 So, as you've probably seen in the news, Kabul has fallen. The president of Afghanistan has fled the country. What a courageous guy going down with the ship. You know, the embassy is basically, the U.S. embassy has basically been evacuated to the airport. 6,000 American troops are either on the way or they're ready to secure the airport, surround the airport, protect the airport. So that the embassy staff can be flown out of Kabul. Thousands of Afghans, interpreters, guides, people who worked for the Americans, people who were promised that they would be kept safe by the American government, that they would be flown to America, that they would be provided visas. Many of them are now in the airport trying to find a way to escape, trying to get the Americans to live up to their promises. They, you know, we're not getting all the information because I think it's hard to get up-to-date information on what's going on in the airport itself. But it's pretty chaotic over there. There are thousands and thousands of Afghans panicking right now, panicking for their life. The only secure zone from the wrath of the Taliban is the airport. So far the Taliban has not attacked American troops, partially as part of the, quote, peace agreement that the Trump administration signed with the Taliban last year and that the Biden administration has supported throughout. We will see if the evacuation goes smoothly and they're allowed to evacuate. Of course, the airport is also being used to evacuate the embassy staff of other Western countries like that have troops and have embassy staff in Kabul, whether it's the Danish, the British, and even some French, I think have been evacuated, two planes of French have been evacuated tonight. Out of there, thousands, thousands of courageous Afghans who helped American troops, American journalists that helped Western forces over the last 20 years and who were promised over and over again very recently by the Biden administration just last week by the Biden administration that they would be securely airlifted out of Afghanistan if the Taliban took over, that they would be protected by U.S. forces, that they would be provided with visas, thousands of these people are being abandoned all over Afghanistan in territory that has already been occupied by the Taliban. There's an excellent article today published in the Atlantic magazine Packer by something Packer who this day and this decision by Biden will live in infamy, the abandonment, the betrayal of Afghans who were supportive of the United States who would have made good immigrants to the United States and have been completely deserted, abandoned, stabbed in the back for all that they helped. Any future allies of the United States around the world are watching this. Don't expect that if we ever get into trouble, if we ever need anybody's help that they are going to provide it. Hugh James is waiting for Iran to say what's Trump's fault. Of course it's Trump's fault and Biden's and Obama's and Bush's. It's all of their fault. But it is Trump who signed quote a peace agreement with the Taliban and actually invited them to Camp David, luckily that didn't happen, but invited them to Camp David to sign the peace treaty. So yes, it's also to a large extent Trump's fault. This abandonment of everybody is partially a result of the fact that our visa regime in the United States is so primitive, backwards, anti-immigration that it makes it almost impossible to give these people visas, get them out of there, help them escape. Priorities now of the U.S. military, of course, is to get U.S. citizens and staff out as quickly as possible. And again, these people who helped us will be abandoned. In the meantime, Joe Biden is vacationing at Camp David. I'm sure he's getting regular updates from his staff, but he is not in the White House. He is in Camp David. He supposedly isn't going to make any kind of statement to the nation, but what can he say? I mean, the decision to leave Afghanistan, given that you're not going to win the war is probably the right one. The complete and utter incompetence of U.S. military intelligence, of the political class of the State Department, of the CIA, of every aspect and every part of the U.S. military, and every part of the U.S. foreign policy establishment in not being able to see that this was coming and not able to predict that the Taliban would be so successful so quickly and again, abandoning our allies is just horrific. And of course, will not, nobody there, nobody in the White House, nobody in our political class will take responsibility for any of it. Nancy Pelosi, brave, courageous, speak of the house, Nancy Pelosi, that one's on Trump, right? When Trump was elected, Nancy Pelosi wasn't speak of the house after two years of his presidency she was. Okay, so that's on him. Nancy Pelosi, speak of the house, today, issued a statement that began with the president is to be commended, commended for the clarity of purpose of his statement on Afghanistan and the actions he has taken. What actions has he taken, abandonment, I mean, you could leave Afghanistan and wipe out the enemy. You could leave Afghanistan and help your allies. You can leave Afghanistan under a variety of circumstances, other than complete collapse, complete betrayal, complete chaos, complete disaster. So Nancy Pelosi, the president is to be commended for the clarity of his purpose of his statement on Afghanistan and actions he has taken. Then she goes on to say, listen to this, we are deeply concerned about reports regarding the Taliban's brutal treatment of Afghans, especially women and girls, are you now? The U.S. and the international community and the Afghan government, what government? The government has just fled to Tajikistan and who knows where from there? Maybe to the United States, maybe we're protecting them. The U.S. and the international community and the Afghan government must do everything we can, everything we can. Everything we can do to protect women and girls from inhumane treatment by the Taliban. Really? You just said what Biden did was fine. You just commended him on evacuating, on leaving, on handing the country over to our enemy to dedicate it to anyone to get to who the Taliban is in a minute. People dedicated to killing Americans, he just handed them the country. And now, now you're concerned about women and girls and everything, we should do everything in our power. Everything in our power would be to blast these people into oblivion. But no, you don't support that. You support what the president has done. I mean, isn't that what we were in Afghanistan supposed to be for now? Again, I'm not for us staying in Afghanistan if we're not going to win, but that's what the American troops will be doing, protecting women and girls for the last 20 years in Afghanistan. You just abandoned them. Okay, fine. We had to get out. But don't say, don't say, the U.S. and international community and the Afghan government must do everything we can to protect women and girls. We're not going to. Admit it, we've abandoned the women and girls in Afghanistan and the Taliban can do whatever they want with them. We will do nothing to the Taliban if they do that. She continues this deluded, delusional, evil woman. Any political settlement that the Afghans pursue to avert bloodshed must include having women at the table. Oh, I'm sure the Taliban is going to have women at the table. There's no question that's going to be, but notice that she says must. Who's going to force them? Who's going to do that? I mean, I'm sure the Taliban was listening and they said, oh, Nancy Pelosi just said we must. She just said the U.S. and international community will do everything they can. So we better invite women to the table when we negotiate. Well, they're not negotiating. There's no settlement. The Taliban won. That's it. They won. They've taken over Afghanistan. There is no Afghan government other than the Taliban. They are the government and they will do it with women and girls, whatever they want. And we know what they want. Not good for the women and girls. Horrific. Horrible. But just admit what you've done. Accept it. We don't want to be the policemen in Afghanistan anymore. We don't want to sacrifice for them, okay? We recognize that this will bring about brutality and horror to the people of Afghanistan. We're sorry, but that's what it has to be. But no, we're going to continue to pretend, we're going to continue to pretend that we're somehow the good guys, that we're somehow going to save face, that we're going to protect the Afghan people, that we're going to protect these girls and women. Just disgusting. Just disgusting. Michael, if it's given, thank you. That's very generous. That got us to $400, you know, within like 15 minutes. It's kind of a record. So thank you for the support. I really appreciate that. I will be getting to all these questions in a few minutes, I promise. Now let's remind ourselves who the Taliban is. The Taliban comes from the word student. It's the Arabic word for student, talib. Talib is the reason they're called Taliban, is the original Taliban were the students. Amrullah Omar, an Islamist, radical Islamist, a militant Islamist, Islamic totalitarian, however you want to call it, who was teaching, centered in Kandahar, and who led, who was part of Mujahideen, the Islamists who fought against the Russian occupation, the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the early 1980s, supported by the CIA and supported by the United States. These young Afghans who originally comprised of the Taliban were all Sunni students who studied in Islamic schools, madrasas in Pakistan, after they fled Afghanistan. And then they call Lester, Amrullah Omar, who was the brightest light, I guess, among these Islamic scholars. In the 1990s, when Afghanistan was in chaos after the Soviets left and there was a huge, basically civil war between rivaling gangs, rivaling tribes to try to control Afghanistan, the Taliban called Lester in the area of Kandahar in the south of Pakistan, on the close to the border of Pakistan. They were supported initially by the Pakistani government. You could argue that they were supported initially by the US government. And Mullah Omar and the Taliban basically started a slow process of taking over control of Afghanistan. They started out by seizing Kandahar in 1994 without a fight. Now remember, Afghanistan, up until that point in the 50s, 60s, 70s, had been at least in Kabul in its capital, fairly secular. You can see pictures online of life in Kabul during that time. One of the reasons the Soviets invaded Afghanistan is that a communist government there that had been elected ran into trouble and called in the Soviets to help them out because of tribal warfare. So there had been a significant sector of the population that was secular and westernizing. But the Taliban, of course, are a group committed to Sharia law, ruling the state based on the laws of Sharia, based on the laws of the Quran. They don't tolerate music. They don't tolerate women being uncovered. They do not tolerate any kind of secular notions. Women do not go to school. And of course, any secular country, any secular peoples, any secular approaches are the enemy. The enemy is secularism. Religion, Islamic religion is the guiding principle. Jihad is the most important thing one can do. If you listen to interviews with some of the Taliban, they talk about the fact that they don't mind dying. The dying in the cause of jihad brings honor, sends you to heaven, basically. So in 1984, they took Kandahar, which was their base. They slowly started to spread across Afghanistan. They had a lot of support in the rural areas, the more religious areas of Afghanistan, primarily in the south, the Pashtun area. The Pashtun is a large tribe that also encapsulates most of northern Pakistan. So they had strong, heavy support in Pakistan, still to this day have and have always had. And they took over Kabul on 27 September 1996. They dragged out the former president, Mohamed Najibullah, from a United Nations office when they took over. They basically executed him after torturing him in public. All of this was in public. The Taliban government, from 1996, basically imposed the strictest interpretation of Sharia, established religious police for the suppression of any so-called vice. Music, television, popular pastimes such as kite flying were banned, girls' schools were closed, women were prevented from working and forced to wear all-covering bookers in public. Taliban courts, religious courts, handed out extreme punishments, extreme like Saudi Arabia, chopping off hands for thieves, stoning to death women accused of adultery. By 1998, two years later, they controlled 80% of the country. 20% in the north were controlled by some people called the Northern Alliance, tribes that were fighting against them in the north. In 2001, they blew up 1,500-year-old giant statues of Buddha in one of the valleys in Afghanistan. They were basically dedicated to the destruction of any non-Islamic symbols, sites, temples, anything. Any archaeological importance, didn't matter if it was non-Muslim, it was blown up. Mullah Omar lived in a fancy house in Kandahar, house supposedly built for him by Osama bin Laden. Now, of course, Osama bin Laden in al-Qaeda had helped the Taliban gain control of Afghanistan. They had also helped the Mujahedin in the 1980s fight the Soviet Union. And Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden became good friends. They shared an ideology. They shared a hatred of the West. They shared a hatred of secularization. And the Taliban had allowed al-Qaeda to establish training camps in Afghanistan, training camps that were known to the United States all over Afghanistan. Indeed, I think it was after the sinking, not the sinking, the bombing of a US Navy vessel off the coast of Yemen, I think in 1999 or in 2000, the United States actually lobbed some missiles into one of bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan, of course, doing nothing. Just it caused a little bit of sand to go up into the air. But the US was very well aware of the training camps, very, very well aware of bin Laden's activities in Afghanistan, but of course, did nothing about it, even as bin Laden was attacking US interests all over the world. In 2001 after 9-11, when it became clear that 9-11 was caused by bin Laden and al-Qaeda, that the plan was hatched in Afghanistan and deployed from Afghanistan, the Taliban were given an ultimatum by George W. Bush, hand over bin Laden, or we will depose you, whatever you call it. Of course, the Taliban did not hand over bin Laden. The United States, in December of 2001, basically assisted with the Northern Alliance, brought in special forces troops, ultimately brought in four ground troops into Afghanistan, wiped the Taliban through the Taliban away from power. Taliban government fled into the mountains. They fled into hiding. Many of them fled to Pakistan. They took with them the remnants of al-Qaeda. The United States, while bombing and defeating them, treated them much with kit gloves, often when they could have killed Mullah Omar or bin Laden or any of the leadership that the Taliban refrained because these people knew that if they traveled with civilians, the United States would keep them off. Now, the Taliban since then has been fighting an insurgency against the United States, against the Afghan government, against the NATO troops that have been in Afghanistan. Well over 2,000 American troops have died. During this insurgency, I reviewed the movie, The Outpost, a few weeks ago, which illustrates the lack of commitment of the United States to fight the Taliban, lack of commitment if the United States actually defeat them, lack of commitment if the United States actually win the war, lack of commitment to the United States to eradicate the threat that the Taliban posed and a complete willingness of the political and military class in the United States to abandon its own troops, sacrificing them on the altar of buying and gaining the favor and the hearts and minds of Afghanistan. We treated Pakistan, who was clearly helping the Taliban and helping al-Qaeda. We treated them with kit gloves, did nothing to them, refused to defeat them, refused to even engage with them. Indeed, we supplied them with weapons and treated them as if they were allies all the time. They were hiding bin Laden and helping the Taliban and helping to kill as many troops as possible. Our military acted in a disgraceful way towards its own troops. Our generals should have all been fired. The last 20 years in Afghanistan is a tragedy of American, you know, we could have gone there. We could have destroyed al-Qaeda. We could have killed bin Laden in the first few minutes after we decided we were going in. We could have devastated the Taliban. We could have destroyed their capacity to wage war and we could have left and said to them, every time we see a al-Qaeda base in your territory, any time we suspect terrorist activity coming out of Afghanistan, we're coming back and we're going to destroy and kill as many of you as possible and we'll keep doing that until you stop. That would have saved 2,000-plus American lives and maybe the Afghans would have learned a lesson and turned against the Taliban. But no, instead we went in, we deployed troops, we trained the Afghan army. We pretended to ourselves and to the Afghans that these troops could defend Afghanistan against the Taliban, that the troops actually believed in what they were fighting for. We supported politicians, we threw about a trillion, trillion with a T, dollars into this, into Afghanistan and we were forced to leave anyway. We were going to leave, we should have left to begin with. We were forced to leave anyway, but this time, not as winners, not as victors, not as destroyers of our enemies, but we were forced to leave with the tail between our legs, defeated, crushed, abandoning our allies with the blood of the people the Taliban kills now on our hands. The Taliban won this last round because there was no opposition. The Afghan military folded. It was not going to fight and die to protect what? What did the Afghan government represent other than corruption? What were they fighting for? What was the vision? What was the ideal? What was the purpose? Americans weren't going to help them. Americans had abandoned them. They just wouldn't, they just walked away. Says I wouldn't go that far, blood on our hands. I'd say the blood of the people who helped us that we promised to get out of there is on our hands. And the fact that we didn't defeat and crush and destroy the Taliban when we had a chance, when we had a reason to, when we had the opportunity, when we had every moral right to do so, here they are again, blood on our hands. In 2018, the Trump administration began discreet talks with the Taliban in Doha in the United Arab Emirates. The idea was to cut a deal so that the United States could leave, cut a deal with the Taliban, cut a deal with the people who are killing American troops on the ground, cut a deal with the people who are committed to the destruction of everything we believe in, cut a deal with the people who harbored 9-11 terrorists, who harbored al-Qaeda for years and years and years, cut a deal with the people who are clearly our enemies. Maybe not a very dangerous enemy, but our enemy. But that's Trump, that's pragmatism, that's all of these people. The talks were interrupted several times because American troops were being attacked and killed by the Taliban. Sorry, Doha is in Qatar, thank you. Thank you for the fixing that. In February, 29th, 2020, a cycle deal was signed between the US and the Taliban. Indeed, Trump was going to invite the Taliban to Camp David to sign the deal, unimaginable. The stupidity and anti-Americanism of that man. And then of course, Biden came and he said, ah, I'm committed to the same goal, I'm committed to getting our troops out of Afghanistan and he actually did it, he did it. He did what Trump and Obama could not do and here US military intelligence assessments have been so pathetic, so pathetic. Biden's weakness has been so pathetic. The betrayal has been so pathetic. I mean, it'll be interesting to see if Biden pays a political price for this. I mean, the American people are sick and tired of the war in Afghanistan, justifiably so. It's a war that we're committed not to winning and therefore it's a war that we must stop and end. The American people don't seem to really care about what happens there. I mean, some on the left are turning against Biden. You can see that in the papers and particularly the media. The media feels betrayed because they feel like they betrayed their sources in Afghanistan, people they promised to help evacuate and the Biden administration did not do it. I mean, the stupidity and hypocrisy and just sheer of Nancy Pelosi's statement that best friend Hank says I'm sick of politicians, sick as an understatement. I think many people will see through that, but does anybody care? Does it really matter? I mean, they do this to the American people in a sense on a regular basis. Nobody seems to care. Nobody seems to want to do anything. Nobody seems to want to force them to making a, you know, to actually paying a political price. Afghanistan, after all, is the burial ground of empires. It's where Alexander the Great was stopped. It is where the British were defeated. It's where the mighty Soviet Union was defeated. And now as predicted 20 years ago, I predicted it. Many people predicted it. It is no place in which the United States has been defeated. I predicted it not because it's Afghanistan. I predicted it because there was no will to win. We lost in Iraq, we lost in Syria, whatever the hell that, you know, I'm not sure we were even there. I mean, to the extent that we were there. And now we've lost in Afghanistan. And we didn't do what we're supposed to do, which is convey a clear message to the Islamist, a clear message to the people who want to kill us, a clear message to the terrorists among them, a clear message to the jihadists that we will not tolerate, that we will destroy them if they try to hurt us. That's the real loss. That's the sense in which your rights are being violated. That's the sense in which this is bad news for Americans. But plus the fact that nobody's ever gonna trust us again. All right, so, I mean, it's a dead story. It's now just a question of the humiliation of getting our people out. It's now just a question of how long it'll take to get everybody out of the airport. It's a question of whether the Taliban will stand down and let 6,000 American troops defend that airport and get the planes off the ground or whether they will, my guess is they'll let it happen. They've won, let all the foreigners leave. I don't think they mind that so much. And it's a time to mourn for the Afghan people and it's a time to mourn for the United States of America. We have lost it. No self-esteem, no self-respect. It's just being downhill from a foreign policy perspective. Downhill from a military perspective since World War II. We've had no basic foreign policy since World War II. All right. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual, would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, whims or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of the stare, cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist, both. All right, before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now, 30 likes, that should be at least 100. I figure at least 100 of you actually like the show. Maybe they're like 60 of the Matthews out there who hate it, but at least the people who are liking it, you know, I wanna see a thumbs up. There you go. Start liking it. I wanna see that go to 100. All it takes is a click of a thing, whether you're looking at this. And you know, the likes matter. 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