The Perils Of Pulling Out Of Afghanistan & Listener Q&A
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Nick and Jared begin with a discussion on the US pull out from Afghanistan and it's historical and political implications. They then turn to questions submitted by the Patreon faithful, engaging in a terrific discussion across a wide variety of topics. At the end, they let us into the world of what they're watching on TV and the internet.
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I'm Nick Hauselmann and this is an announcement to let you know that we are going to be doing a new series called The Weekender over on Patreon that will appear every Friday.
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Hey, everybody.
Welcome to the Muckrake Podcast Weekender Edition.
Crack it open.
Oh, Nick.
I just worked all day.
All right.
I need to crack something open next time.
I have to remember to... I worked all day for the first time in person teaching in a year and a half and boy are my arms tired but I'm happy it's always to be here with my good friend Nick Hausselman.
Thank you as always to our patrons over at patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
A reminder for those of you who are listening to the preview you can get the entire episode that is patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast.
You should head over there post haste Today, tonight, whatever time it is.
I don't know.
It's storming outside.
I'm exhausted.
We're going to talk a little bit and then we're going to get to your questions.
And we have a huge batch of really, really good questions.
So we're going to get to that here in just a moment.
But we would be remiss if we didn't start the conversation off with some developing information, developing situations over in Afghanistan where we are getting ready to celebrate the 20th anniversary of 9-11.
Weirdly enough, it's almost like an Etch-A-Sketch, Nick.
It's almost like the Etch-A-Sketch just got shook up and we're back to where we were after God knows how much money, how many lives were lost both here and there.
I don't know, man.
It just, it leaves me cold.
It pisses me off.
Well, Jared, are you sitting down?
Because I don't want you to be too shocked when I tell you that they grossly mistimed how long it might take for Kabul to fall, believe it or not.
They thought for sure they'd have months and months before the Taliban took over.
It's going to be probably two months tops, maybe 60 days, and then they'll have control of the entire country.
Yeah, and some estimates are actually putting the date around September 11th, the 20th anniversary.
Yeah, and I have to imagine, you know, it's not that long ago when Trump invited the Taliban to Camp David to discuss this pullout, and I'm sure he's going to say, listen, just let us get out, maybe peaceful, give us a few months to make it look good politically, and then do whatever you're going to do.
These guys aren't fucking around.
They are not waiting, and I fear that we're going to have some very scary moments here as the last people are trying to get out.
And in fact, listen, there's some sovereignty here, right?
You're supposed to, you know, there's a country that people live in that can control their destiny.
The problem we have is human rights, right?
I can only pray that the people that would like to live under less oppressive human rights situations have gotten out way before this.
And I sense it's not happened.
No, it hasn't.
And on top of that, you know, as is the case in situations like this.
And I just want to point out to get everybody on the same page.
This thing has been fucked from the very beginning.
From the very beginning.
And we have to talk about the fact that so much of our understanding of 9-11 and the aftermath, the forever wars that resulted from it, so much of what we are taught and what we are told Obscures the fact that the Bush administration dropped the ball, maybe dropped the biggest ball of any modern administration.
They were warned over and over and over again that a 9-11 style attack could possibly happen.
So not only did they fail to make the country safe, not only did they fail in one of their main duties, but in carrying out the vengeful attack for the attack that they should have stopped in the first place.
They were incapable of doing it in any sort of an organized, logical sense.
We don't even have to sit here and argue about whether or not Afghanistan should have been invaded or whether or not there should have been a war, but we can point to the fact that the Bush administration screwed up on every level in all of this, created an untenable situation, and now we're looking at another situation where a ton of people who helped us
During that awful time during a time where we killed innocent people we wasted unbelievable amounts of money and goodwill around the world We've left so many people in the lurch over there who are now in danger and we're suddenly going to look up and we're going to have an Afghanistan that looks a lot like the Afghanistan of September 10th 2001 and that is a horror and it's something that we have to start to wrap our heads around if we're going to understand who we were and who we are and hopefully who we're going to be and
I don't know if you saw the reporting a few weeks ago, but the Joint Chief of Staff was called in front of Congress to discuss how they were going to get people out who would help them with translators and the like.
They had no plan.
And this was very recently.
And all of a sudden they had to scramble and figure it out.
We have heard reports that they were now commandeering planes and trying to get these people out who had risked absolutely everything, including the distant pieces of their families who would be under threat if and when they stay.
So there is some movement there, but yeah, we can't pretend that it was like the Donald Trump administration.
That was completely inept and disorganized and uninterested in doing, you know, competent work.
It happens in bureaucracy anyway and whoever is leading the government, but it's really, really frustrating because, Jared, I've seen this movie before.
We've seen this happen already before.
Now, the interesting thing is Trump is the guy that kind of negotiated the withdrawal of this, right?
Biden is just carrying out the plan.
Are we ready to get into the politics of this because, or do we still need to figure out some more of the details of what's happening in Afghanistan?
Well, I want to say, and again, like you're listening to the Weekender Edition, this is sort of where you pull the curtain back a little bit.
We talk behind the scenes, you know, this is what we're doing this for.
I haven't talked about this before.
But back in 2017, and this was in the aftermath of the Muslim ban, right?
This was after Trump went ahead and pulled out immigration of any type from Muslim countries around the world.
And just to go ahead and put a little reference on there, I was there the night that he proposed it.
I was at a Trump rally the night that he said we have to stop immigration until we can figure out what the hell is going on.
Of course, when that was implemented, it was absolute chaos because it was just something thrown together without any concern whatsoever.
I was working on a story pretty hard in the aftermath of the Muslim immigration ban where I was talking to multiple people who in the Muslim world had worked with American forces as guides, as informants, as translators, as informants, as translators, any number of jobs.
And let me tell you something.
It would make your head spin to know how fast their communications were turned down.
Every attempt that they made to make sure that the United States of America would be there for them, or if push came to shove or shit hit the fan, that they would have a way out, or they would at least have somebody to contact to keep them up to date about what was happening.
They didn't have it at all.
It was radio silence and not just radio silence, but at times you would have people that would tell them you're on your own after years of service in what the United States was trying to do in those countries around the world.
The point of this goes back to the conversation that I had with Danny Besner on the episode on Tuesday.
American hegemony and the project of American empire doesn't give a shit about people.
It doesn't even begin.
The soldiers are disposable.
The people around the world are disposable.
They'll kill innocent people if they're even within the same zip code as somebody that they think is a terrorist.
It is an inhuman project.
And it only gets worse when it's not organized, when it's not directed, when people don't take proper care.
It is deadly at its best, inhuman at its best, but one of the most cruel machines that you could ever imagine when it's handled poorly.
Well, my antenna comes, my Vietnam antenna starts to stand straight up ahead when I'm thinking of, you know, getting out of Afghanistan now because we're going to probably have the same images of the helicopter on the roof and people just streaming out there to get the hell out of there.
The biggest helicopter evacuation ever in history in Vietnam in 1975.
What does it tell you, though, about the fact that we were in Vietnam for basically eight years, 65 to 73, pulled out the majority of the troops, Well, that's if we're not counting the special operators and the CIA.
I mean, because we were there for a long time.
Yeah, but you know, we had the French and us, you know, we were tipping, you know, out of bamboo cups and whatnot, you know, for a while.
So they were there too.
Carrying out systematic oppression of everybody in Vietnam.
I mean, that's where we cut our teeth on that, for sure.
Yeah.
So, but let's just pretend like, you know, in earnest, or whatever the word would be for like when, you know, combat started around, you know, in 65, 64, Gulf of Tonkin incident, we can kind of, let's just use that, right?
So, you know, eight years with the fighting, and it took two years for the North Vietnamese Army to take over Saigon and reunify the country.
We've been in Afghanistan for 20 years, and it's going to take less than two months to completely take over the entire operation.
Like, I don't know, like, what does that tell you?
And I don't know if it's apples to oranges or whatever, but like, it just shows you how precarious Afghanistan is.
And you can just ask the Russians, ask the Soviet Union how they feel about trying to take over Afghanistan.
We've seen this.
Ask the British.
I just want to scream into the void because we know this.
We've seen this story told over and over again.
It's the Trump story too.
Anybody who was alive and an adult during the Nixon administration should know better.
They should have seen Trump.
They should have seen what's going on in Afghanistan.
They should have certainly seen W going into Afghanistan after 2001.
We've seen this in their lifetimes.
This isn't recent history or distant history.
That's what's so frustrating about all this because it's not like we have an absence of evidence to prove that what they're doing was so wrong and so misguided that it's going to lead us into where we are 20 years later and have nothing to show for it and to shudder to think what's going to happen to the regular everyday people Yeah, I want to take what you just said for a quick little walk.
So, first and foremost, the history is there.
The history is easily discernible.
And I want to point out that the entire reason that we carried out the Afghanistan operation, and eventually the Iraqi, Exactly.
The entire reason we did it was because you had a group of people who were either disinterested in the history of these things, or believed that they were special, Nick.
That George W. Bush would give the right speech, or they would be welcomed as liberators, and for whatever reason things would be different.
This goes back to the entire CRT controversy, which is In the right.
And actually some people in the center left even as well.
They'll look at history and they'll say, yes, maybe that's a warning, but I'm different.
We're different.
This is the moment that things are going to be different.
What we're actually talking about with the CRT thing and all of this anti-history bullshit is a bunch of people who they think history doesn't apply to them and they just keep repeating the same mistakes.
That brings me to my second part.
And this is a much, much larger point that Americans have to learn.
Vietnam should have taught us this and now Afghanistan and Iraq should have taught us this.
You cannot control the world.
Everybody who has ever tried this, every empire, every power, every megalomaniac, you can't Do it.
Eventually, you overextend yourself.
And the more that you press, it's like pushing down on Play-Doh, man.
It's just gonna squeeze out the sides.
It's impossible.
And the American Hegemonic Empire Project has been faulty from the very beginning.
We talked about this on the podcast where we went over the intelligence report.
It doesn't work.
And it's always going to lead to something like this.
And you can go in and you can show machine guns to people and roll tanks through the streets.
You can have elections.
You can create coalition governments.
If you leave and the people don't want you there, It's just going to blow up in your face.
It doesn't matter how much money you throw at it, how much time, how much energy, how many lives you take and you give up.
It's going to happen.
And that is the thing that Americans are going to have to learn, one way or another.
Yeah, the rage boiling when you have to mention, you know, going from Afghanistan where they had cleared out the Taliban and they had Osama Bin Laden trapped and ready to take him out too.
And then that let him go, basically.
And then Pakistan lets him, you know, escape into their country.
But that's exactly right.
We've yet to ever get our foreign policy right.
And that's the frustrating thing.
And I think part of it is because, you know, it's interesting how you say CRT and foreign policy kind of connect.
Because, yes, we want to treat ourselves as special as the American experiment, and of course people are going to welcome us, and of course we know better, and it sounds just like what the elections are like.
We can't have these people vote because we know better.
It really is fascinating how you can trace it all back to how you choose to interpret the founding of the country.
Now, JFK outlined it when he was inaugurated that we were going to be like the police of liberty and democracy across the world, and that sounded great.
What you mentioned, though, is right.
In practice, and we have the longest list possible of just debacles in every country.
It's big and small.
Mogadishu, you watch Blackhawk down, and you see, on that level, Benghazi, all the way through to Afghanistan and maybe Iraq.
Cuba, Iran, you name it.
Yeah, I don't think it's ever really gone well, Vietnam.
I mean, where... I know that, you know, in Stripes, when he goes, we're 10 and 1, 1 being the Vietnam.
Like, the other 10, it's like, I don't even know at this point, because World War II was like, you know, it was what?
10 to 3?
Or whatever, it was like 10 on 3.
It was not fair, you know, luckily it wasn't a fair fight.
I don't get it.
I don't even know if we really are successful.
You know what, that's the next CRT is our military might.
Are we really as good as we think we are on that record?
Dude, if you want to be real about that, we quote-unquote won World War I because we stayed on the sidelines and made a ton of money off of it until everybody else had beaten the shit out of each other and then we were ready to zoom in and start talking about freedom and democracy, which they didn't mean.
Wait, but wait, World War I or World War II?
World War I.
And then in World War II, we stayed on the sidelines and were nearly consumed by fascism until Pearl Harbor happened.
And by the way, I was just talking with somebody who's going to write an article about this.
Like, the only reason that America is America right now is because Europe was bombed within an inch of its life.
World War II took place largely on the European continent and destroyed their industry.
It destroyed their ability to make products and to create things.
Guess who didn't have that shit destroyed?
The United States of America.
And so we used our industry and our industrialization and our mobilization and then we took off and suddenly you have like this great economic miracle that's not a miracle because everybody else was bombed to shit.
The whole point is, the idea of American military and this American mission to go around the world and protect people, it's bullshit.
It's not real.
It's about forwarding economic and political interest.
It's about making sure that our corporations are able to raid these countries blind, that we're able to have strategic military interest around the world where we can have bases and control people and, you know, push off special ops to overthrow people and interfere in their elections.
It is a constant thing, and unfortunately, this is a black eye that we can't ignore.
This is everything.
I need some special, like, you know, music to pipe in as I prepare to ask the question I'm going to always ask you in every episode, which is, Jared, why do you hate America?
You know, we have some really good questions, speaking of, from our audience.
And I, man, this Afghanistan thing.
That pisses me off to no end.
20 years, man.
By the way, I just want to call out on Twitter, and I'm remiss to say who because I don't know if I can call it out fast enough, but FuckMiltonFriedman became a slight hashtag a little bit out there from our last episode, and I just want to make sure that was called out because that made me feel terrific because other people, you know, stand in solidarity against that asshole.
Yeah, if you want to keep yourself entertained, understand how things have happened, and basically pop a blood vessel getting pissed off, go check out Milton Friedman and you'll understand why we were yelling, fuck Milton Friedman.
Alright, we're going to go ahead and start with questions.
I'm going to start with Dorothy P.
And Dorothy P. asked, what is Trump's likelihood of trying another putsch this August?
For those who have not kept track, there has been a constant rolling call among the paranoid fringe conspiracy theory right That Donald Trump was going to be reinstalled into office in August.
For those keeping track, by the way, even some of the most crackpot members of this bullshit group are now saying it'll be September.
So, Nick, what do you see as being the possibility of there being violence towards reinstalling Trump this August?
Well, you know, it's certainly possible we're going to have like some sort of, you know, marches or whatnot, that kind of thing.
But it's not, I mean, I don't think anything organized is going to happen.
I don't think Trump can get that to happen.
So you might have some random little blips around the country, but they just keep moving the goalposts.
This is just like the Vaxxers who are like, we're going to find out next week.
You're going to hear how there's 100,000 people who've died from getting the vaccine shot.
And then all of a sudden a week goes by.
Well, it's going to be two weeks from now.
It's the same stuff.
And it's truly amazing how it's convincing.
People want to believe it.
They want to believe it.
And so they do, I suppose.
I don't know.
We know that Trump doesn't believe it, right?
Trump does not believe he's going to be reinstated in August.
He'll say it, but we know he doesn't believe it.
No, he's happy.
We've talked about this.
He's more than happy to be an ex-president.
That's all he's ever wanted.
Hang out at Mar-a-Lago, have people take pictures with him, tell him he got the election stolen from him.
Yeah.
So anyhow, so it's very unlikely.
I doubt we're going to see too much, especially because of COVID, you know, and the cases going up.
We're probably going to start seeing a slowdown of things outside anyway.
Because I think the fear is, if you have a protest in favor of Trump and getting reinstated, and then you have the people who want to, like, counter protest, that's where you get a lot of, and we never actually talked about that, Jared.
I've kind of wanted to, you know, and maybe I don't want to deep dive into it now, but, like, we, or maybe we have.
When you watch the footage of those protests, a lot of the times, it just seems like they're waiting for someone to get into a fight.
And then as soon as somebody starts yelling at each other, they just get surrounded by cameras.
And that is the entirety of the protest itself.
So that's probably what we're going to get.
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