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Jan. 31, 2023 - Dinesh D'Souza
49:47
RESCUE OPERATION Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep507
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Coming up, I'm going to examine the issue of police brutality by diving deeper into the Diary Nichols case.
And I'm also going to compare it to the brutality of the Capitol Police on January 6, 2021.
Author and veteran Chad Robichaud joins me in studio.
We're going to talk about his group's amazing rescue operation in Afghanistan, a story vividly captured in his new book, which is called Saving Aziz.
This is the Dash to Suza Show.
The times are crazy and a time of confusion, division, and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
I want to continue my reflections on the Tyree Nichols case and the wider implications of that case because yesterday on the podcast I laid out the facts of the case.
The police approached this guy.
They claimed that he's driving erratically.
Apparently one of the policemen said that he swerved in a manner as if to hit the police vehicle.
Now, that is uncorroborated in the sense that we don't have any video of that.
We do have his video, Once the Police Approach the Car.
And they yank this kid out and they tell him to get on the ground, which he does.
And he appears to be cooperating with them.
And he's also like, why are you pulling me over?
I'm just trying to get home.
And then they tase him.
And that seems to set off a reaction.
He breaks free and tries to run.
They chase him down.
And then, of course, the horrific beating begins.
Again, this poor kid is beaten really to death while he's crying for calling out to his mom.
I mean, the video is really hard to watch because it's so heartbreaking.
And I don't think there's anyone, I haven't seen anyone in this wide landscape defend what the police did.
It's inexcusable.
It's a clear case of police brutality.
And police brutality appears to be something that does go on.
And I suspect it goes on even more in high crime areas.
This may be the roots of the idea that the police are somehow picking on blacks.
I think what happens in a city like Memphis is you've got an atmosphere that is almost dangerous in the air.
Debbie and I experienced this ourselves.
We've been to Memphis more than once, but we went recently.
We found it a little bit dangerous to walk two blocks to go to a restaurant, and this was from a nice hotel.
But we were looking left and right, looking over our shoulder.
Debbie's like, should we order room service instead?
So just think about it.
So they must have suspected that Tyree Nichols' driving was indicative of something more.
In any event, we don't have their side of the story.
And that's what trials and so on are for and investigations.
But what we do know is that a young man who shouldn't be dead is dead.
And normally, I think you would have a rare case where the country could kind of come together and go, this is wrong.
And we need to make sure that there is better training for these cops, that you don't have this hair-trigger type of response, even in a high-crime neighborhood.
And then you look for what...
What was wrong here?
Were these cops, were they just recently hired?
Were they hired in response to the fact that people aren't joining the police?
So Memphis was just like, let's just grab some people off the street and put badges on them and give them guns and make them part of the police force?
Was this part of Memphis's affirmative action, diversity policy?
We need more minority cops.
I mean, it would be really ironic if it was diversity and not, as the left would have it, white supremacy that played a bigger role.
In what happened here in this tragic incident with Tyree Nichols.
But the left has always wanted to take these incidents and fit them into a narrative.
And their narrative is always the same.
And that is essentially, white supremacy did it.
I mean, think of how weird that narrative is to impose on this case.
Because if you just look at the mugshots of all these guys when they were arrested, you basically got five guys who are all black.
I mean, this is a photograph you could have taken, like, anywhere in the world, but it's five black guys, and how you can say white supremacy made them do it.
Well, first of all, that's almost like making an excuse.
They didn't do it. It was white supremacy operating in the invisible hand.
No, it doesn't make any sense.
And yet, there is an almost irresistible tendency on the part of so many people to racialize this.
In fact, here's the mother of Tyree Nichols, an article...
And see, from the Gateway Pundit, when it's through a public statement that she makes, she goes, I hate that it was five black men that did this.
Now, at one level, I know what she means.
What she's basically saying is, look, in a situation where there are racial tensions already, shouldn't these black men have sort of been a little bit more careful to check out, make sure that my son is a She's a criminal and not a law-abiding guy who just basically got pulled over.
And so I think she feels almost racially betrayed.
I think that's part of what she's getting at.
But the other part of it, which I think is more distasteful, and this is not coming out of Vermont, but one of the other guys, one of the other people who made a public comment on this locally, and he said something like, well, there's got to be some white people involved in this somewhere.
In other words, what he's trying to say is, we need to find a way to fit this right back into the white supremacy narrative.
And so that's the left's problem, is that the police brutality narrative is not enough. They need a white supremacy narrative on top of it.
And so they are doing, you know, pirouettes and sort of intellectual gymnastics to try to make a case that is about five apparently rogue cops and one, five black rogue cops and one black victim, in this case Tyree Nichols, and try to make that somehow about racism and white supremacy.
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It's D-I-N-E-S-H, Dinesh.
The Tyree Nichols case, dispiriting as it is, focuses our attention on the issue of police brutality.
Now, we can't proceed in this without noting that the most shocking example and the most widespread example of police brutality, certainly in recent years, is January 6, 2021. Police brutality was there on video for all to see many gruesome examples of it.
And I think of two that need to be highlighted.
One is the unnecessary killing of a veteran, Ashley Babbitt, an unarmed person coming through a window.
And she shouldn't have been going through that window.
She was, in that sense, responsible for a, let's call it a failure to comply.
But she's not the one who broke that window.
You can see very clearly other people broke the window.
In fact, Ashley Babbitt tries to stop them from doing it.
Why she happened to be the first person through the window, I'm not exactly sure.
It could even be, and this sometimes happens with crowds.
You get pushed through the window.
And then even though there are guards on the other side and she poses no evident threat to anyone, she is shot to death by this guy, Lieutenant Colonel, I believe it was, Bird, Michael Bird.
And that guy was then hailed as a hero for doing it by the left.
So that's case number one.
Case number two, which actually more closely resembles the Tyree Nichols beating, was the beating of Roseanne Boyland.
Now, Roseanne Boylan's death in the tunnel was attributed by the medical examiner, I think, in a case of brazen dishonesty to the fact that it was amphetamines that killed her.
And she was at one time a drug addict, but apparently a recovering one.
And why should it be that the drug effect happened to her right then and there?
She had been, by the way, pepper sprayed.
Now, it could be that the pepper spray We're good to go.
Is savagely beating Roseanne Boylan.
I posted the video on my Twitter.
And it's interesting how people, you know, when you put out a truth that no one can deny, it's right there on the video.
Just the same, by the way, as the Tyree Nichols video.
No one will defend the video.
No one will say, yeah, of course they were beating her.
And that's a good thing, too. She deserved to get that kind of a beating.
They pretend like it didn't happen.
Oh, Dinesh, haven't you seen the medical report?
Her death was attributed to amphetamines.
Oh, Dinesh, in reality, she was trampled to death.
This was the Trump supporters who did that.
It was Trump's fault, because after all, had he not called for people to come to Washington, D.C., none of this would have happened.
So there's a desire to avert your eyes from what you can actually see on the video and shift the blame to some...
To fit the narrative again into your own kind of ideological compass.
So it has to be...
It can't be the cops that were to blame in this case.
In fact, this is the one case where the left loves these cops.
These cops are suddenly wonderful people.
They can't do anything wrong.
They were being overwhelmed by the crowd.
They were saviors of the country.
They were protecting Congress.
They did what they have to do.
Even though there was a shoddy investigation of Michael Byrd, even though he didn't follow the required steps, if anyone had done what he did under any other circumstances, the guy would be arrested.
He would at the very least be facing second-degree murder charges.
But no, somehow he's excused.
Why? Because it's January 6th.
Why? Because the bad guys have got to be MAGA, and the baddest of all the bad guys has got to be Trump.
But I think if we're going to face up to the issue of police brutality, we need a little bit of a mutual reckoning.
And I say this because... Because there are those of us who have been for a long time and continue to be back the blue.
We support the cops.
We think that in a society where there is law and order, the cops need to be supported.
These are people who, for not a whole lot of pay, by the way, put their lives in danger.
Their families live in the constant trepidation.
Is my mom, is my dad going to even come home?
So these are people who don't have an easy job.
I wouldn't want to be in their place and probably neither would many of you.
So back the blue is the right position, but the back the blue should not be indiscriminate.
It's not that the cop is always right.
It is that we have to look at the situation.
And there are cases, and it turns out the cases aren't...
They occur with, I think, a frequency that we...
More frequency than we would like.
We see these examples of egregious miscarriages of justice.
And we need to speak out.
But conversely, on the side of the left...
They've got to acknowledge that, you know what?
Police brutality doesn't always have a racial coloration.
You can't keep making something that's not racial into something racial.
And second, there's police brutality that occurs against whites.
In fact, very often that doesn't get any media coverage.
I've posted a couple of videos on my Twitter feed of white guys just getting absolutely thrashed by the police.
And look just by what you can see.
I realize we don't have the full context.
We don't have all the facts of the situation.
But from what you can see, what's going on is very unjust and unnecessary.
It's excessive force.
And so there's no excuse for it.
And similarly, on January 6th, you can continue to believe that the cops were necessary, that they were doing a job, they were protecting Congress, and also that some of them got completely out of hand.
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Guys, we have a really special guest on the podcast today.
Chad Robichaux is a former force recon Marine, Department of Defense contractor.
He's had eight deployments in Afghanistan.
He also founded the Mighty Oaks Foundation, which is a nonprofit that serves veterans.
We're going to talk about a remarkable book that I've been reading with great interest.
with great interest, it's this one right here.
It's this one right here.
It's called Saving Aziz.
And it's about an evacuation of an American ally and a translator in Afghanistan, but it's part of a bigger story of evacuations that Jad has organized.
Jad is also the co-founder of Save Our Allies, which is a nonprofit that has evacuated some 17,000 people.
17,000 people, wow, from Afghanistan.
And it's currently operating in Ukraine.
So we have a riveting story to talk about.
With much broader implications for U.S. foreign policy.
Chad, welcome. Great to have you.
Great to have you on the show.
Thanks so much for having me on.
Absolutely. Let's begin by just talking a little bit about your story.
You're a guy who has devoted your life to the military.
You put your life in danger multiple times.
In fact, we'll talk about how Aziz, your translator, saved your life on more than one occasion.
What drew you to the military in the first place?
Well, my family has about 84 years of service.
Going back to War II, Korea, my father was the first Marine in our family, served in Vietnam as infantryman.
And then I, of course, served as a Marine for eight deployments in Afghanistan.
And then both my sons served in the Marine Corps, one of them in Afghanistan as well, being in the same war as me.
And so military service has been a big part of my family.
The tragic part of that is my father came home and really struggled.
And that struggle led to a very dysfunctional home for me.
And so I remember when I was 13 and 14 years old, my brother and I decided we were going to join the military and go into special operations, particularly the Marine Corps.
Because even though my father was dysfunctional, one thing that always made him happy was You know, being a United States Marine.
But unfortunately, about a year into me and my brother training for that, 14 and 15 years old, he was shot and killed.
So it devastated our family and that created a lot of...
Really, instability. In my teenage years, I ended up living on my own.
And when I was 17 years old, I met a recruiter named Saf Shortit.
Ronald Brown, I still remember his name, was 30 years ago.
And he told him my story, and he helped me get into the Marine Corps in 1993 at 17 years old when I was in high school.
And it really created an opportunity for me to have a second chance at life, a clean slate, a trajectory that I could navigate on my own.
And at a young age of 17, I think somehow I recognized that and really embraced it, fulfilled that dream to be a recon marine and moved on from there.
You say in the book, and I suspect you're typical in this regard, that 9-11 had kind of a transforming effect on you.
And it helped you to understand that we have a serious threat that we're dealing with, a threat that may start far away but affects American lives right over here.
And this began the U.S. project in Afghanistan, a project that went on for a long time, and then, of course, culminated in the disgraceful Biden pullout.
But we'll get to that.
Let's start with Afghanistan.
I mean, tell a little bit about this country because it's something people don't know about.
You've seen it up close over a pretty long period of time.
You've got to know Aziz, who's a local who probably opened your eyes to some of the ways that things function over there.
What is it about Afghanistan that makes it different?
Well, I think most Americans specifically think Afghanistan is part of the Middle East.
It's an Asian culture and it's a very rich culture with incredible people who choose to live simple lives but very family-oriented and very just gracious and generous people.
The country's also rich in resources that a lot of people don't realize, but it's one of the poorest countries in the world.
And militarily, it's been one of the most strategic places on the globe throughout history, and it's why it's called the Graveyard of Empires, because so many nations have fought for it, and the Afghan people have been able to keep it all these thousands of years, starting with Alexander the Great, through the Russians, and And it's a present day.
And so it's a place that everybody wants.
And the Afghan people, or I think not only what most people think, they are on the surface.
Seems like the modern story of Afghanistan really begins with the Soviet invasion in 1979, if I remember.
Then produces an Afghan resistance, the so-called Mujahideen who were fighting against the Soviets.
Your friend and translator, your interpreter, Aziz, his father fought with the Mujahideen.
And it seems like Aziz was raised...
In a household that was anti-Soviet and also anti-Taliban.
Yeah, I mean, you know, we as America participated in that war against the Russians by proxy, supporting the Mujahideen, building the Mujahideen, arming the Mujahideen.
And then when we left that, they created a fraction, and that's where the Taliban was born from.
And then there was this, you know, Osama bin Laden leading the The Taliban, and then you had a guy named Ahmad Massoud, who was leading the North Alliance, and was a great freedom fighter and leader.
And most Afghans, especially during the initial war, really respected him.
Bin Laden brilliantly assassinated him right before 9-11, because he knew we would retaliate.
And so he went to make sure our ally network was broken up before.
And it was a brilliant move strategically on Osama bin Laden's part to take our ally in the beginning.
And that fractioning, that killing that leader caused Mujahideen to break apart.
And many people were scared and ended up joining the Taliban.
And so it was a race for time.
Let's take a pause. When we come back, I want to explore the aftermath of what happened after the Soviets left Afghanistan, which laid the groundwork for 9-11 and the story that we want to tell.
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Use discount code AMERICA. I'm back with Chad Robichaux in studio.
I'm delighted to say, by the way, his website is chadrobichaux.com.
That's C-H-A-D-R-O-B-I-C-H-A-U-X.com.
The book we're talking about is called Saving Aziz, just a riveting story.
Chad is also the founder of the Mighty Oaks Foundation, which helps veterans in ways we'll talk about.
And also Save Our Allies, which has extracted 17,000 people from Afghanistan, including the fellow we'll talk about, Aziz.
So, Chad, the Soviets leave Afghanistan.
There's a kind of internecine struggle.
The Taliban emerge as the leader.
And the Taliban is operating in the name of Islam, but they don't have the support of the whole country.
And it seems clear that there were a lot of Muslims who resisted and even to now are against the Taliban.
Talk a little bit about, because some people think, well, you know, Islam's the enemy.
The Muslims are all kind of cut from the same cloth.
Talk a little bit about what you discovered on the ground about different types of Muslims in Afghanistan.
Well, I believe there's two, frankly, moving into this.
And so I received a really on-the-ground education of it and seeing how these people – and Aziz is the best example I know.
I remember being in a car with him and we're driving and he's a young Muslim guy and he's talking about a freedom – In democracy, the note he's never even seen before, never witnessed before, he's talking about willing to die for it and fight for it, so his future daughters would be free, so they wouldn't be subject to this Taliban ideology, and they would be able to have education and not be forced to be married and sexually enslaved.
And I remember just being so blown away, because I never heard an American speak about freedom and liberty and democracy that way, and I realized how naive we could be here at home.
And he was willing to die for it.
And that really took me back.
And I realized that wasn't just him.
There was so many Afghan Muslims for many years that were willing to fight against this radical ideology that the Taliban was to truly oppress people for money, for power, and really, frankly, when it came down to it, for sexual power over the women of Afghanistan.
I mean, one day I found you bring Aziz to life really in the book in a powerful way.
I thought what was interesting is that you say that he was an English teacher, and even that was a subversive act under the Taliban, just teaching English, because it represented Westernization.
It was an infidel language. Yeah.
And then he changes careers and he becomes an interpreter.
But you say there are two kinds of interpreters.
There's the kind that sort of just does the job of interpreting, but there's another kind that kind of joins the team and is willing to fight.
And so talk about how Aziz was willing to do that and what that meant to have Aziz in harm's way.
Yeah, I mean, certainly many interpreters, there was a financial opportunity there.
Americans are coming in and going to pay.
And a lot of U.S. service members paid the price for that because the Taliban's always willing to pay more.
But Aziz was not that.
Aziz was there to fight, not just to support Americans, but he was there to fight for his country and for that freedom and democracy of his country, for his future.
And he really played in that.
And so he was completely all in.
He came back from exile because of teaching and he came back to fight for his country.
And so I got to witness him do that.
He put his life on the line every day.
To save my life, to save service members' lives, we had a unique opportunity to serve together on eight deployments for the continuity.
And really, because of my job, I worked by myself with him.
I worked in what would be more undercover capacity to go build our infrastructure for our units.
And so he was with me for months and weeks and months in those mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
And, you know, again, he saved my life multiple times.
And when we came back home from those operations, I didn't go back to Basin.
He went home. I went to his home in Hatra.
His wife cooked my first warm meal.
I was there to hold his kids, his old son, Mashuda Mashuda, his daughter, when they were born.
So they're family to me, and they became family.
Great deployments. I mean, it seems like not only does he actively save your life, but he also keeps you out of danger.
And he shows you the ropes.
Because you said, for example, in the United States, by and large, you have a driver's license.
You can go anywhere. Yeah. But in Afghanistan, there's like a driver's license for each region.
Yeah. Right? So you need to know where you need permits, checkpoints.
So someone needs to navigate.
And he also helps you, I thought very interestingly, in things not to do.
Like at one point, you see a couple of Taliban guys, you want to take their photo.
He's like, do not do that.
So he warns you, like, this is not, you know, don't bring trouble where it doesn't have to be, right?
So you got to know this guy, you got to know him well.
And describe one of the incidents where he really saved your life.
How did that happen? Yeah, well, you know, there was one time we were going in a gun buy and we were going to buy these guns from probably the Taliban to stockpile safe houses.
And I was going by myself and him and he just knew like, hey, this is our right.
These guys are going to try to roll you up for the money and probably kill you.
We'd take a team and we need to have a plan in advance.
And he... His street smarts and just wit and care about me ultimately prevented these guys from probably capturing me or killing me.
I mean, while we were mining these guns, a car full of like four other guys with AK-47s, I would have identified them as Taliban, tried to come in and intervene and catch us, but Aziz was able to spot them.
We ended up catching these guys, tying them up, taking their weapons away and getting out of there.
And, you know, he saved my life that day.
But he probably saved my life every day. Like, don't eat that.
Don't walk there. Don't talk to that person.
If you talk right now, they're going to kill us.
Like, every day he saved my life.
And if I went around a corner or into a cave, he went first, even though I had more experience because he cared about me.
When we come back, let's pick up the story of how finally you had a chance to save his life.
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Feel the difference. I'm back with Chad Robichaux, and we're talking about Afghanistan.
We're also talking about his great book, Saving Aziz, which is not only a fascinating book from a sort of foreign policy and a policy point of view, but it's a riveting story.
So please check it out.
Chad, you know, I'm listening to you and describing this sort of harrowing life on the ground on the streets of Afghanistan.
There might be some people listening to this podcast or watching, and they're going to go, well, this is very brave of Chad, but why is America even doing this?
Why are we sending our young people like Chad out there, put them in this situation, When you went to Afghanistan, you felt, and I think you still feel, you were doing something important and noble and good for America.
What made you come to that view?
Well, initially, it was a sense of patriotism or retaliation for 9-11 in Afghanistan.
But then I get there and I have the opportunity to be embedded with Aziz and his family and Afghan culture.
And I realize it's much bigger than that.
I realize what America's strength in the world, how it impacts other peoples around the world, and helps cultures around the world like Afghanistan, but ultimately comes back to our national security here at home and our global security.
Going to the killing pool, which I write up on in the book, was a chance to see the true oppression that the Afghan people were under in the Taliban.
I mean, we're mass executions. Let's pause here.
You mentioned this phrase, a killing pool.
So there is in Afghanistan a kind of a hill, a mountain, and the Soviet Union evidently constructed an Olympic swimming pool.
To talk about why they do that.
Well, I mean, they're obviously very competitive.
The Soviets are super proud in their athletics, and they wanted the place for their soldiers to build a train for the Olympics and build a train there in Afghanistan.
In an elevated area.
I mean, yeah, Kabul's a mile high, like Denver.
So we have our Olympic Training Center in Denver, or Colorado Springs, and they built an Olympic Training Center essentially there.
And this pool, the Olympic-sized pool is on top of this hill in the center of Kabul.
And then the Soviets leave and the Taliban kind of inherit this pool.
And I'm assuming the Taliban wasn't into the Olympics.
So what do they do with the pool?
They had the Olympic sport of killing those who didn't agree with them.
And, you know, Aziz took me and showed me.
He wanted to show me what their country had been to.
And, you know, unfortunately, this is the things that we see in the mainstream media news.
And thankful for voices like yours, but I mean, they had a noose from the top, and it's like a slipknot to literally decapitate people, and they throw people off as women and children as garbage, who are in the bottom and the deep end and shallow end, both ends. They were just riddled.
Thousands of bullet holes in there.
And I remember taking my Leatherman and pulling out casings and realizing that this casing went through someone's body.
I mean, it would be... I don't mean to compare this to like Dachau or something, but you're saying basically this was a killing chamber, a converted swimming pool that now becomes essentially a deposit for bodies and a place to get rid of people.
And this is what the Taliban represented.
Now... Under Reagan, the United States, as you mentioned, supported resistance fighters like the Mujahideen fighting in Soviet occupation.
Of course, we did that in Nicaragua, elsewhere in the world.
But in both Afghanistan and Iraq, we committed troops and we committed a sort of a U.S. presence there.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, and truthfully, I don't agree with either one of them in the way they negotiated with the Taliban.
In fairness to my perspective of both, I don't believe either one of them should have, Trump or Biden, should have spoken to the Taliban the way they did negotiate this.
The truth is we went to Afghanistan with the right intentions, but there were 20 years of and four presidents that did not make the right decisions along the way that kept us there in the wrong perspective.
However, in 2018, I think President Trump turned a table on that when he did our original intent and took it to the Taliban.
We dropped that move, the mother of all bombs in 2018, that we shifted from a conventional kinetic war with the Taliban to a support and advisory role with the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police.
And the entire international community followed behind that and supported that effort.
And so, Bagram Air Force Base, which I believe is the most strategic place on the globe between Iraq and around Russia and China, and should never be forfeited by the international community, especially to our enemies, was a strategic location that was not in a conventional war.
I believe we should have said the war's over.
Now we're in a support and advisory role.
We should publicly announce that, but we didn't.
But because we didn't announce that, there was this pressure putting American people that we have to get out of this 20-year war.
We have to get out of this endless war, which is just not true and not consistent with how the United States strategically has been successful in previous wars.
When you look at World War II, we still have 80,000 troops in Japan and 40,000 in Germany and 35,000 in South Korea in that 30th parallel.
These things aren't me being a warmonger to suggest this.
This is how we prevent Future conflicts.
The vacuum that we left in Afghanistan is why we're dealing with Ukraine right now, Russian Ukraine.
And it's why we're on the threat of dealing with a war with China.
And when we do go into a war with China, and pray to God that we don't, but if we do, we have given up our strategic position right next door to China.
Let's take a pause when we come back more with Chad Robichaud.
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I'm back with Chad Robucho.
He's... The founder of the Mighty Oaks Foundation also co-founded Save Our Allies, which has extracted thousands, in fact, 17,000 people from Afghanistan.
And Chad, you were making the point, which I think is very important, that there was an opportunity for the United States and Afghanistan to make a transition from an initial direct involvement To essentially a modified Reagan doctrine, where the Afghans take the lead and the international community supports them.
But that was mismanaged.
And as a result, you got the war weariness in which people were choosing between two extreme options.
Either we're fully in there or we're fully out of there.
And then we got this disastrous Biden evacuation.
Now, would you agree that if it had been Trump in charge, he would have evacuated, but not in the inept way that Biden did?
Yeah, you know, we had 4,000 troops in Afghanistan during the evacuation.
At President Trump's tenure, he had 2,500 troops.
I really go into ROEs in here and show how ROEs really change our trajectory of U.S. deaths and injuries and really change the scope of the battlefields.
But I believe President Trump would have, he was, that's that own withdrawing.
I don't believe, I don't agree with them.
Him or Biden negotiated Taliban.
But I do believe he would have not given that Bakran Air Force Base over to the Taliban.
I believe he would have handed it over to the international community.
And I think we would have still participated in a support and advisory role there.
And I mean, to say we have 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, we have that in Djibouti.
We have that all over the world right now.
And so it was really just, it was missed, it was, Inappropriately presented to the American people.
We had that level contingency all over the world.
And not to mention the fact of leaving all those ammunitions behind, right?
$5 billion is what they were said to have left in technology.
And the difference that I think really took place was President Biden gave a date and said, we will be out by this date.
President Trump gave terms.
And that's a big difference in that kind of strategy because terms would have been, again, I don't agree with the withdrawal, but if you are going to withdraw, we will leave when we get Americans out.
We will leave when we get our allies out.
We will leave when we get our $85 billion in equipment out, and we're not going to leave until then.
President Biden gave a date, and when he realized he didn't have enough time, he asked for extension from the Taliban, and they said no because they negotiated with the enemy.
We didn't negotiate with our international partners.
We didn't negotiate with the Afghan government that we spent 20 years putting in place.
The White House negotiated with the enemy of 20 years, the Taliban.
And that was a mistake. And in that chaos, people are filling up these planes and apparently half of them are not vetted.
They don't know if they are friends or if they are enemies.
And so let's talk about Aziz.
Here's Aziz. He actually had applied for a visa earlier to get out, but now he's in a desperate situation.
How do you get him out? Well, yeah, I spent six years in that process, so I knew I had to get him out.
I put together a team of the former special operations veterans that had the experience to do this.
And as we put together his team, we had 12 special operations veterans, highly trained.
And we were saying, hey, this is bigger than Aziz.
There's Americans, interpreters, families, women, children.
Let's help as many people as we can.
And we were... We all felt really God had burned our hearts to do that.
We were obedient to that, to say yes and lean forward.
And honestly, beyond that, we witnessed a miracle.
God orchestrated a complete miracle to allow us not only to save His, He's, His family, but ultimately 17,000.
I mean, and this is something that the U.S. government seems like it was not really doing.
And I say that because I read an article, I even talked about it on the podcast, where in the intervening months since the evacuation, the State Department has been getting all these emails from Americans or American allies still in Afghanistan.
they don't even open the emails. I mean, unbelievable.
And the White House is saying, one of the things the White House is saying, if the Americans want to leave, then they just have to go to the airport and leave, which is, I don't think it was naive of them, because I think they knew exactly what was happening.
The White House took the NEO operation, the Noncombatant Evacuation Operation, away from the Department of Defense, where it belongs, and gave it to the State Department, who's never done that before, they don't know how to do it.
And they made the embassy, I mean, the airport like an embassy, and the military was able to secure that but not go outside and do evacuations.
And so the outer perimeter of that airport became controlled by the Taliban by way of our State Department, and they checked who was allowed to come in and out.
And so if you were some young 20-year-old girl that's there on a medical aid mission or missionary trip, you're not going to go show your passport to the Taliban.
They're literally shooting people in the streets, cutting body parts off in the streets of people.
And I couldn't imagine an American doing that.
For the White House to say that was just either naive or just complicit.
I mean, and even Aziz, who knows the territory, he couldn't get through the gate.
He was outside another gate, and you had to go get him and bring him through to get him out.
Talk a little bit about his life now, because you just said something right before we started filming that I found quite remarkable, which is a change of life for Aziz.
Yeah, well, I mean, he's come to America.
He's It takes half to nine months in the humanitarian center.
He's come to America. He's here in Texas with us.
He comes to church with us here locally at our church here in the Woodlands.
And does that mean, is he a convert?
He's given his life to Christ and got baptized.
And that didn't happen because of coming here.
It happened because while he was there, he has an amazing story of just hitting his knees one night.
And he was praying and praying and praying and nothing was happening.
So you remember... My faith and his American friend's faith and he got on his knees and he prayed to Jesus and he fell asleep, had this incredible dream where I believe Jesus came to him in his dream and when he woke up, we called him and said, hey, we're coming to get you and I remember telling him like, hey, God loves you, we're coming to get you and that just really solidified it for him that when he turned to Jesus that the door was open for him to actually escape and we got him out.
Amazing. We'll be right back with Chad Robichaux.
I'm back with Chad Robichaux, the founder of Mighty Oaks Foundation, also co-founder of Save Our Allies, author of this book, Saving Aziz, that we're talking about.
His website, by the way, Chad Robichaux, R-O-B-I-C-H-A-U-X.com.
Chad, you're telling us this remarkable story about Aziz and the fact that he had dreams or a dream in which Jesus came to him.
I've actually talked in the podcast about Muslims who see Jesus in dreams.
Talk a little bit about Aziz's dream.
Yeah, I've heard this too, that so many Muslims experience Jesus in a dream.
That's a big movement of Christianity in Afghanistan.
People don't know Iran, Afghanistan.
So Aziz gets on his knees, he prays to Jesus.
You've got to realize how desperate he was at this time.
Everyone left him, all his family, everyone, because of the association with us.
And so he's putting guns in corners of his house, hand grenades, ammunition, stockpiling ammunition.
He's watching 35 provinces collapse in Kabul's necks, and we have a mutual enemy that's coming to get him.
And so he's telling his wife, if they come from this way, you shoot.
His oldest son, if you come from this way, you shoot.
His six-year-old, you're going to have to fight.
So that's the position he's in.
He's watching the airport. He's been there seven times and being shot at to make it there.
Women are throwing babies over the fence to their death and landing in Constantinople.
The level of desperation.
So he gets on his knees.
He prays to Jesus. He falls asleep.
He has this incredible dream where Jesus...
I pierced him in his dream and he's drowning.
Kabul's flooding. His family's on a, he says, on the sides of the table.
His family's on there crying for him.
And he sees his hand come over him and says, the hands of Jesus.
And he's like telling Jesus, if you touch me with this hand, I'm going to die.
And he gets scared.
And then there's this big wall.
He said, this big wall over the water and a ship burst through and me and Dan Stenson were on the ship.
He says, I'm twice as small in his dream.
Wow. But he says, we're coming to get you, brother.
And we pull him out the water and he wakes up.
And when he wakes up, he's scared because he realized it was just a dream.
But that's when I call him and say, hey, we got the plan figured out.
We're coming to get you. And I remember telling him, you know, God loves you.
I mean, what a remarkable story.
I mean, Chad, this has not been an easy road for you.
You came back from Afghanistan.
You said you felt like you were, I mean, even though you were coming home, you felt like you were in an unfamiliar world.
Nobody understood you.
You had some serious PTSD. Talk a little bit about that and how that inspired you to create an organization, Mighty Oaks Foundation, to help veterans.
When I came home, as you read in the story, me and Aziz buried 15 friends and we went through a tremendous amount together.
And I came home, I was diagnosed with PTSD. I dealt with severe panic attacks, like debilitating to where I thought I was going to die.
Anxiety, depression, and just a hopelessness and nothing.
I tried work, not pills or counseling or anything like that.
And I ended up at a point to where right here in the Woodlands, we separated, sold our homes.
If it breaks down your marriage, yeah.
We filed for divorce, and during that time, that three months separated, I attempted to take my life in 2010, and my wife intervened, and some amazing people came around me and led me to a restoration of my faith, which brought me that relationship with Christ, and the discipleship I got brought me to hope.
Healing and ultimately the restoration led me to a newfound purpose and that purpose really manifested in me having a deep burden of heart from God to pay it forward to others.
And that was 12 years ago.
In the last 12 years I've been able to speak to over half a million active duty troops on spiritual resiliency at bases around the world, giving away about 350,000 copies of some of my books.
And we have a recovery program that we have at five different ranches around the country, and we pay fully funded $5 million a year programming.
We do active duty service members, veterans, spouses, and first responders.
We bring them to these camps and do a week-long intensive and then followed on by a lifelong aftercare for them.
And it's been an incredible program.
We've taken those successes and been to Washington, D.C., where President Trump had appointed me the chairman of the White House's faith-based coalition to change policy and executive orders and And even some bipartisan policy for faith-based veterans care.
And then we have our international program where we bring these same programs to our partners around the world.
I've been to Ukraine 10 times since February, since the invasion, and bringing our spiritual agency program to the front line.
We've actually did a lot of rescues.
Benjamin Hall, the Fox News reporter, I was one of the six men that went in to get Benjamin Hall in to do that.
So we've been able to do a lot of stuff through Mighty Oaks.
And the vets come to these ranches It seems like it would be a lifeline for someone like that because they're able to see other people who are in the same situation.
They're able to get direct counseling and psychological services, I take it, and then you have a follow-up with them.
What was unique about Mighty Oaks is not that this is faith base, but we're not clinical.
There's great clinical programs out there, but we don't need to be another one.
So we're a peer-to-peer mentoring program.
So we disciple all of our guys that come through our program.
About 28% of them sign up to pay it forward.
And we disciple them through a leadership program so they can go back and pay it forward.
And we have combat veterans that are also biblical counselors through American Association of Christian Counselors and ACBC and can oversee that process.
And so it's just this multi-layered process of discipleship.
To reach back and not just get well, but to reach back and pay it forward to the next guy.
And that's how we've grown so much in the last 12 years because we don't just help veterans.
We empower them and put them back in positions to pay it forward.
And it's just really taken a life of its own.
It's been an incredible thing to watch God orchestrate it.
We have such amazing supporters and it started right here in New Orleans.
Chad, I mean, just for a personal note, Debbie and I want to thank you for your service.
And this is just a remarkable book.
It's called Saving Aziz.
So please check it out.
You can follow Chad on Twitter at Chad Robo, R-O-B-O. Our website, Chad Robo Show, R-O-B-I-C-H-A-U-X.com.
The organizations to check out our Mighty Oaks Foundation and also save our allies.
Chad, a real pleasure. Delighted to have you.
Thanks so much. Thanks for all you do as well.
Appreciate it. Subscribe to the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast on Apple, Google, and Spotify.
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