Welcome to the commentary magazine Daily Podcast for today, August 24th, 2021.

I am Associate Editor of Commentary Magazine Noah Rothman. John Potahoritz is still out today, as is our senior writer, Christine Rosen, but with us is executive editor, Abringwall, i.e.,

and joining us graciously is the editor, Emeritus of Daily Wire, and the author of the new book, The Authoritarian Moment, how the left weaponized America's institutions against dissent. Ben Shapiro, Ben, welcome to the program again. Thank you for joining us.

I'm doing my best to enunciate and articulate and to be a professional broadcaster here, but it is harder than it looks, as you well know.

Today, ladies and gentlemen, I think it's fair to say, and I have said as much on Commentary Magazine's website, where my newest post is just published, that we are embarking upon the largest hostage crisis in the history of the United States of America.

Last night, we had an admission and acknowledgement, rather, I guess, of reality that was overdue, but welcome from the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, who emerged from a classified briefing,

and told reporters that the notion that we will end America's mission in Afghanistan by the self-set deadline of August 31 is nothing short of fanciful quote.

Given the number of Americans who still need to be evacuated, the number of SIVs, the number of others who are members of the Afghan press, civil society leaders, women leaders, it is hard for me to imagine all of this can be accomplished between now and the end of the month.

Today, the president will be confronted by the prime minister of Great Britain, Boris Johnson, who will urge the president in no uncertain terms to extend the deadline of this evacuation beyond the 31st of the United States is doing its best to now exfiltrate Americans outside this airport.

The director of okayed Special Forces operations to exfiltrate Americans, they are slowing down and even denying the Afghans who are eligible to be evacuated from getting on these plans in order to prioritize Americans.

It is a herculean effort, but it is impossible to do what needs to be done in such a short period, according yet to estimates from the Pentagon yesterday, roughly 3300 of the estimated 10 to 15,000 Americans who are stranded in Afghanistan have been evacuated.

So we have done the easy part, now comes the hard part and there is really no clear way to execute this mission.

The Taliban says it will not abide by an extension of this deadline by the 31st.

So the circumstances seem pretty clear to me, either we engage in again combat operations with Taliban forces in order to expand out our footprint, establish safe zones all over the country and get Americans out or we bribe them into submission.

This is the definition of a hostage crisis, am I wrong?

Well, I think you are right and there are also reports that Joe Biden seems to be reluctant to extend the deadline.

Now, this might conflict with reports of the head of the CIA going over to talk with the Taliban.

One presumes are talking, he is talking to them about extending the deadline.

We know our European allies want us to extend the deadline so he may be fearful of the Taliban as he has been throughout Biden.

He may be too fearful to say that he is actually willing and wants to extend the deadline for fear of reprisal, which is, once again, yes, the definition of a hostage crisis.

Throughout this, you have Jen Psaki bristling at the mention during a press conference of the word stranded.

When asked about Americans who are stranded in Afghanistan, she claimed it is irresponsible to use the word stranded.

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