Strategic Narcissism

things are not going well in Afghanistan. They have not been going well for the last several weeks since the Biden and Harris administration announced that they would be withdrawing all troops from the region after twenty two years of being involved in a civil war and in a conflict where we thought that the United States was building a

democratic infrastructure to help the people of Afghanistan. Well, we were receiving reports that there was going to be considerable attacks happening outside of the capital of Kabul at the airport where there were one mornings that went out not just from the United States but from the UK as well to their citizens in the region to move away from the airports because they were very concerned that the security threats that they were receiving were going to actually

come to fruition. Well, lo and behold sadly they have with reports of multiple military folks being killed because that is where they were stationed, outside of the airports. And then also there were apparently suicide bomber attacks that happened at a nearby hotel as well. Folks, when you see the pictures coming out of Afghanistan, heartbreak doesn't begin to really convey what is transpiring in this region of the world.

And you know, there are several military folks throughout the years that I've had on various shows that I have hosted, and to follow them now on social media to just see how exasperated they are by the fact that they lost friends, right, people lost lives, they lost limbs in order to secure this country. And at the end of the day, the United States really did not have a plan for entry, and they sure as fuck did not

have a solid plan for exit. And you know, I said this earlier in the week that Congresswoman Barbara Lee was the only the singular person member of Congress to vote against going to Afghanistan, because she said, why are we going to a place where we have no clear path out and don't really know what we are going

there for? And I find, you know, when I talk, and I'm not a foreign affairs expert, and I make that very very clear, but I am a person that has enough information and research and talk to enough people to have a clear eyed opinion of the way in which the United States goes around the world and bigfoots in other countries creating these terror vacuums when they decide to withdraw. And that's exactly what is happening in Afghanistan.

We're in conversation with the Taliban for fuck's sake, right, and assuming that we're taking a terrorist organization on their word about what they are going to do once the United States is fully out of the country or as they say that the operation to evacuate people will be done on August thirty first, according to reports from MSNBC,

CNN and many other outlets. Is this the reality is that even if the United States were to keep pace, right, given the suicide bombing attack that just happened that clearly killed people, right, civilians and military alike, clearly has now created a more heightened sense of security in that area, the United States is not going to be able to keep up the pace of evacuations that they were talking about.

So how is this deadline of August thirty first, which is just a couple of days from now, really going to happen. I don't get it, And you know, General McMaster was the National Security Advisor under Trump for one year twenty seventeen to twenty eighteen, and he has had a military career for well over thirty years and is currently teaching at Stanford University. And he said made a

comment that actually had me take real pause. It was one of those moments when you're kind of washing dishes in the kitchen and then you hear a phrase and you put the dish down and you turn over and you're like, did he just say that? And this is what McMaster said, And this is a person. Look, I don't applaud various military folks because I don't understand military

operations as well. You have some people that are hawks, right, that just believed that really aggressive of military action is the only way to navigate in countries, right, And then you have other people that believe in more diplomatic approaches. But this is what General McMaster said. He called the United States' role in Afghanistan over the past twenty two years strategic narcissism. And I nearly dropped the dish that I was washing when I heard that phrase, because it

so clearly articulates America's position in Afghanistan. He talked about it as essentially looking through the lens of America. You cannot go into various regions, especially complicated, layered regions that have been in distress for generations, and go in with the lens of Americanism and impose that on other countries and then think that you're going to create some type of mirrored democracy. And he said, you know that isn't

what was never going to happen. There was never a clear plan as to what we were actually doing there, right, So initially it was to hunt for the people that were behind nine to eleven, but lo and behold with more intel and information, those fucking people came from Saudi Arabia, right and so, but because we have really tight knit relationships with the Saudis, we didn't go where we actually

needed to go. So here's the thing. How do we deal with the fact that the United States is not going to be able to evacuate all of the people that need to be evacuated and the assumption is that they are going to be over a quarter of a million people that are going to be left behind that have worked with and collaborated with the United States over

the last twenty years. What does that say about the United States, What does that say about our operations across varied countries right underdeveloped or developing countries that basically, the US will come in, not provide you with a clear timeline, and then when they decide that they've had enough, they'll

just up and leave. And Europe fucking left right and and in this case left at the airport, left to be murdered and slayed by the Taliban, because we're taking their word for the fact that they're not going to do anything, even though we have reports that have come out and said the Taliban is going door to door, knocking on doors and executing family members of people who

worked with the Americans. So they're not even people in that household that them themselves had worked with Americans, but say their brother, their sister were as an interpreter, and now those people are being hunted. We've already heard reports of women, women in the workforce being told by the Taliban that they need to stay home because apparently they have not trained their men in dealing with what working women.

So that's availed bullshit that we are going back to one of the strictest Sharia law practitioners right in the region, which is the Taliban, where women are stoned to death, right where they're not allowed outside of their homes unless they are under the guardianship of a man. That they are not allowed to work, that they are not allowed

to be educated, that they are not allowed to drive. Now, let me not say this in a way that makes it seem like again, the United States doesn't do fucked up shit to women, because here's the thing is that we always look at these countries, right, and we say how barbaric, how horrible. Meanwhile, there is one abortion clinic in all a fucking Mississippi, right And Roe v. Wade is being challenged in the United States because the Republicans don't believe that women in the United States, in a

democratic society, have the ability to have autonomy over their bodies. Okay, we don't have an equal pay law in the United States, so we know that women are oftentimes making way less money, particularly if you are a woman of color, making way less money then their white male counterparts. So let us not pretend that we are going around the world to tell you how to deal with and how to create equity for women when in this very fucking country we

don't have equity for women. Okay, so just because we don't stone people to death in the streets, right, doesn't mean that we have actual equity in this country. And I think that when we are talking, particularly about women's issues, we need to come from a lens and come from a place of transparency and honesty about where the United States is incredibly lagging behind other industrialized nations. All that to be said, the situation is rapidly deteriorated in Afghanistan.

There are reports heartbreaking of children being trampled of a five year old little girl. This is from an unverified source, but a five year old little girl being caught in the blast this week and dying in the arms of a worker, a person, an Afghan person who was working with the United States military over the past several years. You know. And what is sickening on top of sickening, on top of sickning, is that the Taliban gets to say that they are successful in driving the United States

from Afghanistan, reclaiming power in just a matter of weeks. Right. Trump's negotiations with the Taliban allowed there to be five thousand Afghans who are associated with ISIS to be released. And where did they go back to fucking isis. So I just, you know, we really have to take a deep, serious examination of who America is in the world right now and who we want to be because the amount of money, resources, and lives that have been lost over the past two decades in this part of the world

is unconscionable. And for this current president to say that we are not going to deviate from the plan, that we are not going to make any arrangements to be in this country past the thirty first of August, knowing good god damn well that there are going to be mass executions, right And I hate listening to these news reports that are talking about getting Americans out where and

I'm like, what about the Afghans? What about these people? Right? So, now you have created this crisis of humanitarian proportion that we have not seen, have not witnessed right since Syria. And this is worse because we're dispersing these people all around the world, not really having a plan for what happens to them next. And when this story fades from the news, these people are going to be left with trying to piece together what is left of their lives.

And I can't express that enough that we will never know, and maybe I should never use the word never, certainly not in these fucking abnormal times. But for the most part, as Americans do not understand what it is like to

live under a terrorist regime. We do not understand what it could be like to have to have just a few hours to pack up what you can carry and flee your homeland, never to return again, to be left on an airport, to be left there and just hope that you'll be able to find a way out of this country alive. We don't understand that here in the United States. We look at these images kind of in the same way that we look at and connect to Hollywood movies, except these are real people and these are

real lives. And what we are already seeing is how the right wing is trying to turn these people that are fleeing, that worked alongside us for two decades into terrorists. Right. So I am fearful for these people as they are moved from Afghanistan into other parts of the world and what is going to happen to them there. But I will say this that you know, not only is this just this scenario emblematic of where we go wrong in America on a regular basis in terms of what it

is that we are doing. We create these power vacuums, these terrorist vacuums all around the world, and we do a very shit job in our own media of covering the truth. We don't even cover the truth of what is happening domestically, let alone really engage with what is happening with the American presence in these developing nations right

that have these massive terrorist cells. We don't deal with our own terrorist cells here because if we did, then we wouldn't have had a president that told people to stand back and stand by and then set them up for an insurrection. All I'm saying is this, I think that things in Afghanistan are going to get tremendously worse.

We are going to see images and hear stories that are going to be so damaging to this current administration because they will bear the brunt, because they will be the ones that decided to pull out right and leave these people high and dry to be executed one after the other after the other. I fear for the women and girls that are left in this country and what

will happen to them. They had a little sliver of hope and promise through the last twenty years of being educated, of getting jobs, of adding value to their lives into their country. Now that is all coming to a halt, just like that. Overnight. We create a lot of problems, and yet we present ourselves as the world saviors. And I think that what is coming to light right now is this consciousness, this wake up moment of wait a minute,

We aren't the savior. We aren't the heroes in this story, right And I don't know, honestly when we really truly have been the heroes in any foreign story. But that's how. That's the force feeding that we have gotten, that we have received over so many generations. And I think that right now what is happening in Afghanistan is a wake up call for all of us. As always, at the end of every Friday show, folks, I want to give tremendous gratitude to my super supporters and to the wokast.

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