Afghanistan Vet on Biden Pullout: "I'd Change Nothing"

Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté

Useful Idiots, LLC

News Commentary, Politics, News

4.6 • 4.5K Ratings

🗓️ 27 August 2021

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Subscribe for full interviews at http://usefulidiots.substack.com After 9/11, the US government jumped into war in Afghanistan, giving shells of reasons for their aggression. But at least they still gave reasons. However, after Bin Laden was killed in 2011, even the illusion of a reason for this war was gone. It’s been time to come home for a while. In an April interview with Matt, Adrian Bonenberger, author and veteran, predicted that Biden would execute the withdrawal from Afghanistan. And like Biden, he didn’t expect the immediate collapse in the region. But still, says Bonenberger, Biden made the right decision. This was a pointless effort wasting time, money, and lives, and after two tours of duty and much reporting in the area, it became clear to him that US presence was doing nothing productive. Ok, so it’s time to leave. But why is it going so poorly? This, he continues, is more of a problem with the State Department than with Biden: “The system is not set up to get people from Afghanistan or Russia or Mexico or China to America. There needs to be some type of capability that we can switch on, some emergency act.” And without that, this extraction was doomed. But Bonenberger, and your Useful Idiots, believe it’s a necessary move. So hear us say it today, because who knows when we’ll say it again: “Good job, Joe.” Plus, we don’t forget Biden’s terrible side in his nomination of Rahm Emanuel, we watch Newsmax’s racist coverage of “Afghani” men, and we side with the woman who’s deep in an affair with a chimp. It’s all this, and more, on this week’s episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Useful Idiots. This is Matt Taibi and I'm...
0:10.4	Now you haven't even been to yourself. I was going to... I'm Katie Halper. Is that my line?
0:13.6	I know. You say... I say this is Matt Taibi and then you say... And this is Katie Halper.
0:18.0	Oh, this is Katie Halper. If you want to be able to help identify, you wouldn't be the first.
0:21.7	I get no. That's true. I can do that too. I'm Halper fluid.
0:25.6	Halper fluid, yeah. I'm on the Taibi spectrum myself. We have a lot of stuff to get to
0:32.7	in this show. When we have a great guest, a very appropriate guest who did two tours as an officer
0:41.8	in Afghanistan, Adrian Bondberger. Also a matchmaker. You could be. Yeah. That's what we got to
0:51.7	start doing on the show. Every person who looks like they have cool friends. Right.
0:56.0	Just serve it up. Yeah. Give us a list before you come back. Yes. Before you even get booked.
1:01.6	Right. Yeah. Exactly. That's the carrying charge. Obviously a lot of stuff about Afghanistan
1:05.7	this week. Yeah. That's still kind of the big thing in the new... The whole thing just has a mess.
1:11.6	I guess we'll get to it. Yeah, we'll get to it. It's such a shit show. But we'll talk about that.
1:17.7	But it's a positive shit show. It's being spread as it's being spun as a totally negative
1:25.1	shit show as opposed to an inevitable shit show. I was actually listening to Democracy Now where
1:30.4	they're like in Afghanistan where the US has evacuated nearly 60,000 people. Right. Which is not,
1:38.4	of course, how... I mean, Monday morning Matt wasn't here. Matt has been on vacation. So welcome
1:43.3	back by the way. And Matt and Matt. That's still a vacation. Oh, he's still a bright. That's why he is that
1:47.2	New England, New England, and Indian background. Right. But we talked about this a lot and how
1:53.4	the framing, it's just the premise is just baked in there is that this is awful and they're not
1:58.3	enough people who have been evacuated. And like, what's the standard? I mean, for all we know,
2:04.3	what you actually do know this. But there is no standard by which people are... Like, I don't know
	...

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