All Episodes
Previous Next
Aug. 21, 2021 - The Dan Bongino Show
12:38
The Bongino Brief - Aug 21, 2021

What went wrong in Afghanistan? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Dan Bongino.
Welcome to the Bongino Brief.
I'm Dan Bongino.
All right, so our buddy Michael Anton hits it again, nails it again, about what went wrong in Afghanistan.
Michael Anton's a very gifted writer.
He's been a member of the national security community for a long time, but unlike many members of the national security community, he calls out the swamp.
The swamp he knows he was in and says, here's the problems with Afghanistan.
He nails it in two specific ways.
And then I'm going to play some audio of Donald Trump in a minute as well.
And Trump basically says the same thing.
And it's kind of hilarious how the left is always calling out Trump, but he always seems to get it when they don't.
All of these disasters that have happened, happened the minute Trump left office.
Right?
All of them.
Election debacles, inflation, open borders.
I mean, the leftists... This is supposed to be the smart one, correct?
I'm not crazy, right?
The media's told us the left... They're the benighted class.
They're the smart ones.
You know, tolerance, coexist, bumper stickers.
This is all we've heard about these geniuses in academia, Hollywood elitists.
They're so much smarter than us, the little people.
The smelly Walmart crowd.
You know, the smellies.
That's what we've heard.
Yet, how is it that every time they're in charge, And their leftist ideas are implemented, right?
When you get a Jimmy Carter, when you get a Michael Dukakis, whether it's in Massachusetts or elsewhere, how is it every time you implement their ideas, Joe Biden or Barack Obama, things collapse?
How is that?
Anton nails it in this piece.
Afghanistan, doomed from the start.
American Mind, Michael Anton.
Michael Anton, again, has been a member of the national security apparatus, whatever you want to call it, in these fancy words, for a long time.
And he makes a lot of points in this piece.
But in the interest of time, I have to distill it down to two hard takeaways.
Part number one, he talks about how these liberal Americans and even centrists and everybody, oh, you got to celebrate diversity.
All right.
Well, what about when diversity means that some people don't look at democracy the same way we do?
Oh, don't say that.
That's racist.
Here, quote Michael Anton.
Modern Americans are endlessly told to, quote, celebrate diversity, but are also hectored to treat other people as if they are interchangeable and all behave in the same ways and want the same things.
This bedrock assumption of woke America is the ultimate shoal on which the Afghan war foundered.
Amen.
He goes on.
To express any doubt that a fundamentally pre-modern people, talking about Afghanistan, with entirely different experiences and expectations from a State Department bureaucrat or NGO do-gooder, especially to suggest that democracy might not be an easy sell in the Hindu Kush, was instantly to expose oneself to the charge of racism or Islamophobia.
The few who dared quickly learned not to.
The rest did not dare, or else were true believers from the get-go.
Anton talks about, in the piece, how he was in these national security meetings with the Bush administration.
And how these people, if you dared bring up the fact that, you know, you guys talk about diversity and different cultures and all this.
Maybe the culture's not ready for democracy.
You can't say that, that's racist.
No, we can say it, and we will.
I'm not suggesting that we should stereotype every single Afghan civilian and say, none of them wanted democracy ever.
But it's clear, based on the history of the region, that our efforts to impart democracy on a culture that had no previous structure, leading them to believe that that would be somehow beneficial or a path to prosperity, no one ever looked around and said, are they ready for this?
And if they're not, why are we making them ready for what they're not ready for?
Did anybody ask that question?
Why were we trying to impart a system of democracy which took centuries to brew and develop on a culture that, at least at large, was not ready for it?
Because it wasn't being demanded by overwhelming portions of the population.
Why were we trying to do that?
And why, again, is it somehow racist to claim otherwise?
I thought we were talking about cultural diversity.
The way we left, again, was a disgrace and a humiliating disaster.
Forfeiting Bagram Air Base will go down as probably one of the worst tactical military decisions made by a commander-in-chief in the history of the United States, and I'm not kidding.
But it's just odd how the left, all they want to talk about is diversity, and then when you get diverse ideas, Keep in mind, I'm not saying good or bad.
I'm just saying diverse meaning different.
And maybe some countries aren't ready for democracy.
The left says that's racist to suggest that.
Yeah, you can kiss my caboose.
It's time to have real conversations right now.
Because people die when you do stupid stuff.
And you do a lot of stupid stuff on the left.
Anton brings up another great point.
Here, this is the most powerful part of the piece.
IMHO, in my humble opinion.
He cites Machiavelli.
He says the Romans, Machiavelli says, quote, made their wars short and big.
We Americans have taken to making our wars small and long.
We inflict pinprick strikes over decades rather than getting the whole thing over within a matter of days or weeks.
A better strategy right after 9-11 would have been to do what we did, but finish the job at Tora Bora and then leave immediately with a note on the fridge saying, if you do anything like that again, we'll be back quickly with overwhelming force and we'll leave just as quickly.
And we will do this as many times as you make us.
Folks, it is time to fight on their terms, not ours.
We are a good, decent people.
The Taliban are not.
And good, decent people don't want to impart and inflict pain on others.
We don't.
I get that.
That's what makes part of it, which makes us great, but it's also a bit of a weakness in combat because their terms, they don't understand that.
They just sense it as weakness.
If we aren't willing to impart on them real pain and real destruction, And inflict legitimate material losses that they think about for generations.
They're not going to be taught a lesson.
There is nothing wrong with fighting a war for retribution or revenge.
Not everything has to result in the creation of an empire with higher moral values and that turns into and evolves into a constitutional republic.
Sometimes you just fight to kill the enemy.
I agree with Anton's assessment, citing Machiavelli.
We should have leveled that place.
And yes, a lot of people would have died.
Potentially some innocents.
But what's the solution?
To turn the country back over to the Taliban after a 20-year experiment in blood and treasure, where innocents die anyway?
There's no easy answers here, folks.
We're not weighing answers between good and bad.
Here's the good one, here's the bad one.
That's not what this is.
This is a bad answer and a worse answer.
Sometimes overwhelming pain on our enemies is the answer.
This is their terms.
This is all they understand.
We're trying to do pinprick strikes over 20 years to do what?
Maybe we should have just leveled the place and got out.
Again, that's not faux bravado.
It's thinking strategically.
Maybe sometimes retribution and revenge in an overwhelming manner so that a lesson is taught is the only way and maybe we have to do it again.
We're not going to solve the world's problems in one strike no matter how overwhelming.
Make your wars short.
Make them big.
Do not run from the fact that we are seeking revenge.
That is their language.
That is their terms.
Not ours.
I understand that.
Maybe explain that to the American people.
That we're a good, decent people.
We don't like to see other people in pain.
We don't want to see casualties.
We don't.
That's a good thing, that's not a bad thing, but it can be a weakness when you're dealing with people who only understand one thing, blood, guts, and pain.
Here's President Trump in an interview with Sean Hannity.
We had a very strong conversation.
I told him up front, I said, look, before we start, let me just tell you right now that if anything bad happens to Americans or anybody else, or if you ever come over to our land, we will hit you with a force that no country has ever been hit with before.
A force so great that you won't even believe it.
And you're a village, and we know where it is, and I named it.
We'll be the first one.
Mr. President, I want to interrupt.
You dropped right there.
You said this to who?
Yeah.
Who did you?
You said that to who?
To Mullah Baradar, who is probably the top person.
Now, nobody really knows who the top person is, but I would say that's probably the top person.
And it seems to be that's the way it's rolling right now.
But I had a very strong conversation.
I also had a good conversation with him.
We talked for a while after that.
That was the primary point I was making, and he understood it.
And I asked him, do you understand?
He said, yes, I do understand.
You see how his instincts there are absolutely correct?
Trump is very specific.
I will destroy your village.
I know where it is.
And do you understand what I'm saying?
And the left laughs at them all the time as they lord over the destruction of Afghanistan.
I got another piece of video from Trump in a second on that second point that Michael Anton makes about making wars short but big.
Remember Fox Connors' rules of war?
I can't emphasize to you, I don't mean to oversimplify them, but Fox Connors' rules of war, look it up.
Don't ever forget them.
Never go to war alone.
Never go to war for long, and never go to war unless you absolutely have to.
Those three golden rules are inviolable.
Here's Donald Trump talking again about the next, listen to him at the end of this, when he talks about how we should have engaged in a big strike and we shouldn't have been there forever.
Check this out.
We took this horrible place, I mean a place that just we shouldn't have been involved.
It was a horrible decision going into the Middle East.
And I know the Bush family will not be happy, but I believe it was the worst decision in the history of our country when we decided to go into the Middle East.
It's turned out to be quicksand.
We've destroyed the Middle East.
Do you think it's better now than it was 20, 21 years ago?
It's much worse.
It was a horrible decision.
Cost us trillions of dollars.
And if you look at both sides, because I like to look at both sides, millions and millions of lives.
And it's no different than it was.
It's much worse because you have to rebuild it.
It's been blown to pieces.
The worst decision Ever made was going, you can do a strike as retribution and it could be a big strike as retribution for the World Trade Center, etc.
But to get stuck in there was like quicksand.
So we did a terrible thing.
But think of what's happening now.
It's amazing.
Again, for all of the negative tweets, all of the relentless, brutal, savage attacks on Trump.
His instincts are absolutely spot on.
He's been consistent in this.
I get it to the, you know, Media Matters buffoons and, you know, the liberal bloggers like them or whatever.
They're probably listening.
Oh, my gosh, Roy's kissing Trump's butt or whatever.
Whatever.
You do what you want.
You do you.
I'm sure that's immediately how you'll discount this.
And yet you won't process a minute of what the man actually said and how, again, his instincts on the situation were correct.
It'll go right over your head because you're so obsessed with the orange, bad, bad, conspiracy theorists.
I get it.
I get it.
And that's why you'll never understand this movement.
Ever.
Because you don't want to.
The man's instincts were right.
▲
Export Selection