 Hi, I'm Sandy Baird, and with me today is Kurt Mehta, and we're going to be discussing today what's happening in the world, particularly as it relates to the recent Afghanistan withdrawal on the part of President Biden. Two ways to look at this, was it a real withdrawal, or was it in fact a defeat? We're also going to be looking at the importance of Afghanistan and world empires. And Kurt, Mehta with me, is a man who's done a lot of research on the subject, so he will be discussing this with me, and hopefully you're all listening out there. Okay, so Kurt, what's going on in Afghanistan? And here we have a map showing where Afghanistan is in the world in the first place. Yeah, okay, so Sandy, one of the things I think that the average person has probably seen on TV in the last month or so is the debacle known as the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which has been a disaster. It's been a disaster of policy, it's been a disaster from a standpoint of what we've seen in the media. And unfortunately 12 American Marines at the tail end of the withdrawal lost their lives. And so that's... And a lot of Afghanis too, right? And a lot of Afghanis on the way out, so we'll talk about the withdrawal, we'll talk a little bit about Afghanistan historically and how it became this hotbed of terrorism since really the 1970s. And it wasn't always like that. So I mean, Afghanistan, you may have heard, has been known as the graveyard of empires. It's a more recent description of that nation state, it wasn't always the case. There have been a lot of empires that have successfully conquered Afghanistan. Briefly. Yeah, briefly. If we look at the map in terms of history briefly, if we look at the map, we have Pakistan to the right, we have Iran to the left, and then our fine folks here pulled up a map of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan. These countries were all formerly Soviet republics. So that was... I mean, they're now independent of Russia, right? Correct. But before 1992, you could have written the USSR at the top of this map. And then what's missing here is to the right of Pakistan is India also. And above that is China on this map. So those are the two missing portions on this map. So why is it the graveyard of empires? It originally fell within the sphere of India in antiquity thousands of years ago. So the culture thousands of years ago was largely Indian. You had the Zoroastrian religion that emanated from Afghanistan. Buddhism was very prominent in Afghanistan also. Pretty much the entire country was Buddhist, believe it or not, at one point prior to the advent and the arrival of Islam. And then for about a few hundred years, Hinduism was the main religion. And again from India largely, right? Correct. As was Buddhism too. I think people that are familiar with Afghan news watching the news over the last 20 years may remember the large Buddhist statues in Afghanistan that were blown up by the Taliban because they were seen as being controversial or anti-Islamic and pagan. And pagan? And pagan, yeah, predating the arrival of Islam in the 1100s. Since the 1100s though, the country has been solidly Islamic. I think Pew Research shows that 99.7% of the population is Islamic with a small sprinkling of Sikhs, Hindus, some Christians. And up until the end of the 20th century, there was a small Jewish population in Afghanistan also, but most of them left for the United States and Israel after the Taliban really were embedded. And what about the Christians? Are there Christians? But it is illegal to practice Christianity in public. There are no public churches in the country of Afghanistan. Are there mosques? They're all mosques mostly. But they have allowed some Hindus to have Hindu temples and some Sikhs to have what are known, what their religion calls, they're called Guru Dwaras. These are Sikh temples. They do exist. They're licensed. Christian churches have been outlawed by the Taliban for a long time, so they don't exist. So how did we get from this time in antiquity to today? You have a place that Alexander the Great conquered at one point? A Greek. A Greek, right. So there are elements of Greek culture in old Afghanistan and there are Greek temples in Afghanistan that still stand. But we moved from there to the last thousand years where Islam has basically dominated the country. The English had a foray in Afghanistan. The area was referred to as the Great Game because the British wanted to create a buffer state between India, which was British controlled for about 300 years up until the 1940s, and Russia, czarist Russia. So the Great Game, so-called, was a game to control Afghanistan. As a buffer state. As a buffer state between Britain and Russia, correct? Between Britain and Russia, yeah. So the British were concerned at that point that Russia may have an interest in overtaking British India and the trade and all the things that were attractive for Great Britain in India. So they intended on creating this buffer state, which Afghanistan was because it's largely a mountainous region, very difficult to cross, especially in a time frame that preceded airplanes. Okay, so that was in the 19th century the Great Game, correct? And who won that, if anybody? No one essentially won, except for the Afghans. The Afghans were able to repel the British. And the Russians? And the Russians. But more so the British in a brutal fashion, very Taliban-esque if we watch the news and if you read history. I just want to mention a source that I have. It's a writer, a Scottish writer by the name of William Dalla Rimpel, who is an expert on South Asia and South Asian history. And he talks about how difficult Great Britain, how difficult a time Great Britain had in trying to control that area. They even tried to install a puppet king, who was an Afghan king at one point. And all these people were executed, the British cavalry that was sent there. They were all executed, and it was an absolute disaster for Great Britain, so they did not have their buffer state. They wound up fighting three wars in the course of about 75 years. The last one ended in 1919. Right after World War I? Right, and at that point, at the end of World War I, the British were exhausted. They had enough to deal with respect to the Germans and the losses that they experienced on the battlefield in Europe, that they were not interested in fighting a massive war in Afghanistan and in British India. And they essentially just created a line of control. What was that line? It's called the Durand Line. Yeah, right. It's the line between that separated British India at the time, and which is, that portion is now Pakistan. At the time, it was British India and Afghanistan in 1919, when that war concluded. But what it created was an independent Afghan state for the first time in history, with exact borders. Are these still the borders? And these are the borders that we're looking at. And it's landlocked, right? And it's a landlocked country. Yeah. Yeah. And Afghanistan turned into a monarchy for about, I'd say, about a good 50, 55 years from 1919, up until the mid-1970s, when a communist government was actually formed in Afghanistan. In Kabul. In Kabul. Right. Was it elected? I think it was. It was not elected. No? It was not elected. It was a bloody coup that supplanted another coup that had just happened that overthrew the monarchy. The Communist Party started. It was a Communist Party. It was a Communist Party. Was it indigenous? Or was it from the Soviet Union? It was an indigenous party. It was. It was an indigenous party. The party then basically had a great deal of resistance because they were reducing the role of the clergy in that country. One thing. They were also increasing the role of women. They were increasing the role of women. And in the 1970s, Afghanistan, unlike what we see now in the news, started becoming a very modern state in terms of social affairs. Okay. So when was this in the 70s? Yeah. So this was 1978. Was there a monarchy still? No. The monarchy was abolished by a bloodless coup, which then in turn was overthrown by the Communist Party of Afghanistan. So was it a parliamentary system or what? Was there a parliament at that point? There was a parliament that was created. A Politburo. Right. More similar to what you'd see in Eastern Europe at the time. The United States. So this was early 70s? This was 1978. Okay. Yeah. Towards the end of the 70s. The United States was not happy that there was a Communist Party that was one of another country because it was Communist. And therefore assuming that the Soviet Union would have a great deal of pull in that area or increasing their pull and getting closer to the Arabian Sea, which was an old system. So this was during the period of the Cold War in the United States. That is correct. Okay. The United States and Soviet Union were? Loggerheads. They were loggerheads at that time in the late 1970s. Right. The leader of the Soviet Union at the time was Leonid Brezhnev. Mm-hmm. At the time in the United States, President Carter was- Right. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. So we were unhappy. We as the United States were unhappy that the Soviet Union was possibly in a position to exert a great deal of control in another country in Asia and they were getting closer to the Indian Ocean if they were able to control Afghanistan. It's a step closer. So- But this is in the middle of the Cold War where the United States' foreign policy, I think, a lot, was an enemy of my enemy as my friend also. Essentially, that's what that's how it worked. Okay. So why don't you describe how that worked then? Right. So what happened at the time to offset the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan? Was it an intervention? Yes. So- Did the Soviet Union invade? They invaded, let me just move a step back. Okay. The new government that had formed in Kabul had just started to exert control over the entire area of Afghanistan and what the United States did subsequently was they sent in guerrilla fighters through its ally in Pakistan to actually fight the communist government of Afghanistan. Wait a minute. Okay. So this was through our allies, the U.S. allies, called Pakistan. Correct. Okay. So Mujahideen, which you translate that into holy warriors in the local- Jihad. Yeah, Pashtun language, they were sent in to fight the communist government. From Pakistan. From Pakistan. They were supported by the ISI, which is the Military and Intelligence Services of Pakistan, and the CIA. The Central Intelligence Agency of the United States. Working together. Yeah, right. So when this was happening, the regime, the communist regime in Afghanistan became weakened by the constant onslaught of attacks and by the end of 1978, the Soviet Union decided to invade. To support the communist government. Correct. Yeah. But were they invited in? They would argue that they were. Correct. They would argue that they were invited in by the communist party of Afghanistan. Yes. Okay. So prior to that, the Soviet Union were sending military advisors into Afghanistan. Not that different from what we were doing towards the beginning of the Vietnam War, prior to it. Right, sure. The military advisors then turned into the full-on Red Army. And that was in 79? That was by 79. They invaded the country to fight off these insurgents. The insurgency continued for another nine years. The Soviet Union stayed there for nine years. And it became what was known as the Soviet Vietnam. Right. Through the United States, we funded the Mujahideen to fight the Red Army. We armed them. These were people from Pakistan? These were people from anywhere from Pakistan, local Afghans, and a lot of people from Saudi Arabia. A prominent one that we probably know is Osama bin Laden. Osama bin Laden. Yeah. Was he actually in Afghanistan? He was actually in Afghanistan, in the hills. Saudi Arabia also contributed a significant amount of money towards the overthrow of the communist government in Afghanistan. What's their interest in the region? Just to control it, right? Just to control it. Just to control it. And to have a stake in the area. And to reduce the role of the Soviet Union at that time. This was an actual then revolt against the communist government of Kabul, which was assisted by the Soviet Union. That's correct. And the United States, was it in the interest of the United States to then overthrow or battle with the Soviet Union? Yeah. Afghanistan became a proxy war. Okay. Between the United States and the Soviet Union. The other thing it did in the long term for Afghanistan is it created a militaristic society and it became a hotbed for terrorism, which has not gone away. Okay. What terrorists were there? By terrorists, we're talking about guerrilla fighters who were trained by the CIA and they were trained by the ISI of Pakistan to fight in the hills. Against the government of Afghanistan. Against the government of Afghanistan, which was a communist government. Right. And people were largely motivated by religion and were practicing a more extreme form of Islam, which was able to basically inspire people to fight against this atheist outside force. Was this the Taliban? Which was the Soviet Union? No, I know. The outside force was the Soviet Union. By the way, the Soviets, let me ask you another question. So, these were what the United States would now call terrorists that we were aiding? At the time, correct. Okay. Against the Soviet Union. But at the time we didn't call them that. No, we called them freedom fighters. Freedom fighters, okay. That's what they were referred to. Right, right. And President Reagan referred to them when he invited some of the people into the White House at the time. Was it Reagan or Carter? It was Reagan by that point after 1980. Okay. And he continued Carter's policy. He continued Carter's policy and invested a substantial amount of money into the training of the Mujahideen and assisting Pakistan as a base of operations for sending the Mujahideen from Pakistan into Afghanistan to fight. Okay, so then what? And this policy went on for about eight, nine years. 79 to 81, about? 79 to 89. 89, okay. Yeah. And it destroyed the Soviet Red Army. Right, because they went there, correct? Yes. Like the United States went to Vietnam. Right, but remember, we were about 10,000 miles away from Vietnam. The Soviet Union had a border with Afghanistan. Right. It has a border. Right, and? And they had a very difficult engagement in that country. And the bombing and they mined the country substantially. The Soviet Union? Yeah. And again, what it did was the entire country of Afghanistan at that point became very accustomed to just constant fighting, constant war. It became a way of life for people. Not just the... Civilians, too? Yeah, I was just going to say, not just the actual Mujahideen warriors, the guerrilla fighters, but civilians also became accustomed to bombs going off, aerial bombardment, mines going off, shooting bullet holes in buildings. That became a fact of life, which wasn't always the case. That did not exist before the 1970s. So that by 1992, the Soviet Union had completely withdrawn from Afghanistan. And they were in the middle of a collapse themselves. Right. They collapsed. The Soviet Union in 1991. Essentially, they collapsed also. Right. And there was a communist government that was running Afghanistan towards the end, but it collapsed. What that resulted in was infighting on the part of these Mujahideen factions. Yes. Trying to control the country. So it became a country very similar to Somalia in that warlords were running the country. And then what happened was by 1994, an organization that came from Pakistan referred to as the Taliban. They were from Pakistan, too? Correct. The word Taliban means military students. And this group was created by the ISI, the Intelligence Service of Pakistan, that was concerned about the instability that was taking place in Afghanistan at that point because of these warring warlord factions. Right. And there wasn't any clear government. And this Taliban organization came in very well financed by Pakistan at that point. The United States had lost interest in the area. Really? Because the Soviet Union was out. Right. And we had prevailed in the Cold War and it was considered a major victory. And the loss that the Soviets experienced in Afghanistan was a large reason for their own demise and collapse also because of the amount of money that they spent there. And because of the ruination of their own troops, too, who came back to Moscow addicted because, remember, Afghanistan is a huge, they grow poppies and heroin. The largest opium market in the world. In the world, which is, do you suppose that's one of the reasons that all these big powers are interested also is because of the heroin or what? The biggest issue right now, there's been a discovery of rare earth metals that exist in Afghanistan. And they speculate that a trillion dollars worth of these minerals are in the ground. Right. But there's also poppies. And there's a substantial amount of opium growth there also, which is the main resource that the Taliban uses for sale. And for currency, right? And for currency, yeah. Okay. So then what happens? This mess is created, correct? Right. At that point, by 1994, the Taliban begins to exert control and take over Afghanistan little by little. Right. Heavily financed by Pakistan so that by 1997, there was a new organization that started up in Afghanistan, a resistance organization referred to as the Northern Alliance. Right. Right. People watching may remember the Northern Alliance because they assisted the United States in growing the Taliban in 2001 after the United States went in following 9-11. All right. I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm just wondering when the United States got re-interested. Yeah. Right. It was after the 9-11 attacks. Okay. So in the 90s, the United States was largely absent? Completely absent. Completely absent. They reduced aid to Pakistan, which was a major ally that helped facilitate the destruction and demise of the Soviet Union. And they lost interest in the area completely. Right. So we also left a lot of our weaponry there. Then, too? At the time. So the Stinger missiles, which played a prominent role in taking down Russian aircraft, these were essentially bazookas that people were able to hold on their shoulders and take down bombers and other fighting aircraft on the part of the Soviet Union, were basically left on the ground in that country. However, by 1997, I'm going to just throw out another familiar name, Pervez Musharraf was the... In India. Pakistan. No, he was a Pakistani general of the army at the time. Right. He wanted to eliminate the Northern Alliance completely. And he sent thousands of Pakistani troops to assist the Taliban in demolishing any adversary that they had on the ground. And it was a successful ploy. The interesting thing was, four years later, Musharraf had to switch sides and become an ally of the United States to take the Taliban out after we gave him an ultimatum of joining and becoming an ally or essentially becoming an adversary at that point. So at that point, the Taliban had exerted overwhelming control and domination of Afghanistan. And you'll see the things that they did. Basically, women ceased to have any rights in that country. Mass executions, Islamic law was essentially... Sharia. Sharia Islamic law was essentially implemented as the law of the land. And they enforced it very strictly there. So that's the Afghanistan that we came to know by the late 1990s. What happened subsequently to the United States in order to get us interested in that area again were the September 11th attacks. Right, in 2000 and... In 2001 on September 11th. Right. The attacks on the Pentagon, the World Trade Center and the plane that went down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Right. Leading to the loss of life of several thousand Americans. Right. And what was at that time assumed and intelligence found was that Osama bin Laden, a former Mujahideen warrior in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, right. Trained by the CIA was the head of an organization called Al Qaeda. Right. And Al Qaeda had training camps in Afghanistan. Was he there? And it was alleged that he was also physically there. Was he? At the time. We don't know. Because ultimately he was found in a military garrison town in Pakistan. Right. He was killed in 2011. Right. Called Abadabad. But it was assumed that he was actually physically in Afghanistan. And he may have just been en route in Afghanistan on the way to Pakistan. But at the time the Bush administration that was in power needed to show the American people that we were going to do something. We were going to do something quick. Yeah. And the thinking at the time was we needed to attack Afghanistan. The leadership in Afghanistan, the Taliban, at the time were basically not committed to trying to give bin Laden to the United States military. Right. They weren't willing to turn him over. And they were vague and they were ambiguous about what had happened. And they started talking about the overwhelming policy of the United States. And that the United States in that part of the world was playing mischief. And at that time the U.S. government basically had just had it. And said we're going to get this guy bin Laden if he's there. And we're going to overthrow the regime that's in power. Which was the Taliban at that point. Correct. Right. And they were trying to get the nation building. Well, we first wanted to get rid of Osama bin Laden. Was that the first goal? That was the first goal. But part of the goal was also to eliminate any al-Qaeda training camps and terrorist training camps that were in Afghanistan. And the camps were often funded through the growth of opium, as you mentioned before. Which was the currency in that area. So therefore we essentially created an alliance with the Northern Alliance which was this organization that I referred to before. Which was an anti-Taliban organization. We didn't really look into what they were all about. No, again, the enemy is my friend. And when the United States went in with the Northern Alliance they quickly were able to send the Taliban into the hills. And what we thought was a victory for the United States. But we didn't withdraw. Pardon me? We didn't declare victory and come home. No, we didn't. We stayed there to, as you said, to nation build. We were going to reform Afghanistan. And we were going to try to find Osama bin Laden. Right, which eventually we did. But he was not found in Afghanistan. Right. So why did we stay? Why did we stay? We were nation building at that point. Right. And what was sold to the U.S. public was that we're going to prevent this country from becoming a future terrorist training ground. And we're going to help women. And we're going to help women. And we're going to help people go back to school. And we're going to help minorities that were there. All these, you know, great projects. But what happened was there was a confidential memo that, at the time, the Secretary of Defense in 2002, Donald Rumsfeld under the Bush administration, that's just been recently released, this memo, indicating that Rumsfeld thought the only way to succeed, to prevail, was to pay people off in Afghanistan. The warlords who came back in after the Taliban was ousted by the U.S. Army and the Northern Alliance, the warlords were still an issue for the U.S. Army. They were conducting attacks on the Northern Alliance as well as on American soldiers. So the policy at the time was to pay these warlords to prevent them from attacking. And it succeeded. Many of these warlords basically became the highest officials in the Afghan government later, became members of parliament, became military generals and politicians. And presidents. And presidents. And presidents. But the policy to pay Afghanistan warlords continued in the United States. And that continued for years and years. So the corruption that we talk about that existed in Afghanistan was aided by the lack of oversight that we had. Yes, correct. In that country. I think that's always the case, isn't it? Yeah. And you had a country that basically had a GDP of about four billion a year. And we invested over a trillion dollars into that country. In weapons. In weapons, but also in reconstruction. Right. We simply couldn't absorb that kind of money. It wasn't used to absorbing large sums of money like that. Right. And the money was lost. And it was, you know, there were bribes that were paid. And they say up to about 40% of the money that was invested in Afghanistan was invested in organizations and companies that came from the United States. Yeah, right. Halliburton. Halliburton. There were companies in New Jersey. There were companies in other states that were involved in reconstructing roads, schools, clinics. So much of that money came back to the United States. Right. And in many cases, some of these companies were even indicted for bribing Afghan officials and convicted. And yet the flow of money continued. And so when we talk about the corruption that existed in Afghanistan, that's absolutely true. But it was aided and abetted by the corruption and the defense contractors who that were American at the time. And we stayed there until when? Until recently, right? We stayed there up until a couple of weeks ago. So President Trump in 2020 thought that the war, it wasn't an original thought. He knew that this was an unsustainable expense, expenditure for the United States in blood and money and decided to negotiate an exit from Afghanistan. Okay, so let's go back a minute. What was Obama's position? Obama's position was more complicated. Right, right. He was placed in a position where when Osama bin Laden was actually found and he was found to be in Pakistan, the natural next step would have been to declare the Pakistani victory and leave. Right. And he could have certainly done that. But we were in the midst of this nation-building project and what we were using Pakistan for at the time was a means to essentially transport military equipment to Afghanistan as well as civilian goods for the reconstruction of Afghanistan. And what Obama would have had to have done was to declare Pakistan a state sponsor of terror. Which he didn't want to do? Which he didn't want to do because it would have made the rebuilding of Afghanistan more expensive because we would need a new place to transit all this military hardware as well as civilian goods. And Obama did not want to do that. So we continued to stay there in Afghanistan and we continued to maintain the relationship with Pakistan at the time, despite how duplicitous it seemed when they were helping the Taliban and they were helping the United States at the same time. Alright, so then Trump is elected, right? Trump is elected. Trump was largely... Unknown to many people, Trump did not want to continue wars that were in his mind useless, right? Correct, correct. There was an article that a lot of people would have been surprised about, was he actually consulted with President Jimmy Carter in a conversation that was reported by the Christian Science Monitor. He contacted Carter in his home in Georgia and talked about all these wars that the United States was involved in and how big a waste of money they were. That was his main concern, right? That was his main concern and that we weren't getting anywhere and getting anything for them. Well, he was right about that. Right. And he actually had a famous conversation with... Actually, it's not famous, but it was released that he had this conversation with Jimmy Carter on how do we get out of all these things. And that was the Trump policy, was to slowly disengage from these decades-long conflicts that we had. In many cases, the people fighting weren't even sure why and when these things were even happening. In many cases, they predated their births for our U.S. soldiers that were on the ground as was the case in 9-11. A lot of the soldiers that left Afghanistan recently, they weren't even born. In September 11th, the attacks happened. And so the Trump policy was to disengage and one of the places he wanted to disengage from was Afghanistan. So what happened? So he negotiated a treaty with the Taliban in, I think, the start of 2016 to 2017. Well, he was elected in 2016. So shortly afterwards, he began negotiations with the Taliban to withdraw from the country. And then? With the U.S.? Yeah. And then in 2020, he did not prevail in the election. So that policy then was continued by the Biden administration. They did not turn around and decide to stay. They continued the Trump policy to withdraw. They waited too late? They waited, right. The withdrawal, as most people have seen on television, was not done in an organized fashion. Some can argue that these things never do. They're never pretty. Like Vietnam? Like Vietnam. Like, you know, a million people dying when the British withdrew India. Tens of thousands dying when they withdrew from Kenya. When the British withdrew from Hong Kong, that was an exception where there was a ceremony. They usually had a ceremony. But they had a lease with Hong Kong. They had a lease. Right. They just got to the end of their lease and they had a lease. So it was a nice-looking ceremony with fireworks. That's often not the case when these withdrawals take place. See, that's what bothers me. Okay. So what you're saying is something that I think is just coming out. So Trump made a decision to withdraw by a certain date, correct? I think by May. By the end of May. By the end of May. By the end of Moral Day. And he was defeated. That's correct. Okay. And in comes Biden. In comes Biden. And so did Biden follow that? No. What Biden did was he extended the deadline. He extended the deadline. Till? Till I believe it was the... September 11th, I think. I think it was the end of August, actually. It was August 31st. Okay. So it wasn't September 11th. No, it wasn't September 11th. All right. So it's the end of August. Right. The problem, though, was he did not, and the Biden administration, did not push Americans who were still on the ground to leave the country earlier. Right. So that was the mistake. I mean, could the 12 Marines who wound up dying in a suicide attack been saved? I don't know. I don't know. Okay. If someone is hell-bent on doing that, conducting a suicide attack, and being in a crowded place, well, that's going to happen. However, where the Biden administration really failed was they waited until the last minute to start moving massive numbers of people. Now, who are we talking about? We're talking about contractors, American contractors. Right. We're talking about Afghan nationals who happen to be U.S. citizens, maybe visiting family. Our green card holders. Our green card holders. We're also talking about tourists that were there. Students. And Afghanistan students that were there. And we're talking about, you know, the U.S. military itself. So I mean, one can argue that there should have been a greater amount of pressure put on the people that were on the ground who were quote-unquote visiting Afghanistan early, regardless of what the withdrawal date was, because the policy was established that we were leaving. Right. And that the U.S. military was not going to be in a position to protect these people. And then they were going to have to deal with, you know, the good hardness of the Taliban, hopefully, to let them leave when they wanted to leave. And the Biden administration was not forceful in imposing this withdrawal with respect to the actual Americans that were on the ground in that country. Or the friends there. Or the friends there. Yeah, right. There's another conversation that people have had about the fact that while the Biden administration is a little bit more open to immigration than the Trump administration was, depending on the country, there wasn't enough of an effort to assist contractors that were Afghani that assisted the U.S. military to get visas to get out of the country, because these were going to be people that were going to be in a position of being victimized by the Taliban for their assistance. Okay, so what if this is the case? What if the military, at least parts of the military, don't want to get out of there? So they gave Biden, essentially, bad intelligence. Look, I mean, we, you know, part of our country talked about nation-building. Right. But what we are leaving Afghanistan with is 500 U.S. bases in different parts of Afghanistan. With all the equipment. With much of the equipment. So because much of the equipment was given to the Afghan army, which, you know, disintegrated within weeks. See, that's what I think happened, actually. I don't think that Biden had a real choice. I think that the United States got defeated. Sure. That the Taliban and the Afghanis, the Taliban in particular, said, you don't care what your deadline is. You're getting out now. Right. And so Biden was stuck. Right. I mean, we call this, you know, this was referred to as a peace plan. Yeah. Between Trump, between Biden and the Taliban. It wasn't. At the end of the day, it's a defeat. It was a defeat. I mean, if your objective is to get rid of the Taliban and, you know, any kind of the exportation of opium, which was a very big, another part of the project, aside from the nation-building that was taking place there on the part of the United States, these goals were not met. Exactly. These goals were not met. And the Taliban, who we were, you know, essentially blaming as a proxy for the September 11 attacks. They're still in place. They're back in. They're back in. We're shaking hands with them. Are we? We were, you know, during the quote-unquote peace negotiations. So it is a defeat. Right. It is a defeat. But that's not the way the mainstream media is playing it. They're acting as if in criticism of Biden, which I just don't think Biden had any choice, but they seem to be criticizing Biden for the in-epness of the withdrawal. I'm not certain he had any choice. There have been large factions of people, even on the left and on the right, but even on the left, that believe that we should never have left the country. I know. And defense contractors would probably agree with that point of view based on how well they've done over the last 20 years. Or maybe that we should have left it sooner. Sure. That's another point of view. That's another point of view. That maybe perhaps after Osama bin Laden was found in another country, maybe we should have basically, you know, packed up and left. But others thought that we should continue to stay there. I know. The military in particular. That's why I said- The military has said, you know, we've stayed in Germany. We've stayed in Korea for decades. Why not Afghanistan? And I think that they pressured Biden to get a deadline that was extended past Trump. And Taliban said, we don't care what you do, President Biden, we're going to take Kabul. That's correct. That's correct. That's what I think happened. I don't think- I support Biden's decision to get out, but I don't think it was his decision. I think it was forced upon him by the Taliban. By the Taliban. Absolutely. Absolutely. And we no longer had the interest nor the heart to continue fighting them. How could we? We got defeated. Well, look, the other part of it was the- Mike Mullen, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs between 2007 and 2011, and was between the Bush administration and the Obama administration, talked about the fact that this was an impossible war to win. Exactly. You had a population, the Taliban, that could mix in with civilians easily without any difficulty. There were a lot of American arms that were still physically on the ground. Right. And they had sanctuary in a neighbor, Pakistan. Right. And we abandoned Bagram. That's correct. Well, anyway, I think we're pretty much out of time, Kurt. I want to thank you, though, for shedding some light on this horrible situation because regardless of the truth or not, the United States might be an empire that becomes fractured on the same place as all these other empires. And I think that the American people better rethink its whole role in the world, I guess. Right. And if you're not certain right now, wait till you see what happens when we leave Iraq in a few months. I know. In a few months, you think? The quoted date is December 31st. Well, we'll see. We'll see. Thank you very much. So we'll be back in a month or so to continue our discussions about what's happening. Thank you. Thanks.