On Friday’s Mark Levin Show, It’s a mistake to say we should never have gone into Afghanistan. They were harboring Osama Bin Laden and the terrorists that attacked the United States in 2001. Critics say that we should engage in nation-building but that’s exactly what the US did after World War II, it was called the Marshall Plan. What Biden did in Afghanistan is atrocious. The Afghan airbase commander said he showed up and the Americans were gone because they’d left in the middle of the night. Now the Taliban, ISIS-K, Al-Qaeda are running wild in Afghanistan. The moment the U.S abandoned the Bagram airbase and relinquished their air support, every one of those 13 soldiers became a sitting duck. Then, Victor Davis Hanson calls in to explain how contrary agendas at play in Afghanistan are playing out. Hanson predicts that there will be many more ‘Bowe Bergdahl” situations because the Army has shifted its focus from military science to the social science of wokeness. Later, when a society begins to hate itself, hate its founding, and what their country once stood for it rots away at the core of a nation. Forget climate change, the biggest problem facing us is ‘ideological change.’ Afterward, the media and the Biden Administration continually fail to recognize that the Taliban and the Afghan government had to meet conditions in order to earn withdrawal. The conditions set forth by the Trump agreement, for a government of peace were never upheld by the other parties. Therefore, there was no need for a precipitous, reckless withdrawal that killed hundreds, injured more, and gave away billions in military assets. In breaking news, the murder of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Sirhan Sirhan, has earned a shot at parole after two sons of Robert F. Kennedy advocated for Sirhan, ultimately the Governor of California will make the decision. Sirhan maintains that he has no recollection of the RFK assassination, and the Soros-backed prosecutor has declined to participate in the parole hearing.
THIS IS FROM:
NY Post
White House ditched talks with anti-Taliban resistance: report
Right Scoop
Associated Press exposes Biden’s LIES about the deal Trump made with the Taliban
AP
RFK assassin moves closer to freedom with help of 2 Kennedys
NY Post
These are the US service members killed in the Kabul airport attack
The podcast for this show can be streamed or downloaded from the Audio Rewind page.
Image used with permission of Getty Images / Marcus Yam
Rough transcript of Hour 1
Hour 1 Segment 1
Let’s do a little recapping, shall we? I keep hearing people say I never would have gone into Afghanistan. Most of these people look to be around 34, 38, if they’re much older than that, they truly are. Without brain tissue. We were attacked. From Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden had been in Afghanistan. Almost 3000 of our fellow Americans were slaughtered. We talk about 9/11 all the time, we see the horrific video of 9/11 all the time, you see the charities that are built out still dealing with the devastating consequences, tunnel, the towers and so many others. You remember the audio. Of Chick Burlingame. You remember the phone calls? Of Americans on airliners. Let’s roll. Two towers came down, the Pentagon was hit, a plane was crashed into central Pennsylvania. They attacked us, they killed our fellow citizens. Many of the young men and women. In our services today. Joined as a result of that attack. What do you mean we shouldn’t have been in Afghanistan? I don’t even know what that means. Does anybody know what that means? We should have just killed Osama bin Laden and left. Well, I wouldn’t prevent everything. That wouldn’t prevent a lot. Well, the past four presidents screwed up well this past presidents screw it up, but how did the other president screw up exactly what we wanted to do. Democracy, nation building. You know, we have done nation building. Again, history is important. After World War Two, we did nation building. It was called the Marshall Plan. Now, I understand that the barbarians and cockroaches in Afghanistan never had a democracy. I got it. I do get it. But it wasn’t as if it was a bad idea, even initially, to give it a shot. 20/20 hindsight, we look back and say what a disaster that was. Well, it turns out. That it couldn’t happen. But in other parts of the world, it does. But on 2014 and the year 2014. We pulled out our combat troops. So for the last seven years. We have not had effectively combat troops. In Afghanistan or for you, have they have stood down. And you know the story 18 months before yesterday. There were no deaths, no military deaths. We controlled the skies. We are the most advanced air base in all of Asia. Built by the Soviets. And now you hear. That having 2,500 noncombat military personnel. Bagram, the base that I’m talking about, and CIA and other intelligence, there was just a bridge too far. Why was it a bridge too far? The Afghan military was getting slaughtered. They were fighting for their country with our support. 50,000 died in the last seven years. Sixty six, I’ve heard 69,000 total. And as I said last night, they weren’t all shot in the back. You know, apparently they’re special forces are very, very good. But when you have special forces, you need intelligence. And you need some backup. We pulled the intelligence, we pulled the back up, we pulled up everything. I’m reading a report today, the former commander of the Bagram Air Base said. I showed up and the Americans were gone. They left at 1:00 in the morning. I showed up two hours after they left, he says, apparently, and they never said a thing to us. Now, that’s not how you treat an ally. But even the effort to build democracy, which was terribly failed, was an effort to protect us, not to build a new civilization. The thinking was wrong headed, as it may have been. That if people have a vested interest in a civil society, they won’t want to go to war as much. But, of course, as we all know. That’s not the case with many of these barbarians, seventh century cockroaches in Afghanistan. I feel very sorry for the majority of the people in Afghanistan, the majority, the overwhelming majority of the people in Afghanistan don’t want the Taliban. The Taliban is a small percentage of the population of that country. OK, so there was no more nation building going on from 2014 forward, there was no more nation building going on. We had essentially neutralized the Taliban and al-Qaida. Thousands and thousands. And what we now call ISIS-K and al-Qaida. And Taliban. We’re in a prison. Near the airport. Thousands. And one of the first things the Taliban did when we gave them the airport was let them out of prison. This is why I’m not buying this. Well, ISIS is the real enemy. They’re all the enemy, as I’ve been saying. And now even some of the Pentagon reporters are picking up on this excuse me, the Taliban. ISIS came out of prison, thousands of them. If they’re enemies, why would they do that? You got to use common sense to try and figure this stuff out. Not ideology. Remember what I said, Prudence? The moment we gave up that air base. And the moment we decided. At the Kabul airport. Would, in essence, become a defense of Fort. With no external military support, no air support. No forward military ability to go on the offense. Those 13 men were sitting ducks. And we’re still sitting ducks. We’re still sitting ducks. We didn’t have to give up that airport, we didn’t have to turn the Kabul airport into Fort Campbell, into the Alamo. We didn’t have to take out our military first, followed by our intel. We didn’t have to do any of that. And we shouldn’t have. And we’re constantly being told there was a reporter I wish I had caught the name of the reporter who was really, really good today. And this reporter said to Pisarski, Why do you keep saying the choice was either? More massive military resources in Afghanistan or pulling out. He said there’s. There’s dozens of choices in between. What do you have one, can you come up with one? I have one. Should have left well enough alone. How about that one? But then their answer is this It’s all speculation and their answer is no, no, no, the only reason the Taliban didn’t kill any of our military or attack us is because they knew we had a deal that we’d be out by May 1st. That’s not what happened. Our bombers and our jet fighters. Killed the crap out of them. Whenever they would crawl out from under their rocks, we had intel, we had all kinds of information. We would hit them, hit them, hit them. They weren’t behaving. They were already trying to take over various provinces and so forth. Everything I’ve told you the last few weeks, you can see how it is presenting itself. Like the Taliban. We don’t trust them, but we trust them. We don’t trust them, but we’ll give them a list of the American citizens, we’ll give them a list of the of the Afghan supporters of ours, but we don’t trust we know they’re bad guys, you know. The first thing they do is encircle the airport. Did they do that to protect us? No, they didn’t do that to protect us, they did it to prevent people from getting into the airport. And now, because we did what we did because we got out. And didn’t leave the status quo. Because we got out and didn’t leave the status quo of twenty five hundred noncombat soldiers. An air base that was impenetrable. And by the way, that enabled us to keep an eye on the communist Chinese and the fascistic Russians, it’s right on the border. Thanks to the Soviet. Now we have 13 dead Americans, now we’re being told, get ready, it is likely more than 50/50. They’re going to hit us again and we’re in a crouched position. We have Fort Campbell, the Alamo. We’ve got this little speck, this airport, and they’ve surrounded it. And they control everything. And then they tell us, having done this to ourselves, then they say, well, why would you have us do the Taliban control? We got to do with somebody. We have to trust some. You created the entire scenario. You created the entire scenario. And now we have our military spending enormous resources on. Not just evacuation, but settlement. And you’ll be glad to know. The proper meals are being fed to the refugees. The proper meals. We’re building soccer fields and so forth. I don’t hold anything against the refugees. They say they’re being vetted. Pray to God they are. I pray to God they are. But we have a different situation now. Have you noticed the numbers of American citizens keep coming down? It is. 15,000 or more. Wait a minute, wait a minute, 11,000. Wait a minute. 1,500 whoa, wait a minute. Only 500 now want to get out. Only 500 now want to get out. OK, 500 want to get out. How are you going to get him out? We’re going to ask our friends, the Taliban, they’re on the list, please let them out. Please pretty please let them out. Our military is there, they’re sitting ducks. Don’t get me wrong, they’ll fight like hell. That’s the American military. But you keep hearing media personalities say this is enormously difficult situation, it’s almost an impossible situation. Biden and his generals, Biden and his secretary of state, Biden and his secretary of defense Biden and his national security adviser created this situation. We didn’t have this situation two weeks ago, they created this situation. They did. Where our backs are against the wall, we’re struggling to get American citizens, let alone Afghans, who supported us. What we’re trying to figure out how to get the hell out of there without getting shot in the back. That’s why they want to talk about refugees and the proper meals and all the rest of it. When they gave up that air base, they gave up our strategic superiority, that’s what they did when they pulled the military out and then had to bring more military in to Fort Campbell, that’s what it became. They put us in an untenable. Strategic position, absolutely untenable. And when they did all of this, they ensured that we will not get every American citizen out of Afghanistan. It’s not going to happen. It’s not going to happen. Well, we only have two choices now. We had many choices. Like, leave it alone, leave the border alone, leave our voting system alone, but now, now. I’ll be right back.
Hour 1 Segment 2
This general who seems like a nice enough guy, by the way, it seems like put in this position, he’s not really involved in making the combat decisions, but in dealing with the refugees and. You’ve got thousands of people being flown into this country, many of them through Dulles Airport, Northern Virginia. And they used the phrase and that he’s not the only one, we offer them the opportunity to be vaccinated, Mr.. Excuse me. We have the Biden administration. Directing everybody in the military, every federal contractor, you better be vaccinated, OK? We’ve got school districts in this country doing the same thing. We’ve got the Biden administration pressuring private companies to do the same thing. Broadcast companies, soft drink companies and all the you better get a vaccine, but if you’re a refugee, we’re just going to offer you the opportunity to get a vaccine. What is this other than insanity?
Hour 1 Segment 3
Debacle of any show, why a national at eight seven seven three eight one three eight one one Victor Davis Hanson is one of our Weizman. We don’t many left and expert on ancient history and culture and so forth. And, you know, the fall of Rome is actually relatively complicated. Nobody knows exactly what had happened. Historians debate, but it did fall. And so, Victor Davis Hanson, I want to ask you a question. Are we in decline because it sure feels that way to me that we’re in decline, Mark, and the main question is whether it’s a decline that’s permanent or we’re such an adaptive, fluid society with this wonderful constitution that we can react to it and make the necessary adjustments and go on. But this this this challenge is a little bit different than the ones we’ve seen before, because this weaknesses and it appeals to the most tribal instincts of people to identify by superficial appearance. And it’s a narcotic that really destroys societies. We saw that in the Balkans and Rwanda. That’s the ultimate trajectory we’re on if we keep it up. Now, Afghanistan, you know, I watch this and and the media in many respects play along here, to be perfectly honest with you. I watch they give up. You’re also a military expert, manyways historian. You give up the main air base to the enemy. They release thousands and thousands of terrorists, including this ISIS-K that I never heard of before until three days ago. ISIS-K now the Taliban release them. Now we’re supposed to believe that they don’t get along OK. Well they got along long enough to allow them out of that prison. Then we create what is basically the Alamo right for Kabul airport. We put all our troops in one place, we send in more troops. The Taliban encircle it. We have no ability at forward movement except to send some commandos and special forces out in the meantime with American citizens throughout that country and the number of incredibly keeps going down, the number of estimate of how many we have, then then 13 of our men are killed. They’re murdered. And and the answer is, C, this proves my mission is correct, that we need to get out of there as fast as possible. We have over 100,000 people coming into our country at some point, many of them, you know, open arms. I’ve got all that. But I hear them say, Victor, I am going to get the question. Don’t read it. But I’m furious about this. We’re going to give them an opportunity to be vaccinated when they’re telling everyone in the military, you will be vaccinated. What the hell is going on? No, I think it’s a it’s a triumph of our therapeutic culture. I mean, I heard the State Department whine ad nauseum today about the inadequacies of the Karzai airport. And I’m thinking, well, you had the best airport in the Middle East, Bagram. And you’re right, it was fortified. It was huge. We put over three or four hundred million dollars in it. We had prisoners that were could not be tampered with. And we just walked away from it. And then I heard. General Mackenzie yesterday say, well, you know, we don’t want to impugn the Taliban more or less, he said they’re providing security and they have this is what he said. They have the same agenda as we do that we should be out quickly by August 31. So why would they try to be in cahoots with the suicide bombers? I think no, they don’t have the same agenda as we do. Their agenda is that we’re out by August 2004, first in shame, humiliation, death and destruction. Ours is we’re out by apparently the 31st. Without any of that. We have contrary antithetical agendas. He’s the guy in charge and I listened to today and that was all about cultural sensitive food for the refugees. And you made a good point about the vaccination. They gave breakdowns on gender. That was very nice. But we’re only one day away from 13 people being killed and we have not yet heard how it happened, why it happened, what exactly we’re going to do about it. They work so eloquently about this wonderful airlift, and I’m very proud that we’re doing this. But they don’t want to say a word about how we got into this situation so we can learn from these mistakes. And then when they talk about the Taliban and would list, they gave the Taliban a list of names and the Taliban or the new Taliban. Well, as soon as we get out and they have nothing to fear, they will be the regular Taliban. They’re not the old Taliban and they’re always the Taliban. And they’re going to hunt down people all over there. We’re going to have a thousand Bowe Bergdahl. Just take my word for it. And this Therapeutic Administration, I don’t it’s hard to know. Everybody is confused, Mark, because they don’t understand what the catalyst is. Is he cognitively challenged? Is he just so far left a captive or is he trying to outdo Barack Obama himself or what’s going on? But and then these military people can they can lecture us on white rage. I can lectures on Professor Kennedy’s text. They can. The sergeant major yesterday of the army said that this was diversity day and we’ve got to celebrate that same day that people got killed. I mean, why can’t they just do one thing, just one big thing, and that is win wars and protect America. And they seem like they can’t do that. Maybe it’s because they can’t that they do all this other stuff. But it’s really getting scary because when you mention decline the weaponization and the, you know, the ideological taint of the military is one of the chief characteristics of a declining society. Victor, I want you to listen to this. This is this General Mark Milley, who I think is a disaster, the head of the Joint Chiefs. He is your PC general. When we need a George Patton, quite frankly, and I’d like you to listen, this is way back June. Twenty third June. Twenty third cut, five go. Is it at all possible to keep Bagram Air Force Base? Could I make a comment, Secretary? So a couple of quick comments here on Bahram, Bahram is not necessarily tactically, operationally what we’re going to try to do here with with Afghanistan, consolidate on Kabul with in support of their government. This was the plan. What did I say, June 20? This was the plan two months ago, this was the plan two months ago to give up that air base. I mean, listen, I’m not a military guy. You’re not a military guy. We’re pedestrian’s. But, my God, we can figure this out. You don’t give up that air base, do you? No, we’ve heard about it for 20 years, that this was the keystone of Afghanistan, that the Eisenhower administration built it, the Russians took it over and enhanced it. We went in there and really poured the money. And it was defensible. It was impregnable. It was a multi-purpose runway. We had all sorts of other military type. We had Marines. We had special forces base there. We had prisoners kept there. It was the whole protective hub of our, you know, of our presence in Afghanistan. And now he keeps talking about over the horizon, on the horizon. Well, we didn’t need on the horizon. We had it right there and left 2,500, 3,000 people that could defend it as long as that was their contractors were servicing helicopters for the Afghan. You can decide if you wanted to withdraw. You could have done it over a year and a half period. Or you could have. We hadn’t lost anybody when Trump left office for an entire year. So I don’t know what the idea was. It was just to make it so chaotic that then you say, well, there was no alternative. Biden says, I inherited this policy that was terrible. So I had to adhere to it. But I like the policy because I agreed with it. But it was small. It’s just incoherent. And I think it’s because we’re in a period in our history we’re not taking time to ask what’s important. It’s food, it’s fuel, it’s safety, it’s security. And that’s in our Constitution. That’s about it. We don’t have time for, you know, proportional representation, disparate impact, the council culture. That’s therapeutic. I do. When they talk about diversity and culturally sensitive, I think we’re going to look at the dead and see this particular group died and disproportionate to their representation and the demography. This is where it’s all going. And we’re and we don’t understand that we’re post-modern and we’re dealing with premodern people. And we always thought our technology and our sophistication could could trump their ability, you know, their willingness to die and go to heaven and all that. But I don’t know. We’re fulfilling their character, their characters of who we are as post-modern confuse people. And I don’t it’s very hard to the media seem like a deer in the headlights mark for a moment or so. They were. Oh, my God, our guy is doing this. We cover it up. Is dementia where we responsible? Oh, my gosh. The guys in the Congress, I’m worried about the midterm. And then all of a sudden he took a deep breath and they thought, you know, it’s Biden or bus. We’ve got to close ranks and go back to what we were doing originally and prop him up. And that’s where we are now. Again, I want you to listen to President Trump on August 21st, 2017, because here’s what we know about Trump. He doesn’t do this from an ideological standpoint, okay? He’s got principles, but he’s flexible in terms of of of tactics and so forth. That’s why we still have a couple thousand in Iraq. It’s why we have about a thousand in Syria and so forth. And I want you to listen to this, Victor. Cut forgo the consequences of a rapid exit are both predictable and unacceptable. 9/11, the worst terrorist attack in our history, was planned and directed from Afghanistan because that country was ruled by a government that. Gave comfort and shelter to terrorists. A hasty withdrawal would create a vacuum that terrorists, including ISIS and al-Qaida, would instantly fill, just as happened before September 11th. That was August 21, 2017, four years ago, a hat tip to Hannity. Does that sound like somebody who would have done what Biden did, Victor? No. I mean, Trump was basically saying that after 20 years, the military and diplomatic establishments had not made the case and the cost benefit analysis that we should be there forever. OK, and then he said, but wait a minute, if I pull out, most Americans want us to do. I’ve got to do it in a way that preserves deterrence, that preserves the lives and livelihoods of millions of people that we’ve westernise and gives us a security presence if we have any, you know, untoward scenario develop. And he was doing that. And then I think at some point it could have been six months from now, it could have been a year. Somebody would have said, OK, it’s stabilizing and it’ll last or it’s not, and then make a decision whether to stay there or not because there was only about 2,500 people there. No no deaths. And all of the major cost Mark, we left 85 billion dollars in military equipment. That’s 80 percent of all the military equipment we’ve given Israel in its 70 year history. People complain about military aid to Israel. This was about 60 years worth of it. And we just wrote it off. We gave them a billion dollar remodel of the embassy. We gave them a 300 million dollar Air Force base. They’re not just a backward people now. They are the most well-armed terrorist organization in every aspect in the Middle East. Now, just nobody talks about it. I thought, wow, are they going to bomb the weapons? Are you going to have a night raid and take back back room or that? Surely they’re planning that and they didn’t do any of it. Now, I know you have a lot of demands on your time. Do you have another five minutes or no? Yes, I do. OK, I have a couple more questions I want to ask you, so please stick with us. We’ll be right back with Victor Davis Hanson.
Hour 1 Segment 4
Davis Hanson, the location of this air base is crucially important to where is it located? Well, it’s located right outside Kabul, not too far. And it’s but for our purposes, it’s only about a thousand miles to Tehran and and it’s closer to Brisbane and Russia to right in China and Russia, too. So if you look at the geo strategic map, we’ve got three primary challengers, economic, military and cultural, China, Russia and Iran. And we’re right there. And it’s kind of very defensible because it’s a mountainous country. And we also have Pakistan that we call it an ally, Mark. But by traditional metrics, it’s probably not. We got India on the other side. So it’s a way of us. And that’s why there was never any natural resources there. There was not a lot of farmland. But going back to antiquity, whether it was the Silk Road, Right. Roads and Alexander the Great or the British Empire worried about the Punjab, it was always centrally located in that part of the world the minute we went over there and took it. But we said once they started at the Taliban, we’re going to finish it. And then we spent all this money and blood and treasure and we hadn’t lost anybody. As I said, in the year, and it was very inexpensive to keep it propped up and westernise population of about 10 million in the cities of Afghanistan. And it just doesn’t make any sense. And then pulling out the soldiers and leaving the civilian contractors and diplomatic people there, it doesn’t make any sense. We’ve never done anything like this in our history. I just I think we’re more bewildered than even angrier because it’s not it’s so un-American to do these things and to let all these terrorists out of a prison that we spent blood and the lives of American soldiers and Afghan soldiers to capture, to let them out of this prison. By the thousands, I mean, he should be impeached. Know that alone, in my opinion. Well, given the low bar of impeachment, this is sure a lot more dangerous to the United States than so-called phone call about Ukrainian corruption. But we gave them 7,000 machine guns. We gave them 20,000 grenades. We gave them 600,000 automatic weapons. We gave them night vision goggles. We gave them 3,000 RPGs. So we basically gave them all the weapons for terrorist urban warfare. And that’s not counting the thousands of Humvees and all the other stuff. But it was like we just said, we have this country. It’ll be a terrorist mart where you can sell and buy weapons for the next 20 years. And our and our soldiers are going to have to come over here sometime and fight you and are going to look just like the same uniform, same weapon, same everything. And it’s worse than 9/11 before 9/11, because now they’re full of pride and jubilation. They defeated us and they’re so much better armed and they control the whole damn country. They do. They do. And I think at this, I kept thinking all night last night I couldn’t sleep. I thought, I’m going to wake up and they’re going to have a rapid deployment and they’re going to take that airbase at night and then they’re going to make a new perimeter and then they’re going to go up and arm the Northern Alliance. So they’re going to do something like that, because we are we do not fight well in the western way of war to stay fixed and let a bunch of urban people and terrorist attack us with suicide bomb. We are a mobile, heavily dependent on firepower, overwhelming logistics. That’s how we fight. We bomb, we shell and we move fast and at night. And I thought that’s the type of warfare that we need to do, not just sit there and be a fixed target where we beg the Taliban to cooperate and promulgate these lies, that they somehow have some kind of enlightenment. And there are new Taliban. It’s so bizarre. It’s almost unlimited. Well, this is going to shock you. This is breaking The New York Post. White House ditch talks with anti-Taliban resistance movement. The Biden administration has cut off communication with the anti-Taliban resistance group, the National Resistance Front, since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan nearly two weeks ago. Ali Nasrallah, the head of foreign relations for the group, told The Washington Examiner that while he tried to reach out, they haven’t received any response. They’re trying to build a resistance now like the Northern Alliance, and Biden has cut them off his career. I think I think that was I think we know how that happened. We had information that Mr. Burns, the CIA, had flown in there and I think he met with them and they said, look, we’ve got X number of thousands of people and we know where they are. And this is what’s going to happen to you unless you get out at this particular time, you cut off all aid to the northern resistance. You do give us money under the table. So that’s what we’re doing right now. And in that, it’s a lot of people are going to die. A lot of people have died a lot more. This is not the end, this is the beginning of you’re right and I want to thank you, please keep it up, please keep out. Being a messenger out there, your voice is crucial. And God bless you, my friend. We’ll be right back.