 Predictably, the mainstream media has been absolutely horrible when it comes to the issue of Afghanistan and the Taliban taking over Kabul because they're not necessarily trying to present you with different alternatives. They don't want to give you a really holistic picture of what's happening. They just want to present you with a narrative that withdrawing is bad. And anyone who says otherwise is bad, they're a monster because they support the Taliban suppressing women's rights and a crackdown on marginalized communities. And that's incredibly, incredibly disingenuous. Now, I don't want to be overly broad here. I think that individuals like Anand Giridharidas, he brought on Barbara Lee, and she talked about why even though this is a difficult decision, Biden ultimately made the correct move in withdrawing from Afghanistan because this isn't a winnable war. And regardless of how long we stay, this is going to always produce the same outcome. So rather than wasting money and American lives, it's time to come home and try to focus on saving as many lives as possible, you know, accepting as many refugees as we possibly can from Afghanistan since we did help to further ruin your country. But it's not even that simple. You're not just getting the wrong message. You're getting the wrong message from the worst messengers imaginable. The individuals who are the architects of the current situation. Now, I argued in my video that the main takeaway from all of this shouldn't have been that it was wrong for Biden to withdraw. The takeaway should be that anti-war leftists like Barbara Lee were correct and intervening in the first place was always a bad decision. But what does the mainstream media do? They bring on the individuals from Bush's administration who were part of the problem, who we should take the least seriously. And they prop them up as if they're experts when it comes to Afghanistan. And media matters that are really good right up on this particular situation as it relates to the Sunday news shows in mainstream media. So Eric Cleefield of Media Matters writes as the Taliban retakes control of Afghanistan following the U.S. military pullout after 20 years of war, mainstream media outlets are often giving voice to figures from the George W. Bush administration, the very people who got America bogged down in an unwinnable conflict in the first place on Sunday morning's edition of ABC's This Week. George Stephanopoulos, co-anchor, Jonathan Karl spoke with Representative Liz Cheney, noting that she was also a former State Department official. But while Karl asked questions about the long U.S. commitment in the country, having yielded such little positive results and whether it could have been continued, even when the American public no longer supported it, he never actually asked Cheney about her own record informed policy from that era in the Bush administration, during which her father also famously served as vice president. On Sunday night's edition of MSNBC's American Voices with Alicia Mendes, guest anchor Anand Giridharadas interviewed MSNBC anchor and former Bush White House Communications Director Nicole Wallace. But the discussion of the war's whole timeline seemed to treat both Wallace and the entire Bush administration as if they had been passive observers rather than active participants and decision makers. NPR's morning edition spoke Monday morning with former Bush and Trump foreign policy official John Bolton, who lambasted both former President Donald Trump for the erroneous policy of having negotiated with the Taliban and President Joe Biden for bungling Trump's error further. Washington Post columnist and former Bush speechwriter Mark Thieson, who has long advocated a permanent U.S. troop presence in such places as Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, appeared Monday on Fox's America's newsroom to rail against the Biden administration. Thieson is also a Fox News contributor. Fox co-anchored Dana Parino, who was also a former press secretary from the Bush administration, asked Thieson, I wondered about you today, Mark, in terms of what would you say? What would you write for a president to say at this point? But I think that those comparisons are just impossible to make. You worked for a very different president. So they're bringing on the people who got us in this predicament in the first place, and rather than challenging them, they're speaking to them as if they're experts. And it's not just them. If you watch Fox News, they'll bring on Lindsey Graham, who never saw a war that he didn't like. They'll bring on Adam Kinzinger, who oftentimes is celebrated by the press because he's an anti-Trump Republican, but that doesn't minimize the harm that he causes in his nonstop advocacy for war. So they bring on these people and it's really infrequent that we actually see voices who are saying something that's antithetical to the mainstream narrative pushed by corporate media. I cited Barbara Lee, but one interview with Barbara Lee isn't sufficient. She is perhaps one of the people who we should take the most serious since she proved that she was right from the get-go, but instead they bring on people from the Bush administration who should be ostracized and challenged if they are actually brought on. And I don't necessarily have an issue with Mehdi Hassan platforming individuals with Eli Lake because Mehdi Hassan actually does do a good job at pushing back. But folks like this actually have the loudest, most prominent voices in mainstream media as it relates to any discussion surrounding Afghanistan and U.S. foreign policy. Take a look at this really, really just disgusting admission that he says out loud, confidently. Just to be clear, for our viewers, Eli, were you saying that we should be there for another 20 years or for how long? However long it takes, I just don't think that having a few thousand American forces in Afghanistan is too high a price to pay to prevent what we're seeing now before our eyes in Kabul and the repercussions of which are going to be disastrous on a number of levels. So to avoid that, having a small footprint in my view is not too high a price to pay. And I have no problem telling you that I don't mind if it's indefinite. So how many more times have people heard someone say, maybe we should just stay in Afghanistan indefinitely or we should have stayed in Afghanistan indefinitely compared to people who are saying, look, we have no choice but to withdraw. Staying there indefinitely is totally unfeasible. And regardless, we're not going to change the outcome. It's a matter of like ripping off the band aid. We know it's going to hurt. We know it's going to be a disaster and a catastrophe from a human rights standpoint. But we never should have invaded in the first place. And this is why we're telling you, stop doing war, stop doing these intervention. You know, we're not going to hear that voice. That's that's the thing. You have HR McMaster talking about how, you know, we should maybe just go back into Afghanistan. I believe he was on Fox News when he said this. It's just media matters painted a picture about all of the Bush administration officials who are getting platformed by mainstream media. But that doesn't even consider all of the folks who weren't necessarily from the Bush administration, but are still championing never ending wars. And it's just this is explicitly them trying to manufacture consent for war, in this case, never ending war. When again, I have to point out the people from Bush's administration should be the ones that we take least serious when it comes to anything regarding foreign policy. But how often do we see John Bolton brought on mainstream media and celebrated as if he's some sort of an authority on war? He's not an authority on anything. This man is motivated by bloodlust. He is a sociopath. He doesn't care about human suffering. He cares about the pockets of individuals who run the military industrial complex. And so the media has been absolutely atrocious as it relates to their coverage of Afghanistan. But as much as we can in the media, I believe it's incumbent on us to push back against that narrative, because never ending war is not something that we should be promoting. But when you see that as like the main narrative being peddled, it just feels like a lost cause. But I will do what I can on this platform to push back against that and to argue against never ending war and against all wars because war is a thing that primitive species should be doing. It shows how human beings, you know, we haven't advanced if we're still killing each other over resources and, you know, geopolitical disputes. It's just we should all be embarrassed about the fact that war still exists in 2021. But this is, you know, a late stage capitalist society that I'm talking about here. So of course, whatever makes us money, regardless of how barbaric and ruthless it is, that is what our establishment, both governmental and, you know, media establishments are going to root for. But, you know, I think that we still have to call it out, even if the effort is not going to be successful.