BUCK: We promised you an update on the situation in Afghanistan and also all the efforts in the media and from the Democrats, from Biden himself, to try to convince you that all that stuff you saw — all the people who were rushing the airport in a frenzy, the chaos, those grabbing onto the gears of planes as they took off from Kabul airport, the situation of the security on the ground (or lack thereof), the 13 killed in a suicide bombing, 13 of our own, members of the military.
The Biden administration’s already talking about what a success the Afghan withdrawal was. We still have a thousand people there including green card holders, dozens of U.S. citizens. Yesterday, Chuck Schumer said, “Every American who wanted to get out got out.” That’s just not true. That’s a lie, but Chuck Schumer is no stranger to lies. It’s really what he traffics in. But as promised — or as predicted and promised — they’re already trying to tell you that they’ve done a great job, that this was amazing.
Remember when it was a disaster that we could all see unfolding before our very eyes? There were videos and photos and people were giving interviews that were saying what a complete mess it was, how embarrassing it was for the United States to have a run-for-the-exits, run-for-the-lifeboats moment as we did. And yet I said, “It’s just a matter of time before they tell you it’s a great success,” and as if right on cue, here’s Nancy Pelosi doing just that.
PELOSI: The historic, uh, evacuation of 120,000 people was remarkable, and I commend the administration for that. This is never easy. It’s not always, uh, complete right from the start. Uh, but it was remarkable, even though it got off to a — a — a — hazy start. And, uh, now we go forward.
BUCK: “A hazy start,” she says, Clay. I remember when digital Dunkirk was trending, one thought I had was, “Yes, it was amazing that just as they had the Brits taking boats, fishing boats, pleasure craft to get their British shoulders off the north shores of France that came after an almost mind-boggling, hard-to-fathom destruction of the military might of France and the U.K. at the hands of the Germans, right? (chuckling) The evacuation came because of the disaster! But Pelosi wants you to think this was a great moment for America.
CLAY: Yeah, and unfortunately — let’s say a positive story here — Dunkirk, I think, now in the British mind-set is maybe the moment that Britain points to as one of the greatest, if not the greatest moments of modern British history, because the positive there — and this is a little bit of an aside, but there’s an opportunity to go see some of those boats in England.
When you get a chance to go back to London, they have incredible history museums there. And, Buck, some of these boats… I mean, to even call them boats is unbelievable. Seeing the fact that they got four and five soldiers into these little boats that they were willing to take over in the midst of all of the bombing going on by Germany and everything else, it really is, I think, a seminal moment in western democracy.
BUCK: It was a response to unbelievable military disaster, which was the possible eradication of the entire British army in one fell swoop.
CLAY: Yes. They had an opportunity for D-Day because the British people used their own fleets to get people out, and that’s the point on Afghanistan in general. If you had an orderly withdrawal, there would have been no need to even brag about it in any respect because everybody who wanted to get out of Afghanistan would have been able to get out. And already, Pelosi is trying to spin this in some way as a positive achievement by the Biden administration.
I think you’re right that they’re going to, as time passes, hope that this situation fades and people don’t remember how much of a disaster this really was. And are they gonna be successful in that? My belief is no, because this story ties in to all the other Biden administration failures. And so it will be hard to stand alone when you combine it with covid, the border, murder rates, and sundry other failures, including potentially the budget not being able to pass.
BUCK: One of the areas that was always hardest for the corporate media to try to prop up the Obama administration in was on foreign policy, because there were all these disasters that kept unfolding. You had Syria and Libya and Iraq and ISIS and the situation Afghanistan. Also, noteworthy that the highest casualty rates the U.S. sustained in the war in Afghanistan — by far — occurred while Obama was in office.
But there was much less talk. That was “the good war” so we didn’t have to worry, whereas you remember during the Bush administration everything that happened in Iraq, it was like Bush himself was responsible for every single life lost there. Very different approach to it all. But Biden was supposed to be the steady foreign policy hand of the Obama administration. That was the initial pitch, and then people just hoped that he didn’t say embarrassing things and was the kind of foolish uncle that everyone hides at holidays.
And we saw that play out for eight years. But there were things, there were key decisions made: The pallets of cash given to Iran, the transfer of five senior Taliban members from Guantanamo Bay by the Obama administration in 2014 in exchange for Bowe Bergdahl who walked off base. He just decided he was gonna walk off base. I’ve seen and interviewed members of units that Bowe Bergdahl was either in or working alongside who were highly critical, to say the least, of the Bowe Bergdahl decision.
But, Clay, it’s almost like we’re going through this cycle here of the Obama administration foreign policy failures are being revisited on us in very clear ways. Of those… They called them the Taliban Five at the time, right, back in 2014. Four of those five members are now basically the Taliban cabinet! I mean, they’re the guys that are effectively running the situation in Afghanistan.
They’re not quite at the very head of government and they’re not quite Sirajuddin Haqqani, who is really number two now in the whole situation. But here’s what we got. We have the acting director of intelligence, Abdul Haq Wasiq; the acting minister of borders, Norullah Noori; deputy defense minister, their secretary of defense number two, Mohammad Fazl’ and acting minister of information and culture, Khairullah Khairkhah (not easy to say), and the fifth member of the Taliban Five, Mohammad Nabi Omari, was appointed governor of coast in eastern Afghanistan last month. The Obama administration decisions are coming back to haunt us all over again.
CLAY: Well, I think we’re gonna have to send another harshly worded letter to the Afghan government. When hear that, that calls for really hard typing on the letter that we print off and send to them. We’re gonna be so mad when we’re looking at our computer screens. Did you see, also…?
BUCK: You’re joking, Clay, and a worthwhile joke.
CLAY: I know. They did it.
BUCK: They actually did. The State Department has voiced concern over the lack of female inclusion in the Taliban government.
CLAY: There are 35 top government officials, and they’re all male, right? And so though wrote — again, it feels like it should be satire. How do you respond to terrorists with a really harshly worded letter? But that is what we have done now in response to not having a diverse and inclusive enough government. It’s 35 men, all of whom, (chuckling) by the way, are the same religious faith.
It’s just funny to me, like, every picture that you saw, like, so much of what we do in this democracy on a day-to-day basis is total BS, but maybe the peak of BS is this cosmetic diversity obsession. Every time there’s a photo, it has to be like the United Colors of Benetton back in the day. The ad has to be 12% Asian inclusion. It has to have all that, and then you look at the Taliban and they’ve just got 35 bearded Islamic fundamentalists that represent the government, and we’re gonna write ’em a mean letter? And that’s gonna somehow have some impact on them like they care about any of this?
BUCK: Well, also this is an area where we’re gonna say that, you know, international opinion, and the Taliban’s gonna say, really? Well, I’m just telling you. We know what the response is gonna be when we try to have… First of all, we’re not gonna pressure them in any meaningful way. We all know this. I mean, Blinken is like the dean in the high school that none of kids listen to. He’s like, “Slow down in the hallways,” and people are just throwing spitballs.
CLAY: “Where’s your hall pass? Where’s your hall pass, kids?”
BUCK: Yeah. We see the Taliban right now already understandings the leverage that they have, as they’re not allowing a thousand people, and there’s also reports that the State Department — our State Department — has blocked private flights from getting out or landing in ways that just boggle the mind. But the Taliban, I’m pretty sure they’re not gonna care about our strongly worded letters on their lack of diversity and inclusion.
Beyond that… I mean, they have an actual war criminal as one of their cabinet members. I mean, a true documented war criminal, a guy went in and wiped out whole villages of Hazaras, who are an ethnic Shi’a minority inside of Afghanistan. And, Clay, they’re gonna say, “Well, America does business with Saudi Arabia. America does business with China which operates concentration camps.” They’re gonna go and say this stuff at the U.N. and, you know what? At some level, it’s true, and they’re just gonna divert from the fact that, “Yeah, we’ve got a country that’s run by barbarians that we’ve been at war with for 20 years,” and that’s the reality.
CLAY: And also, this just brings back the ultimate reality, which is sternly worded letters… We are running a country like Twitter, and what I mean by that is words matter on Twitter. Somebody says something somebody else doesn’t like and it’s, “Oh, my God! We gotta cancel that person! Did you see what they said about” whatever topic, right? Doesn’t matter what the topic is.
“They made a joke I don’t like. Let’s stone them! Let’s deride them with righteous and furious anger,” and that works for the Democratic Party in America. They have turned Twitter into an arm of the Democratic Party. It doesn’t work with actual terrorists. And there’s a huge percentage of Americans that don’t know what actual evil is. They think Target not mixing boys’ and girls’ toys together is evil.
Not mixing them together! Target has a whole aisle that’s just girl toys and an aisle that’s just boy toys and the things that Americans are obsessed with on a day-to-day basis — and, meanwhile, Afghanistan is stoning people. Right? And what do you think the impact’s gonna be when our hypersensitive, perpetually offended culture tries to have any impact in Afghanistan? Those two are just gonna walk up and smack us in the face: We’re not even a moral authority.
BUCK: We’re not even really gonna try. I mean, this is the other part of this, too. I think everyone realizes that there will be some people that make a little bit of noise, but the left in this country doesn’t even really believe that there are foreign enemies. The only enemies are domestic. The only enemies are Trump voters that are in opposition to the power that they want here at home. So while they’ll do strongly worded letters about the Taliban? They’ll try to lock up insurrectionists here for “attempting to overthrow of government,” when you got a lot of people who were taking selfies and walking around and whatever.
CLAY: Grandmas.