The Matt Walsh Show - Daily Wire Backstage： The Fall of the West

00:00:00.000 You're about to hear one of the most intense Daily Wire backstage episodes you've ever heard.

00:00:04.180 Ben Shapiro, Jeremy Boring, Michael Knowles, Andrew Klavan, and myself explored Joe Biden's

00:00:08.040 failures in Afghanistan. And to call this conversation intense would be an understatement.

00:00:11.780 Trust me, you've never heard an episode of backstage like this one. Check it out. Thanks

00:00:15.900 for listening. Some days you can't even muster up a good fake laugh. Welcome to the Daily Wire

00:00:20.900 backstage, the fall of the West. I'm Jeremy Boring, joined today, of course, by Michael

00:00:25.680 Knowles, Matt Walsh, Andrew Klavan, and Ben Shapiro. Our show today is sponsored by ExpressVPN.

00:00:31.060 It's time to stand up to big tech, protect your data at expressvpn.com slash backstage. Let's

00:00:37.320 get right to the show.

00:00:38.000 For tonight's show, Daily Wire members can enter your questions into the chat box over at

00:00:59.300 dailywire.com and we'll answer them throughout the night. If you want to go a little deeper into the

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00:01:53.400 your Reader's Pass today. Guys, only a short time ago, the President of the United States came out

00:01:59.360 and spoke about the horrific bombing which happened today in Kabul. We don't know, of course, the exact

00:02:04.380 death toll at the moment, but it seems like already 13 American servicemen killed. And the President's

00:02:12.420 speech I thought was one of the more bizarre speeches I've ever seen by a President, and I'm

00:02:16.820 saying this in the year 2021, so I want to get a quick reaction. I'm assuming everyone had the

00:02:21.220 opportunity to review the President's speech. Ben? He is not sentient. He is not capable. He is not

00:02:26.720 competent. He came out. He looked like a mental patient. I mean, he really did. He looked like he

00:02:32.480 was barely awake. He stumbled his way through a bizarre seven or eight-minute speech that

00:02:38.280 contradicted itself about seven different times. He tried to rely very heavily on the I'm empathetic

00:02:42.920 Joe routine, but the minute that the questions began, all of that went out the window and he

00:02:46.740 became combative Joe. He had nothing of merit to say. He has no defense for his policies because his

00:02:52.820 policies are garbage. And most of all, if you're an American enemy watching the President of 0.99

00:02:56.660 the United States on the same day that 13 American soldiers are killed, 12 of the Marines,

00:03:02.620 and you're watching as the United States turns tail and runs, leaving 1,000-plus American citizens

00:03:08.340 behind in Kabul, plus an unspecified number of thousands of American green card holders,

00:03:13.340 plus hundreds of thousands of people who will immediately be slaughtered by the Taliban.

00:03:16.400 And as it turns out, the United States government handed a list to the Taliban of all the people we

00:03:21.020 wanted to evacuate so they know precisely who to kill. By the way, this is just in Kabul. There are 0.86

00:03:24.220 Americans all throughout the country. We aren't even talking. Yeah, that's right.

00:03:26.500 If you're watching this as an enemy of the United States, and then you watch this addled, old,

00:03:31.360 feeble-minded man walk out and barely make it through a sentence, you're thinking, you're like 1.00

00:03:36.540 Homer Simpson with a hamburger right now. Now, Osama bin Laden said in 98, 99, after bombing Kenya and

00:03:41.440 Tanzania, the embassy's there, and after the mild response from the Clinton administration,

00:03:44.780 he said, America's a paper tiger. I don't know how, if you're an enemy of the United States,

00:03:47.940 watching what has happened over the course of the last month, you can't look at the United States

00:03:51.620 and say, that is a nation that I can do anything I want to. This is a nation that is ripe for a fall,

00:03:56.720 and this president is ready to let it happen. Drew, not unfair what Ben's saying. I mean,

00:04:00.080 the president literally said twice, at least in the speech, that some Americans would be left behind

00:04:05.680 after the August 31st. You know, I've been struck. All of this, I agree with everything Ben just said.

00:04:09.680 I mean, the absolute disability, the guy, the guy's a walking dementia, you know, case, and it's very painful.

00:04:16.880 It's painful to watch. I can't, I wish I could even feel some schadenfreude, because he's in the opposite

00:04:21.620 party to mine, but I don't. No, he's still our president. He's still our president, and that really is

00:04:25.180 disturbing me. But all throughout this, I have been deeply struck by his emotional detachment from the tragedy

00:04:32.960 that he has, and he alone, has brought upon this country. Because it doesn't matter what you think of the

00:04:38.460 foreign policy, where you think we should stay, where you think we should go. This was a, one of

00:04:43.260 the deepest active, I can't even use the word incompetent. That's too kind. It was a criminally

00:04:50.380 cavalier and incompetent, and the detachment from responsibility that he evokes, the jokes that he 0.54

00:04:57.920 makes when people say, how are you going to get other people out? And he says, well, you'll be the

00:05:01.580 first person I call. Ha, ha, ha. And what really bothers me about this more than anything is not what it

00:05:07.900 says about him. I feel that he actually represents a large swath of the democratic political class

00:05:13.740 that they don't care about what's happening overseas. They don't care about our foreign 0.71

00:05:18.640 policy. They don't care about the way we look to other people. They are so deeply concerned with

00:05:23.100 transforming us into a woke socialist, you know, European-style democracy that they really don't

00:05:32.820 think that we should be meddling anywhere in the world, because meddling in the world is what great

00:05:37.020 nations do. War is what great nations do. Imperial placements in various places is what great 0.61

00:05:43.200 nations do. They have to do it. They have to do it because they become responsible for the rest of

00:05:47.120 the world, and they just don't care. And I think that in that sense, at least, he is the head of his

00:05:52.800 party. He does represent what his party thinks. When you have Nancy Pelosi making speeches about how

00:05:57.440 proud she is of a budget-busting $3.5 trillion plan to transform our economy, and she's making those

00:06:05.780 speeches while people are throwing their babies over the barbed wire, and she's saying this is a

00:06:09.780 proud day for America while they're throwing the babies. I have to say that the one thing you have

00:06:13.900 to say about Joe Biden is he does represent the party that he leads. Yeah, I think as far as Joe

00:06:19.720 Biden himself goes, I thought the most profound moment of that press conference, profound in all

00:06:23.640 the wrong ways, was the visual. A lot of times with Joe Biden now, there's the visual. First, it's just

00:06:28.580 not to make too much of the body language part of it, but just looking into his eyes, you see a sort of

00:06:33.880 emptiness there, like he doesn't exactly know what's going on. But there was one moment where

00:06:37.280 he's clutching onto his folder, and then he ducks his head down in just exasperation, like he's giving

00:06:43.560 up in the middle of the press conference because he's getting a little bit of pushback from Peter

00:06:47.380 Doocy. And I thought that perfectly exemplifies Joe Biden's presidency. And then in the broader

00:06:52.800 question, not to jump right into a debate here, but picking up what Drew said, that our leaders are

00:06:59.080 woke and leftist, and that's why they don't want to meddle in the world. I also think I agree with

00:07:04.120 you, but that's also why, it's one of the big reasons why I don't want them to be meddling in

00:07:08.620 the world. It's one of the big reasons why I actually think that leaving Afghanistan was the 1.00

00:07:12.680 right thing to do, although executed in a horribly incompetent way. But when I think about, you know,

00:07:17.560 a pride flag hanging in Kabul, these are people who, even if I agreed that having an empire overseas 1.00

00:07:23.640 and being an empire and pursuing our imperial ambitions was a good idea in principle, what I know

00:07:29.180 is that these people are not capable of doing it. And what they want to export is not what I want

00:07:35.400 to see exported by the United States of America. I find it shameful and embarrassing.

00:07:38.820 I have been, I think, as charitable as I can be to Joe Biden. I think I've been as charitable as

00:07:45.500 anybody on the center or the right of the political aisle. I have not blamed him for problems that I

00:07:51.680 think were many years in the making that were not his. I have not even blamed him that there was

00:07:55.680 some chaos or that there would even be some violence in a withdrawal from Afghanistan that

00:08:00.680 both parties have been campaigning on for a long time now. However, there needs to be a basic level

00:08:08.680 of competence. There needs to be a basic level of engagement. It is simply, I think, even if you're

00:08:14.740 a leftist, even if you're a Democrat, you have to acknowledge that there were really basic things that

00:08:19.980 Biden could have done that would have greatly mitigated the risk, that would have greatly

00:08:24.060 mitigated the violence. And what is happening now in Afghanistan is largely on him. I am sympathetic, 1.00

00:08:31.680 as Matt says, I am sympathetic to the arguments for withdrawing. And actually, I'm sympathetic to

00:08:35.980 those specific arguments, as I outlined in a long column, which I thought was fair-minded about this

00:08:41.440 whole thing. Watching that speech tonight, I think it may have been the worst presidential address

00:08:46.660 I've ever seen. He just wasn't there. He was cavalier. He was showing the world that America is inviting

00:08:55.980 aggression from everyone else. It was pathetic. 1.00

00:09:01.280 It was pathetic. We should note that the president didn't come on stage for almost- 0.99

00:09:06.740 25 minutes.

00:09:07.380 25 minutes late, which this isn't an appointment you want to miss, right? When the president of the

00:09:12.700 United States addresses the nation about the loss of our service members overseas in the middle of a

00:09:17.500 crisis, he was boastful about the size of the airlifts and how many Americans have been withdrawn,

00:09:24.120 which is a classic thing that happens with incompetence, is that they create crises, and then

00:09:30.580 they want credit for the heroic actions that they take to mitigate the crisis that they

00:09:34.220 themselves created.

00:09:36.660 The dynamite below the waterline of the Titanic blew it open, and then he's like,

00:09:39.340 look how many people we put on the lifeboats. Guinness Book of World Records. Unbelievable.

00:09:43.680 And then the president had this bizarre moment, which I think we can play.

00:09:49.720 Basically, you said you squarely stand by your decision to pull out.

00:09:53.220 Yes, I do, because look at it this way, folks, and I have another meeting, for real.

00:09:59.140 The president had another meeting, for real.

00:10:01.180 For real.

00:10:01.780 You're not lying this time.

00:10:02.760 No, no, no.

00:10:03.320 Not like all the other times.

00:10:04.640 I looked at a timeline of what this administration has been saying since April.

00:10:08.360 Yeah.

00:10:08.960 And they have not said a true word since April.

00:10:11.620 No.

00:10:11.860 In April, the president of the United States said that we would pull out in a considered

00:10:14.520 fashion, that we would do so in a rational fashion that would not pose a danger to the

00:10:19.600 Afghan people or to the United States.

00:10:21.320 That was a lie.

00:10:22.300 In July, he said this would not be like South Vietnam or like Saigon.

00:10:28.000 That was not only a lie, it was a lie by multiples, because when we pulled out, you can at least

00:10:32.840 say that the Viet Cong, for all of their evils, and there were many of them, had not actually 0.98

00:10:36.320 attacked the United States homeland and killed 3,000 Americans in the process.

00:10:40.660 He said on the 18th that nobody had died, knock on wood.

00:10:45.320 He said that the airport was safe.

00:10:46.940 He said that the Taliban were working with us. 1.00

00:10:49.140 He's just a damned liar. 1.00

00:10:50.340 They have lied all the way through this process. 1.00

00:10:52.300 And so when I look at the failures here, I think there's three levels of failure.

00:10:55.560 I think that most of us in the room will agree on two of them, and we'll probably disagree

00:10:58.220 on the third.

00:10:59.120 The first level of failure is the tactical.

00:11:00.980 I think it is impossible to disagree that the tactical failure here is epic and immense.

00:11:05.400 And the fact here is that every single person in the know knows you do not evacuate the

00:11:10.260 troops before you evacuate the citizenry.

00:11:12.160 You cannot do that. 1.00

00:11:13.140 That is idiotic. 1.00

00:11:13.920 That is defund the police, except on a global scale, right? 1.00

00:11:16.680 That's getting, that's leaving the place to the criminals.

00:11:18.600 You don't give up the air base before the airline.

00:11:20.520 You don't evacuate Bagram Air Base and restrict yourself to Kabul International Airport, which is

00:11:24.360 one runway with no actual buffer zone. 0.99

00:11:26.980 Like, you have to be a complete and utter ass to do this. 0.99

00:11:29.960 Joe Biden doesn't care, so he doesn't care. 1.00

00:11:31.840 I mean, that's really what this comes down to.

00:11:33.200 There's no empathy from Joe Biden, and his empathy extends to he does not care about what

00:11:37.260 happens here.

00:11:37.780 He's made his decision and damned the consequences. 1.00

00:11:39.800 So the tactical nature of this is idiotic. 1.00

00:11:41.820 The notion that the Afghan military collapsed because they were all cowards, they took on 0.99

00:11:45.020 50,000 casualties, 50,000 dead between 2015 and 2021.

00:11:49.720 The United States in that same period took on less than 100 dead.

00:11:52.720 So they were shouldering the burden.

00:11:55.480 The reason they collapsed is because Joe Biden decided that not only were we going to withdraw

00:11:58.980 our troops, which you can make an argument about, we were also going to withdraw our

00:12:02.340 close air support.

00:12:03.320 We were going to withdraw all of the civilian contractors who maintained their own air force

00:12:06.820 so they could not even fly missions in the air, which was their chief tactical advantage

00:12:10.800 against the Taliban in outlying areas.

00:12:13.080 So immediately, the U.S. says, we're gone, we're taking everything with us, and they disband.

00:12:16.060 They're gone.

00:12:16.580 OK, so all the tactical failures, I think, are pretty obvious and easy to spot.

00:12:20.300 Then there's the moral failure.

00:12:21.380 When you make promises to people and then you botch the promises, no ally in the future

00:12:26.160 has any business trusting us.

00:12:27.640 I do not know why our allies would trust us.

00:12:29.740 I don't know why if you make promises to people, we screwed the Kurds, we've screwed 0.76

00:12:33.160 the people of Hong Kong, we've screwed the people of Afghanistan, we've screwed the people 1.00

00:12:36.900 of Vietnam.

00:12:37.480 Like, how many more people can we screw before all of our allies start to look at us and

00:12:41.100 say, you know what?

00:12:41.640 I think I'm going to triangulate a little bit here and see what I can get out of Russia

00:12:43.900 and China.

00:12:44.240 And you left out, the one lie you left out, by the way, is the lie that somehow our allies

00:12:48.920 are all on board with the parliament of Britain, of Great Britain, our only real friend in

00:12:53.700 the world besides maybe Israel, they're actually holding our president in contempt.

00:12:58.780 And then on the same moral level, Joe Biden keeps saying that we went there to stop al-Qaeda

00:13:03.860 and prevent this from becoming a terror haven.

00:13:05.780 I've noticed a few terrorists in Kabul lately.

00:13:07.700 I don't know about you guys, but I've noticed like a few, like the Haqqani Network that's actually

00:13:10.680 running security in Kabul, which is al-Qaeda, and ISIS, which is there, and the Taliban,

00:13:15.660 who, like, last time we trusted the Taliban to stop terror, it ended with a couple of

00:13:19.340 buildings falling down in New York, you may recall. 0.99

00:13:21.080 So, like, on that level, it's just asinine. 0.70

00:13:24.380 I would have to, I agree with most of what you said, but when it comes to the Afghan army,

00:13:29.300 and this is really almost irrelevant to what happened today, because as you point out,

00:13:33.420 I mean, this is just a total tactical failure in terms of getting people out.

00:13:36.980 I mean, the fact that we have our troops there facilitating the evacuation of just

00:13:41.060 masses of Afghans, many of them citizens, and we don't know if they helped us or not. 0.65

00:13:45.640 I mean, it's hard to believe that they're all interpreters or whatever.

00:13:48.260 So there's just no plan in place, which is disgraceful and insane.

00:13:51.500 But as far as the Afghan army goes, I mean, I understand the point that the air support

00:13:56.840 was taken away.

00:13:58.360 I mean, the Taliban didn't have any air support.

00:14:00.600 What we're told, anyway, is that the Afghan troops outnumbered the Taliban by three to one.

00:14:04.600 They supposedly had 300,000 strong versus less than 100,000.

00:14:09.280 Now, I can understand when they're training to have the air support, they don't have it,

00:14:13.040 that that's a huge disadvantage that they have to accommodate.

00:14:16.180 But you would think that as a military defending your nation, you would try to accommodate it

00:14:20.560 rather than just give up in two days, which is exactly what they seem to do.

00:14:24.980 I don't think we could put all the blame on the Afghan army like Joe Biden wants to do,

00:14:30.020 but to absolve them of all blame, I think, isn't fair.

00:14:33.880 It's pretty hard to think.

00:14:34.760 The one thing the Afghanis are good at is fighting. 1.00

00:14:37.140 And I really don't think that this is a failure of the Afghan army.

00:14:40.340 I think it's a failure.

00:14:41.460 You have to remember the Taliban blend in with the people.

00:14:44.960 They terrify the people.

00:14:46.420 The warlords, who the armies were hoping would fight for them in the villages,

00:14:50.300 immediately surrendered because their people are, you know, basically in the villages,

00:14:55.520 the people are afraid of the Taliban.

00:14:57.260 They will welcome them back.

00:14:58.200 They're also fighting Pakistan.

00:15:00.160 Pakistan's Secret Service, which is mostly Islamist, is backing them and has been backing them to the hilt. 1.00

00:15:05.700 I don't really believe, I've never seen the Afghani fighters give up on anything.

00:15:11.800 They're a tough bunch.

00:15:12.800 If you talk to the people that have been over there in our military training the Afghan army,

00:15:19.740 almost everything I've heard from people that have been in that position,

00:15:23.600 and I've heard, I'm sure we all have talked to quite a few,

00:15:25.600 they'll tell you that it's very difficult because, you know, very often they're there sort of on a mercenary basis.

00:15:32.560 If they don't get paid, they don't want to show up.

00:15:34.120 There's a big problem with drugs, huge problem.

00:15:38.360 And just talking to people that have been in the position of training,

00:15:42.440 what I've been told is that a lot of the soldiers they're training just don't seem all that interesting.

00:15:47.340 Radical religiously based guerrilla armies tend to do pretty well against organizations that don't have a great hierarchical structure, for sure.

00:15:56.480 No question about that.

00:15:57.560 The question is to whether they just sort of gave up and ran away.

00:16:00.260 When you structure an entire military around a certain style of warfare,

00:16:03.180 and then you just remove that style of warfare, and you say we're leaving?

00:16:05.980 I agree with this, but the second point is also very important,

00:16:09.160 which is the one thing that they understand in cultures like this is power dynamics.

00:16:14.120 And it's not short-term power dynamics.

00:16:16.300 It's long-term power dynamics.

00:16:18.600 People who I know who were there in 2015 when Barack Obama first gave his we're leaving speech

00:16:23.280 said that almost to the day, within 24 hours, all of the green on blue, the friendly fire attacks started happening.

00:16:31.980 Immediately, all the village elders in any rural part of Afghanistan stopped cooperating with the United States military.

00:16:38.340 And when they would say, we've given you money, we've been fighting on your behalf for years,

00:16:43.480 why now? You won't even talk to us, you won't take our money, you won't say anything.

00:16:46.700 Some of the soldiers have started shooting at us. Why?

00:16:50.080 And the Afghan answer was, because you're leaving. 0.94

00:16:54.100 And when you are gone, it is only a matter of time before the long-term power dynamics

00:16:58.500 of Iran on our border, of Pakistan on our border.

00:17:02.180 There's no question where this goes once you're gone.

00:17:04.440 And if you're not going to be the power center, the people who are going to be the power center 0.99

00:17:09.220 are people who will chop our heads off and rape our daughters. 1.00

00:17:12.240 Like, you can't leave us in a position of a power vacuum that we cannot ourselves fill. 0.99

00:17:19.880 The Afghan army, of course, it's not a westernized army.

00:17:23.600 Of course, it's not a sophisticated army.

00:17:25.260 Of course, it's not a tremendously lethal army, apart from American close air support,

00:17:30.220 American logistics, American intelligence, which is a huge part of it.

00:17:34.640 Of course, that's all true.

00:17:36.400 Since it's true, since we're not talking about people who only kill combatants,

00:17:41.100 since if you're an Afghan soldier fighting the Taliban and your village falls, 1.00

00:17:45.260 you may be fine, but they're going to rape your daughters and kill your sons. 1.00

00:17:49.260 In that situation, you've left them very little. 0.99

00:17:51.740 Well, given the realities of the society in which they live, you've given them very few options.

00:17:56.020 The point that they're a mercenary force is fair enough, but it is part of the failure of our strategy there.

00:18:03.640 It's not the Afghani army's failure.

00:18:06.040 And I don't mean, listen, I'm not a big fan of the Afghan culture, 1.00

00:18:09.460 but still, we created a mercenary force because they had to be loyal to us instead of loyal to what they have been loyal to.

00:18:17.340 It's their tribal identity.

00:18:19.720 Right, and there is no real national identity in Afghanistan.

00:18:22.680 Right, which brings us to the sort of geostrategic point, which is where I think the real conversation lies,

00:18:27.040 which is, what were we doing there?

00:18:28.520 And I think there are points of agreement here, too.

00:18:29.860 Well, let's get back to why we were there, what were we doing there, because that's a pretty big question.

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00:20:06.020 Ben, you were just about to open a can of wine.

00:20:08.120 I was.

00:20:08.700 So on the geostrategic point, I feel like there's places where we're all going to agree here, too.

00:20:11.800 And that is, number one, it's not the job of the United States to build democracies out of places that are not right for democracy.

00:20:17.580 Like, I think we're all on the same page there.

00:20:19.420 And I think that if you are going to seek to build regime stability, that is a very, very long-term process.

00:20:25.340 I mean, we currently have 26,000 troops in South Korea still.

00:20:27.840 And were we to pull our troops, they would immediately be, that country would immediately be under threat from North Korea and China sponsoring it. 0.95

00:20:33.240 We still have some 30, 34,000 troops, 32,000 troops in Japan.

00:20:38.460 We still have some 10,000 troops in Italy so that we can have air power over northern Africa.

00:20:43.960 In fact, by the time we left Afghanistan, the number of troops that we had on the ground officially was 2,500.

00:20:48.980 That ranked at number nine in places on Earth where we had troops.

00:20:52.040 So the question is, what exactly were we there for?

00:20:54.380 And if the answer, which I think we all agree, was to kill terrorists and make sure this doesn't become another haven for terrorists,

00:21:00.000 then the question becomes, so what was the dramatic urgency in pulling out,

00:21:04.500 considering that we had been experiencing year on year fewer than 20 combat casualties and zero since February of 2020?

00:21:09.900 Well, I think the question of why we were there, we all might agree on why we would like to have been there or what we wish the reason were.

00:21:17.880 But I don't think that America was clear on that because the argument that we were given in the early days of that war was,

00:21:23.440 we're going in there to kill Osama bin Laden and the people who were harboring the terrorists that took down the towers.

00:21:28.920 Then in 2005, at George Bush's second inaugural, the mission was redefined.

00:21:32.840 That was the freedom speech, the word liberty or freedom or liberal was used 49 times in that speech.

00:21:39.700 And he made an audacious claim, and I think a ridiculous claim, which is that tyranny anywhere on Earth is an existential threat to the American homeland.

00:21:50.040 This was a radical extreme of ways that we've thought of adventurism and spreading our ideas abroad.

00:21:56.760 It was obviously untrue, by the way, because not only do we tolerate certain authoritarian regimes,

00:22:01.560 we've actually installed many authoritarian regimes that have never threatened us with so much as an insulting look.

00:22:07.080 This redefines the mission as building not only a Madisonian democracy in Afghanistan, but talk about a forever war. 0.65

00:22:14.680 Now, he said, we will abolish tyranny on Earth, which so long as man's nature has fallen,

00:22:20.580 I don't think is going to happen and it will commit us to war forever.

00:22:23.540 So he redefined that.

00:22:24.900 Then I think the American people got pretty sick of that in the years that followed.

00:22:28.700 Barack Obama famously campaigned actually to beef up troops in Afghanistan and to take troops out of Iraq to sort of restart the war there.

00:22:35.700 But then he wanted to pull the troops out there as well.

00:22:37.680 Then the mission Donald Trump runs on pulling the troops home, which was popular in both parties at the time.

00:22:42.640 Then Joe Biden obviously maintains that view.

00:22:46.360 Now we're told we have to stay there for the Afghan women who suffer a terrible plight.

00:22:50.100 Nobody is denying that.

00:22:51.040 But women suffer a terrible plight in Pakistan as well. 0.60

00:22:53.880 This is not fair.

00:22:55.840 Saying that women suffer in other parts of the world is true enough. 1.00

00:22:59.320 The women suffering today in Afghanistan are suffering specifically because of an action that we've taken to withdraw our troops.

00:23:06.100 I think that's off his point, though.

00:23:07.680 His point, which is really fair, is that we live in a place where people vote.

00:23:13.020 And part of running a war is political.

00:23:15.840 You are dealing with people who have other things to do, like raise their children, do their jobs,

00:23:19.560 and you have to be able to convince them that you're there for a reason.

00:23:22.160 And the reason in Afghanistan has repeatedly changed.

00:23:25.580 It has grown.

00:23:26.300 It's shrunk.

00:23:27.160 It's been different than it was when we first went in there.

00:23:30.080 And then to turn to the people and say, how dare you abandon this mission?

00:23:34.520 So I know what the mission was.

00:23:35.720 First of all, I agree with the political failures of our leadership class and of the media in redefining the mission.

00:23:40.760 I mean, again, I think we all mainly agree on the idea that we didn't go into Afghanistan to create a thriving democracy and originally protect women.

00:23:48.100 That was a good byproduct of the fact that wherever the United States boot steps, things tend to get better.

00:23:51.900 But that wasn't the original mission.

00:23:53.080 We didn't go in there because we were going to free women. 0.99

00:23:54.940 We freed women as a consequence of going in there. 1.00

00:23:57.160 Right.

00:23:57.320 So and as Joe Biden correctly, but oddly in non sequitur fashion pointed out, if the attack had been launched from Yemen, we wouldn't have been in Afghanistan freeing women.

00:24:05.540 Of course, that's true.

00:24:06.240 So the problem is this, whether or not the American people are properly informed about what they think the mission is, the rest of life exists.

00:24:16.680 Just because we create a vacuum does not mean that no one is going to fill it.

00:24:20.280 Just because people in the United States and in our leadership class misunderstand what the mission is does not mean that when we remove troops, that does not become a terror hotbed again.

00:24:28.500 And China doesn't take advantage of that terror hotbed to grab, for example, all of the $85 billion in military technology we just left there, including high tech crap, 0.91

00:24:35.460 including drone technology, which they're going to immediately reverse engineer.

00:24:38.980 None of that means that China doesn't look at what we just did to the Afghans and say, OK, well, Taiwan's right there. 0.73

00:24:44.400 And all we have to do is move right across this straight and you ain't going to do nothing.

00:24:48.080 Right.

00:24:48.280 I mean, it doesn't take much of a mind to discover this.

00:24:51.260 All the terrorist groups on Earth look at this and they think that we are weak.

00:24:54.060 So regardless of how this was pitched, and this is my problem with how the Afghan war has been pitched, I think, for the past several years,

00:25:01.440 the first pitch that was wrong was this is about a war for establishing democracy in Afghanistan.

00:25:06.740 You're right. 1.00

00:25:07.620 Then there was a second pitch and it was equally stupid. 0.99

00:25:10.120 And the pitch was the war of 2017 is exactly the same as the war of 2010, which is a lie. 0.99

00:25:14.620 It is not true.

00:25:15.320 The United States had taken down its true presence in Afghanistan from six figures down to about 10,000.

00:25:19.500 By the time Trump left office, down to 2,500.

00:25:21.420 And so when people said this is an endless war and I said, what war do you have 2,500 people stationed in a place with zero casualties for 18 months?

00:25:28.920 You are safer.

00:25:29.560 You were safer up until Barack, until Joe Biden took office.

00:25:33.240 You were safer being a soldier in Afghanistan than you were being a cop in Chicago.

00:25:36.960 And it wasn't particularly close.

00:25:38.820 OK, that the notion that this was an endless war that had to end right now, it had to end right now.

00:25:43.080 And if we don't end it right now, we're going to be putting thousands of troops back in.

00:25:45.440 It is a lie.

00:25:46.120 It is untrue.

00:25:46.780 We have, again, we've been losing on average before the supposed wonderful deal that Trump made with the Taliban, which I opposed.

00:25:53.480 And I was clear about this.

00:25:54.260 When Trump was in office, I'm perfectly consistent on this.

00:25:56.660 Before that deal, we were losing 10, 12 guys a year.

00:25:59.580 That is horrible.

00:26:00.920 Every soldier lost is terrible.

00:26:02.660 That does not constitute a full-scale war.

00:26:04.300 A full-scale war is what was happening in the beginning of the war.

00:26:06.080 We were losing hundreds of guys per year, thousands of guys in some cases.

00:26:09.020 But I think you have to grant, I agree with your point on the losses and the difference in the nature of the war.

00:26:13.180 But it would still be endless.

00:26:15.780 And that is what the Americans...

00:26:17.460 So should we remove all of our troops from South Korea?

00:26:19.020 Is that an endless war?

00:26:19.780 Well, I mean, there is an active civil war going on right now in Afghanistan while our troops were there.

00:26:24.580 And as we learned today, or as many people learned...

00:26:26.620 The civil war in Afghanistan is between the people we went there to depose and the people who we've been supporting for the last 20 years.

00:26:32.760 It's also between ISIS, right? 0.70

00:26:34.600 As Joe Biden actually rightly said, the Taliban are bad guys. 1.00

00:26:39.200 But right now, they are our allies against ISIS in this particular battle that we had to deal with today.

00:26:44.400 So all I'm saying is it's complicated.

00:26:46.360 It's not just the Taliban versus the good guy Afghans and us.

00:26:49.360 It's ISIS. 0.54

00:26:50.640 It's other Islamic groups.

00:26:52.420 It's an unaffiliated group, right?

00:26:53.960 But our goal was not to...

00:26:55.700 But our goal was to destroy all of those associated terror groups that you just mentioned.

00:27:00.220 They do have a common interest against us.

00:27:02.060 Now, the Taliban have a common interest to a certain extent. 0.64

00:27:05.280 To a certain extent.

00:27:05.920 By the way, I'm still not convinced that the Taliban didn't let these guys through to bomb the entry point. 0.87

00:27:10.660 I mean, even the head of CENTCOM said that today.

00:27:13.320 He was asked directly, did the Taliban just let these people through?

00:27:15.740 They were the ones screening everybody at the outpost.

00:27:17.540 But I think this is the bigger political problem here.

00:27:20.100 So, sure, you say, well, we have endless troop presence in Korea or...

00:27:23.780 Literally everywhere.

00:27:24.480 ...or wherever.

00:27:24.840 We have troops in dozens and dozens and dozens of...

00:27:26.980 Sure.

00:27:27.000 And I do think they're a bit different than Afghanistan, but I grant the point entirely... 1.00

00:27:30.000 We have 900 troops on the ground in Syria.

00:27:30.760 But I think this is...

00:27:32.280 And I think the same people who want to pull out of Afghanistan want to pull out of Syria.

00:27:35.200 My point is this.

00:27:36.920 Our founding fathers warned repeatedly against continual warfare.

00:27:42.340 James Madison said, there's no greater threat to liberty than continual warfare.

00:27:46.480 Washington, Jefferson reiterates Washington, and many other founding fathers too.

00:27:50.700 And you might say, well, things are different now than they were then.

00:27:53.400 Fair enough.

00:27:54.420 My point is this, and it's to the political point.

00:27:57.180 The American people are looking at this war in Afghanistan.

00:27:59.680 They're not seeing any particular reason to stay there.

00:28:02.660 They're even looking at the argument that you have to prevent another 9-11 and saying, yes,

00:28:06.360 Saudi nationals were welcomed into Afghanistan, but they then came to America.

00:28:09.560 They trained in America.

00:28:10.580 They were welcomed onto airplanes with tools that were not even illegal to bring on airplanes

00:28:15.120 at the time.

00:28:15.860 Why do we have a Department of Homeland Security?

00:28:17.620 Why can't we deal with these things without having an on-the-ground presence in Afghanistan?

00:28:21.620 And all I'm saying is whether that is true or not, they have the founding fathers on

00:28:26.200 their side, and so I think we need to answer that.

00:28:28.180 They don't.

00:28:29.420 The founding fathers went and killed all the Barbary pirates. 0.67

00:28:31.460 No, no, no.

00:28:32.480 Knowles is right about this part.

00:28:33.700 The thing is, this was before the invention of the airplane.

00:28:36.280 The world was a very different place.

00:28:37.680 They were talking about a country that was protected by two oceans, and they really did

00:28:41.240 if you take this...

00:28:41.620 That's why I use the example of the Barbary pirates.

00:28:43.040 But still, the Barbary pirates were a threat to our trade and our commerce.

00:28:48.840 There is a tradition in America of isolationism, and as far as I'm concerned, I would be okay

00:28:55.900 with either being an isolationist nation or being an imperial nation, but I can't stand

00:29:00.420 this doing both.

00:29:01.260 I cannot stand the promises.

00:29:02.760 I can't stand the changing motivations.

00:29:05.880 I cannot stand an uninformed public, a public who doesn't know.

00:29:09.580 Rightly, rightly, they do not know who we are.

00:29:11.920 They do not know what kind of country we're supposed to be in the world.

00:29:17.160 Personally, I think that empire is unavoidable, and I think the Chinese are about to prove 1.00

00:29:22.600 this to us by taking Taiwan, and then we're going to have a much easier time defining who

00:29:26.940 we are.

00:29:27.500 But just remember, just remember that these wars were never paid for.

00:29:31.620 When George W. Bush was asked by the leftist press, what sacrifices are you demanding of

00:29:36.140 America, his answer was essentially, oh, we don't have to sacrifice to pay for a war.

00:29:39.440 Well, no, wars are expensive.

00:29:40.580 You do have to pay for them.

00:29:41.920 We never paid for this war in the same way we never pay for the kinds of things that

00:29:45.160 the Democrats buy at home.

00:29:46.660 We never paid for anything.

00:29:47.360 So we never paid for anything.

00:29:48.560 So the question becomes, where are we going to put our treasure?

00:29:53.680 And I think that that's the argument that we have.

00:29:55.400 And the problem that we have is the Democrats know.

00:29:58.600 They know where they want to put our treasure.

00:30:00.520 And we, on the Republican side or the conservative side, are really confused about this.

00:30:04.980 I'm really having an argument about this that I think we have to settle before the next

00:30:10.360 presidential election.

00:30:11.920 We live in a time of declining liberty and ascendant authoritarianism.

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00:31:26.200 A couple of points here.

00:31:27.260 First of all, on this idea that Afghanistan turns into a hotbed of terror if we're not there.

00:31:31.520 Well, I don't find that terribly persuasive because the entire Middle East, much of Africa, 0.99

00:31:37.680 I mean, there are many places that become hotbeds of terror, currently are.

00:31:41.240 So are we supposed to invade and occupy all of those places?

00:31:44.280 I would also say...

00:31:44.920 Well, you have to...

00:31:45.420 I'm going to...

00:31:46.140 Let me...

00:31:46.860 What are the...

00:31:47.480 No, no, no.

00:31:47.960 I'll let you...

00:31:48.920 Okay.

00:31:49.700 This argument of bad things happen everywhere, are we supposed to go invade and occupy those

00:31:53.620 places, is revisionist.

00:31:55.040 No one's making an argument here that we need to go invade Afghanistan and occupy it. 0.97

00:31:58.520 We went to Afghanistan and we did occupy it. 1.00

00:32:03.520 It's the equivalent of saying, you know, I shouldn't have had sex with Maggie Johnson

00:32:08.980 back in junior year, and so therefore, now on my child's 10th birthday, I'm going to walk

00:32:15.940 away from my child and Maggie, whom I married, and the mortgage which we took out together,

00:32:20.320 because I've realized I never should have gone there.

00:32:21.940 And when you say, hey, but no, no, no.

00:32:23.440 Didn't you marry Afghanistan? 0.65

00:32:24.300 You actually went there.

00:32:25.320 You actually did something.

00:32:26.220 There are consequences.

00:32:26.900 That goes to my next point.

00:32:29.040 And actually, that analogy, I think, is important, because I don't...

00:32:33.540 In a marriage, you make an undying, eternal commitment to a person at an altar before God.

00:32:39.240 I don't believe that the United States of America has made that kind of commitment to

00:32:42.920 any foreign nation, or can.

00:32:44.460 And in fact, if any government, if any politician tries to make that kind of commitment to another

00:32:49.500 foreign nation, it's not legitimate, and there's no reason why it should be respected. 1.00

00:32:52.480 I mean, you talk about...

00:32:53.980 In an abortion million people don't get killed and raped.

00:32:55.680 Well, but you talk about, well, we're in South Korea.

00:32:57.900 We're in Japan.

00:32:59.200 Japan and Germany and Italy.

00:33:00.300 Yeah, we're in all these places.

00:33:01.220 Well, there's an obvious response to that is, maybe we shouldn't be there either.

00:33:05.180 I mean, it's their country.

00:33:06.280 The idea...

00:33:06.840 So, can I take that for a second?

00:33:08.120 I just want to ask you a question on that specific point.

00:33:09.980 So, it's 1953, we sign the...

00:33:13.540 I mean, since we're doing revisionist history now, it's 1953, we sign the armistice agreement

00:33:18.520 off on the 49th parallel in Korea, and we say, now you're president of the United States.

00:33:24.620 Is the answer, okay, we're done, out, we have no interest here?

00:33:28.700 Because that is how you lose Cold Wars. 0.76

00:33:30.400 Yeah, no, but it's not 1953 I'm talking about in the year 2020.

00:33:33.680 I know, and I'm talking about 2021.

00:33:35.040 Do you sign an agreement to say the Taliban gets to take over this country and bring in

00:33:37.940 exactly the same people who did 9-11, which is exactly what's happening right now?

00:33:40.800 Yeah, and in 2021, I would take our troops out of Afghanistan. 0.98

00:33:44.620 I would do it a lot different than Joe Biden did.

00:33:46.220 I wouldn't shut down our airports.

00:33:46.540 What strategic interest is served by pulling our troops from Afghanistan?

00:33:50.760 Well, first of all, it's not only a strategic interest.

00:33:53.540 But what is the strategic interest?

00:33:54.960 There's two points here, okay?

00:33:57.180 And this is a strategic point, I guess, as well.

00:33:58.960 The idea that the United States of America should be perpetually holding nations, foreign 0.99

00:34:06.540 nations, into existence, which cannot exist on their own without our help.

00:34:11.700 I just reject that strategically, and I reject it philosophically.

00:34:16.340 And I just don't think that that should be our role unless, as Drew says, we're going to

00:34:22.160 embrace it and say, you know what?

00:34:23.580 We are an empire, and this is what we do.

00:34:25.980 We build empires.

00:34:26.680 We take over, you know what?

00:34:27.800 We're going to take over Afghanistan. 1.00

00:34:28.960 It's ours now.

00:34:29.640 It's our property.

00:34:30.620 And if that's the argument, then, okay, let's make that argument.

00:34:33.000 But then you've got to deal with the fact.

00:34:33.860 But our empire is a uniquely American empire.

00:34:36.560 So West Germany could not have survived as a nation if America hadn't left its troops

00:34:41.480 there.

00:34:41.880 It would have fallen to the Soviet Union in minutes if the Americans had pulled out.

00:34:46.020 We think that, like, Berlin is in West Germany, by the way.

00:34:49.860 It's in East Germany.

00:34:50.920 And we had, you know, we were cut off from access.

00:34:53.380 We flew the Berlin airlifts to keep that city free.

00:34:58.160 And it's not just that if we had left the next day, if we had left five years later,

00:35:02.020 if we had left 10 years later, if we had left 20 years later.

00:35:04.880 Similarly, back to the South Korea example, it took, first of all, a world war to drive

00:35:10.280 the Japanese empire out of South Korea.

00:35:12.600 Then a Korean war to keep the North and the Chinese and Russians from taking South Korea.

00:35:17.020 33,000 American dead just in that war.

00:35:19.720 And then occupation by our troops, not in the old imperial sense, because we didn't run

00:35:24.120 their government, just like we didn't in Afghanistan.

00:35:26.360 But in this uniquely American way, where our troops provide the opportunity for that nation

00:35:31.780 to form.

00:35:32.540 We had to do that for 42 years before South Korea became a functioning democracy.

00:35:38.840 And after they became a functioning democracy, we've continued to have our troops there for

00:35:43.080 35 more years.

00:35:44.300 So that that democracy could learn to thrive.

00:35:47.220 Do you think that it is America's duty to actually perpetually hold other countries into 0.89

00:35:55.000 existence, to keep them in existence?

00:35:56.820 Is that how it works?

00:35:57.780 If we're the ones who broke the country, in the case of Afghanistan, whatever the political 0.93

00:36:02.620 argument for why we went there, we went.

00:36:05.340 Should we have stayed for a week and then left?

00:36:07.600 That's a conversation that we can prescriptively apply some of those lessons to future problems,

00:36:13.240 which you can't retroact.

00:36:14.040 Would you really say we broke Afghanistan?

00:36:15.960 It wasn't exactly a thriving place when we got in.

00:36:17.600 It was not a thriving place.

00:36:18.800 But the problems faced by the current, listen, the median age in Afghanistan is like 18 years.

00:36:23.780 We've been there 20.

00:36:24.840 The people in especially urban Kabul, the people in these cities that are falling right 0.57

00:36:29.140 now, they're not like the guys who were there when we went in.

00:36:32.500 This isn't people who ever lived under the Taliban.

00:36:34.900 This isn't people, this isn't women. 1.00

00:36:36.300 Hold on.

00:36:36.780 This isn't women who ever were burqa. 0.98

00:36:38.100 These arguments, these arguments do not, the reason these arguments don't hold water is

00:36:41.760 because they're all really about the Cold War.

00:36:44.040 And the Cold War was in a fight between two and five.

00:36:46.340 No, my argument is about Afghanistan.

00:36:47.740 No, no, no.

00:36:48.320 Wait a minute.

00:36:48.600 Hold on.

00:36:48.720 But you're applying cold war logic to Afghanistan.

00:36:52.300 We went into Afghanistan.

00:36:53.660 Wherever you think we should have gotten out.

00:36:54.640 No, no, no.

00:36:54.740 That's the second part of your argument.

00:36:55.500 Wherever you think we should have gotten out.

00:36:56.680 That's the second part of your argument.

00:36:57.440 We held it for 20 years.

00:36:59.060 We held it for 20 years.

00:37:00.400 And now in leaving, we are the cause of the terrible things that are happening there right now.

00:37:04.760 I don't agree with this at all.

00:37:06.500 Knowles is right about this.

00:37:07.780 The place is a mess.

00:37:08.880 It's going to be a mess unless we stay.

00:37:10.980 And it was a mess before we got there.

00:37:12.340 Yes, it was a mess before we got there, but we went.

00:37:15.160 The thing about Germany, the thing about Italy is all of these places were places we occupied 0.79

00:37:18.880 to keep the Soviets and the Chinese out. 1.00

00:37:21.460 Right.

00:37:21.680 And the thing is, no, what I'm saying is we are about to enter a new Cold War.

00:37:27.940 I think there's no question about it.

00:37:29.480 We're already halfway in it.

00:37:31.560 However, however, the Taliban never, and even Islamism,

00:37:36.740 never constituted the existential threat to our way of life

00:37:40.420 that we basically sold it as having.

00:37:42.700 And that's the key thing here.

00:37:44.100 That's the key difference.

00:37:45.100 And so, in other words, if now...

00:37:46.600 You're going back 20 years and saying that the arguments were wrong.

00:37:49.020 I'm saying right now, today, as we speak, an actual thing is occurring.

00:37:53.080 I'm sorry.

00:37:53.880 We do not have a responsibility to every country.

00:37:56.820 Even if this thing we broke it, we fix it.

00:37:58.060 I didn't say we have a responsibility to every country.

00:38:00.120 We have a responsibility to the country we are in and have occupied for the last 20 years.

00:38:04.160 Let's put aside for a second the quote-unquote...

00:38:05.940 We have a responsibility to Puerto Rico.

00:38:08.100 That doesn't mean that we also have a responsibility to Costa Rica.

00:38:11.560 Puerto Rico is our protectorate.

00:38:12.960 No, no, I don't agree with this.

00:38:14.180 Well, I mean, here's the real...

00:38:16.440 So, hold on.

00:38:17.420 So, we're not responsible.

00:38:18.640 This is a legitimate question.

00:38:19.840 We're not responsible for what's happening right now?

00:38:21.860 Well, wait a minute.

00:38:22.560 Wait a minute.

00:38:22.960 So much of what's happening...

00:38:24.180 This is what's a little confusing about the conversation.

00:38:26.260 So much of what's happening is a matter of this incredible...

00:38:30.140 I mean, this is criminal incompetence we're talking about.

00:38:32.200 This is not just like, ooh, I left my shirt at home.

00:38:34.940 You know, I forgot to bring my tie to work.

00:38:36.500 This is an actual...

00:38:37.440 Because Biden's argument is it had to happen like this.

00:38:39.960 Yeah, that's completely insane.

00:38:42.280 So, there are a few things that I think were also conflating.

00:38:45.580 One is the morality of the situation, whether we owe it to the people of Afghanistan to stay 1.00

00:38:49.540 there forever because they're the people of Afghanistan and they came to rely upon us.

00:38:53.620 And I think there, there's an argument to say that the answer is no, not in perpetuity.

00:38:57.520 We're still America.

00:38:58.300 We have our own interests.

00:38:58.960 Then, there's the question that I actually want to ask, which is, why is it in our interest

00:39:03.480 to turn this back over to the Taliban, have it be a terrorist hotbed, incentivize China 0.93

00:39:07.220 to go and get all the rare earths minerals, incentivize China to invade Taiwan, and why

00:39:11.260 is all of that worth it to take 2,500 troops out of a position where no one was dying?

00:39:15.520 That's the thing nobody seems to be able to answer.

00:39:17.320 I agree with that.

00:39:17.340 We're not talking about 100,000 troops there.

00:39:19.780 We're not talking about 10s of that.

00:39:21.040 So, Joe Biden's excuse for this is that if we didn't, then tomorrow there'd be a vast wall

00:39:25.580 of Taliban fighters coming over that wall.

00:39:27.460 There is zero evidence of this.

00:39:29.160 None.

00:39:29.800 Okay?

00:39:30.100 We'd had a stasis situation in Afghanistan, effectively, since 2014.

00:39:34.540 That's right.

00:39:34.740 Pretty much nothing had changed.

00:39:35.900 So, what we are talking about when we talk about ending endless wars, I think that that,

00:39:39.020 I think that's a bumper sticker slogan because it does not count as an endless war when

00:39:41.860 you station a baseline force of 2,500 people there with zero casualties for a year and a

00:39:46.180 half.

00:39:46.320 Is there any reason to think that that would maintain, though, given that Afghanistan is not

00:39:50.340 South Korea?

00:39:51.140 It has maintained for the last, it's maintained for the last six to seven years.

00:39:53.800 I think that there is, I think that there is very little evidence that the Taliban were

00:39:57.620 on the verge of radically overrunning the country.

00:39:59.640 I've yet to see Joe Biden present any of that intelligence evidence.

00:40:02.000 Do you think if we stayed exactly as we were 10 years from now, do you think we've now

00:40:06.920 gone 16 years without, without it?

00:40:09.840 I think that what, I think what you would see is what we have typically seen in situations

00:40:12.760 like this.

00:40:13.220 When it gets a little hotter, we put in a few more troops.

00:40:14.920 When it gets a little colder, we take out a lot more troops.

00:40:16.540 I don't think there's a situation in Afghanistan where we're dumping another 100,000 troops in

00:40:19.980 there because we had forces on the ground constantly, constantly degrading the Taliban.

00:40:25.220 Because the Afghan army, at the cost of thousands and thousands of lives a year, were going and

00:40:31.040 killing the Taliban.

00:40:31.540 So my question, again, is not, we can go back to the fundamental principles of, you know,

00:40:35.400 when do we owe things to people?

00:40:36.980 I think also, but I think that, you know, Drew, you mentioned the Cold War.

00:40:40.640 The world is filled with threats on a consistent basis.

00:40:42.700 This is where you and I agree.

00:40:44.060 This is where you and I agree.

00:40:44.700 Notion that the Defense Department exists mainly as a make-work program for people to 0.91

00:40:48.380 sit on a base in Alabama is silly.

00:40:50.300 Okay, this has become the Democratic talking point, which is that our soldiers should never

00:40:53.540 be put in the line of combat in favor of American interests unless those interests are existential

00:40:57.820 to the United States.

00:40:58.880 This has never been the perspective of any nation that has been worth its salt.

00:41:02.020 Well, this is the part where you and I agree.

00:41:03.360 I mean, this is the thing.

00:41:04.440 And what I'm saying is, it seems like a fairly cheap deal to me to have been stationing 2,500

00:41:10.700 troops in country, providing air support, close air support with some military contractors

00:41:16.160 at the cost of like 0.5% of the United States budget every year to keep the Taliban from taking 0.99

00:41:22.080 back over the country and re-bringing in Al-Qaeda and re-bringing in ISIS and turning, 0.63

00:41:26.640 I mean, you know how much money we had to spend and how many troops we had to put back

00:41:29.160 into Iraq just to quell ISIS?

00:41:30.840 And I remember you being in favor of that.

00:41:32.340 This is all based on the assumption that the situation right now would maintain in this

00:41:37.260 tribalistic hellhole country in the middle of a civil war between all these various different 1.00

00:41:41.780 factions.

00:41:42.180 I just, I don't think, first of all, there's any reason to think that that's true.

00:41:45.080 We're going through six to seven years in the grand scheme of history is nothing at all.

00:41:48.460 So we're going through a period of relative-

00:41:50.380 20 years in the grand scheme of history is hardly anything at all.

00:41:53.480 Agreed.

00:41:53.900 But so they're going through a period of relative calm, if we can call it that, in Afghanistan.

00:41:58.160 I don't think there's any reason to think that it would maintain that way.

00:42:00.600 And there was always this threat when you send our guys over to Afghanistan.

00:42:04.000 They're still at least at a serious threat of being killed in service to this relatively-

00:42:09.320 No, they really were not.

00:42:10.840 They really were not.

00:42:11.700 You have 2,500 troops there and zero combat deaths since February of 2020.

00:42:15.200 Well, but that-

00:42:16.000 Seven years prior.

00:42:16.780 But I'm saying that could change at any moment.

00:42:18.520 There's no reason to think that could-

00:42:19.520 That's true.

00:42:19.740 At any moment.

00:42:20.040 Matt, that's true.

00:42:20.480 That's true literally anywhere on Earth.

00:42:22.200 That's true literally anywhere on Earth.

00:42:23.620 No.

00:42:23.780 I don't think it'll turn into a hot fan.

00:42:26.540 Yeah, that's not true in Japan.

00:42:27.940 I mean, Japan, I think we-

00:42:29.720 If China decides to get militaristic with Japan and they have fired some missiles into the

00:42:32.400 Sea of Japan, you could get militaristic pretty there.

00:42:34.680 And everyone knows in South Korea is the biggest hot spot, right?

00:42:37.200 We've got 26,000 troops there as a trip wire.

00:42:39.200 But you would agree that Japan and Germany are not nearly as volatile as Afghanistan.

00:42:45.020 Right.

00:42:45.180 Yes.

00:42:45.500 And the volatility is the reason to keep the American presence.

00:42:48.140 The volatility is the reason to have-

00:42:50.560 When we invaded Afghanistan, we had to use hand-drawn Russian-era maps.

00:42:54.500 We had no intelligence.

00:42:55.480 We knew nothing about Afghanistan.

00:42:57.060 We knew very little about border Pakistan.

00:42:59.480 We had very little eyes into Iran.

00:43:02.680 Pakistan, by the way, a nuclear power with 75 nuclear weapons, who already their intelligence

00:43:08.300 service for this whole time has been sympathetic to the Taliban.

00:43:12.060 And now-

00:43:12.400 And to the United States.

00:43:13.020 And now they have ejected all Americans since Biden's withdrawal in the last two weeks.

00:43:17.040 Are you guys making two different arguments?

00:43:18.120 Because you're saying, on one hand, we should stay there because it's peaceful and nobody's

00:43:20.740 dying.

00:43:20.980 On the other hand, we should stay there because it's volatile.

00:43:23.580 I'm saying that America-

00:43:24.460 We're making the same argument.

00:43:25.000 We're keeping a lid on it.

00:43:26.060 And we were keeping a lid on it. 0.99

00:43:27.140 And now you remove the lid and now you get a shit show. 0.99

00:43:28.920 And it's in America's strategic interest to have- 1.00

00:43:31.380 Not have a shit show there. 1.00

00:43:32.240 Not have a shit show there. 1.00

00:43:32.660 But this goes back to the political failure. 0.99

00:43:35.100 And it's a political failure that has gone on since the Bush administration.

00:43:38.740 You can't say to people, we're going in there to get bin Laden.

00:43:42.240 I mean, this is still a democracy of some sort.

00:43:44.640 You can't say, we're going in there to get bin Laden.

00:43:46.260 Oh, no, we're going in there to build a civilized country.

00:43:51.140 Oh, no, we're going in there because we need Bagram in order to fight the Chinese interests. 0.99

00:43:57.340 No, you can't do that and succeed unless, unless we understand ourselves to be in a conflict

00:44:04.940 of great powers.

00:44:06.040 And this is where you and I agree.

00:44:07.420 I think this great, the conflict of great powers is inevitable.

00:44:10.480 And we should start-

00:44:11.260 It's here. We're already in a conflict of great powers.

00:44:12.100 It's always here. It's always here.

00:44:13.620 Correct.

00:44:14.160 And we should start to talk like that.

00:44:16.980 I never want to fight a selfless war ever again.

00:44:20.140 I never want to hear, you broke it, you fix it ever again.

00:44:22.900 I want to be, when my fellow Americans send their sons and daughters into harm's way,

00:44:28.760 I want to know that they are there for this country and for our interests.

00:44:33.620 And part of our interests is fending off China. 0.99

00:44:37.000 I wish most of our major corporations knew this. 0.89

00:44:39.880 I will say, you better have a damned compelling reason for pulling out 2,500 troops from a

00:44:44.860 place where they are the lid and they are the cork in the bottle, especially when that 0.98

00:44:48.700 is now going to subject 19 million women to rape.

00:44:51.120 You better have a very good reason and better not be a slogan like, no endless war.

00:44:54.600 That is not good enough.

00:44:55.480 You know, you guys keep saying these things, slogans, all of democratic politics are slogans.

00:45:01.640 Don't be a deconstructionist.

00:45:02.520 No, I'm not being a deconstructionist.

00:45:04.300 I'm talking about the reality of political...

00:45:06.900 I have a question.

00:45:08.160 When did this become about whether, like, just because the American people like a thing

00:45:12.280 does not mean that they are correct to like the thing.

00:45:14.460 But it doesn't have a right to set their nation's course, doesn't it?

00:45:17.460 I mean, I think they still...

00:45:18.460 I know that, especially for recent decades, there is this idea that...

00:45:23.140 On foreign policy, they 100% do not.

00:45:25.620 What's the last congressionally approved war?

00:45:27.400 What's the last congressionally approved war?

00:45:29.200 Well, this wasn't a war.

00:45:30.520 I mean, that's the other problem.

00:45:31.300 Was this a war?

00:45:31.940 Was this an occupation?

00:45:32.820 I understand.

00:45:34.180 Michael, if we're talking about the realities on the ground, when was the last time the

00:45:36.700 American people approved a war?

00:45:37.860 But this gets to Jeremy's point.

00:45:39.720 I actually think Jeremy made a very good point here, which is when you said, yes, America

00:45:43.600 is an empire, but it's a special kind of empire.

00:45:45.440 And I jokingly, but not so jokingly, said, yeah, it's special because we don't admit

00:45:49.380 that we're an empire.

00:45:50.060 And the reason that we don't admit it, by the way, is because our nation is founded not

00:45:55.740 to be an empire, and all of our most revered founding fathers said, don't do this, don't

00:45:59.940 have perpetual war, don't have entangling alliances, don't go overseas.

00:46:02.740 And then they proceeded to move directly from one coast all the way across to the other

00:46:06.000 coast, all the way down.

00:46:07.280 Fighting the whole way.

00:46:08.300 But they didn't occupy it as some imperial territory.

00:46:10.900 They would bring it into the nation. 0.94

00:46:11.880 Wait, wait, hold up.

00:46:12.480 They would annex it as an imperial territory?

00:46:13.920 No, these places were literally federal territories until they became states.

00:46:16.780 Until they became states.

00:46:17.800 Are we going to make Afghanistan a state?

00:46:19.100 I don't think so.

00:46:19.480 If you go to the...

00:46:20.540 Nobody's talking about making Afghanistan a state, but the notion that there was...

00:46:22.740 Hold on.

00:46:23.000 You're talking about empire and the...

00:46:24.160 So, wait, wait.

00:46:24.780 So you're saying that it is not imperialistic?

00:46:27.160 You're saying it's less imperialistic to make a thing a state?

00:46:29.980 Yes, by definition.

00:46:30.980 Then do.

00:46:31.220 Because it becomes a nation.

00:46:32.000 Yeah, because it's part of the nation.

00:46:33.340 But if you hold it as an...

00:46:34.260 Take a place over and you... 0.99

00:46:35.140 That's ridiculous. 0.97

00:46:36.260 I'm sorry. 0.94

00:46:36.480 It's ridiculous.

00:46:36.800 No, yeah. 0.91

00:46:37.120 The British Empire turned us into British citizens.

00:46:40.880 If you go to the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C., it says, we came to liberate, not to conquer.

00:46:47.980 And that's been basically our idea with all...

00:46:50.380 That's why our troops have been there for seven years.

00:46:51.740 With everywhere else.

00:46:52.620 Well, okay.

00:46:53.480 Then what Knowles is saying is right.

00:46:55.100 That the problem with our empire is we don't admit it's an empire.

00:46:58.000 Now, Ferguson makes this argument all the time.

00:47:01.140 And I think he's got a point.

00:47:02.440 And I think if you don't make the argument, if you don't tell the truth, the American people who still do vote for the president of the United States, who still is the guy who runs most of our foreign policy, are not going to be convinced.

00:47:13.800 And you can't accuse them of bumper sticker slogans when you're basically selling them a bumper sticker slogan themselves.

00:47:21.800 I still think just we're operating with this assumption that because the situation was a certain way, it's going to maintain that way.

00:47:28.480 And that denies the risk that our military was in over there.

00:47:32.980 I know that it's been a certain way for a few years, but I don't think we can do that.

00:47:36.240 I don't think it's fair to do because part of this is we're sending, you know, our sons and daughters are actually going over there.

00:47:42.280 And there is many of them have died in the last few years, not as many, but there's always that threat of something terrible happening to them, as we've just discovered.

00:47:49.300 And on top of that as well, I mean, there are other things, too, that we haven't brought up.

00:47:53.680 Like one of them, again, talking to the veterans that served over there, even in the peacetime, they'll talk about things like, you know, I don't know.

00:48:01.300 They come home traumatized because they have to overlook child rape, which is utterly widespread in the Afghan army and in the Afghan leadership.

00:48:08.820 And they're just over there and they have to just deal with it.

00:48:11.560 And they're told, not to mention the threat of being killed by our supposed allies.

00:48:15.620 But even that alone, like just that piece alone, to me, means send our guys home. 0.93

00:48:22.000 Because I'm not, they got to go over there and look the other way while children are raped left and right. 0.96

00:48:26.980 And it was as widespread as that.

00:48:29.460 Wait, hold on.

00:48:30.220 Are you going to be a realist or are you going to be a moralist here?

00:48:32.180 I mean, I need one or the other.

00:48:33.160 Well, you're answering the moralism with a sort of moralistic argument on the other side.

00:48:37.160 It's not a moral answer, though, to say X people do bad things.

00:48:42.300 Therefore, let's create a vacuum in which people who didn't do those things suffer a moral consequence.

00:48:46.700 I'm trying to bring it back around to focusing on the actual human beings, our countrymen and our service members who we are sending into these situations.

00:48:55.220 So when we say that there hasn't been a combat death in six or seven years, I think that overlooks.

00:48:59.560 In 18 months.

00:49:01.000 In 18 months.

00:49:01.800 And few for, you know, relatively.

00:49:03.480 There has been relatively few for six or seven years.

00:49:05.200 And when we say that, that overlooks some some realities that they were living with.

00:49:10.140 And I think we have to at least.

00:49:11.040 Right.

00:49:11.260 If we're going to have this conversation.

00:49:12.600 No, look, putting the military in places always is a question of cost versus benefit.

00:49:17.140 And so you're lining up costs.

00:49:19.740 And I'm saying that there were actual benefits.

00:49:22.100 And I think one of the things that's happened here is that what has happened in the wake of the United States pulling out is being labeled a potential cost to the United States when it is an actual cost to the United States.

00:49:32.920 Meaning that what Joe Biden has done is in the aftermath of us pulling out and as they bomb American troops and as the Taliban takes over the country again.

00:49:39.780 And as ISIS comes back in, as all kind of comes back in, my argument is pretty simple.

00:49:43.900 If we hadn't left, this wouldn't have happened.

00:49:45.960 And my evidence for this is that if we hadn't have left, this wouldn't have happened.

00:49:48.920 Joe Biden's argument is if we had stayed, this would have happened.

00:49:52.940 He's going to have to prove that case stronger than I think this would have happened because the counterfactual is already here.

00:49:59.520 It's happening.

00:50:00.300 It's happened.

00:50:01.100 The Taliban have taken over the country.

00:50:02.340 So I already know that if A, then B, he is saying if not A, then B, he's going to that doesn't exist.

00:50:08.860 That's an alternative history.

00:50:09.940 And the last data point that I had was that it wasn't happening until we pulled out the troops.

00:50:13.640 So unless he can show me, which he has not done, extremely compelling data that leaving 2,500 troops in place was going to result in this straw man argument where we have 50,000 troops back in there fighting close hand to hand combat in Mazar-i-Sharif.

00:50:26.440 I'm going to need some actual evidence of that, not some bullshit from Joe Biden to justify the fact that he wanted to pull out in 2010. 1.00

00:50:31.200 And can't get his head out of his ass. 0.99

00:50:32.820 This is also why I don't want any more selfless wars. 1.00

00:50:35.400 I don't want any more selfless wars.

00:50:37.340 Okay, you can prescriptively take that wisdom into the future.

00:50:42.060 This wasn't a selfless war.

00:50:44.480 It is a self-

00:50:45.220 There was unanimity going in by that.

00:50:46.360 It is a selfish-

00:50:46.880 Oh, yeah, but we went into a very specific reason.

00:50:48.980 It is a selfish withdrawal.

00:50:50.840 We actually do bear-

00:50:52.100 We don't bear- 0.88

00:50:53.080 America is not responsible for every humanitarian crisis in the world.

00:50:57.140 We're just responsible for the ones that we create.

00:50:59.420 We are creating this crisis.

00:51:01.200 If we had gone in, tried to kill bin Laden and left, if we had used airstrikes and left, I don't buy the Colin Powell if you break it.

00:51:07.920 We bought it.

00:51:08.620 But if you break it, create it, hold it, let a generation of people come of age under American protection, and then just decide on a whim for no strategic upside, that you're just going to bail on them and leave them all to the slaughter.

00:51:22.940 Leaving out that last part about no strategic upside just for a minute, I think that argument is basically saying we have to throw good money after bad.

00:51:31.940 If we go into a place and we have an American interest and we cannot find we cannot serve that American interest and we withdraw because we can't serve that American interest and there is-

00:51:42.940 And the country reverts to what it was before we got there.

00:51:46.160 You know, I'm not sure I can hold us responsible for that.

00:51:49.160 We're responsible for the two million people who died in Southeast Asia after we abandoned the South Vietnamese. 1.00

00:51:55.660 Of course we bear responsibility.

00:51:58.640 We are not wholly responsible.

00:52:00.200 We bear responsibility.

00:52:01.120 Domestic context.

00:52:01.900 The question is, are the people who are pushing defund the police responsible for an increase in crime?

00:52:05.620 To my mind, sure.

00:52:06.500 Yeah.

00:52:06.940 Yeah.

00:52:07.300 Sure.

00:52:07.580 Okay.

00:52:07.900 Well, this is the exact same thing internationally.

00:52:09.720 If you remove the cops, and then people go around killing other people.

00:52:12.060 Yeah, but that is-

00:52:13.320 Then you're embracing us as the world police.

00:52:15.180 But we are the cops.

00:52:16.220 We went over and took over that country.

00:52:17.860 We were in the position of being cops.

00:52:19.000 In fact, we didn't just take over that country.

00:52:20.280 We created that.

00:52:21.080 By the way, you can make the case that if you had to redeploy the people, like, to take the domestic context.

00:52:26.800 If you had the police in one area, right, and you had to make the decision, we need to redeploy the police from here to here.

00:52:31.940 Because it's more important to have them over here.

00:52:33.520 By the cost that we are undergoing in this city, you know, for the police, too many cops are dying.

00:52:37.880 We're removing them, and we're putting them here.

00:52:39.800 You're still responsible for what comes next over here because you've removed the police.

00:52:43.600 But at least you can say the costs here were worth the benefits here.

00:52:46.840 The point that we're having in Afghanistan right now is that the costs here are accruing not only no benefit, but negative benefits.

00:52:52.940 So I think the question that is coming up is what changed?

00:52:55.720 Not only what changed in the last 10, 20 years, but what changed since 1950.

00:53:00.660 What changed since our establishment of a sort of empire overseas.

00:53:05.040 And I think we should define the terms because we're using different terms for imperialism and nationalism.

00:53:11.680 When I say that Texas, the acquisition of Texas is not imperialism, of course it's imperialism when you go and you...

00:53:18.260 And Lincoln thought it was imperialism.

00:53:19.380 But when you make it part of the nation, that is a very different thing.

00:53:23.080 Or even Hawaii, for that matter, making it part of the nation.

00:53:25.060 That is a very different thing than the British nation.

00:53:26.660 I don't know what you're talking about.

00:53:27.540 The point...

00:53:28.460 Well, I'll show you the distinction.

00:53:30.640 When Great Britain holds India as an imperial territory, it is not holding it as a part of the British nation.

00:53:37.420 It is recognizing this is a distinct culture, a distinct country, part of its own thing, but we are holding it.

00:53:43.100 We are the British empire.

00:53:43.960 We don't really do that with Texas, as distinct as Texas is.

00:53:47.920 We say it's all part of the American nation.

00:53:49.300 Now, we hold imperial territories, like Puerto Rico.

00:53:51.860 We've held other imperial territories that, because of our national origin, we gave up and we have always felt uncomfortable with in the 19th and 20th century.

00:53:59.580 But this brings us then to the question, what changed between 1950 and today?

00:54:03.420 And it gets back to your point, Drew, and it gets to your point also, Matt, which is we, in the middle of the 20th century, were a strong superpower with a lot of national cohesion that knew who we were.

00:54:16.120 We knew what it meant to send truth, justice, and the American way overseas.

00:54:19.020 We can't even put that in Superman movies anymore.

00:54:20.980 They actually cut that line out.

00:54:22.560 To your point, Matt, you say, what are we there for?

00:54:25.340 Are we going to raise the pride flag on the embassy in Kabul, which we actually did?

00:54:28.640 I don't think a lot of Americans are going to get behind that.

00:54:30.740 That has become a sort of imperial flag, but a lot of people don't support it.

00:54:34.100 And so I think it's very important, if you want to choose, are we just a nation or are we just an empire, or is it inevitable to become an empire, which I think probably it is for great nations.

00:54:43.020 What is the empire?

00:54:44.720 What is it?

00:54:45.280 And I just think if you're in a situation where we can't agree on anything, in this country we can't even agree on the definition of man and woman at this point.

00:54:52.120 You've got major political activists with the support of the Democratic Party burning down the country for 2020.

00:54:57.120 I'm just not sure that we have the ability to project that overseas.

00:55:00.360 I'm not sure what we're projecting.

00:55:01.820 This, I think, is an enormous, enormous strategic and ideological mistake.

00:55:06.400 If the notion is that the weaknesses and internal failures of the United States do not allow us to either pursue a strategic interest overseas or to say to the Taliban,

00:55:16.300 sorry, whatever it is that we are pursuing is better than what you are pursuing, then I think that there are failures on the right as well.

00:55:22.400 I'm not a fan of the problem.

00:55:23.460 I just want to make this one point.

00:55:25.240 I'm not making even a prescriptive argument here.

00:55:28.700 It's a descriptive argument?

00:55:30.200 And the descriptive argument is this.

00:55:32.020 Seventy percent of Americans wanted out of Afghanistan, and the majority of Americans, both parties, have wanted out for a long time.

00:55:38.040 I'm not saying that's a good thing.

00:55:39.560 I'm just saying I think the reason for that is the collapse of our cohesion, and we had a lot more of it.

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00:57:02.960 So I wanted to make a quick point on this, which is that I totally—listen, you don't have to argue to me about the lack of cohesion and the moral decline of the United States, right?

00:57:10.340 I think that as a nation, one of the symptoms that we are so eager to get out of Afghanistan, I think that is a symptom of the fact that we are a nation that is ready to climb into a warm bath, get fat, and slit our wrists. 1.00

00:57:18.560 I think that is where we are as a country.

00:57:20.820 I think that's why Joe Biden is president right now, because he's effectively a senile president presiding over a nation in a tragic state of decay.

00:57:29.900 I think that seems like what it is unless there's some sort of dramatic resurgence.

00:57:33.400 With that said, I think what happened in American foreign policy is pretty obvious.

00:57:36.660 We had a mission when the Soviet Union was around because we recognized there were existential threats to the United States in the form of the Soviet Union. 0.98

00:57:41.840 Then the Soviet Union fell, and we figured we have no idea what the hell we're doing, right?

00:57:46.100 Are we doing this for capitalism?

00:57:47.260 Are we doing this for liberalism?

00:57:48.440 Are we doing this for nothing?

00:57:49.720 Should we do Pat Buchanan retrenchment?

00:57:51.620 Should we instead try and spread the message of the IMF?

00:57:55.020 Like, what exactly are we doing here?

00:57:56.860 What we failed to recognize is that, once again, nature and foreign policy abhor a vacuum.

00:58:02.000 And the notion that the United States was forever and always, that we'd reached the Francis Fukuyama end of history, which, of course, is slightly misinterpreted,

00:58:07.620 but that we had reached that end of history where the United States was destined to be the everlasting hegemon,

00:58:12.880 created the sense of, so what do we do with all this stuff?

00:58:15.540 What do we do with all this power?

00:58:17.080 And what that failed to recognize is that there are always powers on the move.

00:58:20.580 And that is what you're seeing in Afghanistan right now.

00:58:22.720 And the fact is that when we leave, it is not as though everything just goes back to a tribal state of warfare with no externalities.

00:58:28.160 By the way, the Taliban was in charge for a grand total of five years in Afghanistan.

00:58:31.740 Everybody acts like the Taliban was in charge since forever.

00:58:33.460 They were in a state of constant civil war with serious externalities, particularly the Soviets and for surrounding republics, for quite a long time.

00:58:39.720 And the United States was deeply involved in Afghanistan all the way back in the 50s, right?

00:58:42.740 Eisenhower actually flew into Kabul Airport in 1959.

00:58:45.240 So the United States has always been involved all over the world.

00:58:49.000 The question is always one of costs and benefits, which I keep coming back to this because I think that's a hard-headed way of doing foreign policy.

00:58:54.360 And so I ask, again, I don't see the benefit in pulling out other than the fulfillment of this muddle-headed idea that we have somehow sinned in being in Afghanistan or to continuing sin to remain in Afghanistan at extraordinarily low cost to keep a lid on what was going on there, and especially in the face of Chinese aggression. 0.85

00:59:11.520 The notion in American foreign policy, we were able to keep an empire effectively during the Cold War because we were doing so as an anti-communist empire.

00:59:19.640 Not because we were doing so as an American empire, but because we were able to do all the stuff saying we were opposing the Soviets, right?

00:59:24.100 And the reality is nature is going to force us back into that.

00:59:27.480 You can say we're out of Afghanistan.

00:59:28.880 Not for long.

00:59:29.620 That's right.

00:59:30.100 We were out of Iraq, and then we were back in Iraq.

00:59:32.400 What you just said is far more in keeping with my tragic view of these things than anything else than anybody's talking about.

00:59:37.980 But in the interim, during this end-of-history phase, we did fall apart.

00:59:42.820 And Knowles is right about this.

00:59:44.000 It is very hard to project power without a—it's very hard to project the kind of power that is American power without an American set of values.

00:59:52.800 And we no longer have an American set of values.

00:59:55.400 And I think, listen, it's a tragic—it is a truly tragic thing that it is China that is about to force us back into the great game. 0.98

01:00:02.600 But in forcing us back into the great game, it will help us redefine who we are.

01:00:06.080 Because it's not true that everything we did against the Soviets was simply against the Soviets.

01:00:10.800 We were against the Soviets because they stood for something that we didn't stand for. 0.55

01:00:14.360 I agree.

01:00:14.540 And it was only in my horrific, cursed generation that we lost the plot of what we stood for against the Soviets. 0.51

01:00:21.280 So I agree with everything you just said.

01:00:22.780 And by the way, just one more thing.

01:00:25.220 You know, Vietnam gets a bad rap, and in some ways it deserves a bad rap. 0.99

01:00:28.460 But the Chinese looked at us in Vietnam and thought, those people are crazy. 0.78

01:00:31.580 And it kept them in line for 50 years. 0.60

01:00:34.080 And they didn't really start to stretch out their imperial tentacles because they saw we were going to fight them on every level.

01:00:41.140 And they just didn't want any part of that.

01:00:42.820 Yeah.

01:00:43.040 So I agree with what you just said, and I agree with what you just said.

01:00:45.620 The reason to remain in Afghanistan is America's strategic interest. 0.64

01:00:50.400 I do think that we're abstracting our way out of the urgent moral question.

01:00:53.840 There is a moral question about whether or not, in addition to pursuing our strategic interests,

01:00:59.600 we also create moral obligation along the way.

01:01:02.500 I agree that you don't have a moral obligation to go into every place that something bad happens.

01:01:06.320 I agree that you don't have a moral obligation to occupy every country that you drop some bombs on or send special operators into.

01:01:14.680 I agree that you don't have a moral responsibility to build governments in countries,

01:01:20.540 even if you do occupy them for a brief amount of time.

01:01:23.720 Those are philosophical, political questions.

01:01:28.500 They are abstract questions.

01:01:30.080 They're questions that can deeply inform our view of the world.

01:01:32.240 They can deeply inform the actions that we will take in the future.

01:01:37.240 The urgent question today, the moral question today, is do we have an obligation to the people who for 20 years lived under whatever drove us there,

01:01:49.140 whatever took us there, whatever mistakes we made along the way, whatever things we should or shouldn't have done,

01:01:53.520 whichever things we hope to do in the future or hope not to do in the future, we did do something in Afghanistan.

01:01:58.500 And because of what we did for the last 20 years, we keep using the word women, the people being raped and murdered are women. 0.60

01:02:04.540 They're not women. 1.00

01:02:05.140 They're small girls. 0.72

01:02:05.960 They're 13.

01:02:06.540 Of course.

01:02:06.960 Girls who were going to school, girls who were not wearing burqas, girls who were not Westerners. 0.69

01:02:13.980 They did not have our values, but they had something far better than the values of the generation that preceded them in Afghanistan. 0.95

01:02:20.960 And they had them as the direct result of actions that we ourselves took.

01:02:24.760 So while we are, while we are, I believe, betraying our strategic interest, I think we're emboldening China.

01:02:30.120 I think we're emboldening Russia. 0.94

01:02:31.560 I think we're going to see the fall of Pakistan to the Taliban. 0.92

01:02:35.160 And now the Taliban will be one of the six nuclear powers on the earth. 0.98

01:02:38.920 I think we're emboldening Iran. 1.00

01:02:40.840 I think we're emboldening ISIS and al-Qaeda, just like when we pulled our troops wrongly out of Iraq under Barack Obama. 0.54

01:02:47.560 And suddenly we lost half the country that we had fought and bled to win.

01:02:51.360 And we lost Syria. 0.82

01:02:52.680 And ISIS formed. 0.99

01:02:53.980 And Europeans started getting bombed and getting their heads chopped off. 0.92

01:02:56.920 And now we had to fight yet another war in Iraq and yet another war in Syria.

01:03:01.260 I think we're going to see the same thing.

01:03:02.100 And for all the reasons I think it's horrible for the interests of the United States of America to withdraw our troops, I also think there is a moral question about our withdrawal of our troops.

01:03:12.160 But let me address that one moral question, which is in order to answer that moral question, you have to imagine the counterfactual that Joe Biden did not screw this up beyond the imagination of man.

01:03:25.720 You have to be able to say that there was an orderly withdrawal.

01:03:29.340 We left.

01:03:29.900 We left the place intact.

01:03:31.100 We left the government intact.

01:03:32.300 We left the army intact.

01:03:33.540 And we withdrew slowly in an orderly manner.

01:03:37.620 We got our people out.

01:03:38.660 We got our allies out.

01:03:39.800 All of those things you have to imagine first, right, because the immoral thing that's happening is happening because of this incredible act, almost mind-boggling act of incompetence.

01:03:47.820 And I suppose what I would say to that.

01:03:49.160 In that case, in that case, if we left Afghanistan in an orderly manner and Afghanistan still could not maintain its government and still could not maintain its system,

01:03:58.900 then I would say, no, we don't actually have an obligation.

01:04:01.100 And I suppose what I would answer to that is we had essentially withdrawn from Afghanistan.

01:04:05.640 We had the lightest touch.

01:04:08.040 We were using the lightest touch.

01:04:09.800 But now you're changing the question.

01:04:10.920 I mean, the question is, do we have an eternal moral obligation?

01:04:15.140 And no, eventually another country, unless we're an empire, eventually other countries have to be able to run them.

01:04:20.980 Was it moral to pull out of the Philippines?

01:04:22.700 I don't think it's unreasonable if we had any moral obligation to the people of Afghanistan.

01:04:27.360 And frankly, I don't think we did or do.

01:04:29.840 But if we did, then I think 20 years is a pretty good amount of time to give them to figure out how to run their own country.

01:04:36.600 And honestly, we all agree that the way that we pulled out was terrible and incompetent and all that.

01:04:41.860 But no matter how we pulled out, I just think you are the military of Afghanistan.

01:04:48.260 This is your job.

01:04:49.440 You should be able to do this no matter how America leaves.

01:04:52.480 And if they can't, then I think the moral failures fall on the Afghan army more so than on the American army.

01:05:00.780 You think that 20 years means 20 years was enough.

01:05:07.560 Like, the longer you're there, the more you need to leave.

01:05:09.840 And I think what I'm suggesting is the longer you're there, the more responsibilities you begin to incur.

01:05:14.500 Yes, if you go into a country and bomb them and get out, if it's shock and awe and leave. 0.68

01:05:19.940 If you shoot some cruise missiles into the Sudan, you have very little obligation to the Sudan or the people of the Sudan that you incur as a result.

01:05:25.700 If you were there for a year until Tora Bora, we realized that Bin Laden's probably out of Afghanistan and we're going to have to take our fight elsewhere. 0.71

01:05:33.340 You've incurred more moral obligation, but certainly far, far less than if you've been.

01:05:37.520 We have been there and we have engaged in the nation building.

01:05:40.200 If you withdraw your support for a tyrant like the Shah of Iran and another tyrant, an Islamist tyrant, comes in and takes over like the Ayatollah Khomeini, 0.96

01:05:50.020 essentially, do you have an obligation there?

01:05:51.700 Do you think like, oh, gee, we should have kept supporting the Shah? 0.53

01:05:53.880 Well, certainly, certainly 100% we should have kept supporting the Shah. 0.99

01:05:57.960 Yes, for political reasons, for political reasons, but not for moral reasons.

01:06:01.360 But I think that even when it comes to foreign policy, morality is a currency, right?

01:06:07.820 I mean, that is just a reality of the situation, right?

01:06:10.260 This is why the United States ought to win the Cold War, for example. 0.97

01:06:12.760 Morality is a currency.

01:06:14.020 And one of the ways that morality is used as a currency is via incentivizing people to join your fight, meaning that-

01:06:22.260 I actually don't understand what you're saying.

01:06:23.880 So in Afghanistan, it is not merely that we went there and out of the kindness of our heart, we were like, here's some liberalism and we're here to save you.

01:06:31.640 We went in there with a particular purpose, as we all discussed, the political leadership botched the explanation of that purpose.

01:06:36.320 All that's true.

01:06:36.820 We then made a bunch of promises to all the people who work with us, hundreds of thousands of people who work with us, that if you work with us, you will have these things.

01:06:46.540 Your women will be able to go to school. 0.88

01:06:48.240 Your women will be able to walk out in the streets. 1.00

01:06:50.460 And women helped us. 1.00

01:06:51.120 Many women helped us, right? 1.00

01:06:52.300 You will be able to live a different life.

01:06:54.300 And they lived that life.

01:06:56.400 And many of them kept those obligations.

01:06:58.580 And so now the question becomes, if you make a promise and then you withdraw the promise, is that a problem?

01:07:04.820 And I think the answer is yes.

01:07:06.400 And then the question becomes, okay, so how do we deal with that promise?

01:07:08.900 So, for example, if we were talking right now, because these are now the alternatives.

01:07:12.640 Now we're to the real world alternatives, right?

01:07:14.620 The alternative number one, we pull out of the country.

01:07:16.760 We made promises to literally hundreds of thousands of people that we were – Joe Biden says this all the time – that we were going to help them get out, if not to the United States, then someplace else, right?

01:07:25.000 That if we leave and if this thing collapse, you're going to get out.

01:07:28.300 And by the way, we did the same with the Vietnamese boat people in the – or we should have in the aftermath. 1.00

01:07:31.760 Many of those people are unbelievably good American citizens.

01:07:34.020 We do this for people who are trying to escape Cuba from a bad life to a good life.

01:07:37.840 You know, the – so if the alternatives are figure out where 250,000 people who actively work with the United States are going to live.

01:07:44.960 Or keep a baseline truth presence there and nobody has to leave.

01:07:48.440 Which one of those is better?

01:07:50.540 Now, again, I think that you can – in the end, everything in foreign policy, just like in politics generally, comes down to transactional cost.

01:07:57.920 It comes down to cost and benefit.

01:07:59.980 When you're making a calculation as to the promises that you made to people on a moral level, do you bear – do we bear any responsibility for those people?

01:08:06.600 So, for example, forget about keeping the troops there.

01:08:09.040 Do we bear any responsibility to the people we made promises to that we were going to evacuate them to help them evacuate?

01:08:13.760 Or should we have just said, you know what, screw it.

01:08:16.320 We helped you for 20 years.

01:08:17.440 You're on your own.

01:08:18.020 If the Taliban slaughter –

01:08:18.760 I think we'd all agree that we had responsibilities to the people we promised to evacuate.

01:08:22.220 Right.

01:08:22.460 If our government made those –

01:08:23.400 And we evacuated a lot of them, by the way.

01:08:24.360 Right.

01:08:24.600 Right.

01:08:24.860 And they did.

01:08:25.560 Okay.

01:08:25.820 So we agree on that.

01:08:27.720 So then the question is just whether, with regard to the keeping of the skeleton force, whether that would have been better.

01:08:32.060 Or is it better to try and airlift out hundreds of thousands of people, hundreds more thousands, by the way, are still going to get left and slaughtered?

01:08:36.760 And do we own a moral obligation to not just the girls who are about to get raped, but to their fathers who worked with us and to their parents who worked with us?

01:08:45.440 And I think the answer is yes.

01:08:46.320 When you incur a mutual obligation in order to get a thing done, you owe something to someone.

01:08:49.400 Do you think that's an everlasting moral obligation, I guess, is the question?

01:08:53.280 I mean, I think that it is a moral obligation that if you promise someone – we didn't promise the people who fought with us that – here's the deal.

01:09:00.580 You fight with us today.

01:09:01.660 In 20 years, we're out.

01:09:03.360 Right?

01:09:03.580 And if the Taliban take over, that's it.

01:09:05.960 We'll fight with you today.

01:09:06.960 In 20 years, we're gone.

01:09:08.300 And that's not how you promise in foreign policy.

01:09:10.580 No one promises that way in foreign policy because then nobody does it.

01:09:13.260 So we promised we'd be there forever?

01:09:14.660 No.

01:09:14.920 We promised that they were going to have a particular kind of life.

01:09:17.560 This is what happens in foreign policy.

01:09:18.540 Which would entail us to be there forever.

01:09:20.260 Not necessarily.

01:09:20.680 Or we fly them over here.

01:09:21.660 Not necessarily.

01:09:21.960 Or we fly them over here.

01:09:22.680 Or maybe there's the possibility that if we withdraw in more orderly fashion and don't completely collapse, there are air force from within.

01:09:29.320 Did the Afghan government and military have any obligation of its own to its own citizens?

01:09:34.700 Of course they had an obligation of its own.

01:09:37.100 And by the way, they undertook that obligation to the tune of 50,000 dead over the course of the last six years.

01:09:42.220 And 67,000 dead in the 20 years we've got.

01:09:44.800 And that's –

01:09:45.880 That is an awful lot of human beings.

01:09:46.940 That is an awful lot.

01:09:47.960 But that's also –

01:09:48.920 That's more American troops than we've lost in all wars combined since Vietnam.

01:09:51.300 But that's the way the ratio should be at least.

01:09:54.060 I mean, they are defending their own country.

01:09:56.040 They should take the lion's share of the casualties.

01:09:57.940 So I agree with you.

01:09:58.540 So the idea that we're supposed to, you know, admire the Afghan military for being the ones to take the brunt of the casualties, of course it's your country.

01:10:06.180 I mean, who else is going to do it?

01:10:07.140 We shouldn't be the ones.

01:10:07.820 But my question is, I just – I suppose I just don't understand the tremendous urgency that was felt by so many people.

01:10:15.680 We must get this tiny bare-bones force out of Afghanistan forthwith and even if the consequences are world historical. 0.99

01:10:23.760 And they are.

01:10:24.420 Okay?

01:10:24.560 So when you turn over a country of 38 million people to the Taliban, welcome in all these terrorist groups, give China an open running field, give Russia an open running field. 0.92

01:10:31.600 And then, yes, create the moral hazard of – and this does make a difference in the world.

01:10:35.740 When our allies look at us and they – and yes, this goes back to the political leadership point, maybe we should never talk in moral terms.

01:10:41.940 But I do happen to think that it was kind of a good thing that we stopped mass rape in Afghanistan. 1.00

01:10:45.840 So if George W. Bush said in a couple of speeches, we stopped terrorism – and by the way, we also stopped the mass rape of 12-year-old girls in Afghanistan, I don't think that's the end of the world.

01:10:52.920 But if people in the world –

01:10:53.820 We were looking the other way on the rape of boys, though.

01:10:55.700 I mean, that's –

01:10:56.180 But in the Afghan army.

01:10:57.180 I mean, so he should have said that, too.

01:10:59.120 And he should have moved on that.

01:11:00.320 Okay? 0.85

01:11:00.560 Like, we can all agree I'm not in favor of the rape of boys.

01:11:02.740 I think we're all on the same page on this one.

01:11:04.200 But there is the painting of the Afghan allies, and I'm very grateful for the allies who helped us.

01:11:10.360 But there's the painting of them as these pure as the driven snow charitable people who didn't commit –

01:11:15.680 But what Matt is saying is they committed some of the same atrocities that we're all focusing on here, moralizing about the Taliban. 0.56

01:11:20.680 The South Koreans did, too, during that 42 years that we occupied South Korea. 0.97

01:11:24.000 And so did the South Vietnamese, and so did Pinochet, and so did – 0.85

01:11:26.320 Right.

01:11:26.620 That's the nature of foreign policy.

01:11:28.040 The question is, is it more moral?

01:11:30.460 Was the United States' presence –

01:11:32.220 Did we make Afghanistan in the period of our dominance better than it had been under the Taliban? 0.96

01:11:37.100 Sure.

01:11:37.300 But if we're making – if we're now having the moral discussion, then I think it's important to remember that when we went in there, the people who helped us in Afghanistan, I don't think they did so on the suggestion that we were going to stay there forever and claim it as an imperial territory.

01:11:49.880 That was not the argument we made when we went in.

01:11:51.640 Claim it as an imperial territory.

01:11:53.160 I'm sorry?

01:11:54.300 Who claimed it as an imperial territory?

01:11:55.780 Well, I think we are saying now we should have stayed there for many, many more years if not for –

01:11:59.100 I still don't think that makes it an imperial territory.

01:12:00.780 Yeah, it does.

01:12:01.600 I think it does.

01:12:02.480 But we'll get back to that.

01:12:03.260 Germany is not an imperial territory.

01:12:04.680 I think both of you are wrong about that.

01:12:06.400 Well, what would you say if China tried to build a – what if some other country tried to build one military base in our country?

01:12:12.740 We would say you're trying to claim us as your own, right?

01:12:15.260 And I just – just to get back to this moral point.

01:12:17.340 Well, yeah, but so isn't it the same thing if we do that in another country?

01:12:19.240 We're claiming it as our own?

01:12:20.020 Just on this moral point, you know, Ben brought up transaction and foreign policy is decided by transaction.

01:12:25.460 And I just think that it's worth remembering – I'm grateful for the support of our Afghan allies.

01:12:30.660 They were doing so because they had an interest.

01:12:32.640 And I don't – I actually don't believe that they thought the United States was going to stay there forever.

01:12:36.400 I don't think we said we were going to stay there forever.

01:12:37.880 And I think they thought we were the best –

01:12:39.300 I think when you look at America's victories in the last century, any place where we fought and won, we still have troops.

01:12:45.960 That's before 1975.

01:12:47.680 Anywhere – I'm sorry, in the last –

01:12:49.460 No, but I mean, I just think –

01:12:50.440 Until 1970.

01:12:51.400 Literally every place that we fought and won, we still have troops.

01:12:55.080 Every place that we fought and suffered humiliating defeat, we don't still have troops.

01:12:58.440 If I can just inject one more time my morbidly tragic life here.

01:13:03.800 One thing we should also keep in mind, that the thing that we're actually noticing is that a democracy is a very bad system for running an empire.

01:13:12.060 And the reason it's a bad system for running an empire is because one day you've got George W. Bush running the place.

01:13:17.420 And the next day you've got Joe Biden or Obama running the place.

01:13:19.900 Don't agree.

01:13:20.760 And they pull out our troops and they put our troops back in and our promises are broken.

01:13:23.800 And our promises are broken for democratic reasons because we voted for somebody who was going to break the promise of the last guy we voted for.

01:13:29.480 This is one of the reasons that as great – as free nations become strong and free nations become strong, they become empires and they stop being free nations.

01:13:37.660 And this is one of the prices I believe we're going to have to pay.

01:13:40.240 There's a reason the Roman Republic fell. 1.00

01:13:42.400 There's a reason this republic will fall.

01:13:43.940 And I think that we have to understand that what you guys are talking about, keeping your promises, is going to be a drain on the democratic process.

01:13:51.980 I'm also curious what –

01:13:53.400 Foreign policy has been – I mean, I just – again, I'm going to point out that every president since Barack Obama pledged to get the troops out and nobody did it.

01:14:02.820 Because it turns out that foreign policy is not a democratic process.

01:14:05.660 Not at the moment.

01:14:06.320 It is not.

01:14:06.620 It's not what it is, you know.

01:14:10.900 It has not been since World War II.

01:14:12.160 Joe Biden did not get out because the people of the United States were rabidly demanding that Joe Biden get out.

01:14:16.840 That's right.

01:14:17.020 If you looked at the list of American priorities, getting out of Afghanistan – 0.93

01:14:19.800 But they voted for somebody who was going to get us out.

01:14:21.580 Okay, but – okay, now you're actually justifying the idea that they voted for somebody who pledged that he was going to go to universal health care.

01:14:26.500 I mean, like, that doesn't work.

01:14:27.400 That's not right.

01:14:27.980 No, it is.

01:14:28.980 But it's true.

01:14:29.580 It's not – I'm not saying it's right.

01:14:30.820 And George W. Bush was right in 2005 when he said you voted for a guy who's going to privatize Social Security, except that's not the way this works.

01:14:36.560 Okay, just because you vote for a president of the United States and because that president wins does not mean that he has a referendum on every single issue down the line or that his calculus –

01:14:44.780 But I'm talking about the reality of it.

01:14:46.060 I'm not arguing the morality.

01:14:47.280 I'm talking about the reality of it.

01:14:48.420 And this is one of the reasons why great nations lose their republic.

01:14:51.940 Elections have consequences.

01:14:53.040 This is true.

01:14:54.100 Of course. 0.99

01:14:54.900 It is also true that the American people have a piss-poor understanding of foreign policy because our leadership class is garbage when it comes to this stuff. 0.98

01:15:00.280 And it has been since the Cold War. 0.98

01:15:01.860 And during half the Cold War, we had a piss-poor understanding.

01:15:05.500 America's leaders have been piss-poor on foreign policy way before the Cold War.

01:15:09.120 Yeah. 0.83

01:15:09.840 Piss-poor on everything also.

01:15:10.980 But I am curious what you guys say about this issue on the moral question.

01:15:18.420 Our country right now, when we talk about exerting our influence and we think about what that influence actually is.

01:15:25.980 Now, I think about one of the most powerful videos that I've seen recently was – and it was a small group, but still, it was in Jamaica.

01:15:33.260 And I don't know if everyone's seen this video.

01:15:35.400 But our embassy in Jamaica was flying a pride flick.

01:15:39.180 And the Jamaican people got together and protested it and said, we don't want that here. 0.99

01:15:46.000 That's your values.

01:15:47.560 It's not ours.

01:15:48.220 We don't want it here.

01:15:49.520 And I look at that and I side against our embassy.

01:15:52.760 I'm on their side 100%.

01:15:54.340 And so – and I don't like that.

01:15:56.360 I mean, when someone's protesting our embassy and I have to be on the side of the protest.

01:15:59.460 It's not a good place to be.

01:16:00.560 It's not a good place to be.

01:16:01.500 It's also tragic and sad that I have to say that.

01:16:05.840 Why are we flying that flag?

01:16:06.980 Right.

01:16:07.500 So what about that problem as well?

01:16:10.020 I'm just curious what you guys think about that.

01:16:11.720 I mean, I don't disagree with any of that.

01:16:13.300 I do think that it is better for – I think that if the package deal – and I wish there

01:16:18.960 weren't a package deal.

01:16:19.720 I wish that we weren't flying the pride flag. 1.00

01:16:21.060 I think it's absurd to fly anything but the American flag, period, at the United States

01:16:24.140 embassy.

01:16:25.100 But the American flag is now more controversial in the United States than the pride progress

01:16:28.540 flag.

01:16:28.920 Much more so.

01:16:29.780 Significantly more so.

01:16:30.460 Because the pride progress flag is, in my view, my humble view, the imperial flag, right?

01:16:34.940 It's universal and we put it at our embassies all over the world.

01:16:37.660 So the – but putting aside the – so then the question is, okay, so here's the package

01:16:42.920 deal.

01:16:43.640 I disagree with flying the pride progress flag in Kabul.

01:16:47.100 I definitely agree with preventing the mass rape of 18 million women. 0.93

01:16:50.340 So if I have to balance those out, that's not that tough a balance. 0.98

01:16:54.500 Like, America may suck in a lot of ways, but we don't suck in that big, giant way. 0.62

01:16:58.600 And so I have generalized moral objections to the conflation of America, again. 0.94

01:17:03.900 And you see this a lot, actually, with the kind of left-wing approach to the United States.

01:17:08.820 We can't criticize this country over here because look at all the problems we're having

01:17:11.480 over here.

01:17:11.980 And I do see it mirrored sometimes on the right, which is look at all the bad stuff we're

01:17:15.280 pushing over here, gender ideology and critical race theory. 1.00

01:17:19.820 And that makes it inappropriate for us to, quote-unquote, spread our values anywhere else.

01:17:23.420 And all I would say is, yes, those values should not be spread even at home.

01:17:26.500 But it's a fallacy to say that because there are people in the United States spreading that

01:17:30.700 at home, it is therefore bad for other countries for us to export the parts where we kill the 1.00

01:17:34.920 guys who are the rapists abroad.

01:17:36.620 The pride flag here is just sort of symbolic in a lot of ways, but it represents the overall

01:17:41.300 problem.

01:17:42.040 Obviously, if you're going to weigh the rape of thousands of girls against the pride flag 0.92

01:17:46.040 hanging on an embassy, the rape of thousands of girls is obviously a lot worse, clearly.

01:17:49.840 But what we are exporting in general, and the pride flag is only one small symbol of it,

01:17:55.480 is just, I think, utter, total moral confusion.

01:17:59.800 And I do think that people in Jamaica and across the world see that.

01:18:03.420 And what they're saying is, we don't want any part of that.

01:18:06.080 We don't want that here.

01:18:07.240 You guys are falling apart morally.

01:18:09.400 Well, this is what Macron said.

01:18:10.040 On a broad scale, I mean, we weren't flying the pride progress flag in 2005, and the Taliban 1.00

01:18:16.240 didn't seem to waver in their determination to overthrow the...

01:18:19.880 Michael, what are you about to say?

01:18:21.100 You know, Macron, the leader of France, came out, this was about a month or so ago, and

01:18:26.300 he addressed woke ideology, you know, political correctness, whatever you want to call it.

01:18:30.740 He said, this is bad stuff.

01:18:32.680 We don't have that in France.

01:18:33.800 This is France.

01:18:34.420 This is one of the most liberal nations I've ever known.

01:18:36.240 He goes, we don't have that here.

01:18:37.840 It is a poison.

01:18:38.580 We are going to prevent it from coming into our schools and our institutions.

01:18:42.120 And I think that's kind of what Matt is getting at here is, yes, we historically have exported

01:18:47.000 wonderful things and ideas and values around the world.

01:18:50.160 That is changing.

01:18:51.680 That has changed.

01:18:53.060 And even Western, enlightened, wonderful leaders are recognizing that.

01:18:57.080 And I think that causes some of the lack of cohesion at home.

01:19:00.340 It has absolutely changed.

01:19:02.060 Our values today in many ways are worse.

01:19:04.960 Some of our values are a lot better, though.

01:19:06.420 And I think one of the mistakes that we make on the right, because we're definitionally

01:19:09.980 reactionary, that's what the right is, is that we, because we point at all the bad things

01:19:16.360 that are beginning to happen, we wind up, and even Donald Trump did this, you know, when

01:19:21.800 he basically said, oh, we do bad things too.

01:19:23.540 The Russians do bad things. 1.00

01:19:24.340 We do bad things.

01:19:24.880 That's a horrible line because it is 90% true and 100% wrong, right?

01:19:30.920 Yes, we do.

01:19:31.940 Of course, it's true that we do bad things.

01:19:33.520 There is no comparison.

01:19:35.200 America is, like, we still live in a great time.

01:19:39.720 We still have, fundamentally, compared to most people in most places at most times, a

01:19:44.760 great way of life, a great value system, a better value system in some ways than we've

01:19:49.480 ever had, a worse value system in some very important ways, and a worsening value system

01:19:54.440 in some very particular ways that we need to fight.

01:19:57.020 But when you see, like, Nicky Fuentes, little Nicky Fuentes, saying, on the only social channels

01:20:03.300 he's still welcome on, which, of course, he should not have been banned from Twitter.

01:20:05.900 Well, this actually kind of gets to the point, doesn't it?

01:20:06.640 I still also like to rub a little salt in his mouth.

01:20:08.640 But he said, you know, Afghanistan is falling to a regime that makes women cover their faces, 0.83

01:20:17.340 and some little clever little list of, ha-ha, I made you think, because really, America

01:20:22.540 is just as bad.

01:20:23.400 And you go, no, America isn't just as bad. 0.97

01:20:25.360 The fact that America has gay marriage does not make it as bad as the Taliban. 0.95

01:20:29.540 The fact that America has transgenderism confusion, which is a horrible moral sin that needs to 1.00

01:20:34.680 be combated, doesn't make us as bad as Afghanistan.

01:20:36.960 Honestly, even the fact that America has abortion, which I think is the grave sin, far worse than 0.98

01:20:41.440 gay rights, far worse than even the trans ideology, a blight that will, if God permits the earth 1.00

01:20:47.680 to continue, a blight that future generations will look back on, not the way we look at slavery, 0.99

01:20:52.880 the way we would look at slavery, if slavery involved murdering every black person.

01:20:59.320 Nevertheless, we live in this broken and fallen world, and America is still better.

01:21:04.440 Our way of life is still better, and our values are still better than in most of these places.

01:21:08.800 I think it's, I'll take America over the Taliban any day of the week. 1.00

01:21:12.400 I mean, that's why I'm living here, and I don't want to move to Afghanistan. 1.00

01:21:14.260 But broadly speaking, can I say that I recommend the American way of life as it stands right

01:21:22.240 now?

01:21:22.480 And the answer is no.

01:21:23.380 It's not something that broadly to the entire world I want to broadcast and try to bring

01:21:27.120 people into.

01:21:27.600 I think the abortion thing, you know, that, if we really take that seriously, just homing 1.00

01:21:34.260 in on that for a second, if we really take seriously the idea that 1,800,000 human beings

01:21:41.460 are being slaughtered every single year, you can make the argument, it's actually hard to

01:21:47.300 find something worse than that.

01:21:48.080 That's about 60 million human beings we've killed in about 40 years.

01:21:51.080 Since Roe v. Wade.

01:21:51.900 Yeah.

01:21:52.580 So do we believe that or not?

01:21:55.360 Do we actually take that seriously as a real death toll or not?

01:21:58.260 And if we do, then we're in a pretty bad shape against almost anybody, actually.

01:22:02.440 Well, not against almost anybody because abortion is legal in many other Western, in almost every

01:22:08.780 other Western nation, because for most of our lives, abortion was mandatory in our only

01:22:13.760 true rival superpower.

01:22:15.340 So when you're still talking globally about the values that are being imported or exported

01:22:20.780 around the world, then yeah, America is still better than China, even with those grievous 1.00

01:22:25.000 sins, because China has all, well, not all of the exact same, they have abortion, certainly 0.74

01:22:30.380 the same grievous sins, and more additional grievous sins.

01:22:35.260 That's not, that's an okay argument, but it's not that great an argument.

01:22:38.740 I think what Matt's saying is it does have a lot of weight.

01:22:40.920 There's also a bit into the weight.

01:22:42.280 Really, no, wait, wait a minute.

01:22:44.100 I think this idea that we are slaughtering this many babies, what is it, like 3,000 a day?

01:22:48.720 3,000 a day.

01:22:49.300 You know, I think this should weigh on us a lot more heavily than it does.

01:22:54.380 One of the great triumphs of the left is because we can't see the babies who are being killed.

01:22:59.440 They've convinced us that they have no humanity. 0.89

01:23:01.660 And if we could see them, what was happening, it would be on a parallel with raping the young 0.99

01:23:08.540 women of Afghanistan. 0.98

01:23:09.520 And if we were going to Afghanistan and then immediately forcing abortion on all the women 0.99

01:23:13.140 there, I think that that would be a far graver.

01:23:16.100 I think that the big question in politics that people generally fail to ask is compared

01:23:22.640 to whom or compared to.

01:23:23.840 That's right.

01:23:24.280 I agree.

01:23:24.880 I agree.

01:23:25.300 But this is a great country if you survive birth.

01:23:29.800 Listen, you don't have to preach to me about abortion.

01:23:32.380 But when it comes to the question of whether the United States has the right and or obligation

01:23:38.140 to push our values when we are so confused and discombobulated and screwed up at home,

01:23:44.220 I think the answer is compared to what?

01:23:46.100 Because I think in certain circumstances, the answer would probably be no, right?

01:23:49.440 I mean, we would look at like if you were saying, do we need to pursue cultural imperialism

01:23:53.020 with regard to a Western European country that happens to be stricter on abortion, say

01:23:59.220 Ireland four years ago?

01:24:00.920 Or France.

01:24:01.820 Right.

01:24:02.060 Or France.

01:24:02.560 Like, not really.

01:24:03.600 I don't see a need for us to be culturally imperialist on that.

01:24:05.780 I don't see our need to be culturally imperialist with regard to wokeness.

01:24:08.360 And so I think it's almost a non sequitur to say something like, you know, the problems

01:24:12.900 that we have at home are the problems that we are exporting abroad, when in large measure

01:24:16.900 that is not true.

01:24:17.700 The problems that we are having at home are problems that we are screwing ourselves up

01:24:21.560 with at home and a symptom of our failure to have any sort of heart for the fight for

01:24:26.680 our own values that we have no values.

01:24:28.120 So what I would say is that our withdrawal from these places, our attempt to go isolationist

01:24:32.220 is a symptom of our interior weakness, not a reconsolidation.

01:24:36.100 It's almost as though, like, you hear a lot of people on the right make the argument, well,

01:24:38.820 you're spending all this money over here.

01:24:40.180 Let's bring that money home and let's spend it on the border. 0.99

01:24:42.260 And it's like, well, yes, but that's not where any of that money is going to go.

01:24:44.820 Joe Biden is not going to take one dollar of that or one soldier there and put that

01:24:47.620 person on the border.

01:24:48.220 It's not going to happen.

01:24:49.020 So you're just doing a non sequitur now.

01:24:50.480 You're just saying, I would like more security on the border.

01:24:53.040 And also, I don't want troops in Afghanistan.

01:24:54.940 And that's not the same thing.

01:24:56.260 You're going to have to show the connection between those two things.

01:24:58.060 I can say it once.

01:24:58.820 I hate wokeness. 0.99

01:24:59.440 I think all of the stuff the left is pushing is serious garbage. 0.98

01:25:02.740 And also, I don't understand how that is of any comfort at all to anybody who is still 0.98

01:25:07.580 trapped behind enemy lines in Afghanistan.

01:25:09.360 But it is true. 0.90

01:25:09.920 It is true that within living memory, at least my living memory, it wasn't always so that

01:25:14.820 this was a great country as compared to what?

01:25:16.920 Yeah.

01:25:17.260 You know, that's a new phenomenon.

01:25:18.640 I don't think that's true.

01:25:19.560 I mean, I think that, no, because I think that, I mean, and this is where you're going to

01:25:22.700 get the argument.

01:25:23.400 I mean, pick a period.

01:25:25.680 Michael, which period are we talking about?

01:25:27.060 I think the period after World War II, this country actually entered a period of great 0.56

01:25:32.040 Missing segregation there. 0.90

01:25:32.780 Yeah, I think if you're black in the South, that's the problem. 1.00

01:25:33.980 No, I know. 0.99

01:25:34.240 Wait a minute.

01:25:34.820 Wait a minute.

01:25:35.220 I didn't say that it was perfect.

01:25:37.180 I didn't say that it was...

01:25:37.740 No, but then it is compared to what?

01:25:39.880 The Soviet Union made this exact argument.

01:25:41.880 I know they did.

01:25:42.420 This exact argument.

01:25:43.140 That was what aboutism.

01:25:44.800 But abortion is different.

01:25:46.360 And also, to Matt and Drew's point here, you know, a lot of the way that we spread our

01:25:50.960 imperial reach is through non-governmental channels or NGOs, literally, right?

01:25:55.980 And we actually do spread abortion through NGOs.

01:25:58.260 And this is something we've gotten a lot of pushback from Africa.

01:26:00.420 So one of the values we're spreading, I'm sorry to report, is abortion.

01:26:04.000 And I think, you know, Jeremy, well, you bring up this point about this guy, Fuentes, who,

01:26:07.580 you know, but it's not just him, right?

01:26:09.100 It's other people, too, who will make this argument and say, are we so much better than

01:26:13.600 the Taliban?

01:26:14.060 And the reason that some people can make that argument with more credibility is because

01:26:18.780 they have, as we joked, been kicked off of social media.

01:26:21.420 They have been taken out of financial institutions.

01:26:23.420 They've been put on the no-fly list without being accused of crime.

01:26:26.060 Yeah, we've got some problems.

01:26:27.140 So I'm just, I guess my point, again, is descriptive, which is, I understand why some people would

01:26:34.240 make even that semi-joking comparison when perhaps we would not.

01:26:37.620 I think that it's disingenuous to have this particular group of people devolve into some

01:26:45.340 sort of tacit accusations that maybe we're not pure enough on the abortion issue.

01:26:49.500 No, no, no.

01:26:50.040 Nobody's saying that.

01:26:50.880 Come on.

01:26:51.120 I reject that.

01:26:51.440 That's not true.

01:26:52.300 The abortion is like unto slavery in two ways, and wholly different than slavery in most ways.

01:26:57.580 It's like unto slavery in two ways.

01:26:59.420 One, that it is culturally, in broad swaths of the culture, considered moral, even though

01:27:05.660 it is wholly unrighteous.

01:27:07.660 And it is likened to abortion in that it is somewhat ubiquitous.

01:27:12.040 Slavery was ubiquitous in all of the world.

01:27:14.760 Abortion is ubiquitous in all developed nations, really, on earth.

01:27:19.260 And that does not get out of jail free card for us where abortion is concerned.

01:27:22.960 But it is to talk about the scope of the problem of abortion, that abortion does not make America

01:27:27.200 unique.

01:27:28.180 America is a grievous evil. 0.98

01:27:31.660 Abortion is a grievous evil. 0.86

01:27:33.040 And we're worse on it than most other people.

01:27:34.180 It's not a unique evil.

01:27:34.960 That also, what you're talking about also, I think, could potentially mitigate to a certain

01:27:39.260 extent the personal moral culpability of some individuals who choose abortion because they're

01:27:45.040 in this environment where they're told by everybody that's okay.

01:27:47.400 But in terms of the point that I was making anyway, it's not about any individual here.

01:27:51.420 It's actually all of us.

01:27:52.280 I had this thought just the other day when I was, we were going out to eat or something

01:27:56.120 and we passed by at Planned Parenthood, which we all do all the time.

01:28:00.360 We passed by Planned Parenthood.

01:28:01.580 And I didn't even think much of it.

01:28:03.180 I just went to eat.

01:28:04.660 And only later did I stop and reflect.

01:28:06.740 I'm like, I just passed by a building where they were killing babies.

01:28:08.900 And it didn't even register fully on me as pro-life as I am and as we all are.

01:28:14.880 So this is, like Drew pointed out, this is a success the left has had.

01:28:19.240 This is something unique about abortion that we don't see the victims.

01:28:22.340 And so that prevents us all from fully confronting it.

01:28:25.060 I think that if these were, and I'm sure we all, I know we all agree, if these were two-year-old

01:28:29.700 children who were being, and we could see them being carted in by their parents to have

01:28:33.400 their brain sucked out of their head, I wouldn't have been able to go eat.

01:28:36.860 I mean, I would have had to charge in there and stop it. 0.99

01:28:39.840 And we don't, none of us really have that.

01:28:41.500 Abortion is the Lord's of the ring sin.

01:28:45.900 It's the sin that God can't see, right?

01:28:48.480 It's the, if you had the ring of power and you could turn yourself invisible, 100% of

01:28:52.120 all men would go into the women's locker room. 1.00

01:28:53.700 Like your very first thought, it'd be like, yep, women's locker room, right? 0.99

01:28:57.760 Just instantly, because God couldn't see you.

01:29:00.140 Because, and when I say God, I really mean man, because God knows the heart of it.

01:29:03.840 God sees all, but we reduce God down to us.

01:29:06.860 We think, so abortion is what it is in particular because people don't see it.

01:29:11.500 Not only do they don't see the crime, they don't see the criminal.

01:29:14.720 And in that way, I mean, I will confess in various moments in my life, always thinking

01:29:22.020 that abortion was a grievous crime, I've been confronted with the part of myself that could

01:29:28.140 have snuck around and done it.

01:29:29.900 Yep.

01:29:30.040 Because I know what I would do if I, I know what I could do if I could get away with it.

01:29:34.400 It's that Matthew's, that passage of Jesus in the book of Matthew about, you know, adultery.

01:29:41.180 If you lust after, you're an adulterer.

01:29:42.900 If you have hate, you're a murderer. 0.91

01:29:44.340 You're kind of like them or you're on the path to being one.

01:29:47.140 You are one because you've revealed what you actually would be if no one was watching.

01:29:52.020 Abortion just happens to be the one that actually no one is watching.

01:29:56.060 We've actually run out of time, but rather than ending the show, I'm going to prolong

01:30:00.200 the suffering because we promised that we would take some questions from our Daily Wire

01:30:04.380 subscribers. 0.99

01:30:05.280 They make it possible for us to conduct this crap show. 0.97

01:30:09.540 We have a, I would argue that the longer the show goes, the more moral obligation we incur 0.99

01:30:14.240 to our subscribers.

01:30:16.680 Now I even more strongly disagree.

01:30:18.720 Exactly.

01:30:19.220 We should just withdraw.

01:30:20.120 Yeah, withdraw.

01:30:20.980 The first question for the group, how will the reduction in American might and reputation

01:30:27.180 have ramifications on other world events, namely China moving on Taiwan and Russia flexing

01:30:32.080 its muscles in Eastern Europe?

01:30:34.320 That's the question, Ben.

01:30:35.460 I mean, I think it's going to have dramatic ramifications.

01:30:37.500 I think everybody who follows foreign policy can see that people are talking openly in China

01:30:41.160 about moving on Taiwan.

01:30:42.440 Frankly, I think they'd be fools not to move on Taiwan before Joe Biden is out of office

01:30:46.340 because, well, the getting is good.

01:30:49.240 I think you're going to start to, they may try to pursue the Hong Kong model of trying

01:30:52.960 to pressure the government there into moving more pro-China because they feel like they're

01:30:55.860 not going to get American support.

01:30:57.200 So just basically softly take them over the way that they did Hong Kong before they marched

01:31:00.220 in the troops.

01:31:01.140 But look, China's on the march. 0.97

01:31:03.240 They're taking advantage.

01:31:03.960 Russia's on the march. 0.93

01:31:04.680 They're taking advantage.

01:31:05.600 We're not going to have any bases now, not only in Afghanistan, but also in Pakistan.

01:31:08.560 So we have no ability.

01:31:09.660 When Joe Biden talks about how we're going to have over the horizon capacity, we absolutely

01:31:12.500 will not.

01:31:13.200 In order to do that, you have to have people on the ground who actually know where to spot the

01:31:16.160 actual bad guys that you can actually put a laser on it so that our guys can hit it.

01:31:19.820 So it's a disaster area and a wide array of foreign policy issues is the really short

01:31:26.280 answer.

01:31:27.420 And again, I think our enemies are looking at this and they are just drooling.

01:31:32.340 Yeah.

01:31:32.500 To Drew's point, America is about to have to actually face the question of what is our role

01:31:36.640 in the world.

01:31:37.580 Do you think Biden is going to be impeached or is going to be forced to step down?

01:31:41.460 And is that even a good thing?

01:31:42.820 Because Kamala is just as bad and also should be impeached. 1.00

01:31:46.280 Kamala, too, because she obviously had a part of this plan. 0.97

01:31:49.280 Also, in fact, she right before it all went to crap, she made a major point of saying that 0.78

01:31:54.020 she was very involved. 0.96

01:31:54.900 How incompetent do you have to be where you're like, OK, this thing is going to be just

01:31:58.280 it, but I need to be on that bandwagon.

01:31:59.680 Well, don't forget at that first speech, she wasn't there.

01:32:02.320 I think she had to have her arm twisted a little. 0.99

01:32:04.440 But to this point, I think as just I'll defer to the lawyer in the room.

01:32:07.640 But as a as a simple matter of impeachment, maladministration is not a basis for impeachment.

01:32:14.400 High crimes and misdemeanors is a basis.

01:32:16.380 There's also nobody who's going to impeach him.

01:32:18.240 Right, exactly.

01:32:18.760 I think the question of whether he will have to step down is unanswerable because he is

01:32:23.280 such a we we just don't know how bad off he is.

01:32:26.860 And it's some it's it's possible at some point they won't be able to hide it.

01:32:29.840 He looks the way he looked tonight.

01:32:30.920 I cannot imagine running for reelection.

01:32:32.940 But at the same time, we won't run.

01:32:33.940 They can't let Kamala Harris. 0.97

01:32:35.560 I think he runs.

01:32:36.460 I think he runs for reelection.

01:32:37.420 I think you will strap him to a horse and they will run down there.

01:32:39.800 I don't think I've run.

01:32:40.960 Did you just see?

01:32:42.120 So the Yahoo headline just came out about his poll numbers and they said, this is really

01:32:45.220 hurting Biden Harris.

01:32:47.680 Harris is only leading Trump by two percent.

01:32:50.240 That was a headline.

01:32:51.740 Wait, is she running? 0.99

01:32:52.960 I didn't I didn't know that was part of the past.

01:32:54.960 I just I'm kind of with Ben.

01:32:56.140 I think that they will it'll be weekend at Bernie's.

01:32:58.900 They they are terrified.

01:33:00.300 I mean, Kamala couldn't win a primary. 0.99

01:33:02.820 She certainly isn't going to win.

01:33:04.000 And and, you know, the idea that both the president and the vice president would not

01:33:08.160 seek a second term against a Republican.

01:33:11.120 I don't know if we've ever seen that.

01:33:12.300 I think that's going to happen.

01:33:13.260 I we don't know the future, but I think that's going to happen.

01:33:16.480 I think it's very hard to know.

01:33:18.260 It really is impossible to know what's going to happen with Biden because he may just be

01:33:22.520 it may just be impossible to prop him up.

01:33:24.220 That's true.

01:33:25.060 Do you believe the Biden administration will pay a ransom for remaining Americans who

01:33:28.980 are left in Afghanistan before using military force?

01:33:32.220 For sure.

01:33:32.620 One billion.

01:33:33.580 Yeah, exactly.

01:33:34.200 There are going to be pallets of cash that are shipped over there that we're never going

01:33:36.900 to see.

01:33:37.320 There already are.

01:33:38.160 Probably a hundred percent.

01:33:39.740 By the way, that actually is an impeachable offense.

01:33:41.480 Yeah, you're not right.

01:33:42.200 I mean, that actually is.

01:33:42.960 So if we start shipping money over there without any sort of congressional approval to a terrorist

01:33:46.520 group, then that actually is who's going to do it.

01:33:49.080 Right.

01:33:49.480 But I mean, just to the legal question, by the way, to the legal question, the real answer

01:33:52.340 is it doesn't matter because impeachment is a political exercise, right?

01:33:55.360 So it doesn't really matter.

01:33:56.420 Right.

01:33:57.560 What are the chances that China decides it's time to go after Taiwan?

01:34:01.140 I mean, we're basically off.

01:34:02.400 A hundred percent.

01:34:03.940 And if I were China, I'd certainly do it in the next three years because we don't know

01:34:08.140 what's coming.

01:34:08.780 And by the way, who exactly is going to oppose them?

01:34:10.400 To speak of like the West and its restrictions on freedom, it makes more sense to have that

01:34:14.000 conversation less in the guise of the Taliban than it does with regard to China, considering

01:34:17.480 Chinese social credit system, considering how Australia is currently locking its citizens

01:34:21.980 down, like, I mean, like, did you see the video from Nine News?

01:34:25.760 Yes.

01:34:25.960 And it was like, I was just waiting for the, and then there was the guy who's coming down

01:34:28.620 the elevator and the anchor's like, his name is, and I was like, I'm waiting for them

01:34:31.280 to release the hound on Montag.

01:34:32.680 I agree.

01:34:33.780 You're the only person who got the reference, but I was like, this is the end of Fahrenheit

01:34:36.820 450 water.

01:34:37.500 He's running for the river and you've got the hound following him because he might have COVID

01:34:41.580 and he's asymptomatic.

01:34:42.880 It's unbelievable.

01:34:43.740 It is the fall of the West right now.

01:34:44.980 And it is the Chinese moment.

01:34:46.280 I mean, you wrote your book, The Authoritarian Moment.

01:34:47.960 And really what you mean in some ways is that this is the Chinese moment.

01:34:51.220 There have been, for the last 25 years, there have been two models that were sort of dominant.

01:34:56.220 There's the Western model, basically the American model.

01:34:59.180 Now, in Europe, it's further left and it has more a parliamentary system and it has, you

01:35:04.120 know, bigger social space.

01:35:05.040 Bigger social area.

01:35:06.140 It's essentially the post-war American order.

01:35:09.320 And what we're seeing, to some degree even domestically, which is very concerning, is that

01:35:13.880 in some ways both left and right are looking at China now and saying, you know, this system

01:35:18.600 of strong authoritarian regimes with liberal economics may be scalable in a way that this

01:35:29.420 isn't.

01:35:29.600 This happened before World War II, too.

01:35:31.120 You know, there were plenty of people in America who were going like, Hitler isn't such a bad 1.00

01:35:34.900 guy.

01:35:34.980 He's got a point. 1.00

01:35:36.380 Do you believe that this is a combination of idiocy, incompetence, naivety, or intentional? 0.99

01:35:43.700 In other words, are they trying to inflame the American populace and thereby increase 0.99

01:35:47.320 military operations overseas?

01:35:48.780 I think it's a, I really, I've heard the conspiracy, if you want to call it that, the conspiracy

01:35:54.300 theory that this is a purposeful attempt to debilitate us and demoralize us.

01:35:59.580 I just don't think that that's smart, to be honest with you. 1.00

01:36:01.400 Joe Biden is a moron. 1.00

01:36:03.060 He's a moron. 1.00

01:36:03.460 I suppose the only moron. 1.00

01:36:04.660 And he always was, even before this. 1.00

01:36:06.240 To put my tinfoil hat on, though, if I could stand up for the question, to Ben's point,

01:36:11.920 the people do not control foreign policy, or at least have not in many years, many decades.

01:36:17.040 And we know that the bureaucracy and the foreign policy establishment did not want to pull out

01:36:21.440 of Afghanistan.

01:36:22.720 And we know that Joe Biden is not running the show.

01:36:25.020 And so there is the question. 1.00

01:36:26.700 I don't want to ascribe to malice that which is explained by stupidity and incompetence, and 1.00

01:36:30.660 there was a lot of that. 0.99

01:36:31.920 We left a lot of stuff behind at Bagram.

01:36:34.140 We left a lot of stuff behind in the country.

01:36:36.180 75,000 vehicles, over 200 aircraft, 600,000 firearms.

01:36:42.380 10 million rounds of ammo.

01:36:43.800 I mean, we're missing an army's worth of stuff.

01:36:47.480 That is either historic incompetence or there were competing.

01:36:53.140 I think we're missing an option, though, which is indifference.

01:36:55.660 I think part of it, the problem is the people that run our country don't really care that

01:36:59.720 much about Americans or our country at all.

01:37:02.380 So I think there's also... 0.99

01:37:03.520 Joe Biden's always been committed to his peculiarly stupid idea of the moment, right? 0.99

01:37:07.160 I mean, it's like, what if we just took this country and we sliced it in three? 0.99

01:37:09.700 You're like, well, there are no natural resources in one third of that country.

01:37:12.320 And he's like, I don't care, man.

01:37:14.080 Come on, man.

01:37:15.140 And it's that here, too, right?

01:37:17.300 Didn't his press conference tonight where he's like, all my generals agreed on this?

01:37:21.260 He kept saying this over and over, right?

01:37:22.220 Not all my generals, all the higher-ups in the military, which actually extends even

01:37:27.640 beyond...

01:37:28.360 Like, one person has to say, but I mean, I didn't.

01:37:31.480 By the way, it's not true.

01:37:33.060 We have many, many stories of all his guys going, you can't pull out this way.

01:37:36.100 And he's like, we're doing it.

01:37:37.060 And then he's like, but they also agreed that we should not defend Bagram.

01:37:40.080 It's like, oh, you mean once you said we could have two troops and you could put the

01:37:42.680 two troops in one place?

01:37:43.840 They said, let's do Kabul instead of Bagram?

01:37:45.420 Wow, big agreement there.

01:37:46.580 But it is amazing.

01:37:47.620 I do think that we can't talk about it on this show because we got to go home. 0.96

01:37:51.140 This is ridiculous.

01:37:51.940 But I do think that there is a case to be made that our intelligence services are infiltrated 0.56

01:37:57.400 by our enemies.

01:37:58.280 I think that there is a case.

01:37:59.080 Of course.

01:37:59.740 Of course.

01:38:00.300 Yeah.

01:38:00.580 And, you know, the thing, we talk about the big things.

01:38:03.740 I'm not committing suicide.

01:38:04.720 If I die, that's what I mean.

01:38:06.840 You wrote a McAfee-esque letter.

01:38:08.480 You did just give up the whole plot.

01:38:11.260 Biden's not going to run.

01:38:12.180 Kamala's not going to run. 1.00

01:38:13.000 Hillary's going to be president. 1.00

01:38:14.440 You're in real trouble, buddy.

01:38:15.940 We talk about the big things, Humvees, you know, armored vehicles, airplanes, and helicopters.

01:38:22.360 It's the 16,000 pairs of night vision goggles that I'm the most worried about.

01:38:25.960 Our special operators have ruled Afghanistan truly for the last 20 years.

01:38:30.160 They're the most lethal fighting men that have ever existed in all of human history.

01:38:35.540 And their superpower is that they can see in the dark.

01:38:38.700 That's their superpower.

01:38:39.660 And we just gave the enemy the superpower.

01:38:41.300 The good news is, where are they going to buy batteries?

01:38:43.840 That's all the time we have for tonight.

01:38:45.620 We want to especially thank our DailyWire.com subscribers for being patient with us tonight.

01:38:49.780 It took us a minute to get to your questions, but we're grateful that you are with us.

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The Matt Walsh Show - August 27, 2021

Daily Wire Backstage： The Fall of the West

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