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Aug. 26, 2021 - The Ben Shapiro Show
46:40
Biden to Americans Stuck in Afghanistan: So Long, Suckers! | Ep. 1327
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Secretary of State Antony Blinken admits Americans will be stuck in Afghanistan past the August 31st deadline.
And Joe Biden smirks at reporters for asking basic questions.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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We'll get to all the news in just one moment.
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Okay, so.
Remember that time that Joe Biden said there would be no Americans left behind?
He actually said there'd be no Americans or Afghan allies who would be left behind.
Well, all of that was a lie.
It continues to be a lie today.
But now we have a new line from the Biden administration.
And the new line is, if you are still in Afghanistan after the U.S.
military leaves, and remember, we left basically with no preparation.
We had to reinsert troops just to hold Kabul airport.
We gave up Bagram so we didn't actually have more than one runway running at the same time.
We're not in control of any of the gates at the Kabul airport.
The new line from the Biden administration is, if, because we screwed up, you are stuck in Afghanistan, it is your fault and it's on you.
This is the new line, right?
So long suckers, you're on your own.
This is the new take from the Biden administration.
It really is astonishing.
You could see this line formulating over the past several days because you saw the language shift from the administration.
At the beginning, the language from the administration was, we will get everybody out.
Then it was, we will get everybody out who wants to leave.
And it was sort of a subtle shift that not many people noticed.
Who wants to leave?
I mean, everybody thought, okay, well, that means everybody.
I mean, who wants to stay?
Is everybody there like, yeah, let's hang with the Taliban.
That's what I'm in this game for.
But the real point of that phrase was to create wiggle room.
So now, If there is an American or an Afghan who gets stuck in Afghanistan, the idea will be that the United States did its best, but these people, they were just intransigent.
They're probably Trump voters or something.
They were just stuck there and they didn't want to leave.
Those idiots.
This is the direction that we are now moving very, very, very quickly from the Joe Biden State Department and from the White House itself.
And here is the thing.
People are stuck there not because they don't want to leave, but because we are not competent in getting them out.
You're hearing all these big statistics about 82,000 people have left.
Okay, number one, how many of those people are vetted?
Number two, how many of the people who are leaving are not American?
And how many Americans are still stuck there?
And how many people who want to get out cannot get out?
I'm amazed at the shift in sort of direction here from the Biden administration.
They are captaining the Titanic.
They steered the ship directly into an iceberg.
On purpose, by the way.
They saw the iceberg, and they ran directly into it.
It wasn't like the thing came up by surprise.
They ran directly into the iceberg because Joe Biden is a fool and wanted to run directly into the iceberg.
And then, as the Titanic took on water, they offloaded a bunch of people onto the lifeboats.
And then, when a bunch of people drowned and were stuck on the Titanic, they, as the captain of the Titanic, they said, well, you know, we did run a historic effort to get people off the Titanic and onto the lifeboats.
In fact, Guinness Book of World Records, more people have been put on lifeboats today than have ever been put on lifeboats before.
So really, this is a giant success.
But it isn't.
The State Department yesterday was forced to tell people not to come to Kabul Airport.
Now remember, the deadline that was set as of yesterday, and was confirmed as of yesterday, was August 31st.
It is currently, according to my calendar, which is reliable, August 26th.
That means five days until we hit the deadline.
And it's going to take at least 72 hours for us to pull out the remaining troops.
Which means that if you work backwards and we still don't know whether it is noon on August 31st or if it's midnight on August 30th or if it's midnight on August 31st, we don't know.
Okay, but let's assume that it's the very, it's 1159 p.m.
August 31st.
This means that we have to remove our troops as of August 28th.
So basically we have today and then two more days and that's it.
We have two or three days maximum to get more people out.
Yesterday was completely lost because the State Department was getting threats from ISIS, because ISIS is in town.
And the Taliban are providing a very bare-bones level of security, unbelievably enough, for Americans to get out, presumably because we're bribing them.
And that bare-bones level of security does not apply to Afghan nationals who are being stymied and held up, and many American citizens can't get in either.
According to the State Department yesterday, they told people to go home.
There are no more flights coming after probably August 28th, August 29th, certainly not after August 31st.
And the State Department put out a statement yesterday, quote, due to threats outside the Kabul Airport, U.S. citizens should avoid traveling to the airport and avoid airport gates unless you receive instructions to do so. Those at the Abbey Gate, East Gate or North Gate should now leave immediately. So if you are stuck outside the airport, they're telling you now to go home, the State Department, and wait for us to leave.
Meanwhile, Antony Blinken, the State Department Secretary, he says there might still be 1,500 Americans in Afghanistan.
Now, I'm not sure where they're getting these numbers.
Because remember, every estimate, up until the last 48 hours, was that there were 10 to 15,000 Americans in Kabul.
Tony Blinken and the rest of the team over at the State Department have now said that we've gotten at about 4,500 Americans.
So, if he says there are 1,500 Americans in Afghanistan still, Plus the 4,500 who have left.
That's only 6,000.
What happened to the other somewhere between 4,000 and 9,000 Americans?
Did they never exist?
Where are they getting these numbers?
Are they artificially lowering the numbers so that Americans don't know how many Americans are stuck there?
Are we abandoning more people in Afghanistan than died on 9-11?
To the tender mercies of the same people who protected the 9-11 terrorists?
That is quite possible, given the statistics put out by this government.
Here's Antony Blinken saying there could be 1,500 people still stuck in Afghanistan who are American citizens.
Starting on August 14, when our evacuation operations began, there was then a population of as many as 6,000 American citizens in Afghanistan who wanted to leave.
Over the last 10 days, roughly 4,500 of these Americans have been safely evacuated, along with immediate family members.
Over the past 24 hours, we've been in direct contact with approximately 500 additional Americans and provided specific instructions on how to get to the airport safely.
Okay, and then we told them that they can't get in because there's too much of a threat outside the gates, so go home.
Again, the analysis has shifted somewhat.
Remember, the number was 10,000 to 15,000 Americans.
Now, Antony Blinken is saying 6,000 Americans, and there's that magical language, right?
Who wanted to leave?
There was a population of 6,000 American citizens in Afghanistan who wanted to leave.
So are you saying that there are another 9,000 American citizens in Afghanistan who didn't want to leave?
Or like, this sounds great.
I'm sticking around for the 8th century goat herders and barbarians to come in and rape my wife and then shoot me in the face.
Where did these other people go?
Where is the evidence that they didn't want to leave?
Like, where is this coming from?
The answer is it's coming from covering their asses.
They have to cover their asses.
They're abandoning people there.
They know they're abandoning people there.
And so they got to use whatever tactics are available to pretend this isn't one of the great debacles in American foreign policy history.
Meanwhile, John Kirby, over at the Pentagon, he's like, we don't know how many Americans are in Afghanistan.
So Blinken is telling you right now, it's 6,000 Americans who were in Afghanistan.
We got 4,500 out there, 1,500 left over.
We're working on them.
John Kirby has asked how many Americans are in Afghanistan.
He's like, meh.
I think yesterday you did put out a statement saying about 4,000 Americans have been evacuated.
That's correct.
Is there an updated number?
And do you have the sort of base number, how many have to be evacuated now?
It's right now, today, north of 4,400.
And I don't have a specific number of total Americans that are still in need of leaving.
I don't have that.
Oh, so we, yeah.
So who do you believe?
Tony Blinken or John Kirby or none of them?
I mean, at this point, I think none of them would probably be the correct response.
Blinken himself is blaming Americans for not leaving sooner.
Right?
He said that, uh, we are attempting to get people out.
But if you don't, you know, if you don't leave, we're just going to assume you didn't want to leave.
Here's Anthony Blinken.
We're on track to complete our mission by August 31st, provided the Taliban continue to cooperate and there are no disruptions to this effort.
The President has also asked for contingency plans in case he determines that we must remain in the country past that date.
But let me be crystal clear about this.
There is no deadline on our work to help any remaining American citizens who decide they want to leave to do so, along with the many Afghans who have stood by us over these many years and want to leave and have been unable to do so.
That effort will continue every day past August 31st.
There's no deadline.
The effort's going to continue every day, guys.
I mean, we're going to leave, and we're not going to have any soldiers on the ground.
We're not going to have any embassy staff on the ground.
We're not going to have anybody on the ground.
But after we leave, I promise we'll be working every day.
Thoughts and prayers to the people stuck on the ground in Kabul from Tony Blinken right there.
We're out.
I mean, we're gone.
But don't worry, we're working every day by sending engraved invitations to the Taliban to let you out.
That's what we'll be doing.
Every single day.
We'll be getting on TV and talking about how mean the Taliban are and how they have to make existential choices about who they want to be.
And then we'll send them really nasty letters from the UN.
Maybe, if Russia and China allow us.
I mean, what a plan that is!
You know what would have been useful about this point?
When you think about it, what could have been super useful at this point is like a skeleton crew of maybe 2,500 American soldiers holding all the major cities in Afghanistan, along with an Afghan military, several hundred thousand strong, backed by superior American might and technology, holding the country if people wanted to leave.
You know, that would have been useful.
But I understand.
We had to pull out.
It was deeply necessary.
We had to.
If we didn't pull out, then nothing would have happened.
And now something has happened, and so obviously that means we should have pulled out.
This was always part of the plan, gang.
And they have contingency plans.
In fact, it's like a stack of turtles.
It's turtles all the way down, right?
It's contingency plans all the way down.
If this contingency happens, we have another contingency plan.
Sure, all of the plans suck.
And sure, we caused all of this.
And sure, we're botching it in real time.
But the reality is, the people who are to blame are the people who are still on the ground, stuck in Kabul.
According to the UK Daily Mail, Blinken blamed Americans still on the ground for not leaving fast enough.
After first being warned earlier this year to leave Afghanistan as soon as possible, that said, there would be no deadline in helping those who still want to leave.
Oh, that is some cold comfort.
He said, we've been reaching out to some Americans, but some Americans are not responding.
So we'll assume they want to stay.
Blinken said what we're doing is very carefully tabulating everything we have, cross checking it, referencing it, using different databases.
We'll have numbers for all those different categories in the days ahead and after this initial phase of efforts to bring people out of Afghanistan ends.
But the idea is that we've reached out over and over and over again, and if people aren't responding, well, there's not much that we can do.
Okay, well, assuming that people are not responding to your requests and to your letters does not mean that they actually want to stay.
Do we know they're not being held by the Taliban?
Do you know they have access to the internet?
Do you know they haven't been cut off?
We don't know any of those things, but this is the new line.
The line is, if you're stuck in Afghanistan, it is your own fault.
Here's Ambassador Ross Wilson.
He is the Biden administration ambassador to Afghanistan saying this.
They're a bunch of Americans, and if they're stuck there, on them.
We put out repeated warnings every three weeks to Americans going back to, I think, March or April.
Each one in stronger terms, leave now, leave immediately.
Never in my 40 years of working, since I began working at the State Department, have I seen such strong language used.
People chose not to leave.
That's their business.
That's their right.
We regret now that many may find themselves in a position that they would rather not be in.
And we are determined to try to help them.
Oh, we're determined to try to help them.
But, you know, they didn't respond.
We told them... You know what would have been very helpful?
Is if the president of the United States last month hadn't told everyone in Afghanistan that all was well and things were going fine and the Taliban had no capacity to take over the country.
That would have been helpful.
It turns out that when you tell people, you know, you really should leave, it's very important that you leave now.
You need to leave.
And meanwhile, you're like, everything's going to be fine.
It's going to get turned over to the Afghan national government.
They're going to be fine.
Our intelligence sources say they're going to be fine.
This isn't going to be like Saigon.
When you give those assurances to people, maybe some of them aren't so fast on the uptake with the, let's get the hell out of here.
Okay, that is not their fault.
That is your fault.
The question is, are those, are those Americans, we're not even talking, by the way, about the Afghans who worked with us, who are giving second and third priority.
Those people are just screwed.
The Taliban is going to come in and they're going to execute all of them.
And Biden originally promised, you can see again how the language shifted.
We shifted with Americans from, we're getting everybody out to, we'll get out everybody who wants to go to, look how many people didn't want to go.
Amazing!
That's what happened with Americans.
With Afghan nationals who were working with the United States, who had special immigrant visas.
With Afghan translators, the line was, everybody who wants to get out, everybody we can get out, we'll get out everybody.
Then it was, we'll get out as many people as we can.
Then it was, well, sorry, And the media are already declaring them, you know, great at this.
Like, you can see the worm turning with regard to the media who are starting to move on from the story and be like, well, they did get thousands of people out.
I mean, it is a World Guinness Book of World Records record for how many people they're getting out.
But let's be real about this.
The evacuation is not under America's control because we handed over control of the country to the Taliban.
Here's John Kirby from the Pentagon saying that.
We are in daily communication with Taliban commanders about who we want to see get in and what the credentials are, what they look like, what's valid.
And that communication happens literally every day.
We have been nothing but open with the Taliban about who we expect them to let in.
Again, Fully recognize that not every step of this process is in our firm control.
Oh, it's not in our firm control, guys.
And you know what they're saying?
They're saying now that ISIS controls things.
It's not even the Taliban.
The guys who are even worse than the Taliban are actually in control of our timeline.
Here, it's ISIS.
We have to leave because we're afraid the Taliban won't hold back ISIS after August 31.
We'll get to that in one second.
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All right, so ISIS is actually, so the Biden administration was like, well, the Taliban is kind of in charge.
Well, now it turns out that ISIS is actually kind of in charge.
According to the New York Times, The United States has been battling the Taliban and their militant partners in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda and the Haqqani Network, for 20 years.
By the way, the Taliban are now providing security for Americans at the airport, and so are the Haqqani Network.
Yeah, things are going great.
But the biggest immediate threat isn't to any of those people.
It is Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K.
The terrorist group's affiliate in Afghanistan.
It's like Special K, except Islamic terrorists.
Created six years ago by disaffected Pakistani Taliban, ISIS-K has carried out dozens of attacks in Afghanistan this year.
American military and intelligence analysts say threats from the group include a bomb-laden truck, suicide bombers infiltrating the crowd outside Hamid Karzai International Airport, and mortar strikes against the airfield.
By the way, all it takes to end everyone being able to get out is one mortar hitting the runway at Khamid Karzai International Airport.
When you hear international airport, you imagine like LAX or O'Hare, right?
You don't imagine like a single runway.
That's what Khamid Karzai International Airport is.
It is a postage stamp.
Because we decided, like fools, to give up Bagram Airbase.
Richard Engel from NBC News.
He reported from Afghanistan before any of this went down.
And he like went and he was bicycling around Bagram Air Base.
There was no one there.
He was able to look underneath all the trailers.
He was able to get into all the storehouses.
We just abandoned the place for no reason at all.
These threats, coupled with new demands by the Taliban for the U.S.
to leave by August 31st, probably influenced President Biden's decision on Tuesday to stick to that deadline.
Biden said every day we're on the ground is another day we know ISIS-K is seeking to target the airport and attack both U.S.
and allied forces and innocent civilians, which is, of course, why the U.S.
Embassy on Wednesday warned Americans to stay away from the airport completely.
A senior U.S.
official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe confidential assessments confirmed the U.S.
was tracking a specific incredible threat at the airport from ISIS-K, which has carried out dozens of attacks in recent years.
The threats lay bare a complicated dynamic between the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and Haqqani Network and their bitter rival, ISIS-K, in what analysts say portends a bloody struggle involving thousands of foreign fighters on both sides.
Apparently, there are 8,000 to 10,000 members of ISIS-K in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan has now become the Las Vegas of terrorists, of the radicals, and the extremists, said Ali Muhammad Ali, a former Afghan security official.
People all over the world, radicals and extremists, are chanting, celebrating the Taliban victory.
This is paving the way for other extremists to come to Afghanistan.
Wait, you're telling me that when we abandon Afghanistan, it's going to become, wait for it, a terror center for people who hate the United States and the West, and who might perform terrorism?
Why did we go there in the first place again?
Anybody can remind me?
And Joe Biden told me, by the way, last week that the terror threat in Afghanistan had been quelled.
So there was really no reason for American troops to be there at all.
Oh, well.
Well, the good news is that, as always, this is part of the plan.
But it's all part of the plan.
Isn't it?
Well, Jen Psaki was asked about that.
Like, what's the plan after the deadline?
You say you're going to withdraw everybody by August 31st.
So what's the plan, Jen?
And her answer was, plan?
We don't need no stinking plans.
We are looking at a range of options for how we can continue to provide consular support, facilitate departures for those who wish to leave after August 31st.
And our expectation, and the expectation of the international community, is that people who want to leave Afghanistan after the U.S.
military depart should be able to do so.
We're working on that.
As soon as we have more to provide to all of you, more information, we will do exactly that.
Okay, so as soon as we have a plan that we just pull directly out of our asses, then we will get that to you.
But right now, we don't have a plan beyond that.
Well, the good news is the President of the United States is also very sanguine about all of this.
In fact, he's joking about it.
So yesterday, Peter Alexander asked Joe Biden what he will do if Americans are still in Afghanistan after August 31st.
His response, quote, you'll be the first person I call.
Took no further questions.
So that is a disgusting response.
A journalist asks the most straightforward question in the world.
What's your plan after August 31st?
And he says, you'll be the first person I call.
What a douche.
I mean, seriously.
They said that Donald Trump lacked empathy.
The cruelty was the point.
I'm not sure what you would say about this.
You got thousands of Americans who are stuck in Afghanistan.
You have tens of thousands of Afghans who want to get out, who are stuck.
By the way, if you look at the video from like the Pakistani border or the Turkish border, You can see that, like, it's insane.
Like, the Turkish are in control of some of the borders.
You can see that it's completely insane.
Like, thousands and thousands of people trying to get out and no place to go.
Everybody's trying to escape the clutches of the Taliban.
And Joe Biden is joking, well, you'll be the first person I call.
Willie, though, you wouldn't even call Boris Johnson of the G7.
You wouldn't return his phone calls in the middle of this debacle, Joe.
How bad is this?
The White House actually cut the feed of Biden.
I'm not kidding you.
The man's not in charge of his own administration.
You'll hear the clip go silent.
That's when the White House actively cuts the audio feed of Joe Biden, the president of the United States, because they don't want people noticing that he's a rambling old idiot.
Thank you guys, I'm so glad you came to the show.
Thank you all.
Bye guys, thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, so you can hear Peter Alexander call out the question, and then they just cut off the feed.
And then you can see him mouth, he'll be the first person I call.
Things are going great, guys.
They're going great.
Okay, so meanwhile, Peter Doocy actually asked Jen Psaki about all this.
He's like, you know, Joe Biden is joking about this, but I've noticed that there's a bit of a humanitarian crisis on the ground in Afghanistan.
So what's so funny?
At the tail end of the president's remarks today about cyber security, he was asked about Afghanistan and he made a joke.
I think Peter asked him that question.
The other Peter did.
And he made a joke.
So what's so funny?
Well, I think the question he was asked, if I remember correctly, was about when he will provide information about a decision on August 31st.
I don't want to paraphrase the question if that was an inaccurate description of the question.
Very important for a lot of people watching.
Of course it's a very important question.
Okay, of course it's a very important question, but he's just joking about it because he likes two scoops of chocolate chip ice cream.
Chocolate, chocolate chip.
That's his ice cream, guys.
The important thing is that he slipped while he was chasing his dog around the bathroom.
These are the important things to know about Joe Biden.
Meanwhile, I've noticed that we've also shifted our stance on what the U.S.
military is for and what America's foreign policy looks like with regard to terrorists.
So Jen Psaki was asked, didn't it used to be said that we were not in favor of negotiating with terrorists and aren't you now negotiating with terrorists?
And Jen Psaki's like, well, yeah, kind of.
Why haven't we heard the President say the United States does not negotiate with terrorists?
Is that still the U.S.
policy?
Well, of course it is, Peter, but I would also say that there's a reality that the Taliban is currently controlling large swaths of Afghanistan.
That is a reality on the ground.
And right now our focus and our priority is getting American citizens evacuated and our Afghan partners evacuated.
And I would say, given the numbers that we've outlined and briefed for you, that we've had made a great deal of progress in doing exactly that.
I mean, and so yes.
I mean, the answer is yes, we are negotiating with terrorists because they hold the whip hand over us.
Again, there's been a complete reversal here between the sort of vision of what the American military is actually for and what Democrats apparently believe the American military is for.
Democrats in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, they said, okay, we can't treat the military like garbage anymore because that was really bad for us politically.
So instead, we will treat the military as though they are victims.
And so our sole job is to protect the military from actually having to do anything.
Every time there's a foreign deployment, our chief goal is to not be in there, right?
We're basically to make work program according to many Democrats.
Now if you ask members of the military, they're not into it.
Members of the military know what they signed up for.
What they signed up for is to defend American citizens.
I can think of no greater situation requiring military defense of American citizens than hundreds, thousands of American citizens stuck behind enemy lines in Kabul, probably a hundred yards away from where the American military sits.
I mean, typically in American history, this would be a good time for America's military might to overwhelm the people who are in the nearby area, pick up the Americans, and then if you want to leave, you leave.
But because the logic has shifted, because in the minds of Democrats, they would rather sacrifice American civilians in Kabul than risk American military going out to save the American civilians in Kabul.
That's where we're at right now.
And by the way, the logic is so insane that we have now come to the point where the logic was not even, are we going to risk American military lives to save American citizens in Kabul?
The logic several months ago was, are we going to leave Americans in Afghanistan where their lives are not at risk Or are we going to pull them out in order to say that we protected them?
Remember, there have been zero combat casualties in Afghanistan for the United States since February of 2020.
You were significantly more likely to die as a cop in Chicago than you were to die as a soldier in Afghanistan between February 2020 and today.
And so, what exactly was the logic?
And the answer is, there was no logic.
It is all PR.
And in the end, it's about a real embarrassment at America having a footprint anywhere.
And our enemies know this.
And meanwhile, we got planes that are leaving empty from Kabul.
I mean, we're trying to get people out.
And this was one plane that just left from Kabul.
All empty seats, completely empty seats.
So what is the Biden administration doing?
Well, they're torturing people like Eric Prince.
So Blackwater founder Eric Prince Reportedly, was charging like $6,500 for people to escape Afghanistan.
And Psaki decided that it was time to yell at Erik Prince.
I have a question.
Who would you— Let's say that you are a person trying to escape Afghanistan, and here are your choices.
Either you pay Erik Prince $6,500 to leave, or you stay.
Those are your choices.
There's no third choice where the American government does its job.
Who are you angrier at?
Erik Prince for getting you out, or the American government for sucking so much at this that they couldn't get you out?
I love the misdirection here.
Jen Psaki ready to unleash the dogs of war on Erik Prince for charging money to get people out of there.
By the way, you know who could pay that bill?
These folks.
We're gonna spend, what, five trillion dollars this year?
You're telling me that we couldn't make a bargain with Erik Prince?
Spend five thousand dollars ahead to get Americans out of there?
Here is Jen Psaki going after Erik Prince anyway.
Two comments specifically, though, on Erik Prince.
I mean, he has already made so much money from the Afghan conflict, and now, in these sort of final waning days, is once again essentially exploiting people in order to make profit.
I mean, what is the position of the administration that this is taking place as you are offering flights free of charge?
I don't think any human being who has a heart and soul would support efforts to profit off of people's agony and pain as they're trying to depart a country and fearing for their lives.
I have a question.
What would you say about a politician who tried to politically profit off of people's agony and pain by pulling out 2,500 troops for no apparent reason and leaving a country of 38 million people to the tender predations of the Taliban as well as thousands of Americans behind enemy lines?
What would you say about the heart and soul of somebody like that?
What would you say about the heart and soul of an administration that is sending empty planes away from Afghanistan rather than just paying somebody to get people out of there?
What would you say about that administration?
I love the ire that Jen Psaki can muster for Erik Prince.
Again, this is not a defense of Erik Prince.
The point here is that Jen Psaki is ready to go ape on Erik Prince.
Meanwhile, the administration she works for is leaving Americans behind enemy lines and then telling the world it is because the Americans are stupid that they have been left behind enemy lines.
It's unreal.
And quite disgusting, by the way.
Currently, the United States is apparently working to locate 24 California students and 16 parents trapped in Afghanistan.
This is according to the LA Times.
Apparently, These students went to the country to visit relatives on special visas for U.S.
military service.
The trip was not school-sanctioned.
Mike Serban, the district's director of family and community engagement in Cajon Valley Union School District, east of San Diego.
They said, we have a long summer break.
Nobody knew the extent of what was going to happen.
Nobody knew it was coming.
There are extended families in Afghanistan.
They wanted to see their family.
They went back, likely before the troops left, so they could say hello or goodbye one more time.
What wouldn't you do to go see your family one more time, let alone know you only have a window of time to go see them?
Ferdoun Hasemi, an Afghan immigrant community liaison for the school district, told the publication, quote, the families go out there for summer break. The only reason they're there is to see family.
If you watch the news, you see the airports are really crowded, even for people with passports.
It's hard to get to the gates. We're trying to help them as much as possible, trying to reach them, trying to contact them. The students range in age from preschool to high school.
The school year began August 17th, two days after the nation's capital of Kabul fell to the Taliban.
So probably all the students want to stay.
That's what I'm getting.
What I'm getting from that story is that the preschoolers definitely want to stay.
And that's why we're just going to leave them there.
By the way, let's assume that the Biden administration actually intends on trying to get the Americans out of there.
So what options are available after the U.S.
military leaves?
There's only one, and it's abject humiliation and bribery, right?
It's we send a lot of money over to the worst people on earth.
So allow the Americans out, which of course incentivizes terror groups all over the world to simply take American citizens hostage.
That is what that does.
It incentivizes more of this, which is typically why you don't negotiate with terrorists, right?
That was always what the phrase was about.
You don't incentivize them to do bad things, knowing they can earn concessions from you.
GOP representative Major from Michigan, he says that the Americans who are left there, it's going to make the Iran hostage crisis look like nothing.
We're on the cusp, Harris, of having the biggest mass hostage situation in American history.
It's going to make 1979 and Tehran look like a sleepover because you're going to have thousands of Americans left behind that the Taliban will then have for leverage when they want international recognition, they want money, they want economic assistance, and they've got a gun to the head of American citizens because Joe Biden left them.
Okay, that's actually Representative Michael Walt, Republican of Florida, who served in Afghanistan in the United States Army.
And he is exactly correct about this.
And everybody, both sides of the aisle, knows this is the case.
Here is a Democratic representative, Chrissy Houlihan, Democrat of Pennsylvania, and she says the same thing.
She says, we're going to leave people behind.
Remember that time that the slogan was, leave no man behind?
And now it's just, leave people behind and then blame them?
The utter disgusting irresponsibility and blame shifting from this.
And remember that time that Joe Biden says the buck stops here?
Actually, it stops at the preschooler from San Diego who's now stuck with the Taliban.
That preschooler didn't return phone calls from the State Department.
Effectively what I'm hearing, and I think many others are hearing, is that we are making progress in the sense that we're escalating the number of people we're able to successfully get out every single day.
It increases, and that's good news.
But I do think that it is worrisome, as we talked about just now, that we probably won't be able to accomplish the mission of leaving no one behind with the timelines that we have.
And so I think that the atmosphere and the mood within the meeting was bipartisanally one of encouraging the president to reconsider that date.
Okay, and he didn't reconsider that date.
Democratic Representative Jason Crow of Minnesota, he said the same thing.
He said, our Afghan allies are stuck back there too.
As you look at the new numbers, getting more people on planes, getting more people out, how do you assess the situation right now and what needs to be done?
Yeah, I'm not seeing a scenario.
After all the briefings, the information I've reviewed, both as a member of the Intelligence Committee and the Armed Services Committee, as well as the congressional live briefings that we've received in the last 24 hours, I'm not seeing a path.
Okay, so, I mean, even the Democrats are acknowledging what a disaster this is.
Admiral James Stavridis, who of course served in the United States Navy and helped to preside over the Afghanistan war, he said, we lost.
It's over, we lost, and now they're going to take hostages.
What is it like for you as someone who has served there and has commanded troops to see this dynamic at play after the Taliban was driven out of that country so quickly?
Well, as we say in North Florida, sometimes you got to know the difference between quitting and getting beat.
And what I mean by that is we have got to recognize that in this case we have lost this conflict.
We have lost this conflict.
Okay, but what actually we mean by we've lost this conflict is we did surrender.
We surrendered.
That's what happened here.
By the way, the Taliban are going around showing off American-made arms right now.
Things are going great.
The Taliban are apparently gearing up in literally American uniforms, carrying American guns.
They've got American weapons all around them.
They're riding American Humvees, according to the Washington Post.
On his tour through the fallen city of Kabul last week, Taliban-aligned militant Khalil Haqqani rose to address a crowd at the capital's largest place of worship, Pul-il-Kishti Mosque, as he clutched a U.S.-made M4 rifle.
His security guards, similarly armed, were draped in the U.S.
combat aesthetics that have come to symbolize the last 20 years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Sporting high-cut helmets with night-vision goggle mounts, plate carriers, and U.S.
camouflage patterns, the guards looked like caricatures of the elite troops who have hunted insurgents in nightly raids and firefights.
The bounty of U.S.-provided weapons and vehicles long paraded by Taliban insurgents after capturing or stealing them from Afghan forces has grown to alarming proportions, well beyond the ability of U.S.
officials to casually dismiss.
And while throughout the war, militants prized rifles and other sophisticated personal equipment, the sudden and stunning collapse of the Afghan military has allowed for armored vehicles, helicopters, and a glut of heavy weapons to be commandeered by militants now running the country.
Since 2005, the U.S.
provided at least $18 billion to the Afghan military for equipment and transportation, and pretty much all of that is now in the hands of the Taliban.
So we've got Americans in the hands of the Taliban, our weaponry in the hands of the Taliban, but according to the Democrats, this was unavoidable.
At least Democrats who are willing to stand for the Biden administration.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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All right, we'll get to more in just one second.
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Also, tonight, we're gonna be talking about the debacle in Afghanistan.
We're gonna be talking about the rise again of lockdowns and curfews and mask mandates and the forever pandemic.
We're gonna be talking about all of that on Backstage tonight.
I'll be there, Jeremy Boren will be there, Michael Knowles, Matt Walsh, Andrew Clavin will all be there.
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I have a feeling it's gonna be a hot one.
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And meanwhile, you have Nancy Pelosi out in full scale defense for the Biden administration, and it was all inevitable.
Now, here's the thing.
Either it was inevitable...
In which case they should have made better plans, or it was not inevitable, in which case they got taken by surprise.
They want to claim that it was both inevitable and also they made excellent plans, which begs the question, what's going on over there?
If it was inevitable and you made plans, why do things suck so bad?
So they're just going to try to ram through this cognitive dissonance, these mutually exclusive positions.
Here's Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, saying this was a tragic situation.
It was tragic.
How did that tragedy get started?
And why is it tragic?
I've been told it's a great success.
So what is bad that is happening there?
I don't know.
I just don't know.
This is a tragic situation.
I've been there eight or nine times.
We want to make sure that there's a big bright light shining on Afghanistan if they wish to participate globally in any way.
Oh, so your threat is, and the Biden administration's threat is, that if the Taliban turn out to be bad, which, I mean, that would be weird if they turned out to be super bad.
It would also be really weird if it ended up being a terror haven.
Oh, wait, it already is.
That'd be strange.
So we'll shine our big, bright light on there.
And then if they do stuff we don't like, you know what we'll do?
We'll send them mean letters.
You know what we won't do?
Put any boots on the ground ever again.
You know what else we won't do?
Anything useful.
What we definitely will do is threaten them with economic sanctions.
Because people who have been living in caves for the last 20 years or so, what they are most afraid of is losing the conveniences of daily life.
If there's one group of people who are afraid of you cutting off their internet access, it is the Taliban.
Those people cannot go without eBay.
I mean, they need their OnlyFans, and they need it right the hell now.
And if you cut that stuff off, they will immediately start talking about women and gender studies over at Afghan University.
Okay, don't worry.
The Democrats have placed their ire in all the right places.
You have Jen Psaki, who's very angry at Erik Prince for charging people to get out of the country.
Meanwhile, the U.S.
isn't getting people out of the country.
At least, not all of them.
Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi is very angry.
Who is she angry at?
She's angry because there were two congresspeople, Peter Major from Michigan and Seth Moulton from Massachusetts, who went over and did an unplanned junket to Afghanistan to see what the situation is actually on the ground over there.
Now, they did it with a minimum footprint.
They did not take seats away from people who needed to leave the country.
And they came back with some pretty valuable information because we are being lied to day by day by the Biden administration.
So it's pretty, I mean, you have Congress people do this sort of stuff all the time, right?
Congress has an oversight function of the executive branch.
You have Congress people who routinely travel places to make sure that things are happening.
This is why you have Congress people travel down to the border, for example.
It's why you have Congress people travel over to Europe to make sure that what we say is happening is actually happening at the White House level.
Nancy Pelosi, however, is super mad, super angry at Seth Moulton and Peter Major for going over to Afghanistan.
Why?
Because they came back and they told the truth about what they saw, which is that Americans are going to be stuck there after August 31st.
Here's Nancy Pelosi mustering all the ire she can in her frail brain in order to in order to get mad at the people who are truly to blame.
These two congresspeople.
When did you learn that Congressman Bolton and Congressman Meyer traveled to Afghanistan?
And is that what prompted your letter instructing members not to travel to the region?
It's not just about them going to Afghanistan.
We're going to the region because there's a call on our resources diplomatically, politically, militarily and the rest in the region as well.
So this this is deadly serious.
We do not want members to go.
It's deadly serious.
We don't want members to go into war zones, and we certainly don't want them checking out what's happening over there.
Flashback, 2007.
U.S.
House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi's decision to defy the White House and meet Syrian President Bashar al-Assad steps up a tug of war between Democrats and President George W. Bush over foreign policy.
Despite Bush's admonitions, the talks were counterproductive and sent mixed signals.
Pelosi on Wednesday sat down with Assad, accused by Washington of backing terrorism and adding to Middle East instability.
Newly empowered Democrats already doing battle with Bush over who is really the decider on Iraq policy are taking a more assertive role on foreign policy.
So, Nancy Pelosi, you'll recall, actually went over to Syria and hung out with Bashar Assad, who is just preparing to kill, you know, half a million Syrian civilians.
And she did that without the permission of the White House.
So she is a rich one to be talking about how bad it is for Congress people to descend to an evacuation area to survey the situation and then report back accurately to the American people.
It's all in this direction.
And here's the thing.
The bottom line here is that in the end, the Biden administration knows this is a debacle.
They're hoping you forget about it.
In the same way that Americans forgot about Benghazi, in the same way that Americans apparently have now forgotten about 9-11, they're hoping that Americans just forget about this.
By the time we hit 2022, it won't matter anymore.
You'll be worried about your pocketbook.
You'll be worried about what's going on with COVID.
You won't be worried anymore about the thousands of civilians trapped behind enemy lines in Kabul.
It just won't be an issue for you.
The only way, by the way, to make it a non-issue for you is to just ignore whatever happens over there.
So if Americans start being tortured and killed, don't look for the Biden administration to do anything more than shoot a few missiles at camel asses the same way that Bill Clinton did in the 1990s after the bombing of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Lead him to basically blow up a supposed chemical factory in Sudan.
Look for the same sort of thing to happen from now on.
If Americans are mistreated, if things get really egregious in Afghanistan, even if pictures emerge of the Taliban humiliating Americans, don't look for Joe Biden to do anything there anymore.
He has to justify the decision he is making right now.
This is now the sunk cost.
And Joe Biden is going to continue to engage in the sunk cost fallacy.
The sunk cost is getting out.
That decision has to be made glorious by Joe Biden.
The only way to make that decision glorious is to suggest that peace and at least stability now reign in Afghanistan and that there is no ongoing threat from Afghanistan.
So the next few years are going to be about Joe Biden downplaying any threat from Afghanistan.
They're going to be about Democrats pretending that this is a massively successful airlift.
They're going to be about ignoring whatever comes next afterward or giving some mush mouth nonsense about how we are negotiating and we're going to get our people out eventually.
And five years later, the people will still be there and they'll still be held hostage by the Taliban and we'll still be covertly giving aid to the Taliban.
And they're hoping that you forget about all of this.
They're hoping that you forget about the geopolitical consequences of handing over Afghanistan to the Taliban.
They're hoping you don't notice that China feels emboldened and starts to go after Taiwan and starts to cut off Shipping lanes in the South China Sea.
They're hoping you don't notice that Russia is going to start getting pretty feisty with Latvia and Estonia.
Because Americans don't care about foreign policy until they are forced to care about foreign policy.
So the next couple of years, at a very minimum, are going to be about making you forget.
It's all sleight of hand.
They'll make you forget and the press presumably will aid them in this task by moving on.
All they have to do is delay.
All they have to do in their own mind is get beyond August 31st.
Because once they get past August 31st, once they get past September 11th, Americans will just go right back to sleep.
So the only question is, will we?
I think there's a 50-50 shot we do.
Maybe a better than even shot that we do.
Joe Biden is banking on the compliance and complacency of the American people.
And if that bet is correct, frankly, we don't deserve to have the most powerful country on planet Earth.
We really don't because that takes some upkeep.
Joe Biden doesn't want to do the upkeep.
He just wants you to settle into the warm bath of civilizational decay and slit your own wrists.
That is the goal here.
So will we go along with it?
We're going to find out in pretty short order because that's the actual plan.
Forget about the contingency plans.
That's the actual plan.
Big P plan from Joe Biden.
All righty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content coming up soon.
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