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Oct. 23, 2023 - Stew Peters Show
58:24
Elected Officials Claim Afghanistan War Didn’t Accomplish Mission Goals…
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Earlier this week, there was an article released about whether or not the United States military accomplished their goals in Afghanistan.
Do the American people feel like we accomplished what we set out to do?
Some of these goals, I'm wondering if we even knew they were the goals of our military.
Jason and I today are going to discuss that, so stick with us.
Don't go away.
We start now.
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Okay, so as I said in the intro, which by the way folks took me more than one try to get out.
I was a little tongue-tied today.
Did we accomplish our goals in Afghanistan?
Did our military do what they set out to do?
I don't know.
We're going to talk about it.
Let's first find our good buddy, Jason.
Hey, there he is.
Whoa, look, he is just a stout fella.
Look at him.
Hey, Jason, how you doing, buddy?
Pretty good.
How about yourself?
Not too bad.
As I was telling the folks out there in viewer land, we had other things to discuss today.
But this article that is titled, let me get up there here, Republicans and Democrats agree that Afghanistan was not worth it.
The war in Afghanistan was not worth it, according to some poll that was put out.
I don't know if it was worth it or not.
I think that, not to jump right in the pool, but let's jump right in.
I think that if we're going to, as a government, put out right now that it wasn't worth it, it's a lot of slap in the face to a lot of families and a lot of soldiers who lost a whole lot over there.
What say you about just the title of the article?
What do you think about that?
I'm starting to truly understand when people say the what is up is down, what's down is up, and what's right is left, left is right.
This is becoming far too foolish for discussion.
An article like this that's written that comes out of A particular section in time in a storyline versus something that starts at the inception and follows the entire storyline is something that makes sense.
They choose continually to just turn a sensible situation into pure and utter nonsense.
Well, agreed.
Agreed.
And I wonder why we're talking about this now.
Isn't there a lot Bigger things happening in our country or in the rest of the world right now that we need to be talking about whether or not it was worth it when it's seemingly, in air quotes, over.
The war's over.
Why are we talking about whether or not it was worth it?
Maybe it's too soon.
I don't know, but I think there's other things to concentrate on, right?
Right.
Well, in a post-mortem of anything that you do in life, it's pretty likely to occur.
I don't care what it is.
So if it's a military mission or a business mission or a life mission, anything that you're doing has to have an established left and right limit and an objective, right?
So when you shared this with me and we started looking at it, I was like, well, why were we in Afghanistan, Richard?
Why was that?
Well, my thought was to find and hold the people responsible for 9-11.
Right?
That's kind of what we were sold.
That was kind of the big thing.
There happened to be, to quote Ilhan Omar, some people did some things.
It was pretty impactful.
Great words, by the way.
I mean, she's a wordsmith.
But it was one of those galvanizing moments, certainly in our nation's history.
In my short time, historically, on planet Earth, planet not plane, where this 100% was the thing that drove America together as a people.
It showed that we were...
We weren't as divided as certainly we are now, but we had unified under this, this horrific attack that had occurred on our homeland, and there was going to be retribution, hell or high water.
So regardless of your feelings of how it happened, if somebody let it happen, all that bullshit aside, it happened.
So the response, you know, was that we are going to go hunt those responsible.
We are going to hunt those responsible for aiding and abetting those people.
And that solely landed on a majority basis in Afghanistan with the Taliban.
Period.
That was it.
And it landed well here with the American people, right?
I think you and I have talked about it.
Stu Peters and I have talked about it for sure together on either it was our show together or his show or my show or whatever.
But that this country arguably has never been more together, has never been more unified than on September 12th.
And the days following.
And now, we're going to have a discussion about...
Well, before we continue, why don't we just...
Why don't we look at what the goals were, right?
Let's take a look.
So here on the screen is...
Oh, hold on.
I moved the page.
Sorry, guys.
Here we go.
So this is the poll.
For everybody watching, and those of you that may be listening but can't see...
This graph is in the article, and it is titled, Many Americans Say the U.S. Did Not Meet Key Goals in Afghanistan.
And so there's a graphic here, and here are the four goals that are outlined in this article in the graph.
Number one, apprehending or killing people in Afghanistan who are responsible for September 11, 2001, the attacks, so 9-11.
Number two, improving the educational and employment opportunities for women and girls in Afghanistan.
Number three, eliminating the threat from Islamic extremists taking shelter in Afghanistan.
And number four, helping develop a functioning Afghan government.
So, according to this article, which was put out by, let me see if it says here, I wanna say that it was, let's see, the Associated Press or something like that, put this out.
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We covered the first one, right?
Holding those accountable for whoever was responsible for 9-11.
And then those who supported them, aided and abetted.
Okay, great.
Well, according to the article and the graph, 46% of Americans that were polled, which was 1,191 United States citizens were polled.
46% of them agreed that we accomplished that goal.
26% said that we were neither successful or unsuccessful.
25% said we were very or very unsuccessful or somewhat unsuccessful.
Okay, whatever.
But number two, improving the educational and employment opportunities for women and girls in Afghanistan.
This is the very first time I ever heard that this was a goal of the war.
Now, let me throw a monkey wrench in here, Jason, because as you know and I know and many other people know, that when you enter a foreign country during a conflict and you're conducting operations, part of un-assing the AO and getting out of there and ending the thing is to try to help and rebuild it and make it just as it was or better than when you found it.
And so, although I agree that opportunities for women and girls in Afghanistan is important, it's important for women and girls all over the world, is this a reason for us to wage war in a foreign country and destroy the place?
Or help the place?
Whatever your view is on what we did there.
Is that a goal?
Did we go into the country of Afghanistan and go, hey, we're going to kill Osama bin Laden, and then we're going to help girls get education and women get jobs and be able to vote?
I wasn't.
I was never told that.
I don't think that was ever put out anywhere.
Well, I think that's that difference in this military versus political warfare.
So, I don't think there's a specific MOS in any branch of service, and I'm fairly certain I could be wrong, but there is no speciality that drives towards building new business in foreign countries.
Certainly not ones that are designed specifically for said businesses being women-owned in foreign countries.
I don't know how that's a military byproduct.
Of the pieces we bring to the table, right?
So it had to be driven from somewhere.
So I think more so when I read this, there were two things on there that make sense.
There's two things that are outliers.
Sure, just like land reclamation, if you're mining, we're going to leave things better than they were.
Nobody does that better than us.
We normally just do it by shoveling money on top of them and watching them fritter it away.
We don't seem to be active participants in that.
So for us to be failures in something we don't really do, I think, is an abject way of looking at things in regards to improving the educational and opportunities for employment for women and girls in Afghanistan.
That was never discussed when I was in basic training.
That wasn't part of our pre-entry brief at the beginning of the war effort.
Kind of the other two fell in line.
Bad guys, no more.
That's the game.
I don't know what these other things are.
And I don't know how we can have a perception of what they were if we never really knew what they were doing to get there.
That's what I don't understand.
Right.
And I agree 1000%.
I think the other one that fits is eliminating the threat of Islamic extremists taking shelter in the country.
I think that goes hand in hand with finding the people responsible, those who helped them, those who acted in accordance with whatever it is they say or did, and making sure that they are held responsible.
So I think two out of the four goals are acceptable and were understood, right, when we started this whole thing.
But a functioning Afghani government, is that really...
Maybe I'm going to catch a lot of hell for this, but is that really our business?
If we're going into a country to find a terrorist or a terror leader like Osama bin Laden and all of his cronies and all of his people and get him the hell out of there, isn't that then mission accomplished?
I mean, again, because we're doing it now, right, in the Ukraine, do we really need to be doing all that?
And is this why the United States of America is criticized in many places in the world for putting our nose where it doesn't belong?
Well, I think that's an astute point.
It's something that needs to be discussed.
I mean, realistically, do we, as United States citizens, want to pay tax dollars to recreate governments in other parts of the globe?
I can't say...
There's no definitive yes or no, obviously.
There's stark examples in our past where it made some sense because a lot of the direction was coming from those political powers that be.
But I think...
I think we've been in that, what do they call it, color guard change operations for some time, if they're clandestine or otherwise.
But again, over time, I think we'll find out that we did maybe more of this than we ever really wanted to know.
And maybe that's just one of those dirty byproducts of going to war someplace, that you think you're going to bring the best possible outcome to their governance.
You don't do it with the military, right?
So if the military is there, they're providing security, they're doing those pieces, regardless of what the stated goals were, I don't understand how the military can be held liable for doing those things.
And quite frankly, when I saw this, another thing was I wanted to track, and I wish I had an analyst again, In a past life, I was able to talk to one on a regular basis.
But let's just look at what dollars were being spent year by year, how much of those were actually for combat ground operations, troops, etc.
And then how many of these dollars got fed into the government or into other agencies that were working for our government to do these things?
These two stated goals, but I guess if you're gonna talk about these two, there's probably about 150,000 funnels that are like this, that we were spending money on, unbeknownst to us.
Yeah, and my question would be, is do we really even wanna start delving into how deep the bunker goes?
Like the sub-goals of these goals, right?
And I don't know that we have enough time, and I don't know if we have enough patience to even dig down that rabbit hole at this point.
That seems like a stew thing to do.
Well, Mr.
Peters, challenge issued.
We'll see if it's accepted.
I'm sure he's got a lot of challenges in front of him from a lot of people right now.
Think about this, right?
When we deployed to Iraq and we were in a briefing, I don't know if you got the same briefing, Jason, but I remember going over mission objectives, like overall mission objectives, not just for the unit or the team, but overall for the military.
And when they put up on the PowerPoint that one of the objectives of our occupying of the country of Iraq was to bring...
It said something about, like, bring viable operating democracy to the country or to the region or to the country or something like that.
We kind of all looked at each other and went, why?
Who gives a shit?
Right?
Like, maybe Iraq is a strategic stronghold.
Right?
In the world, right?
All the oils there.
It's kind of in the middle of everything, you know, Egypt and Europe and India.
You know, you can kind of get everywhere from right there.
So I get that.
So maybe having an ally or a foothold there of some sort, but why do we need to impose our government there?
Why do we need to impose our government in Afghanistan?
Why do we need to impose it anywhere?
Why don't we go do what we say we're going to do, And most importantly, what we tell our troops they're going to do, and then send them home.
Let me ask you this, Jason.
I'm sorry to be jumping around.
Maybe I seem scatterbrained, but I got a lot of questions.
Who was told, hey, I'm going to send you to Baghdad, and you and your people, your job is to bring democracy.
We need a strong democratic government by the time we unoccupy the country.
Whose job would that have been?
One of said consultants, we just said.
Okay.
Well, yes.
Some contractor, probably not even American, because we're not the best financial people, in my opinion.
I think there's a reason why people use Swiss banks or Grand Cayman or whatever.
Maybe I don't know enough about the financial field.
That's more your expertise.
But if you're gonna tell a bunch of infantry Joes, hey guys, what I need you to do tomorrow morning is I need you to load up all your gear, In the deuce and a half or the five ton.
And I need you to jump on these Abrams and we're going to ride into Baghdad.
We're going to get into this big firefight and we're going to overtake the city.
We're going to get all these strategic strongholds in the city.
And then when we're done with all that, 48 hours later, we're going to start building democracy in Baghdad.
Okay.
What do you think would have been the reaction?
They'd be smiling and laughing like I am right now just hearing you say that.
Well, yes.
So why even get Americans involved in this?
Is it possible that these types of things, Jason, are normal for a country like the U.S. occupying another country in war and we just have never talked about it before?
Well, you know, doesn't it go back to how we rebuilt Germany and we assisted the Japanese in rebuilding efforts?
You know, that was the first time I can think, you know, again, I'm no historian.
I don't play one on TV or otherwise, but it was kind of the one that I think about when we did it.
But boy, look what we did in 91.
What was that?
Two to three weeks in, out, mission accomplished, gone.
That's what militaries do.
That's what a war is.
Again, it gets back into this changing vernacular.
Again, so I won't say the word, but a daxine used to have a particular meaning.
Maybe the word war has evolved into something completely different, and war actually means that we're going to not only invade Inflict some carnage.
Go after bad guys.
But at the end of the day, we're going to rewrap it in freedom seeds and democracy.
And that's what war means now.
Well, I don't know that that's the war that Americans sign up for.
Not that we sign up for war at all, but if it needs to happen, I don't know that Americans are cool with you spending my, I don't know, just off the top of my head, maybe last year I paid $20,000 in taxes.
I don't know if I'm cool with the government spending my $20,000 in To make sure women can vote in Afghanistan.
I agree that they should be able to, but I certainly think that there are issues in our own backyard that my $20,000 could go to first to solve.
And your $20,000 and everybody's $20,000 could go to something a whole lot more meaningful that's going to help us a whole lot more.
Because let me ask you this, if the tables were turned, but the people didn't change at all, And Afghanistan was a superpower and we were a third world country.
Would they be bending over backwards to make sure your wife and your daughters and my daughters and his daughters all had the opportunity to work at Dairy Queen or get a job as a nurse or a doctor or drive a car or vote for the dipshit that's in office right now?
Would they care about whether or not the females that are close to us have those opportunities?
Probably not.
I don't know, maybe they would, but I don't think that that is the best use of our resources first.
Certainly not sending our brothers and sisters to their death, if they have to, or in harm's way at all, for those types of goals.
I don't know.
And maybe at the end of the day, man, this is kind of a nitpicky thing for us to be discussing, but it kind of grinds my gears a little bit that these are the things that we're even talking about nowadays.
These are not barometers of success based upon the mission and the objective that was laid out when I think the vast majority of Americans understood and got behind the global war on terrorism.
It was the global war on terrorism, not the global effort for women's integration into business.
It was a war on terrorism.
And I know there's going to be people that will certainly say that we're being a little callous.
And certainly, again, whatever efforts were done, hopefully they were impactful.
From the sounds of it, I think about 14, 16 months ago, anything that we did do was gone.
Yeah.
But the fact that we're sitting here, you know, 22 years later, 21 years later, whatever the case is, and we're looking at it, and those are the things we're nitpicking about versus some of the big picture problems, is again, a completely short-sighted view of What's actually happening today?
What happened?
How were we sold on it?
Why were we unable to meet the objectives?
It's so easy to just say it wasn't done well and ask very pointed questions.
You can see just even in the wording and then how people's responses need to be.
So depending upon who takes this data and looks at it, you could skew either of these as a positive or a negative.
So, again, it is boilerplate, but just the fact that it exists, and these are the four main factors that they chose through the AP, to publish to define success should show us the failure in and of itself.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And what I was going to say, just to end out the segment, because we've run out of time, but I want to get this in.
My personal opinion...
Is that the war was not worth it.
And the war was not worth it because we showed a whole lot of cowardice in the way that we left, the way that we ended it.
And we did nothing but slap the face of all of our dead soldiers by the way that we just left.
We didn't see it through.
We didn't do anything to ensure that the good people of Afghanistan that deserved any help is going to reap the rewards of sticking with it and staying at home and defending their homeland in any way that they did.
Because, according to President Biden, there was a promise made that we would be out by blah blah blah date.
Bullshit.
We're not going to just leave because somebody said, well, we'll be out of there by this date.
If suspense dates were so important to you, Mr.
President, a whole lot of other shit would have been done a long time ago and have done a whole lot better.
God dang, man.
So anyway...
The war was not worth it.
The war was not worth it because women didn't get the right to vote.
That's bullshit.
The war was not worth it because we look like a bunch of assholes.
That's why the war wasn't worth it.
Stick with us.
We'll be right back.
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Hey folks, welcome back here.
Let's jump right back in.
Jason, I was on my soapbox at the end there.
I'm going to give you the floor right now since I ate up a lot of time.
What's your feeling?
How are you feeling about what we've talked about so far?
What is your input?
I know how you feel.
What's your input?
Okay.
Well, number one, the emotional high of a Richard Leonard soapbox symposium like that is something that I always appreciate because I know that we're talking about things that matter.
And so, you know, as we were talking and we were reading through the article, they obviously interviewed a few of the 1,100 plus people that were sampled in this.
And one of the People that they chose to quote spoke these words.
It was unwinnable from the beginning.
Period.
Now, I'm going to omit his name because it's irrelevant and it shouldn't matter.
But if anyone in this country or in the globe or on the globe has a misconception of what the United States military is capable of, In a war effort, that is sad.
Because it is not that wars are unwinnable.
Because we have the most powerful military.
We have the best.
Still to this day, as many times as you and I have spoken the words that, you know, maybe the military is softer than it was.
It was certainly softer than when my father was in, in my perception.
But I can guarantee you right now, we have the single greatest fighting force on the field.
I almost said the F word, on this planet.
The fact that people would think that the wars are unwinnable means that there's a perception or a belief that the military cannot do it.
That is not the case.
The reason that the Marine Corps has lieutenants and other officers, do you know that reason?
It's not to lead troops.
It's to retard them from doing the things that they're capable of.
Period.
The United States military is not weak.
It is not cowardice.
It is not built of wookies, wussies, and pussies.
It is built of real American people.
And the problem is, is that the political parties, the political elites, the political officers end up driving how wars are fought.
Not the fighters.
It's the reason that you and I are so pissed about the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
It's the reason that we don't see honor in the way that certain things are done, because a fight is a fight if you can fight it.
A fight is not a fight if you're handcuffed.
Wow.
Yes.
Yes, absolutely.
So I think that that brings the conversation right to things like rules of engagement, for example.
I agree that the...
I'm trying to think of the best way to put this without getting a million bleeps entered into the show.
The men and women who are boots on ground that are fighting the war are probably the most frustrated.
I would agree with that a thousand percent because I know what that's like.
I know what it's like to be in a situation in a combat zone and be able to know how to stop a threat or how to handle an incident, but understand also that if I do what it takes here, there's a chance that I sit in a cell for the rest of my life.
In Fort Leavenworth or otherwise.
And soldiers are constantly acting upon what essentially some politician tells them they have to do.
And you're right, Jason.
On paper, I would agree with you, but enter a caveat to that that says, on paper...
We are the strongest fighting force in the world.
What makes us maybe not actually the strongest fighting force in the world is exactly what you said, is the politicians that regulate how and when the trigger pullers pull their triggers.
The equipment, the munitions, the tanks, the aircraft, the weaponry, the tactics, the gear, all that stuff is by far elite.
There's a reason why many other countries in this world want American weaponry.
Because it's the best.
And if our military was allowed To use said weaponry to its full potential.
Things like the war in Afghanistan went on for 20 plus years and it certainly was winnable.
And if you ask me, we did win that war because the one goal that we were all sold that was shoved down our throats Was that we were going to find and kill Osama Bin Laden and anybody associated with him.
And for the most part, I think that we did that.
So...
And if this guy or gal or whoever said that it wasn't winnable in the first place is some bleeding heart, thumb-sucking...
Pansy, who thinks that, you know, like, war is bad?
Well, first of all, jump on the bandwagon, right?
Welcome to the party.
War is not good.
War is bad.
But it's necessary sometimes.
And there's men and women that are able and willing to fulfill the obligation of war.
But that war certainly was winnable.
Absolutely.
But what is the win, right?
So if you can't define the objective, if you can't define the parameters for success, the fact that you would go in and then say, were we successful?
Well, you don't even know where the starting point and the end point are.
If the goals were initially that these were the five pillars of this critical mission, the first being the breach to take, to destroy, and then you're going to work your way back through to a rebuild and eventually hand over a greater union that would be the United States of Afghanistan, Whatever, with whatever democracy or democracy in facto that they wanted to put in place, sure, then buy those metrics.
But that wasn't what we were told.
That wasn't how we got involved.
That wasn't why, you know, folks like you and I had this drive to go join the military.
And nobody wants to go to war.
You know who wants to go to war the least, Richard?
People that have.
Yeah.
Correct.
Because it's not just the things that can happen overseas.
It's all of the things that you bring home.
It's the changes.
It's the bullshit.
It's the unforeseen consequence of putting people into that situation.
So certainly not warmongers, not fearful of it, have a healthy respect for it, but I also understand what it can be.
And we have never Yeah.
Yeah, that's kind of a fun game.
Well, but you know what, man?
I mean, it's such a necessary...
I mean, if we look back at the history of the world, right?
Unfortunately...
War is a necessary evil, it seems.
All the greatest civilizations in the world, they had to fight off people who wanted what they had.
The one thing that remains constant in our world is that somebody always wants to take what you have, or they want to bring you down to their level.
This idea of world peace I think is a great idea.
But I honestly think that it is something that this world will never see.
There has been fighting and war and murder and just bad things happening all over this planet since the beginning of time.
And there always will be.
And I think the unfortunate part about the time that we live in right now, Jason, is that there's a whole lot of patsies all over the place that just don't like it, that I'm just not comfortable.
I'm not comfortable with that.
Right.
Well, neither am I. I'm not comfortable with it either.
But that's too effing bad.
So either you are uncomfortable with it and you try to do something about it to make it better for you and your family and your community and your surroundings, or you let it just consume you and then you have dumbass comments like, it wasn't winnable in the first place.
Well, if it wasn't winnable in the first place, and you don't have any confidence that this country can stand up and defend itself from the evils of the world, then go live somewhere else for Christ's sake.
Then get the hell out of here.
I'll come help you pack.
And then when you leave, I'm going to cuff you in the back of the head.
And good riddance to you.
Because it's necessary.
Unfortunately.
Just like it would be great, Jason.
It'd be great if we didn't need police officers, right?
It'd be great if we didn't need the police patrolling our neighborhoods in case somebody wants to break into our homes and take the things that we work hard for.
Or it'd be great if we didn't need police officers because they're super attractive women in the world and people just can't help themselves and they gotta sexually assault people or other men or steal kids or take cars or whatever.
I mean, there's rape, guns, drugs, murder, there's all kinds of stuff.
And somebody needs to defend it.
Right.
And so, you know, and where you're living is the delicate balance that's been created by the creator, right?
There's good and evil.
Mm-hmm.
There's no question about it.
There are certain people that you meet in life knowingly or known that have evil tendencies.
They have bad things that they think, that they actuate on, that they do, right?
And so the one way is to have that strength, to have the police force, to have the military.
But in doing so, that's what gives us peace.
Right.
Because you have an ability to act, right?
So the difference between peaceful and harmless is what, Richard?
I don't know.
Peaceful people have the ability to be violent.
Harmless people will always be harmless.
So living in a world with peaceful people that have the ability to enact and do things is a much safer place than a world full of harmless people against the evildoers of our globe.
That's very wise words, man.
Seriously.
Because that is a mentality that I think is completely lost on many people in our society today.
And that is, it's that type of thinking, the opposite of what you just said, that type of thinking is probably a large part of why we find ourselves in the predicament that we're in and why it's so easy for all these assholes in high places in our government that type of thinking is probably a large part of why we find ourselves in the predicament that we're in and why it's so
Because we're a bunch of, not we, but there is a bunch of harmless people out there that are just going to, all right, well, you know, you want to shove another lie up my tailpipe?
Okay.
There's a lot of room up there.
Go ahead, keep shoving.
Apparently, look at this.
What's that?
Limitless.
Yeah, I mean, I don't get it, man.
I don't understand.
And you're right.
And what the old saying is, you know, be careful of the quiet guy.
Because he's nuts.
He'll do some crazy shit.
Well, good.
To keep the quiet guy close to you.
Because when the shit hits the fan, those are the guys that you want with you.
Right?
I mean, it's the reality of the world that we live in right now.
And it's always going to be though.
The good and evil is this...
It's this harmonic balance that is across every place.
And so good can take many different forms.
Evil takes many different forms.
Evil can take on powerful positions.
We always talk about the elites.
It always seems like there's a puppet master, right?
But did you ever notice that the puppet masters aren't the puppet masters for the people doing good?
Right.
It's kind of odd, right?
There's never been this discussion about, well, you know, there's this.
And I guess the closest thing would maybe be the papacy to the Catholics and then people that are anti-Christian would point to the Pope and the Vatican as that particular mechanism.
But I think that one in other groups is all assumed together in the same piece.
It just doesn't happen.
It always tends one way, and it always tends towards the evil side.
And again, evil cannot be met with harmlessness.
Evil needs to be confronted with peaceful people capable of doing things.
And it doesn't mean physical violence or any of these other pieces, but it means voicing your concerns, voting with your mind, not your heart, It is a courageous act to be peaceful.
It is a cowardice act to continually be harmless.
Yeah, well, we should put that on a t-shirt, front and back.
Or something.
Yeah, t-shirts.
Honestly.
I mean, like, because, man, just like those subtle reminders of those things, I think would go a long way with people who just, like, they're on the fence or they're kind of lost.
Because, you know, like, I'm sitting here right now and I'm thinking to myself...
Like, what is it inherently in people that sets us apart, right?
So, people like you and I and many others in our communities who, if your phone rang right now and It was somebody credible, whoever that would be.
And they're like, hey, Jason, I need you to show up here tomorrow and there's this deal and I just need you and a bunch of vets.
We need you guys to go and take this building.
And it's for a good cause, blah, blah, blah, whatever.
The details don't matter.
But if you believed in the cause and you know it's dangerous, I think you would do it anyway.
Just like signing up for the military at a time of war.
Hey, we're deploying next year.
We're going to Afghanistan.
And we're going to go to blah, blah, blah province.
And we're going to be on this mountain.
And they take a lot of casualties.
But we're going.
Sweet.
Let's go.
When does the plane leave?
Like, what is it in people that are like, yeah, okay, I'll do it, versus others who are like, nah, I'm good, man.
I don't want anything to do with that.
I'm going to stay here.
I'm going to go work at Starbucks and get my little Teletubby backpack and just going to get in my Subaru and go to work and go home and that's it.
Like, what is it that is that inherent, like, I guess it's a sensor call to service, right?
Like, And they just don't care about...
And same with people who decide to be cops or whatever.
Like, you know that there is a chance that when you go to work, it may be the last time you go to work.
And yet you go anyway.
Can't wait to get there.
Right.
And that's the place we all go to with peace officers, right?
Is, you know, the fact that they could be killed in the line of action, their line of duty.
But the thing that we don't give them enough credit for is 90% of their interactions are with the 5% of the toughest population in our country.
Day in and day out.
It's the drug users.
It's the rapist.
It's the...
Substance abuser that's in a domestic situation, they're constantly, constantly seeing the worst side of humanity.
And then when they do get to interact with the regular population, it's typically over a traumatic event.
Like, what part of being a cop is enticing?
That has to be a call.
That is not something, you know, it's not like the military where, you know, there's certain parts of it that are like that, but that's a police officer's typical day to day.
that's crazy so when you're talking about this call to action like the the difference in people you know certainly there's there's a build-up in people's personalities and who they are and they're going to have a likelihood of following a particular path of a protector of a peace officer or military person but certainly a peace officer is a completely different animal than i think the I think there's a nice bleed in between, but cops lend themselves.
I don't know how the hell we ended up on this, but I think it was through the good and evil and perseverance of the good souls on planet Earth.
And I certainly think that it's unique to think that those are the places Where they get the most heat from people.
And I like to think that good people don't do that, but the evil people do or the weak people or the harmless people.
Yeah, well, and there's no secret, right?
Like probably more than majority of the people that cops come into contact with is seemingly the worst day of their lives, right?
So it's a shitty situation.
But, okay, so then let's take police officers out of it.
Just folks who decide to join the military, right?
And we know that people join for many different reasons, right?
Everyone's got their reason, whether it's school money or my grandpa served or whatever.
But nonetheless, there is still that...
You can't escape the idea that...
The military is there to defend a country, and when and if there's a war, or something like that, we're gonna go fight it.
And when you fight a war, people die, things get destroyed, they get blown up, carnage happens, and people's lives are forever changed.
And yet, people like you and me, I'd go tomorrow.
If I believed in it, I'd go tomorrow.
I mean, I'd need more than a few hours to get into shape to go, but I'd go.
And I wouldn't think twice about it.
Right?
Because...
For me, my opinion is I made that commitment now, what, 23, 24 years ago, whatever it was.
And just because I'm old, fat, and broken doesn't mean that I won't live up to that commitment if I have to.
But there's many people who just never really wanted to.
And so I've had this discussion with many people over the years.
And one guy told me once, and it kind of has always stuck with me.
And his response to me was, and this was in the lobby of the VA hospital.
This gentleman was, I think he was the nephew of an old World War II guy who was getting Starbucks and then spilled it on his way back to the table.
So we had to get him another one.
But anyway, his response to the question was, he goes, Richard, you know, if everybody was a hero, who would sit on the curb and cheer for the heroes as they walked by in the parade?
And I was like, well, I guess I don't know.
I said, I've never walked in a parade.
He goes, well, you're kind of getting off in the weeds on me.
But just kind of thinking that, you know, the system, right, the military system needs a support structure.
And so maybe we have people that just don't want to do it because they need the support, I think, is where he was coming.
But I don't know.
It's always been interesting to me that there's just some people who are just not, nope, absolutely not, don't want it, don't need it.
I think it's stupid.
And then there are some that are like, yeah, when can I go?
And they're like chewing on bullets as they go into a recruiter's office.
I don't know.
Some people call it a mental health disorder.
And whatever.
I don't know, man.
But either way, we got like three minutes left.
We set out to have an off-the-cuff discussion about this survey.
We got off in the weeds about cops and recruiters and all kinds of stuff.
So in the last three minutes, Jason, I want to give you the opportunity to tell me, do you believe...
That the war in Afghanistan was worth it or not?
Do you agree with anything that we talked about in the survey, right?
Do you believe that we accomplished women having rights in Afghanistan?
No clue.
The war in general.
I would say, right?
So again, going back 20 plus years, Thinking about what happened, understanding what the plan was, you know, hearing the talking heads talk about, you know, you have to go take that fight to their place of business so they don't continually fight on your turf.
Makes sense.
I think the things that we did in Afghanistan militarily were likely a resounding success.
If we weren't able to win the hearts and minds of the Afghani people, that's unfortunate.
Maybe time will tell, and there'll be another turnover in governance, because they will have maybe had a breath of what we have, that is freedom.
So, in my personal feelings, which I hate feelings, I think it would be successful.
These other down ticket items to me weren't necessarily the things that define success or failure.
There's certain caveats that carry along with the overall mission and if they should have happened or could have happened, that would have been wonderful.
But I don't think that a failure to improve educational and employment opportunities for women and girls in Afghanistan falls on the shoulder of any service member.
So, yes.
It was a success from the standpoint of the initial objective and the mission being accomplished.
Okay.
Do you believe it was worth it?
Yes or no?
Worth it's a rich people's gain.
I don't have that.
I can't say...
I can tell you right now that lives were lost.
We did spend a lot of money.
We had a lot of effort that was put into that country.
I have to feel that in some way, shape, or form, if it's worth it today or worth it tomorrow, it was positive.
Okay, fair enough.
I agree with you that it was a success.
I think, in my opinion, the goal of the war was to find bin Laden, kill him with no mercy.
I think they showed him a little more mercy than he deserved.
Nonetheless, he's dead.
So I believe that that was a success.
Was it worth it?
I believe up until the time we pulled out, it was all worth it.
Because I believe that the ongoing success of our military in the region and the things that were going to come out of it were worth it.
But as it sits now, I don't believe it was worth it.
I believe that everything that we accomplished aside from killing Bin Laden and his cronies was all lost.
Any kind of headway that we made, any kind of accomplishments that we made there was all lost in a matter of a few days or a week or a month or whatever.
Whatever it took to finally get everyone out of there.
If they're still, if everyone's out of there yet, who knows?
So, in that aspect, no, it wasn't worth it.
Anyway, what do you guys think?
That's what I really want to know.
I'd like to make sure that we include you, the audience, on the discussion.
So please leave the comments down below.
Let us know how you feel.
We take notes on it.
We compile it.
You do?
Yeah, so we keep them.
We keep them and keep track of what it is that you guys are saying.
We get a lot of comments that aren't even relevant to the conversation on the show, but that's okay.
Anyway, that's all the time that we have for the week.
Thank you again for being here, Jason.
Thank you for your time.
Take care of each other, and we will see you next week.
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