Welcome to the commentary magazine, Galey podcast.

Today is Friday, August 13th, 2021. I am John Pudhord, the editor of commentary magazine.

Christine Rosen is out today with me as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald,

hi Abe. Hi John. Associate editor, Noah Rothman,

Hi Noah. Hi John. And joining us today, Bloomberg columnist and all around

Bonrivant Eli Lake. Hi Eli. How are you? Thanks for having me to an okay.

So we love having Eli about any subject today, however, is a distressing subject and entirely

predictable subject. Unfortunately, since we predicted it, and I think Eli predicted it,

and anybody with a sense of history and eyes to see and ears to hear could have predicted

the imminent collapse of the government in Afghanistan, well ahead, by the way, of the

August 31st deadline placed. I guess it's not precisely in August 31st,

but it's not exactly in the way that I'm going placed by Joe Biden on the departure of all

US forces, except for a small force that was supposed to protect the embassy or something.

Eli, you had a sting, you have a sting column today in which you pointedly asked the question,

the President of Afghanistan to his democracy promotion conference this year, given the fact

that he is unlikely to be the president of Afghanistan much longer.

Yeah, I wanted to highlight the dissonance between this Biden administration, kind of optimistic

rhetoric, which they have deployed in a part as a kind of political weapon against Trump

in that they're the America's back, leadership is back, they're going to stand for democracy

and against the Tharitarians. And this is a useful way for liberals to talk about Tucker

Carlson going to hungry to meet with Victor Orbán, and it makes everybody feel good. But

if you care about what he calls a global democratic renewal, then this is the decision of Biden

...