A Turning Point? Afghanistan and the Future of the U.S. Empire
The Socialist Program with Brian Becker
The Socialist Program
4.7 • 587 Ratings
🗓️ 19 August 2021
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Will the chaotic end of the Afghanistan War deal a lasting blow to US imperialism? We cover essential historical & international context with Dr. Gerald Horne, professor at the University of Houston & author of many books, including “The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century.”
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | After 20 years of war, the U.S. acknowledges its defeat in Afghanistan and the Taliban take control of the Afghan state. |
| 0:11.0 | What comes next? |
| 0:13.0 | We need a new system. We need a new society. |
| 0:17.0 | We need to demand that which may have sounded impossible even a few weeks ago, but is not only realizable, but an imperative necessity. Welcome to the real story segment of the Socialist program. I'm your host, Brian Becker. |
| 0:54.0 | Today we'll be talking to |
| 0:55.3 | Dr. Gerald Horn. Dr. Horne holds the Moors Professorship of History and African American Studies |
| 1:01.5 | at the University of Houston. He's the author of many, many books, including blows against |
| 1:07.3 | the empire, U.S. imperialism in crisis. Dr. Horne, welcome back. Thank you for inviting me. |
| 1:14.8 | An amazing, amazing set of developments just in a few weeks. In a way, Dr. Horn, we're all witnessing |
| 1:22.0 | history. We had Joe Biden, you know, speak on July 7th or 8th saying, this won't be like Vietnam at all. |
| 1:31.3 | It certainly won't be people being airlifted off the roof of a U.S. Embassy. |
| 1:37.0 | It turns out he was right. |
| 1:38.7 | It was on the helicopter pad next to the U.S. embassy in Kabul. |
| 1:47.6 | And Anthony Blinken, Secretary of State, said, |
| 1:54.4 | this won't be anything fast. I don't see anything happening between a Friday and a Monday when literally Kabul fell on a Sunday. Anyway, there's the issue of how it was presented by Biden. That's important. And of course, |
| 2:03.7 | Biden is taking a lot of hits for that. But Biden basically has acknowledged something that the |
| 2:09.6 | U.S. presidents who came before him since 2001 have refused to acknowledge, which is that the U.S. |
| 2:16.3 | is defeated in Afghanistan. |
| 2:18.4 | Anyway, let's start there, get your take, and then I want to put this into a broader |
| 2:22.7 | context if we could. |
| 2:25.0 | Well, first of all, the wider question is this. |
| 2:29.9 | Is this a Suez moment for U.S. imperialism? |
... |
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