 All right, 9-11. So some of you might know this, but the victims of 9-11. So it's almost 20 years, almost 20 years since 9-11. We'll talk more about that as we get close to 9-11. You know, we'll do at least one show commemorating 9-11. It is 20 years. It's hard to believe, 20 years. Wow. Anyway, you might notice that the victims, many of the families of the victims of 9-11, suing the Saudi Arabian government and claiming that they share responsibility for 9-11. And as part of that, they have asked to the US government for their classified files about the potential connection between Saudi Arabia and 9-11, and particularly specific intelligence officials, maybe members of the war family, and their involvement in 9-11. And the US government has not been willing to release the information. It's all, I guess, top secret. And they are withholding that information from the families. Basically, families have now told Biden that he should not come to any of the events commemorating 9-11, either in Pennsylvania, where Flight 93 went down, or at the Pentagon, or in New York City, unless he is willing to release these documents. Now, my view about government secrecy is that almost nothing should be secret, right? The only stuff that should be secret is the stuff that truly puts American lives a danger, but anything else should be open. The government is our government. They are our servants. How dare they keep secrets from us? And there's some credible reasons to believe that Saudi Arabia did have involvement, whether officially as a government, or whether rogue agents within the intelligence agencies in Saudi Arabia. But that Saudis, Saudi citizens, did have some role to play in 9-11 in facilitating, or at least in not providing information to US security about what was going on. So it's horrific that the US government and the US government for 20 years now has been preventing families from getting the information. It is horrific that the US government does not make that public and make accusations against the Saudis public. I mean, the groveling of every single administration, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, to the Saudis. And I'm sorry if I offended anybody by mentioning Trump in there. I know some of you are very sensitive to that. I'm not allowed to say anything negative about Trump. But every single administration just grovels before these cheeks, these barbaric Middle Ages tribalists at the expense of American lives and property. Remember that the only flight to leave the United States, and this is no conspiracy theory, this is fact, the only flight to leave the United States in the days after 9-11 was a flight authorized by the Bush administration to take Saudis out of New York, out of DC, back to Saudi Arabia. Only flight. If they were connected, and I don't know that they were, we don't know. We don't have the intelligence. If they were connected, the evidence would back with them, right? That's the one exception the Bush administration made. In the midst of a national horrific tragedy, they didn't let any Israelis go anywhere. They let the Saudis back to Saudi Arabia. So the idea that these families can't get the information, can't get their lawsuit going forward because the US government is trying to protect Saudis is, as usual, horrific, mind-blowing nobody cares. Nobody cares. Which is connected to Afghanistan, of course. As we know, the Biden administration is committed to following up on what Obama and Trump committed to, which is leaving Afghanistan quickly. Biden is actually executing on that. This is in spite of a peace deal negotiated by the Trump administration with the Taliban that the Taliban will behave themselves once the American leaves. In spite of that, the Taliban are on the offensive. They've taken out seven provisional capitals in five days. What shocks me about this, the fact that they're doing this is not shocking at all. The fact that the US is leaving is not shocking at all. I mean, indeed, I think they should leave if they're not going to do anything anyway to protect America. The thing that's shocking is that I keep hearing these foreign policy experts, former and current diplomats, saying, oh, it's still not too late for peace. We can still negotiate. If we could just get the Taliban to the negotiating table, we can negotiate a peace deal and preserve the few liberties that the Afghan government provides its citizens. Why does anybody allow these people to speak? I'm not foresilencing them by government. But why does any media anywhere or any, why does any rational person in the world listen to this garbage? I mean, think about it. Why would the Taliban, under the best of circumstances, the Taliban doesn't want peace. It doesn't want to share power. It doesn't want negotiations. I mean, other than to use those negotiations to weaken its enemy so it can advance, the Taliban wants to rule, to dominate, to control Afghanistan. It's not interested in women going to school. It's not interested in women going without covering their faces. It's not interested in any of this stuff. It wants to impose, as it did historically, sharia law over the entire Afghanistan with no compromise. What is it about the Taliban? What is it about its history? What is it about its behavior? What is it about anything the Taliban has ever done to suggest that they're open to negotiating a deal? And yet, nobody challenges these people. How much should we give to negotiate? Trump famously invited the Taliban to Camp David. I mean, talk about a disgusting act of foreign policy to sign the peace deal. Luckily, that never happened. How does one treat the Taliban as some kind of just friendly force? They're not getting what they want, so they engage in violence. Really? When we know what they want is to completely dominate that society. That's not a secret. They don't hide it. They don't pretend. Why do we pretend? Why do we have to couch everything as they're just rational players? No, they're not rational players. They're religious fanatics who want to control everything and dominate everything and destroy people's lives. Now, I'm not arguing for the US to stay, because it's not our job to bring freedom to Afghanistan. But it's shocking to me that anybody thinks you can negotiate with such people. Like, the United States negotiated peace between South and North Vietnam. And Henry Kissinger, the great Henry Kissinger, disgusting human being, the great Henry Kissinger, got a Nobel Prize for peace for negotiating that deal. Six months after he got the prize, the prize, North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam and took them over like that. You remember the helicopters leaving their US embassy? You don't negotiate with the devil. This is why it was so absurd and insane and nutty and immoral for Trump to negotiate and go and hug and kiss and grovel before the brutal dictator of North Korea. You don't negotiate with evil. You just don't. And when you do, you suffer the consequences. You embolden them. You make them stronger. You make them tougher. So yes, the Taliban is over on seven provisional capitals in five days. It will, within a few years, dominate 100% of Afghanistan. There will continue to be pockets of tribes that will fight the Taliban as they were before. There was the Northern Alliance, if you remember. And they might still be a Northern Alliance. But fundamentally, the Taliban will dominate Afghanistan. Now, just to give you a sense of the cost to Afghans of this. Now, no, Afghans will ultimately support the Taliban. But note the cost. Since the United States occupied Afghanistan, infant mortality has been cut in half. Life expectancy, life expectancy in Afghanistan has increased by six years. Electricity consumption, which is a good measure of economic advancement, has increased by 10 fold years in school. For men, it's increased by three on average. For women, by four on average. University students have gone from 31,000 to 100,000. Sorry, 200,000, close to 200,000. Life in Afghanistan is about to get much, much, much worse. Now, you can say you don't care. And I certainly don't care enough to think that American troops should be dying in order to sustain all these advancements. But you have to recognize that these are major advancements, major improvements in the quality of life of Afghans. And it's sad, for me at least. It's sad. When I see human society deteriorate, go backwards. It was sad in Venezuela. It's sad anyway it happens. And it's sad to watch Afghanistan go from heading in the right direction as corrupt and as bad as everything is, heading in the right direction to going back to the religious fanaticism of the Taliban. And of course, for the United States, this is a tragedy. Because what the Taliban rule over Afghanistan means is that another safe haven for al-Qaeda, it's not dead, it's not gone. Islamism has not just disappeared into a puff of a thing. They're always there. And now, they've never really had a strong base to operate from. They've been in Pakistan. Obviously, that's what Bin Laden was when he was killed. But Pakistan won't let them really execute any missions against us. They're still around. They're still functioning. They're somewhat in North Africa and Iraq and Syria. But Afghanistan's gonna be a real base for them. It's gonna be their historic base. They're gonna start training camps again. I don't know if that'll lead to more terrorism against the US. It's hard to tell. But there's a real risk. We're gonna see an elevated risk of terrorism against the United States resulting from this handing over the Afghanistan to the Taliban. I mean, as I've said before, the way you hand over Afghanistan, where you leave Afghanistan is you first spend like a month or two basically destroying the Taliban. I mean, destroying them. Using whatever munitions you need in order to eviscerate them. And then you leave. And if you have to go by the way into Pakistan to eviscerate some of the Taliban, you do that too. You just find them wherever they are and you kill them in large numbers in devastating fashion, starting from the leadership on down. Anybody who volunteered for the Taliban is open game. You destroy them and then you leave. But we won't do that. We've never done that. We don't believe in doing that since World War II. That's why we lose. And that's why our enemies are constantly emboldened. 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 broads. 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. It's not an issue of my ego. 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