Huawei, right? The Chinese authoritarian 5G company. We've been trying to convince them not to
00:45:05.660
have that in their systems. Um, so if you look at these countries in central Asia and in Southeast
00:45:11.120
Asia, in my opinion, are, are the most crucial countries, um, in the long-term fight that we are
00:45:17.500
up against with the Chinese communist party. And all of those countries are up a lot closer to
00:45:23.560
Afghanistan than we are in terms of proximity. And how are those countries going to now ally with us in
00:45:28.960
the fight against China? That's my big concern. Yeah. Well, hopefully that's a concern of the Biden
00:45:33.860
administration as well. I think best case scenario, this is some kind of wake up call for the Biden
00:45:40.240
administration and maybe the American people in, in general, not everyone knows the ins and outs of
00:45:44.960
foreign policy. I certainly don't. Um, but we do know what it looks like to be humiliated on the
00:45:50.520
world stage and we don't like it. We do know what weakness looks like and we do, no matter how much,
00:45:55.780
you know, no matter how much, you know, about foreign policy, people don't like to feel that their
00:46:01.400
leaders are not doing what is in the best interest and in the safety interests, um, of their
00:46:08.320
constituents. And I think that's one concern right now. Like, does this possibly pose a threat, um,
00:46:15.200
to America in our, in our homeland? That's a really important question. And here's part of the
00:46:22.220
problem that we're going to have in answering that question going forward. Um, how do you have
00:46:27.200
intelligence collection capabilities, right? Uh, you have that whenever you have, wherever you are
00:46:32.900
in the world, not just Afghanistan, uh, you have assets in the region, right? You have, um, you know,
00:46:38.980
wherever you are, you've got embassies, you've got, you know, uh, maybe bases, you have friendly
00:46:43.600
countries. Um, we have a variety of different methods, um, which I'm not going to go into to collect
00:46:48.620
intelligence. Um, but when we have pulled everything out, including our embassy and our entire presence
00:46:54.900
in Afghanistan, for me, I see a massive intelligence gap. Now the U S military is saying we have these
00:47:01.260
over the horizon capabilities. Um, that's, I remain highly skeptical of that. Like if you think,
00:47:08.120
for example, we have a base in Doha, Qatar, uh, that's, I think a four and a half hour flight
00:47:12.600
from Afghanistan. So it's not like Iraq. So if you, if you go back and you think about like 2009
00:47:18.560
in Iraq, whenever Obama started pulling everyone out, and then we started seeing the rise of ISIS and it
00:47:24.140
took a couple of years for Obama to go back in, but eventually Obama had to go back into Iraq
00:47:28.580
because, um, there was, you know, because ISIS constituted forms taking over the country and
00:47:33.940
was chopping off heads, right. And the American people woke up, right. Especially in that 2012
00:47:39.700
and other elections was like, uh, wait a minute, we don't want them coming over here and chopping
00:47:43.720
off heads. So we need to take care of this over there. Well, in Iraq, if you think about the map of
00:47:48.340
the Middle East, uh, we have bases, right. All, you know, all over the place. We have people in
00:47:52.820
Bahrain. We have people in Qatar. Um, we have, we have so many, uh, uh, you know, things that we
00:47:59.400
can use in what we call the CENTCOM, what military, what the military calls CENTCOM. Um, we are not
00:48:04.460
nearly as prolific in Southeast Asia. So it's, it's going to be, I know this is a long-winded
00:48:10.180
explanation, but it's important to think about the geography when we say, well, what is the,
00:48:14.320
is the intelligence community going to watch, you know, what happens to Al Qaeda? Okay, well,
00:48:18.940
they'll try, but they have just had, you know, an arm and a leg chopped off in terms of their
00:48:23.700
collection abilities. Right. So we're going to have to rely on a lot of partners and we're going
00:48:28.180
to have to watch it very closely. Um, the, if the Taliban once again allows Al Qaeda to, uh,
00:48:35.100
reconstitute and to green ground and to start planning attacks in Afghanistan, we're going to
00:48:39.300
have a very, very, very big problem. We're going to need to go back in. Um, and it's going to be a lot
00:48:44.180
harder and, and a lot more, uh, expensive and not, not as easy to do as everyone thinks.
00:48:50.120
Right. I think people probably have good reason to wonder if the Biden administration is going to be
00:48:56.140
as cautious and careful as we think they should be in trying to prevent, uh, America from having
00:49:03.700
those vulnerabilities. We already know we're accepting, you know, I think it's 30,000 refugees,
00:49:08.260
which I think most Americans understand. Okay. America kind of helped cause this mess.
00:49:13.020
It seems like our responsibility to accept a lot of these people and especially the women and
00:49:17.820
children that are there. I think most people have a heart to do that. At the same time,
00:49:21.840
there's a lot of fighting age men that are also coming to the United States and we want to make
00:49:28.220
sure that they're carefully vetted. How do you do that? Is this administration committed to doing
00:49:33.180
that? Very hard to believe when the Southern border is basically wide open where there's been
00:49:37.640
hundreds of thousands of migrants who I guarantee are not vetted, um, who are coming in.
00:49:42.880
And so it feels very much like an America last situation in a lot of, in a lot of ways and
00:49:49.600
just swinging from president Trump, who was so adamant about putting America first and,
00:49:54.940
you know, progressives complaining about that. Well, I would say that's probably a better
00:49:59.420
alternative to America last, which is what we're seeing right now. Unfortunately, um, last question
00:50:04.620
for you, you said that you've got friends that you are trying to get out right now. Tell us like
00:50:10.340
what, what the state is, what people can be thinking about, what people can be doing here
00:50:14.600
and what people can be even, um, praying about as we're thinking about the situation right now.
00:50:20.320
Yeah. Thank you so much. That's a, that's a great question. First of all, if anybody wants
00:50:24.140
to donate, I know there's several organizations out there. The one that I've been promoting is
00:50:28.340
no one left behind. You can just Google it. The website will, will come up. Um, and they're
00:50:33.260
working very studiously, um, to try and get the right people out. They're really focused on,
00:50:37.980
uh, people who were interpreters, people who have, uh, letters proving that they worked with,
00:50:43.480
um, the military, the U S embassy. Um, and so that's a fantastic organization. Um, obviously I'll
00:50:50.480
keep the, uh, you know, names quiet because we're still, uh, trying to, trying to get them out. But,
00:50:56.240
you know, I have a friend, um, who we actually, um, brought over to the U S. He did an LLM at Harvard,
00:51:02.640
uh, went back to Afghanistan, uh, was a lawyer there, has a family. Um, and he employed other
00:51:08.740
lawyers. I mean, he did so much to advance, uh, the cause over the past decade or so that,
00:51:14.260
that I've known him. Um, and so he is, um, we're trying to, we're trying to get him out. I, I guess
00:51:20.360
I'm a little hesitant to say too many details because I'm very, I'm holding my breath, hoping that we can
00:51:25.940
get him out. But of course, you know, there's also other people, a friend of mine, um, sent me a picture,
00:51:30.940
uh, just, uh, just last night, uh, of a, of a guy who was interpreter with the military young guy
00:51:37.540
has a, has a young wife and they have three month old, um, babies, twins. Um, and they are just,
00:51:42.900
they were just sitting there at the airport, no food, no water, uh, holding the babies. And,
00:51:47.880
uh, the mom is nursing, but you know, as you and I know with little babies that doesn't, you know,
00:51:52.820
you got to drink some water to be able to nurse those twins, right? Where are the diapers?
00:51:56.900
Where are the things? Um, so getting his information to the state department and there's,
00:52:02.080
uh, you know, a million more tragic, uh, cases like that for sure. There's obviously some people
00:52:07.480
there. Listen, we know this. There's some people there who are just desperate to get out. They may
00:52:10.600
not have worked with us and they're just, you know, trying to get out. And, um, this administration
00:52:14.960
does really needs to do a very thorough job of vetting that. But I can tell you the people that have
00:52:20.180
been brought to my attention that I've worked with, um, you know, are all people, um, you know,
00:52:25.200
with babies, you know, small children and, um, they're fearful for their lives. You know,
00:52:30.400
one of my friends with small children yesterday that had worked for years texted me, I think it
00:52:34.700
was in the morning, our time and just said, I've given up. It's hopeless. You know, it's I'm done
00:52:39.220
for it. I said, do not give up, do not give up. I said, I know you're frustrated, but you have
00:52:44.280
three children, you have a wife, you have a family, you cannot give up. And hopefully,
00:52:51.280
Yeah. Gosh. Well, we will be thinking about that and praying, praying about that adamantly. Thank
00:52:56.860
you so much for taking the time to explain all of this to us. Your insight is really,
00:53:01.400
really valuable. And thank you for just kind of setting the scene, um, for what's going on. So
00:53:06.160
people can kind of get a better sense of what to focus on. Um, I really appreciate it. I encourage
00:53:11.980
everyone to follow you, to keep getting your insight. Thank you so much.
00:53:21.280
All right. So I know there's so much going on in the world. And as we've talked about so much,
00:53:32.740
like sometimes we're just at a capacity, um, to, we can't care about anything else. Like we are just
00:53:40.300
filled to the limit of things that we have to care about, not just when it comes to ourselves,
00:53:44.140
but maybe your family is going through a really hard time right now. Maybe you were dealing with
00:53:48.420
relatives. Maybe you're going through a hard time financially. Like you already feel the weight of
00:53:53.620
your own world on your shoulders and then adding everything else can just be really tough. And maybe
00:53:58.340
you're taking care of your community and you're fighting for a variety of different causes. Let
00:54:02.720
me just relieve you of the burden of having to carry everything yourself. You don't. God is completely
00:54:08.300
in control. We don't know why things happen the way that we do. We don't, uh, understand how
00:54:13.820
things are going to come together, but we have to trust that God still works all things together for
00:54:19.080
the good of those who love him. We have to pray for our brothers and our sisters in Christ who are
00:54:24.280
in Afghanistan, whom we have more of a connection with that spiritual connection that, uh, that kinship
00:54:31.540
that we have with them as, as members of the body of Christ is greater than the connection that we
00:54:37.740
have to our fellow Americans. Um, we have to be praying for them. We have to be thinking about them.
00:54:43.240
Be careful about who you donate to. I don't have a list of organizations in front of me that are
00:54:48.140
necessarily trustworthy, but I do think that we have to use a lot of discernment and giving our
00:54:53.220
financial aid and our support. I'm sure there are people that you trust that can kind of point you in
00:54:58.860
the right direction, but let's be just praying that the Holy Spirit would protect them, strengthen them,
00:55:04.240
especially the women and the girls in the region. I just think about the babies. I think about the
00:55:08.780
mothers. I think about just, I can't imagine the panic that they're feeling, the desperation that
00:55:13.960
they're feeling right now, and just that the Lord would comfort them and, and would be with them.
00:55:19.300
Um, we don't know. We don't know what's going to happen. We don't know when Jesus is coming back.
00:55:23.680
We don't know when we're going to be rescued, when they're going to be rescued from all of this
00:55:26.940
stuff. Right now, what we're called to do is all Christians are called to do is to be grateful,
00:55:31.160
to rejoice in the Lord always, to continue to pray, to cast our cares on Him because He cares for us.
00:55:37.040
Let's be thankful for the freedom, for the privileges, for the luxuries and the blessings
00:55:40.680
that we have right now that so many in the world will never be able to enjoy. Let us give,
00:55:45.400
let that give us some perspective and let us even more than just having an American and temporal
00:55:50.680
perspective, let us also have an eternal perspective that one day God will rule in perfect
00:55:55.040
peace and He will avenge all of the wrong that's been done and He will end the wrongdoer
00:56:00.220
forevermore and let our joy and our hope come from that. All right, we'll be back here tomorrow.