 the Taliban have taken back Afghanistan. It's like the worst thing ever. Who lost Afghanistan? This is awful. This is so bad. What's going to happen to gay rights in Afghanistan? What's going to happen to the rights of the transgendered in Afghanistan? What's going to happen to the principles of democratic freedom in Afghanistan? Why are people so up in arms? Like, who cares? What happened in Afghanistan has nothing to do with what goes on in America. And it doesn't have anything to do with American credibility. Like, I mean, an acquaintance in the YouTube streaming sphere said to me last week, you know, wow, as for your prediction, the United States will be the 21st century, will be the American century just like the 20th century. Well, look at what happens in Afghanistan. It has nothing to do with American welfare, right? The collapse of whatever government was in Afghanistan getting replaced by the Taliban has absolutely nothing to do with my welfare or your welfare, with America's welfare, Spain's welfare, England's welfare, Australia's welfare. There isn't even a country of Afghanistan. It's just a bunch of tribes. It's not a coherent country. There's no Afghan identity. It means nothing. So America's credibility does not depend upon setting up, you know, Western-style democracies in the Middle East. This is not doing anything to America's credibility. I mean, there's just so much nonsense with regard to what's going on in Afghanistan. Like, who cares? I mean, Biden blamed for Afghan fiasco. So what? Like, some costs are sunk. It doesn't matter if we spent a trillion dollars in Afghanistan. That says nothing about whether we should stay there. And then as for all those people who helped us in Afghanistan, we should act with regard to our own self-interest. Like, is it in our own self-interest to protect those people and bring them to America? Maybe in some cases. But it's up to the Afghan people, of which there isn't an Afghan people. But the people who are in Afghanistan, it's up to them to decide what kind of government they want. Like, what do I care about whether or not they want a government of Sharia law? Like, why should any of us care? And obviously, the people opposed to the Taliban are weak and without billions and billions and billions of outside support, they couldn't keep anything going. So forget about them. If they're so weak and pathetic that they can't resist the Taliban, like, why should I give a toss? Why should you give a toss? So Richard Spencer tweets, I am proud of my president. I'm proud of Joe Biden. He made a tough call, but clearly the right one. He admitted to failure. He acted decisively. He articulated principles for moving forward. He did what Trump couldn't. So what exactly did Joe Biden do? Biden defends pullout. Good for him, despite Taliban route. Calls withdrawal messy, but says, I stand squarely behind my decision. Yeah, good for Biden, based Biden, getting us the heck out of Afghanistan. President Biden blamed the chaotic fall of Kabul on the failure of Afghans to fight back. Yeah, he's absolutely right. It's not America's fight. It has nothing to do with America's self-interest. Now, that's not to say in 2001, 2002, 2003, it made sense for the United States to perhaps invade Afghanistan, like, go through there fairly quickly, get the job done, get in, get out, you know, take care of Al Qaeda, right? I can see why there might be a reason for that, even for going into Iraq possibly. But we did not want to stay there. I definitely did not want to stay there. And so good on Biden for getting us out, man. Based Biden, based Biden. All right, let's get Peter Zion here. Why is America leaving the Middle East? Yeah, I like Peter Zion's analysis. You know, we may have had a good reason for being in Afghanistan at one point, but we no longer really have that reason. So from the folks that I know in the defense and intelligence community, that the basic goal was very simple, skill set, and the force posture to go after Al Qaeda. We attempted to hit them in Afghanistan. And when they were holed up in Torobora, we realized the number of troops we had in the area was insufficient to the task. So the Joint Chiefs brought W. Bush the option of nuking Torobora 11 times, because that's what it would have taken to guarantee that the tunnel systems under the mountain would have actually collapsed. And, you know, say what you will about W. Bush. He was like, that strikes me as excessive. So the folks in Al Qaeda got away. They went west through Iran, where the US couldn't go. The Iranians knew that they were passing through, and then they dispersed. And that condemned us to play in a whack-a-mole game throughout the entire Middle East. And since we can't invade the entire Middle East simultaneously, the solution that was struck upon was to get the Middle Eastern countries to do it for us. So we invaded Iraq, not because we thought they were in Iraq, they weren't, but because by putting an armored brigade in Fallujah and, you know, you don't use an armored brigade to do urban pacification. That's infantry, not tanks. It threatened Syria and Saudi Arabia and Iran because they didn't know what we were going to do next. So they destroyed Al Qaeda for us. And it worked. Unfortunately, we didn't pull the plug at that point because that was back in, what, 2003, early 2004. And so the decision was made at the top, trying to make Iraq look like Wisconsin. And that's where it all went to hell. So we shattered the bath party, which destroyed all the traditional spheres of influence that made Iraq function. And then we tried to remake it somewhat in our image and it completely fell apart. So the place descended into civil war and chaos and the Iranians got more influence in the country than they ever had before. And it took us 20 years to both admit that the strategy didn't work and admit that we couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again. So eventually we were left with the choice of being there forever or leaving. And so Obama continued the W plan of withdrawal, didn't even accelerate it, trumped it the same thing. And now we're in the final days. There is a theoretical possibility, although I'm not sure it's like the majority chance that if we had left back in 2004, 2005, that Iraq would be in a much better position now than it was then. Afghanistan would not have been. Afghanistan, the only time that Afghanistan has ever had a functional government is when every single country around it has been in chaos for civil war. It's a stateless area. And there is no way that we can beat it into any shape that we're going to like. So the only debate to be had from a security point of view is whether or not you leave a small footprint there to look out for trouble with enough kinetic power to drop the hammer on things that you think are going to be trouble. The problem with that theory is that it will always generate trouble. There are large portions of the world that geographically are simply incapable of sustaining what we consider to be a modern government, much less a democratic one. And Afghanistan is one of those. So you're either actively managing it badly or you're leaving it alone. And I don't mean to suggest that I have like the golden keys to a solution here. If it was easy, we would have done it 15 years ago. But the American people are simply done. Now, will that come back to bite us in the ass? It might. But honestly, Afghanistan being a stateless area is more a problem for the countries that border it than for us. What exactly has this focus on the Middle East since 2005 accomplished? Nothing. Nothing. It's shattered a number of the secular institutions that ran the country and has either thrown them into chaos or made the Islamic groups far more powerful. And basically, we've been stirring the omelette of trying to turn it into a soufflé and it just hasn't worked. Now, moving forward, we're going to have a very different picture now that the U.S. is done. I mean, we're looking at a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan within a few weeks at this point. Come headquarters in Qatar are going to close probably within a year because there's nothing for them to coordinate anymore. And the general American footprint of the entire region is evaporating. And I'd even say even odds that places like Incirlik are going to be closed down because they don't support anything anymore, which means there's no need for a coordinating office there anymore, which means the Turks want to kind of take back control. And if the Middle East no longer has any troops, then all of a sudden the entire military commitment we have in Germany, which is scrupulously designed to support Middle Eastern operations, falls into question. We're in a position today where we only have three large-scale deployments in the wider world of Japan, Korea, and Germany, and the German one is in danger, and the Korean one is in danger. Had this happened 30 years ago. Wait, wait, wait, wait, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't. Why are you dropping an, why are you bloody dropping an ad on me, mate? Gosh. Hate it when they do that. As of three years ago, the United States achieved that energy independence, so there's no longer an energy rationale for the US being involved. And as we've seen in just the last month, that when oil prices hit 70, the shale operators kick into high gear and produce more. So any energy shocks we have in North America are small and limited. That just leaves the general argument of supporting the global structures of the order because the idea has been that, you know, we will pay you to be on our side and we realize that for you to function in the modern era, you need energy. So we've been in the Middle East to make sure that the energy can flow to our order allies. But there's no longer a security quid pro quo. And the idea that the United States is going to fight to keep the oil flows in the Persian Gulf open so that China can be the world's largest energy importer, that's a little dubious considering today's political environment. We're not just looking at American withdrawal from the Middle East and an end to the forever wars. We're looking at Americans retreating from maintaining what allows the rest of the world to function because that's what makes sense domestically in the United States. And you could argue that it also makes strategic sense globally. That would require a deeper conversation that I've seen possible. Okay, so who lost Afghanistan? And stop. And who cares, right? I mean, there's all this hyperbolic commentary about who lost Afghanistan. I was talking to a friend in Australia yesterday. He's going, what a colossal stuff up, like the US really blew it here. Who cares? This is like in, I think it was in Kansas City. It was a court ruling that mandated that they had to start spending four times as much on certain school districts that were quite low performing. Well, guess what happens when you spend four times as much on education for low performing groups? They keep performing at a low level. Right? You can invest billions and trillions of dollars in groups that are low performing and they still keep performing at a low level. Right? The United States spent what 86 billion dollars training the Iraqi Defense Forces? It's pointless. You could pour 86 billion dollars into some other low performing group and they also have really low levels of performance. Like the problems with our schools are not bad schools, problems with our schools that we have a lot of bad students, right? People who want to get an education do really well in our school system. And Luke, however, consistently performs at a high level. Well, sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. So you could invest in me in certain areas and I'm not really going to perform because that's just not who I am. All right? So it's ridiculous to to think that just because we spent a hundred billion dollars on the Afghan Defense Forces, that that means something. That that's going to, you know, that we should expect some bang for our buck. All right? So the whole idea of setting up, you know, some first world Jeffersonian democracy in Afghanistan is completely silly. I mean, obviously that's not on and it has nothing to do with America's self interest. Why would the U.S. one rips? Come on. 7,000 documented penetration infections so far. But compare that to the 95,000 infections that we had overall reported just three days ago. The numbers are pretty obvious. You're about 40 to one in terms of your risk factor if you haven't gotten vaccinated. In addition, it makes you sicker. In addition, it affects younger people. We're seeing pediatric hospitals having to turn away patients throughout Texas at present. It's getting kind of ugly out there. Now, a few things. Number one, we're not going to have national lockdowns again. Because this is now in a pandemic of primarily the unvaccinated communities can make the decision based down to the zip code level as to what they're going to do to handle it. So in a lot of areas that have really good records for having high vaccine rates, particularly in the northeast, they're doing okay. In fact, they're not going to be facing any real pressure until this winter because they can all be outside until at least October. It's primarily in the south where vaccination rates are both lower and people are spending more time inside because of heat that there's a danger. So if we are going to see any degree of lockdown or restrictions, it's likely to be in those areas politics down with standing. And that's going to be the same whether it's for bars or for kids going back to school and needing to wear masks. We just don't know. We probably will be having boosters approved. So you can get your third shot that is more specifically tailored for the Delta variant within a couple of months. We expect action from the FDN in just a few weeks. So there is good progress here in the United States now is in a position where 70% of the population has had at least one shot. So the vulnerable population is shrinking day by day by day. We are moving in the right direction. It would be nice if we could get there a little faster. But so number one, most importantly, no big lockdowns. Anything we have is going to be local and targeted. Second, we are still not going to be done with this for at least another six months unless the pace of vaccinations triple in the next couple of weeks. It's just going to take that much time to convince people that this needs to be done. Some people are doing it on their own, but we now have court cases that are coming up to district courts in the Supreme Court level that basically throw out some of the restrictions against mandates that governors in Florida and Texas have thrown in things that are blatantly unconstitutional, but they still need to go through the court process ever. Anyway, district court just ruled against the governor of Florida when it comes to telling businesses that they couldn't require vaccinations. That case was practically laughed out of court by the judge as you would expect. So everyone who wants to require vaccinations either for their employees or their customers now has legal cover. So we should be seeing a cavalcade of those things go through. But if everyone makes the decision today to get the shots, they're not going to get their second shot for another three to four weeks, and it's another two weeks for full effectiveness. You're already talking a minute of five, six weeks. Six months is probably more realistic. In addition, the United States is kind of a couple of other cooked in-vectors. The most important one is Mexico. The Mexican president is a little bit like Trump and just he's not interested in dealing with COVID. So he kind of either pretended it didn't exist or shoved it off on the governors. So the country really doesn't have a COVID policy. And when it comes to tourism, there are no restrictions whatsoever in Mexico. You can just fly down there. You don't need to get tested or show a vaccine card. You have to show that you've been tested to get back, but not to get there. And this is turning Mexico into kind of this incubation center for the next variant of COVID. And since we've gotten after and since we have bilateral tourism, this isn't going to go away anytime soon. So let's call it six months before we've really broken this in North America. Third, we're finding out in real time what works against this sort of bug. Now a number of countries, Taiwan, Korea, Australia, and China had what we called zero tolerance policies. So as soon as they detected anyone had tested positive, they locked the entire area down. So I believe Melbourne is in its sixth lockdown right now. That might work with the original China strain of coronavirus that infects two to three people per infected. But Delta infects eight to 10. It's the most communicable thing that we've had since measles. And it's got at least five, probably closer to seven times the fatality rate. And it's not clear that these sort of measures will work. So Beijing is dealing with a multiple stage outbreak that was started on a plane that came in from Russia about a month ago. It's spread to about a dozen cities that are all in lockdown now. And the government has ordered all flights into and out of the capital of Beijing suspended, despite the fact that Beijing is not one of those cities. It's always difficult to know when you're talking about Chinese statistics, but it appears that they're losing control of the situation is which is kind of what you would expect by something that is this communicable. So as a result, we've got energy use in Chinese just collapsing. We're talking about like 5% of global energy demand has just evaporated in the last week that it will spread to their manufacturing space. And if you add in what the Chinese are doing for internal political reasons against their own tech sector, this is the sort of thing that can start a traditional recession independent of any other structural or demographic issues, which you guys know I spend most of my time talking about. So that sort of issue temporarily melancholy China out of a lot of global economic processes is the kind of thing that is going to hurt a lot of countries around the world, particularly the countries in East Asia that are integrated into their supply chains or commodity providers in Africa and Latin America that are dependent on continuing sales of their commodities to the Chinese system. We're going to see echoes of this around the world in countries that thought they had come up with a good strategy and most of them are in East Asia as well. So we should expect significantly slower economic activity at the East Asian Rim this year. In Europe, it's probably going to be a little better. They've done just as bad of a job of preventing Delta from spreading throughout their system as the United States has, but their vaccine rates are now a little bit higher, which brings us to the fourth and final point. We're going to get a really good lesson here into which vaccine works better against Delta and why. So Pfizer and Moderna, those are the two that dominated the United States. They were 95 plus percent effective at preventing the original China strain from getting into your system. They called it sterilizing immunity. It was fantastic, better than we could have ever hoped for. They don't do that for Delta. You're perfectly capable as a vaccinated person with Pfizer and Moderna of carrying the virus and spreading it to other people. We don't have good data as to how likely that is, but it's certainly something closer to 50 or 60 percent. You're still protected against disease. Very few people who have been vaccinated have died of COVID compared to the 100,000 plus that Delta has killed already throughout the unvaccinated, but it's not as your chance. And one more quick topic on labor business relations in the weeks to come. We're going to be hearing a lot about vaccine mandates. Let me explain why that's coming. There's some people who have concerns that the vaccines allow for breakthrough infections and based on whose numbers you're looking at, somewhere upwards of 15 percent in some cases, of the cases that we've seen recently have been breakthroughs. That's far from insignificant. And it's not so much that the vaccines prevent severe disease and reduce chances of death by 99.5 percent, even against Delta. The point is it happens, but for folks who say that means that the vaccines aren't working and therefore you don't need them, that's really not the right takeaway. It has to do with the immune response. The immune response that you get when you catch COVID and get T cells and the antibody response and everything is okay, but we now have over a year of data suggesting in places like India and Mexico and Brazil that the original COVID strain could blow through that after a few weeks. And with Delta, we now have three months of data here in the first world that Delta can punch through it, not just once, but over and over and over. Whereas it's really hard for it to break through the type of immune response that you get when you have the vaccine. It's like a factor of 30 to one. So from an employer point of view, this is incredibly significant because if you're an employer and you have unvaccinated employees, you can look forward to them. You can plan on them getting sick every couple of months with COVID forever. And the number of sick days that you can get if you get COVID every couple of months, you know, you're building up to 20, 30, 40, 50 sick days a year versus if you have the vaccine where it might be two or three. We've burned past the point that we might get this out of our system. There have been so many unvaccinated people for so long that it is now endemic in the American population and we have to manage it moving forward. And if you're managing it with masks and if you're managing it with tests, you're talking about $100 test per employee per week going on forever in addition to the sick days or you can get the free shot. And so we are seeing a change in mindset in various businesses that are more customer facing, where people have jobs where they cannot work remotely. So I'm thinking here like utilities or food processing or healthcare. And we're seeing vaccine mandates come down from the top of these firms, whether it's Tyson or Chase Bank, where it's absolutely necessary in order to get to back to some version of normal and avoid the massive health costs that go along with it. And remember, Medicare isn't going to be covering the health costs for people who are unvaccinated who go into the hospital. So you're talking a cool $11,000 for a 23 hour visit that assumes you don't have to go on a ventilator, which can conscious upwards of $25,000 a day. That is now the personal or the corporate responsibility. And I think most corporations see that as something that they don't want to pay for. And of course, you've got all these people getting sick days. The only way you could adjust for that is to staff up in an environment of staff shortages in order to make sure that you've got backup staff for when the unvaccinated and the chronically ill just can't show up for work. So expect this sort of activity to explode across the business community. Yep. Expect vaccine mandates. All right. So today's show is brought to you by Beta Sister All Plant Sterols. So these really help if you get up a dozen times at night to go pee, take a couple of these before you go to bed in the evening. It supports healthy cholesterol levels and it's got added fish oil. So I heard about Beta Sister All Sterols on the Kaminsky method on Netflix. These old men were taking it. And then because I've got Ehlers-Dano syndrome, I like little rapid rehydrate, maximum performance. Something like 10 cents, about 10 cents per capsule. Oh wow, I feel the rehydration going on right now. Oh, this is sweet. All right. Looking at the chart, Jim says, why was the United States in the Middle East so much for the last 40 years? Was it to protect our greatest ally? No, the United States was not in the Middle East so extensively for the past 40 years to protect our greatest ally. They were there for their own self-interest because until three years ago, the United States was a net energy importer. And there used to be a very significant energy importer. So now the United States is energy independent. It doesn't need Middle East oil as much. And so the incentives for the U.S. to be so heavily invested in the Middle East have considerably reduced. So much to talk about. Who lost Afghanistan? The Afghan military was built over 20 years. Look, it doesn't matter how many years the group's built over. If it's not up to the job and it's not dedicated to the job, it's going to fall apart no matter how many hundreds of billions you spend. And we've done the same thing in the United States. We've invested trillions of dollars in low-performing poor people and it's done nothing. They're still just as low-performing as they were in the 1960s. So how did it collapse so quickly is a naive question. Why would we expect it not to collapse quickly? It's not like you invest trillions of dollars in a low-performing group and then they suddenly become high performers. That's not how the world works. In the wake of the horror of Al Qaeda's attacks on the U.S., most Americans believe the country was doing the right thing in going to war in Afghanistan. That level of support didn't last long. Why? Because Americans shock mostly about America. Americans, by and large, don't want Americans losing their lives in foreign countries where it doesn't have anything to do with American self-interest. So Donald Trump, you know, got the ball rolling by pulling troops out of Afghanistan. And then really so many stupid perspectives in the mainstream news media is really dumb one in the New York Times. Afghanistan's unraveling. They strike another blow to U.S. credibility. No. Do you know what U.S. credibility depends upon? The dollar is the international currency. The size and strength and vitality of the American economy. The American workforce is the most productive and hardest working of any workforce. And America spends more on its military than all other countries put together. That's where America's credibility comes from. It does not depend upon intervening in foreign countries and turning them into democracies. This has done absolutely nothing to American credibility. Losing the war in Vietnam did nothing to American credibility. We still had nuclear weapons. So these idiots say, the notion you cannot count on Americans will strike deeper roots because of Afghanistan. Look, you can only count on Americans to act in American self-interest. Where should you count on your spouse? Whereas for her to act in her self-interest. Like if it's in her self-interest to stay married to you and to have sex with you and to clean your clothes and to clean your house and to raise your kids. If that's in her self-interest you can expect her to do that. As soon as it stops being in her self-interest then you could start expecting her to move on. Can you count? Can a wife count on a husband to stay faithful? Well, number one. Number one question. What are his options? Does he have a flock of attractive young women trying to have sex with him? If he has access to a lot of young women who want to have sex with him the odds that he will stay faithful are quite small. Probably less than 10%. Most men don't have a bevy of attractive young women who are dying to have sex with him ago. Most men, you know, may well stay faithful. So this is going to do nothing for American credibility. It's not going to affect it in any way. And then some idiots are saying, oh, you know, Afghanistan's no longer part of the free world. Afghanistan was never part of the free world. When you're in a hopeless cause you get out, sunk cost sunk. And this idea that, oh, now Ukraine won't depend on us. Ukraine should not depend on upon us. That's in Russia's sphere of interest. Yes, we are not energy independent. Yes, we are. So we have massive natural gas resources. We do massive amounts of fracking. So let's, let's Google is America Energy independent. So America, United States energy independent. So United States was 90% self-sufficient in total energy consumption in 2016. So in 2011, the country became a net exporter of refined petroleum products. So yeah, Biden is not shutting down fracking. He may make it more complicated, more expensive. So November 2019, the United States became a net exporter of net exporter of all oil products. So yeah, United States is effectively energy independent. We love our cops. We love our law enforcement. We love our military because they're important. But what happens in Afghanistan does not matter for, for America's self-interest. Now, what about the tens of thousands of Afghans who worked with us? Well, is it in our self-interest to bring them on board? Why would they not work to try to build up their country? Right? And so it's up to them to, to work out what happens from here. Taliban, Taliban rendered Afghanistan unworkable as a country. Afghanistan has always been unworkable as a country. It's always been unworkable. Wasn't the Taliban that did it? Yeah, the Taliban did what the American forces of independence did in the 1770s, that they melted away in the face of overwhelming force. They regrouped. They restored themselves to fighting strength. They returned to the battle. And that's where they live, right? That's, that's their home. So we've got Stephen Erlinger writing in The New York Times. Most of the Afghan men whom I met and who led battles against the Taliban are now dead. Almost all were killed in separate assassinations as part of the Taliban's plan to return to action. Taliban were more effective. They fought harder. They fought more effectively. They won. Why should we throw in with a bunch of losers who, who can't even, you know, defend themselves? So the Taliban won just like the Viet Cong won, a classic example of successful guerrilla war of attrition. So stealth campaigns have hit and run military attacks, selective assassination, demoralize their adversaries, acts of terror, weaken the government, create an atmosphere that object compliance from local populations. Public campaign of arts and minds followed, accompanied by decoy negotiations to promote the idea that the Taliban are not really extremist. So Colin Liddell says the United States is not energy independent because value of the dollar is based on controlling foreign oil. All right. I'm not an expert on American energy independence, but all those of whom I'm aware who are expert on what it means to be energy independent have noted that the United States has been energy independent for the past three years, but I'm not, not an expert there. Now you're thinking what is, what is Richard Spencer tweeting about? So he says, Beast Macron strikes again. Macron, the leader in France vows European Union initiative to protect against migrant flows from Afghanistan. Well, that's excellent. So Macron doesn't want the Afghans pouring into Europe. Good on him. Richard Spencer says I'm at a hipster coffee shop in Austin. Lots of millennials. They're fed up with Biden's feckless Afghan policy. Living at the end of the American empire and I feel fine. We're not at the end of the American empire. Explain 2,500 American dead to the parents. What for? These kids signed out for the U.S. military. What did they think was going to happen? They signed up for the U.S. military. They wanted the benefits of joining the U.S. military, but they never expected they were going to have to fight. No one sent them to Afghanistan at the point of the gun. They signed up to fight. All right. And they paid the ultimate price for doing so. And guess what? 50,000 people a year die from car accidents in the United States. Generally speaking, people aren't forced to get into a car at the point of a gun. People get in a car because they see it as in their self-interest and they weigh the benefits and they weigh the risks the same way that people join the military. Richard Spencer says what about Afghan gay and transgendered activists who are currently reading Nabokov in Kabul in a few days? They literally won't be reading Nabokov. Yes, remaining another two decades in Afghanistan might seem expensive and pointless, but have we considered the toll the fall of Kabul might have on girls with master's degrees working at national security think tanks in Washington, D.C.? Yeah, people join the military out of their self-interest and out of their patriotic desire to be of service. And it's just widespread notion on the distant right and all through a society that, yeah, I want to be a hero. I want to do something great, but I don't want to pay any price. Well, any option where you have the opportunity to do something heroic, there's always a price to be paid. There are always risks. So being shocked that there are risks and price to be paid while you are on a heroic mission strikes me as incredibly naive. The Joe Biden says there will be consequences for the Taliban if they harm U.S. personnel or the evacuation mission. No mention of consequences if they take Kabul. So yes, consistent message, the U.S. is leaving and it is final. So what's happening in Afghanistan now? Nothing new. Nothing new. Good point. So Edward Dutton wrote a book on Islam, an evolutionary perspective. Islam has its advantages. So the Muslims have elevated ethnocentrism, some Muslims, and more ethnocentric groups win in the intense struggle of Darwinian selection. So Islam will come to triumph in the West as Edward Dutton because of its ethnocentrism. Luke, shame on America. Shame on Australia. Why? Why? Why should America feel ashamed? They got rid of Osama bin Laden and they destroyed Al Qaeda. Afghan troops did a heck of a lot more fighting than U.S. troops and mainly hidden bases and flew drones. Okay, let's say they did a heck of a lot more fighting. Well, they're absolutely pathetic. If they won't fight effectively to protect their own country, like why should we give a toss and why should we help them? Let the Afghans control their own destiny. The anti-Taliban forces are absolutely pathetic. Why should we give a toss? Who cares about a bunch of losers? What happens in Kabul stays in Kabul. Exactly. Fight for whom? Unjust war. So people are reacting to this as though the state of reasons we were in Afghanistan are the true reasons. Like, oh, United States went into Iraq in 2003 to take out weapons of mass destruction. You can't take seriously the things that people say about why they're doing what they're doing, whether it's American politicians or your neighbor, right? There are two reasons why people do things. Number one is the state of reason. Number two is the real reason. And often people don't even realize the real reason of why they're doing anything. But guess what? The reason we were in Afghanistan for two decades wasn't to bring about peace and democracy and gay rights and women's rights. Yeah, I'm in terrible pain about what's going on in Afghanistan. Yeah, I mean, as soon as I log off, I'm just gonna be crying my eyes out. What has been achieved? Well, I guess early on we destroyed al-Qaeda. And early on, we put the fear of God into Iran and Syria that they might be next. So overall, yeah, it seems like a big stuff up. But we got some training for our troops. But yeah, from my perspective, we should have gotten out 18 years ago. Afghanistan was a sandbox for the military to practice in. That seems like that. We tried our best with our hands tied. Rules of engagement were only free for the first few years. What has been achieved? We got some training for our military. We got to try out some new weapon systems that the Arabs destroy Israel. Is that okay, Luke? Well, yeah, if Israel can't defend itself, then I don't think it's the responsibility of the United States or any other power to defend it. Israel is perfectly capable of defending itself. Israel's got the most powerful military in the Middle East. So now I don't think Israel needs to fear Arab intentions. So some smart people made a lot of money. And some dumb naive people lost their lives. And we backed losers and we finally cut and run. So research shows Afghan security forces lost 69,000. Yeah, because lower intelligent people, less effective people are going to die in much higher numbers than more intelligent, more effective, more trained people. So Afghan security forces died at 69,000. Civilians and militants killed at 51,000 each. Okay, it's whatever it is. It could be 37 million. It doesn't have any effect on American well-being. If Arkansas and Mississippi disappeared tonight, it wouldn't have much effect on American well-being. The American economy does not depend on Arkansas and Mississippi. So I'd be sad if Arkansas or Mississippi, oh, they did more real fighting than U.S. troops. I don't know. Like, who cares? I don't know what real fighting is. So if they did, you know, ineffective, crappy, you know, lousy work and they got slaughtered, I, there's only so much I can care about. I care about America. I care about my friends. I care about Australia where I come from. Biden's speech is BS. I didn't watch Biden's speech, but from what I understand about it, it was awesome. He says, we're getting out of Afghanistan and that's good. We should get the heck out of Afghanistan. We should have gotten out 15 years ago. So base Biden doing the right things. Well, we only have so much space for caring, so shouldn't you care primarily about your family, your friends, your community, your profession, your religion, your country. Those are the primary things you should care about. Like caring about people of a different religion on a different part of the world who are completely unlike you, that just seems bizarre and it just seems like a virtue signaling. All right. We only have so much energy, so much time, so much money to care. We only have so much emotional, financial, moral resources to bring to bear. Why would we bring them to bear for people who are completely foreign to us, who have completely different ways? Just doesn't seem to make much sense to get all upset about what's going on on the other side of the world. Biden blamed for Afghan fiasco. I think Biden's done great with Afghanistan. He got us the hell out of there because I primarily care about Americans. I don't primarily care about Afghans. I don't have any ill will towards Afghans. You know, let them live and be well and let them work out their own destiny. I care about Americans. So George Parker writes in The Atlantic, Biden's betrayal of Afghans will live in infamy. What does America and Joe Biden owe the Afghans? Nothing. Nothing. Do you think the Afghans were walking around carrying a load of guilt and are worried about you? How many people in Afghanistan right now do you think are worried about you? How many Afghans do you think lost their lives because they wanted to fight for America? The Afghans who got killed fighting in Afghanistan were not fighting for America. They were fighting for their own self-interest. So the Afghans don't care about us. The Afghans don't care about Joe Biden. The Afghans don't care about you or me and I don't blame them for that, but why should we care about them? George Parker writes, the abandonment of the Afghans who helped us, counted on us, staked their lives on us. The final gratuitous shame that we could have avoided. Look, any Afghan who counted on us and staked their lives on us is a fool. They're an idiot. Like, how much can you help idiots? Biden's new narrative that the Afghans didn't fight the Taliban so we left is BS. Well, I haven't seen Biden's speech, but the Afghans certainly didn't fight effectively. So who cares if they fought ineffectively? Like, big deal. If they are not up to taking control of their own country, then who cares? If the Afghans aren't up to the job, why should we keep subsidizing that? We've poured in hundreds of billions of dollars into that country. Let's get the hell out of there. And the Afghans who sided with us, they were idiots. They were fools. Why should we go subsidizing and trying to help out idiots who made really bad decisions to staked their lives on us? It's not our responsibility to protect Afghans. Look after Afghans, subsidize Afghans, take Afghans out of harm's way. Do you think the Afghans are crying and shaking with fear and guilt over what's going to happen to you or me? They couldn't give a task. The debacle is that we stayed in there after 2002. That's the debacle. There's no debacle in getting out now. It's the right thing to do to get out now. So Trump reduced the truth numbers and Biden finally got us the hell out of there. And so good on Trump, good on Biden, and that the Afghans work out their own destiny. And who cares if getting out of Afghanistan didn't go according to plan? It's like getting out of a bad relationship. Getting out of a bad relationship is often messy. People often say things that they regret. They're often hyperbolic sentiments thrown around. It's often some really bad behavior. But if you're in a bad relationship, the most important thing are none of those, right? It doesn't really matter what you say and do presuming it's not criminal or highly unethical. If you're in a bad relationship, you should get the hell out of there. If you're in a bad job, you should get the hell out of there. If you're in a bad situation, you should get the hell out of there, right? You keep working for someone who abuses you. You stay in a relationship with someone who abuses you. You keep allowing people to mooch off you. Then that's on you. And Colin Liddell has had some interesting perspectives on this on affirmativeright.com. Real narrative should be we left, because after the Chinese built a pipeline to Turkmenistan in 2009, we couldn't make money on this deal. Sorry, it took so long. Yeah, I'm sure that's a major part of it. So we weren't in Afghanistan for the past two decades for selfless reasons. There may be an element of selflessness and idealism. But the reasons that countries put their troops on the ground in foreign nations and spend billions of dollars is out of their own self-interest primarily. The U.S. military industrial complex made their dollars. Everything is okay. So much for Luke's Talmudic view of the world. We were there too long. So nothing I said was okay. We should have been out there in 2002. Not sure we should have gone in there in the first place. America has no self-interest in Afghanistan. If Africa disappeared from the map, American welfare would not be affected. The pro-feminist, pro-guerrides, pro-democracy rhetoric, that's just window dressing. It's ludicrous to take people out their word. It's ludicrous to take politicians out their word. It's ludicrous to take nations out their word. America uses a lot of beautiful rhetoric for when it goes in and starts killing people. But don't confuse beautiful rhetoric with reality. We did really well in World War I and World War II by letting all the other countries slaughter each other. That was in America's interest to delay entering those conflicts as long as possible until at the last moment we provide the decisive strength and we get the benefits by paying very little of the price. So ideally, in a World War II situation, you want to let the Germans and the Russians just slaughter each other. It's fine to let the Germans go to war with the Poles and the French and the English. And then when all these other sides are exhausted, then you come in and you wrap up the enemy. You set the terms. America sets the terms because it paid comparatively a very small price for its interventions in World War I and World War II. But it got enormous benefits. It was the big kid on the block. It didn't suffer compared to what Russia and Germany and France and England suffered. You got to come in late, which is ideal. If you've let everyone else slaughter each other, then you come in late, you clean things up, and now you're the big kid on the block. That's how the real world works. Now, we can use all sorts of rhetoric about freedom, fighting for freedom, fighting for democracy. That's just window dressing. It has no meaning. America, generally speaking, acts in its self-interest, just like Saudi Arabia does. And it wouldn't matter if America was a dictatorship or a democracy. Whether a nation is a democracy or a dictatorship says nothing about whether it's more or less likely to go to war, whether it's more or less likely to go in its act in its own self-interest. And nation states have to put their own survival as a number one priority. They have to put their self-interest number one. And nation states that don't put their self-interest number one, they don't generally last long unless they're incredibly rich and affluent like the United States. So the United States has been able to afford all sorts of lunacy, like all sorts of stupid, ridiculous foreign policy interventions that didn't need to do. But we shouldn't condemn these foreign policy interventions by simply taking them at their word. Like we may well have intervened in the Korean War and the Vietnam War just to set certain signals that we are going to be the big dogs, that we are going to limit the rise of communism, so that we are going to be able to protect, quote unquote, the free world, and we're going to ensure an international trading system. We did that not out of altruism. We did that out of what we saw as our self-interest. So we had a threat from the Soviet Union, so we intervened to show that we were willing to intervene and doesn't really matter whether or not we won in Korea or Vietnam. It was just a statement that would incentivize other countries to line up with us. So most countries that mattered lined up with us in the Cold War. Most countries that mattered line up with us now. China's got virtually no allies. Who wants to be allied with China? Like almost all countries that matter are allied with the United States against China. So if we have to do a little foreign intervention here or there to keep other nations in line, then it might be effective. So don't assume that the United States intervened in Korea in 1951 for the reasons the United States did. Don't assume that the United States intervened in Vietnam in the 1960s for the reasons the United States did. Don't assume the United States intervened in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 for the reasons it stated. On the one level, there's the window dressing, there's the rhetoric, but on the other level, there are hard-headed thinkers in the United States trying to pursue American self-interest. Yes, sometimes they make mistakes, but all these American foreign policy interventions, they weren't just quixotic, naive, altruistic actions. These were policies carried out by hard-headed men who definitely made some mistakes, but they weren't as foolish as their own rhetoric suggests. Bye-bye!