The Ricochet Podcast - Lost Causes

Episode Date: August 6, 2021

Peter’s out this week, so it’s a Lileks and Long show. But we wouldn’t want to be without a Hoover man. Our guest is Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, whose decades of service in the Middle East make him the perfect man to help us make what little sense we can of the hurried withdrawal from Afghanistan. (And be sure to check out his piece in the Wall Street Journal.) The guys also wonder about... Source

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And the only vaccination is federal legislation. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Democracy simply doesn't work. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson. No, he's out this week, but Rob Long's here. I'm James

Lylex, and our guest this week is H.R. McMaster on Afghanistan and more. So let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you! Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast number 555. You can join us at ricochet.com, be part of the most stimulating conversations and community on the web. That's a promise. Usually we're joined by Peter Robinson, and he's not here.

He's out on assignment, as we used to say, not knowing what that meant. But Rob is here, and Rob, your assignment is to fill up all that space previously filled up by Peter. Can you do it? Are you up to the task? Of course I can. Even with vertigo, even with vertigo. Are you are you still are you still working that vertigo angle? Yeah, I'm still working the angle because I still kind of have it. And and I'm I'm doing this thing where you especially with things like this, which you just basically have to have patience for, right? Which I don't really have. I don't know if you've noticed over many years working together, not the most patient person. So I'm doing the thing

where I'm spending a few minutes every day thinking, okay, well, what is this teaching me? What is this telling me? What is the guiding divine spirit i'm going to be ecumenical here so that everybody can join in what's the lesson and i don't mean there's always a lesson but there's got to be a lesson here and the lesson is patience and also maybe it's okay to see things a little tilty from the way i saw them before so that's kind of your life is a movie film that dutch angles well we hope you get better soon because otherwise you're walking around with your arms out and you want to wrap yourself in arms

akimbo in in bubble well arms akimbo would be this right yeah arms akimbo arms athwart your uh your yeah well we hope you get better soon because new york is full of sharp objects and edges um speaking of which i know you're are you're not in New Orleans now. You are in New York? I am in New York. Thank God. Just in time for this. I always love when something happens in a distant corner of Minnesota and people say, all right, you're in Minnesota.

Tell us what people are thinking. Right. And I really don't know. How can we? There's nobody in the office. I talked to my wife and my dog and that's it. But you're in new york are they abuzz about uh the cuomo trial the rest of us are watching this and saying

we think he's probably going to outlive it who knows doesn't really matter i don't know you know schauden freud because people didn't like him because of the way he was right elevated to godhood during the government during the covet thing but tell us what what's the word on the street well i mean i think the word of the street is less to me less interesting than the word that's the official word from the democratic party establishment um which is almost uniformly against him that's what's so strange to me is that i don't think we've ever had this i can't think of a time when we've had this, where you have the establishment saying he's got to go,

but the popular media, I mean, the New York Times yesterday said he had to go, but the popular media, not sure. Like, if you're Andrew Cuomo, I don't think you're, I think you're insane, but I don't think you're insane for thinking that you can brazen this out because, you know, there's this lick spittle press up until really 48 hours ago that slobbered all over you. I mean, objectively, if you and I'm not trying to be a I'm trying not to be a DeSantis fanboy, I'm sure he will disappoint me. But if you stack up to two governors of major huge states in terms of their leadership in the past two years facing a crisis, including last week, including today. DeSantis almost objectively comes out ahead. His decisions were smarter and fairer

and more just. And he's been given the worst press you can imagine. Cuomo has been given the best press you can imagine. So if you're Cuomo, I don't know what I don't know what could convince you to leave. The president of the what could convince you to leave. The president of the United States said you should resign and he didn't resign. So there's nothing else there. All the Democrats think he should resign, most of them because they hate him and most of them because they want his job and most of them because they don't want to run for president. I mean, all sorts of things. Right. But but the press still seems to think he's a fallen hero. And as long as the people use the term hero, I think he's going fallen hero and as long as the people are using the term hero

I think he's going to grasp on that so I can't I really this is a very long winded answer I don't know what he's going to do I can easily see how he in his bunker with his brother slavishly shilling for him

I can see how he thinks he can brazen this out and I don't know maybe he know, maybe he can. Unless he's impeached. Unless he's impeached, which I think is highly likely. I mean, that is the other thing. Yeah. I mean, state troopers could remove him from the office because he's been impeached and that could happen. And that is also part of the lesson of American politics,

is you actually do need to make friends. Because you don't know when you're going to need those friends, and you do need to make them. You can't just be a jerk. You have to kind of make friends. And he is, by all accounts, a gigantic jerk.

Apparently, he mistook sycophants for friends. I mean, if you haven't lived, you said everybody in the press who's been just absolutely slobbering over his masterful handling of COVID all these, lo these many months, he regarded them as friends. Frankly, it's one of those stories where when you watch the mighty tumble for reasons that the left themselves have held up as the absolute worst possible thing you can do, one of them, it's – Schadenfreude comes to mind, but there's got to be more intense German word for it. Right. Anyway, it's of limited interest to me. To be absolutely honest, it is. There are things on the table that are far more important. There was.

Yeah. Wait, wait. Can I just like. You can. You're sorry. Isn't it sort of interesting though? I mean, I think two things are interesting about it. One is the incredible brazen relationship between him and his brother who has a very very popular for cnn hour on on

on cnn right um and the kind of a shrugging like oh well you know that's okay and then the second thing is the level of retribution and the things that he did to uh to intimidate and silence and get back at and undermine and discredit his accusers. And the people who helped him do that and who they were, the one guy from the Human Rights Foundation, but people who did this and the press that reported it, I mean, I'm naive. I just think this is sort of shocking, not that they did it, but that they thought they were going to get away with it. I mean, I'm naive. I just think this is sort of shocking, not that they did it, but that they thought they were going to get away with it. And if I'm Brett Kavanaugh, I'm reading this and thinking, what? Where were all of these people and all of these principals when he was getting attacked for a thing that didn't happen at the Yale old campus in 1983, like at no point.

Like that. So I know I'm naive. I should, I should accept, I should expect it, but I don't. The Kavanaugh story didn't happen and it's long ago and it doesn't matter. I mean, we forget everything that happened until about two or three days ago and focus on what's happening now and figure a way to get around it. The story of me this week has been all of the stuff that people are finding buried in this infrastructure bill, an extraordinary amount of things. Like for example, there's a per mile tax program floated. They're going to come together just to see how it works.

And I love the idea of the government setting up a commission to see exactly how this tax works, not ending up implementing the tax. At some point, they look at the numbers and say, well, we're getting billions of dollars from this. But we can see where this would be a slightly onerous imposition on people in rural areas. We simply can't do that. So, no, we're not going to give up. We'll put that idea away. Of course, the idea that they want a mile tax is because they're not going to get the gas tax with the electric vehicles. So they have to come up with some other way to have the revenue generated.

And if by some strange coincidence that this all works out, that there's a device in your car that in addition to the device in your phone, uh, tells them where you are all the time. That's great. That's absolutely fantastic. Another brick building the Panopticon. Then there's a little note in there in the paper the other day, by executive order, Joe Biden wants all cars sold in the country or 50% of the cars sold in the country to be electric by some ridiculously early number, 50%. It's an executive order.

I'm looking at this and I'm trying to figure out whether or not it actually has the force ordered yeah whether whether or not we have the state commanding industries what to do because i've been told that one of the hallmarks of the right is this is is is the the unstoppable fascist urge right right if if tucker carlson waves at orban and in hungary it means that the right is desperate to start the frog marching in the shiny uniforms in the rallies. But it would seem to me that one of the hallmarks of fascism is industrial policy exactly like this. And nobody's going to really particularly care because electric vehicles are good. If you say, how are we going to get the grid to handle it? We'll get to that.

We'll get the solar panel. If you say the fact that we have 70% of the batteries in this country that go for these things come from China, which makes them in absolutely filthy conditions, they say, well, Biden says that he wants to bolster the American capacity to produce these things. And those will be good jobs. Why? The jobs that people are losing in the oil fields, they'll be able to go to work in the battery factory. I mean, it's a dream. It's a nice scheme. And if I was playing Civilization 5 on my computer and arranging things, I might do it that way. But the idea that the government is going to control the price of cars and the type of cars that they are to this level ought to make people stop and say, wait a minute, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. But we don't. We just pass the

bill and move on and say, roads and bridges shovel ready no longer are we going to have our our bridges thundering down into the river as they've been doing on a daily basis for the last 10 15 years how you doing james you okay i'm fine i'm fine i'm fine but i'm but i guess okay here's my here's my here's my I'm sure to you infuriating response to that. One is that these things never work anyway. And two, it seems to me like it. Look, if you want if you want Americans to buy more electric cars, the smartest thing to do is to do nothing because they're going to. There's a big market electric cars. There's a guy, one of the richest guys in the world, started a company that didn't exist and makes electric cars. And in fact, it's like a worldwide brand name now. And so the idea that you need anybody's help or a thumb on the scale,

but take your thumb off the scale, take 20 steps back from the scale. I say the federal government and wait and watch, wait and watch and see what happens when you don't sign the Kyoto Protocols or you don't sign the Paris Accords. And guess what happens is you end up magically reaching some kind of number that the anti-whatever emissions people want. I mean, the idea that we're going to make batteries in this country is how we can do that. We have to strip mine Brazil and Africa to get those rare earth minerals that we can use to make the batteries. That's what's going to happen. The car batteries, electric car batteries are by no wise environmentally sound. They are chock full of chemicals and things that need to be dug deep for in really, really sad places and get ready for sad pictures of sad miners in sad countries.

While you, we are driving around in electric cars, uh, feeling like, well, you know, we're doing a good, you know,

good for us. Well, we won't, but we won't. I mean, meanwhile, I just, I don't think any of that thing's going to work anyway.

So I'm, I'm fairly sanguine, but I may, maybe I'm too sanguine, but as you know, I'm always sanguine and you, it always bugs, bugs you.

I'm saying I'm, well, I'm sanguine too in a lot of ways. But I agree with you completely when it comes to letting the market do it. If people want the electric cars, let them have the electric cars. If people want to put up with a grid that can't handle it and find themselves stranded somewhere, then fine. Let the market and the regulated utilities figure it out. It's the imposition in the state order.

I mean, no, Biden's 50% thing may not come to pass, but there are new fuel standard regulations in there that will affect cars. Trump said, no, not going to do that. But now we're going to do it, apparently. And that's going to affect what cars look like, how powerful they are, how much metal they have, how crash resistant they are. And again, this level of micromanagement in the transportation bill, that thick tells you that, yes, but. It is. Is this a segue? I mean, because what's interesting about it is that the level of.

Of denial or acceptance that people have, that certain people have, I shouldn't say people, not you, not me, but certain people have for the risks and the death rates that will go up with lighter cars. Because they're abstract. They're absolutely abstract. But those death rates will be real. There'll be real people who really will, will die in car crashes that weren't going to die before. And we say, OK, well, that's, you know, it's part of the balance of the way we as a society are making that choice.

Now, you and I may disagree with that choice, but we're making it. That level of risk, people are, for some reason, some people are unwilling to accept when it comes to COVID. So this 0.000 something percent of people who are vaccinated who get COVID and die from COVID is so tiny. And yet we're talking about keeping the schools closed again. We're talking about masking again. We're talking about all this crazy stuff, this neurotic behavior designed to somehow approach zero COVID, which is, as Jay Bhattacharya said, our old friend Jay in the Wall Street Journal this week, is lunacy.

It is. And I guess what I would just say is there is something of a piece with all of this kind of that uh obsesses over small numbers and then kind of doesn't obsess over other numbers because it appeals to our vanity and it's all it is is vanity it doesn't has nothing to do with like it really doesn't have anything to do with the environment but it's a hierarchy it's a hierarchy of virtues people are perfectly willing to accept the unnamed and unknown, unseen deaths of people from lighter cars because there's a higher virtue, which is the environment. That's it. And when it comes to having all of this panic and neurotic obsession over COVID,

it's because the higher virtue is themselves and also their ability to project onto other people the view that they are a good person who does not want grandma to die uh and therefore they're wearing a mask while they're vaccinated and they're outside which you see from it's insane um but i i would say look if i if i as you know i do not lead a conservative movement in fact for many conservatives i'm i've been ejected from the movement because of my views on a certain president, which we should go nameless. But if I were I in charge of conservative media for a day, I would say to talk about nothing. I would say every single conservative mouthpiece,

elected, non-elected media, non-media, talk about nothing for the next seven days other than schools and teachers unions and how they have failed and why we need school choice. Because it feels to me like there's an opening here. Oh, absolutely. Speaking of openings. A week on school, a week on police and crime, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, well, Rob, you know, I would like to put you in charge of that movement. I would like to have you write up a manifesto. And you're a professional writer, so you probably say, hey, nobody can edit my work. My work's perfect. Well, listen, even professional writers sometimes need a little assistance. And that is where WordTune comes in. Yes, WordTune. What is it? Well, you know, sometimes when you're writing

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tone. It lets you choose different ways of phrasing things so that the work flows naturally. It's important too, because your writing affects how people view you and it can shape your future prospects, right? That's why it's important to write as well as possible. You want to write good. It's ideal for professional writers looking for an edge, frankly. Managers who want to make their point perfectly or anyone who's writing could just use an occasional tune-up. Tune-up. WordTune works anywhere you're working online at Google Docs and Slack and Outlook, Web, WhatsApp, everything, frankly. Our listeners can try WordTune for free at wordtune.com slash ricochet. If you're away

from your computer, go to wordtune.com slash ricochet on your mobile, enter your email, and we'll send you a link to make it easy to get started. It's really interesting to see how your writing can be improved with WordTune. Get help writing your emails, your reports, your presentations, your resumes, your blogs, and your Ricochet posts if you like. Today, go to w-o-r-d-t-u-n-e.com slash ricochet. That's w-o-r-d-word- T-U-N-E, tune.com. And we thank WordJune for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. And now we welcome to the podcast H.R. McMaster. Retired Lieutenant General following 34 years of service, Herbert Raymond McMaster played key roles in the Gulf War, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. He's been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a consulting senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, served as the 26th National Security

Advisor, and is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Before enlisting, he graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 84, later earned a Ph.D. in American history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where his Ph.D. thesis formed the basis for the book Dereliction of Duty. More recently, he's published a memoir, Battlegrounds, the fight to defend the free world. We have him with us today to speak on the forthcoming withdrawal from Afghanistan and what it means for, quote, all civilized peoples that he put in. Before we get into that, thoughts laid out in your Wall Street Journal piece on how to mitigate the disasters, consequences of the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

What do you think of the decision itself to go? And thank you for joining us today. No, hey, James, it's great to be with you. I love your podcast. And I just think I wish all Americans would listen to it and be better informed. And I think that could help us be a better country as a result. And I love the discussion on education as well. I mean, I write in Battlegrounds that this is the most important thing we can do, is to help educate the next generation and also continue to educate ourselves, right? Because learning has to be a lifelong endeavor and you guys contribute to that. It's great to be with you, you know. So I really, I think it's a disaster, you know, it's a disaster because what it will do is it will lead to the

strengthening of jihadist terrorists who already want to commit mass murder as their principle tactic in a war against all civilized peoples. And we know this is not a theoretical case, right? We know from the most devastating attack in history, 9-11, that when these terrorists gain control of safe havens and support bases, and they have the time and the space and the resources to plan and prepare and train for, and then execute mass murder attacks to become orders of magnitude more dangerous. We saw this with ISIS as well. Remember in Iraq when Vice President Biden at the time called President Obama in December of 2011, he said, thank you for allowing me to end this goddamn war, right? Well, hey, wars don't end when one party disengages. And what we saw in 2014 was the rise of al-Qaeda in Iraq 2.0, ISIS, which became the most devastating terrorist organization in history, in control of territory the size of Britain, and conducting or planning inspiring attacks across the world.

And so this is the situation we're facing in Afghanistan. And what's so sad about it, I think, is that it's self-inflicted, right? I mean, James, we'd already won the war. We had 8,500 troops there. Okay, now if you're Ecuador, that might be a stretch, right? But we're the United States, damn it. And those forces were enabling Afghans to bear the brunt of that fight, to maintain the freedoms that they've enjoyed since 2001 after the end of the Taliban regime, but then also to really

to fight on the frontier, a modern day frontier between civilization and barbarism. A lot of people would say if we were still in Germany 20 years after the conclusion of the Second World War and trying to mop up Nazi you know, Nazi revanchists hiding out in caves that, you know, we might consider leaving and just letting the country go. But this is different. What, however, is the difference between Afghanistan and Iraq when it comes to being able to fight, hold, seize territory, find the guys and extirpate them? I mean, there's a question simply that one is full of nooks and crannies and mountainous redoubts, and the other one's fairly flat, and you can see the dust plume of the guys moving across. Why were we able to do it in Iraq? We couldn't do it in Afghanistan.

Well, we did do it in Afghanistan. And I think that really what is sad about both wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, is we often debate, should we have done it? Mainly talking about the invasion of Iraq in 2003. I think what we ought to talk about is who the hell thought it would be easy and why do they think it would be easy? And really what occurred, I think, in both wars is that a short-term approach to what was essentially a long-term complicated problem and a simplistic approach to these problem sets actually lengthened those wars and made them more costly. And paradoxically, sadly, we're learning the wrong lesson from these conflicts that, hey,

it's just intractable, right? And we should never have done to begin with. We should disengage as an unmitigated good. But hey, when you disengage from war, it's not as if these jihadist terrorists are looking around saying, oh, hey, the Americans are gone. Let's just stop our jihad, right? Our narrative is one of ending the endless wars, as we call them, right? But this is an endless jihad, and our enemies have a say in the future course of events. And that's why it's important to remain engaged with them. I'll tell you, Jeff'll tell you, we, we, you know, we, we really had, had, had the, the enemy in, in a difficult situation in, in Afghanistan. It was obviously

still contested, right? Afghanistan had not become Denmark, right? But, but Afghanistan doesn't need to be Denmark, right? It just needs to be Afghanistan. And it was going to be a violent, you know, you know, you know, screwed up place at a certain level, but it would be a place that was not in at risk, but very small number of casualties compared to the cost that the Afghans were bearing to really fight the fight against jihadist terrorists. And about $22 billion a year, and that number was going down. So that was sustainable, and it was preventing what we're seeing happening right now, which is a humanitarian catastrophe that was predictable. And obviously, what the jihadist terrorists will characterize as a victory. They're going to say, hey, we defeated the world's greatest superpower, right? Come join our cause. And I think we're going to see, as we did with ISIS in Iraq and

Syria, a much more potent jihadist terrorist threat, and we're going to have to go back. We're going to have to go back at a much higher price as we had to do in Iraq as well. So, so, John, I'm going to ask you a question because I before we get to what's going to happen in the next month or two, which I think we I think we all know what's going to happen the next month or two. It's happening now. There's a there will be an article on the front page of every newspaper every morning about a new area that has been Talibanized, right? Like just now, we just got an alert that

Afghan provincial capital Zaranj just fell to the Taliban, I guess the Taliban we're calling. So who got it wrong? Did, I mean, Biden get it wrong? Did we get it wrong? Did the American people get it wrong? Because the American people kind of think, let's get out of there. And they kind of feel like we failed so that we should get out of there. Right. And whenever you ask people, they say, well, how long were we supposed to be there?

What were the standards of success? We know what the standards of World War II. Hitler dies in a bunker and we get France back basically, right? How do we know? And I think what you're describing in Afghanistan is a kind of a winning that no American knew to define as winning. Yeah. No, I think you're right about this. So I think it's your question of who failed. I think we all failed. I think our leaders failed across really four administrations now. So we often hear the mantra of a 20-year war or two decades of war, but it's not a 20-year war fought 20 times over with strategies and policies that were based on really what we would like the war to be and the enemy we would like to fight on a delusional view of Afghanistan rather than reality on the ground. And I think the American people would have sustained the effort. I mean, I think we talked ourselves into defeat there, right? And I think to answer your question, okay, what does winning look like? Winning looks like a sustainable political outcome in Afghanistan that addresses, I mean, the cause of the war to begin with, which is to deny jihadist terrorists safe haven and support bases that they can use to plan, prepare, and execute attacks against us, our allies and our interests abroad. And by that standard, Rob,

we'd won already. And it wasn't pretty, again, Afghanistan wasn't Denmark, but it didn't need to be Denmark. So we set an unrealistic standard and unrealistic expectations. I mean, the analogy that I sometimes use is the analogy of Korea after the Korean War, right? So think about South Korea in 1953. I mean, it was totally screwed up, right? I mean, this is a people who had been ravaged, right? A country ravaged by decades of war and brutal occupation. No natural resources in the country, an illiterate population, a hostile neighbor, and a corrupt government. And it wasn't until the 1970s that South Korea began to reforms in the economy, which unleashed its potential. And it wasn't until the 80s that it became really a democratic representative government.

And so it takes time. These problems take time. Part of the reason that Korea, that worked, I mean, I don't mean worked physically, but politically, is that it was part of a larger struggle that America was open and honest about the Cold War, the fight against communist dictatorships across the globe. And, you know, if you had stopped an ordinary, I mean, I guess, a stop in the ordinary American in the street in the 60s or the 70s and said, how's this going to end? They would say, well, I don't know if it's ever going to end. I mean, really, there was only one prominent American in 1980 who thought that Cold War was going to end, and that was Ronald Reagan. Everybody else thought that was kind of like, really?

We're going to be doing this forever. And yet, people I talked to about Afghanistan and Iraq, they're like, well, how long are we supposed to be there? And you're saying 20 years is, that's phase one. forever. And yet I, people I talked to about Afghanistan and Iraq, they're like, well, how long are we supposed to be there? And you're saying 20 years is that's phase one. Well, yeah, it is phase one, but not at the level. I think Americans, I think believed that we're still at the level of commitment that we had between say 2009 and 2013, 14, you know,

a hundred thousand troops, right? That that's a lot. 8,500 troops who are enabling others to do the fighting, that is a sustainable commitment for the United States. And I think you're right about this. Americans don't appreciate what is at stake. That's why this podcast is so damn important because you actually talk substance here, right? You're not performative. You're formative. You talk about what's going on in the world, why it's important to Americans. And across, I would say, the last three administrations, that only rarely did the president make the case

to the American people why, what was at stake, right? And then what was the strategy that would deliver a favorable outcome at an acceptable cost? And you know what? I don't blame the American people. Your question about who screwed this up, What was the strategy that would deliver a favorable outcome at an acceptable cost? And you know what? I don't blame the American people. Your question about who screwed this up, not the American people. I think our political leadership screwed this up.

And how many Americans, Rob, could even name the various Taliban factions? Who could even tell you? Let alone spell them. Who is Haibatullah Akhenzadeh? They don't know who that is, right? I mean, this is one of the most odious people on earth, right? And these are people who want to impose this form of Sharia that is brutal. These are people who just recently bombed a girl's school and then set up secondary bombs outside to kill more young girls as they fled from the

initial bomb. These are people who conducted an attack on a maternity hospital and gunned down babies and expectant mothers, right? I mean, these are the enemies of all humanity. And so we don't even talk about our enemy. And you alluded to this in your question, which I think is absolutely right. We are narcissistic in our view of the world. And I read about this in Battlegrounds and how we define the world only in relation to us. And we assume that what we decide to do or to not do is decisive toward achieving a favorable outcome. And the problem with that is, hey, others have authorship over the future, including our enemies and our rivals and our adversaries. And that's why we have to stay engaged. And that's the lesson of 9-11. And I'll tell you,

I think that's the lesson of the pandemic, right? Problems that develop abroad can only be dealt with at an exorbitant cost once they reach our shores, right? So I'm not saying that we need a huge, massive military commitment across the greater Middle East and South Asia, but we need a sustained and sustainable commitment there. Right. But unfortunately, for the last 20 years, we've had a general disengagement from the idea that the United States can unilaterally, unipolar power, impose, bring freedom to other places. We've just sort of decided to let them all to their devices. And you're absolutely right about what's going to happen to Afghanistan after the Taliban takes over. But I think a lot of

people here in this country say, look, we were there for 20 years. We attempted to set up some institutions and they were so fragile that they crumbled like a stale cookie the minute that we left. That's their culture. That's their place. Leave them to it. That's what they believe. If the minute the United States leaves, all of a sudden the Taliban springs up like somebody sprinkled sea monkeys and poured water on them, then that was going to happen eventually, inevitably anyway. The real problem is Pakistan, which sits there and encourages them. The real problem that we should be talking about is Iraq et cetera, et cetera. It's as if we have to do something, let's do something to a place that matters. Americans believe that Afghanistan

doesn't matter to us anymore. It just doesn't. Yeah. But sadly, the opposite is the case, right? What happens in Afghanistan doesn't adhere to Las Vegas rules, right? It doesn't stay in Afghanistan. And we know that from the 9-11 attacks, right? It doesn't stay in Afghanistan. And we know that from the 9-11 attacks, right? And we know that from other jihadist terrorist attacks that have emanated from essentially what is a terrorist ecosystem, as you alluded to, along the Afghan-Pakistan border. And so when people say we should disengage from Afghanistan because the real problem is Pakistan, Well, hell, I mean, do you think instability in Afghanistan is not going to affect Pakistan?

Of course it will. And that's where the refugees will go initially and, and we'll further destabilize and already destabilize Pakistan, a country that is home to, I think, 22 U S designated terrorist organizations. These are organizations that are, that are organizations that are not homogeneous, right? And separate from one another, they overlap, they share expertise and resources and people, right? And so it's going to become a much more dangerous place. Pakistan is a nuclear armed country. And so you can imagine the worst scenario, right? Are these jihadist terrorists

getting hold of the most destructive weapons on earth? And so again, it is really an insurance policy to remain engaged there. And it isn't the United States on its own. I mean, gosh, we had 28 countries there. And when we signed the capitulation agreement, James, in 2019 with the Taliban, which is, I think, a nadir for the United States. I love the United States to sign something, a capitulation treaty. It was horrible. On the hood of some broken down car instead of the deck of a battleship. Anyway, go on. And at the time, it's worth noting that there were more NATO and coalition troops in Afghanistan than there were American troops, right? And, and, and, you know, and it just shows how I think that, you know, Americans should recognize, right, that, that this, this idea that, that if we disengage,

others will do more actually kind of, it's kind of, kind of counterintuitive, but if the United States just does a little bit and leads, others will do more and share the burden. And that was the case in Afghanistan. And that's what made it really a sustainable commitment there. It is self-defeat in Afghanistan. We defeated ourselves. The Taliban are claiming now that they are the victors over the world's only superpower, but that's not true because we essentially defeated ourselves. So I got got a couple questions and i know you're gonna run i don't keep you too much um i get one is when after 9-11 the um one of the the tenets the people followed was that hey we don't need a police action here we need need a military action. Yeah. And if there's one thing that everybody can agree on is that the United States military is incredibly, incredibly effective and efficient.

I mean, invasion of Afghanistan, invasion of Iraq. That's fine. But then it really does become a police action where you're in a neighborhood, a bad neighborhood, and you've opened your precinct. You only have a certain amount of resources, and you kind of have to keep the lights on and you have to do all sorts of things to keep the peace. But nobody ever thinks or some people think that you got to defund the police, although there were people marching saying defund the police. Is that what we just did in Afghanistan?

Yeah, I think I think I think, Rob, we're learning the wrong lesson as you're looking to. So, you know, there's this idea now now that we should have just left, right? We should have just taken the George Costanza approach to war and left on a high note, right? So after you don't see the Taliban, say, okay, that's it, we're out. But really war has always required the consolidation of military gains to get the sustainable political outcomes. Now there are exceptions to that, and those are called in military terms, a raid, right? A raid is a military operation of limited purpose, short duration, and with a planned withdrawal, right? But in Afghanistan and in Iraq, we were trying to change the political outcome there. And we did it. I think, I mean, sadly, in Afghanistan,

we did it. It wasn't pretty. We made it much harder on ourselves I mean, sadly, in Afghanistan, we did it. It wasn't pretty. We made it much harder on ourselves than we had to. But then we quit. We just quit and left it. And, of course, then your enemy has an opportunity to come back, right? So let me ask you two questions. I want to get to what you think we should do now, right?

How do you mitigate the disaster? But before we get to mitigating the disaster, if this is kind of the future, not really wars of conquest, meaning we're taking back territory, we're kicking out the Vichy and restoring France or whatever. Is the U.S. military equipped and trained and prepared for this kind of work?

This doesn't seem like traditional. No, you know what's sad about it, Rob? It is traditional. We've always had to do it, right? So even during the Revolutionary War, right, once we defeated British forces, there had to be governance, right, in the wake of the defeat of British forces. If you look at the Civil War, and we failed in large measure in Reconstruction in the South, it required, right, the army to play a role in establishing, you know, alternative governance there. In the frontier wars, I could say, you know, in the Philippines in the 1890s and into the early 20th century. Look at the Panama invasion, Dominican Republic intervention. I mean, so we've always had to do it. But what we do

in the wake of these conflicts is we say, oh, we're never going to do that again. So my friend Conrad Crane is a great historian. He said, we have never been able to never do it again. And so I think we are condemned to repeat the same mistakes. Our visiting fellow here at Hoover, Nadia Shadlow, has a great book called War and the Art of Governance. And in this book, and she covers Iraq and Afghanistan in the book as well, she calls it American denial syndrome. We deny that

we have to do that complicated stuff. We just want to defeat the fielded forces of the enemy and then call it a day. Who should do it? Who do we hire to do it, though? I really mean this because I'm completely ignorant. Is that something that

you're teaching at West Point or Naval Academy? They should be garnet. I did in my class when I taught history at West Point or Naval Academy or the War College? Yeah, I mean, they should be garnet. I mean, I did in my class when I taught history at West Point, right? And the Army has always had to do it, right? Because there is no State Department cavalry. They're not waiting on the other side of the hill to just ride in.

Now, that doesn't mean that the military sets the policy, but the military has to be really aware of the range of tasks that are necessary to consolidate gains. And you already alluded to some of these, Rob, the basic ones, right, which are, you know, which are really established, legitimate and capable security forces, right? They can provide the degree of security that allows, you know, life to return to normal. It's support to other really critical government functions, right? We're not doing it, right? We want to help Afghans do it. We want to help Iraqis do it, but you have to be active in establishing the conditions that allows governance to return. So let me ask you about the bad luck. So is it just bad luck or bad timing that 9-11 happened after a decade, maybe a decade and a half of a pretty much consensus among the

smart people that one thing we're not doing in America, we're not nation-built. And the 9-11 happens and really what we have to do is nation-build. And that's a phrase you can't say. You can't put those two words together. No, it's a dirty phrase. It's a dirty phrase. We've been taught that that's what we got to do. But nation building is building cultures that don't exist, right? And so I would agree that we don't nation build, right? We don't determine kind of the form of governance and the character of these societies and the degree to which they can live together harmoniously. We don't determine that, right? The people in the region, they are the authors of their own fate, and they have their own social and cultural and religious backgrounds and

historical backgrounds that determine really the present, right? And constrain what can be achieved in the future. But really there's a difference, I think, between like this idea that we can export our form of governance and the nature of our society and the consolidation of gains, right? To get to a sustainable outcome consistent with their culture, consistent with their traditions. So, you know, people say, oh man, Afghanistan, it's, you know, it's never been a country. It's

been a graveyard empire. That's a historical, right? It has been a country that hung together, you know, not perfectly since, since the mid 18th century, right? It is a country that, that, that has not been sort of, you know, centralized in terms of control, but it's been. And that's okay, right? Again, it doesn't have to be Denmark. So I think it's important for us to recognize, obviously, as you're alluding to, James, which is very important, the limits of the degree of agency that we have over other people's futures. But it's also important to recognize that, that we have to exert influence in a positive way to get to the outcome that we want. And especially if it's,

if it's realistic, we can do it. And we, and we have done it in the past, you know, and, and, you know, I think that, you know, there, there are many examples of successes in this area that we tend to overlook. Okay. So now that we have a country on the edge, we've made a decision, that decision, we took the Okay, so now that we have a country on the edge, we've made a decision. That decision, we took the decision, we did it. The situation is what it is. Well, the decision was made for us when I think they committed, when Al-Qaeda committed

the most devastating terrorist attack in history, murdering nearly 3,000 innocents. Right, okay, but what I'm saying is that we're out we're out now right we're leaving we've left oh the decision to leave yeah now we have we have a you know front page of the wall street journal the front page of new york times every every day is going to be a drumbeat of of the of the fall of afghanistan right what do we do how do we mitigate what i think we kind of you know seem to be a disastrous decision. Right. Well, I think the only way that we could do it is to support Afghans who are

defending themselves in the best way that we can. And what that would require, that would require more active support for Afghan forces who are fighting, who are fighting to, you know, to prevent the loss of the freedoms that they've enjoyed since 2001. I'll tell you, what has not been covered in the press, and I got hammered in Twitter for saying this, but I think that this is the most underreported war in American history in the information age. And so Americans didn't understand what was at stake, as you alluded to. they didn't even know who the enemy was, but they also didn't understand that Afghan society was completely transformed from the hell that they had experienced from 96 to 2001 under the Taliban, from the hell they experienced from 92 to 96 under the civil war. And so what we don't recognize,

what we didn't recognize is how much there was to lose. Now, Afghans get that. But war is ultimately a contest of wills, right? And I think what you're seeing is with the rapid fall of these districts in Afghanistan is that the Taliban is convincing Afghans that they're laying down their arms. And so, so the effect of our complete disengagement was psychological, even more than physical. So what I argue for in the, in the journal piece is that, Hey, we should provide air support. We should provide, you know, we should provide the firepower that will help Afghans bolster their will and fight to protect their country and their children from the horrors of living under Taliban rule. And I think that's the most important thing that we could do at this stage is to commit to it. Now, there are some people who say, well, gosh, that will go back on our agreement with

the Taliban. OK, well, you know, the agreement with the Taliban has been broken by the Taliban, right, who are engaged in a massive offensive across the country. They're using murderous terrorist tactics, assassinating anybody, journalists, judges, anybody who took a stand for the future of the country. So your argument generally is if we have to leave the ground, we don't have to leave the sky. No, that's right. Because Afghans already, see, this is what's killing me. I mean, this is what's so sad is that the Afghans were already bearing the brunt of the fight.

8,500 troops? Really? You know, that's nothing. Afghans were taking about 30 casualties a day fighting against the Taliban because we helped bolster their will. We're providing them with certain capabilities. And then when we just pulled the plug and actually, Rob, what made it worse is if we were going to leave, OK, just leave. But we actually empowered the Taliban and weakened the Afghan government on the way

out. We didn't demand a ceasefire. We insisted that the Afghan government release 5,000 of some of the most heinous people on Earth on our way out. And then we adopted this narrative of really the Afghan government needs to do more for peace. And our Secretary of State writes a letter to Ashraf Ghani, the elected, who's inflicting so much harm and visiting so much horror on the Afghan people? No. So what we are witnessing here is a reversal of the truth, right? We've created a self-delusional view of Afghanistan, like the Taliban's not connected to al-Qaeda and jihadist terrorists. They're completely intertwined. But we're also seeing the reversal of morality in which we have actually sided in many ways

with the Taliban on our way out. It's extraordinary. Why? Why did that happen? I think it's a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the conflict, right? Fundamental misunderstanding. And so you hear the phrase all the time, the nature of the conflict, right? Fundamental misunderstanding. And so you hear the phrase all the time, the graveyard of empires, right?

You know, who will be the next, you know, empire to engage in the folly of engaging in Afghanistan? But, you know, we were not fighting against the Afghan people. We were fighting with the Afghan people against the Taliban, a Taliban whose regenerative capacity resided in Pakistan and was sustained by jihadist terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda and sustained by Pakistani intelligence, the Inter-Services Intelligence, the ISI. And so the misconception of the nature of the war and the nature of our enemy led us to a strategy that cut directly against our interests and led to the embarrassing, the shameful behavior of actually emboldening some of the most horrible

people on earth, the enemies of all civilized people. I mean, how can you explain this? How do you explain that the president, when he announced our complete withdrawal from Afghanistan, pegged the date to September 11th, the anniversary of the most devastating attack? And how can you explain that the president, when he made that announcement, did it in Area 60 of Arlington Cemetery, where fallen heroes from the Afghan war are laid to rest. And he thought somehow, somehow that this would be welcome because, I mean, I think there's this kind of crazy view these days, you know, that soldiers want to be pitied, right? I mean, soldiers don't want to be pitied. What soldiers I think want, want is they want to win. And they want leaders who will

direct all efforts, not just military, but as we've been talking about, right? I mean, you have to have an integrated military, political, diplomatic, economic effort to achieve a sustainable outcome that is worthy of the risks that soldiers take and the sacrifices they make. And so I think that this is a situation in which we are doing and acting completely opposite to our interests and opposite to what is ethical behavior in war, right? I mean, you can't go wrong with St. Thomas Aquinas, right? I mean, he got it right. He got it right on just war theory. And essentially one of the tests of a just war is that you have a just end in mind, right? And the achievement of that just end is what makes the use of violence for political purposes justified, right? And so that's what we're walking away from in Afghanistan.

We are actually engaging in activity that is not only cuts against our interest, but I believe it's fundamentally unethical. Best case scenario, air support mitigates, I guess, slows it. Worst case scenario, what you said earlier is we got to go back? Well, yeah, because the problems won't stay there. We know this, right? I mean, the refugees will flow not only to other countries in South Asia, but to Europe as well. And we know that when you have a refugee crisis like this, it is a recruiting boon for jihadist terrorist organizations. The instability of Afghanistan will allow illicit trafficking, especially of narcotics to continue unfettered completely. And that will

raise billions of dollars for terrorist organizations. And I'll tell you, Rob, the biggest benefit to them more than financial and the safe haven is psychological because they're already saying, I wish more Americans would just read the translated statements of the Taliban who were saying, we defeated the world's greatest superpower, right? Join our cause. You have Al-Qaeda, you know, pledging Bayat, you know, continuing to pledge Bayat or allegiance, right, to the Taliban. These groups are completely intertwined. And they're going to become, again, as ISIS did, as we learned just in recent years, right? I mean, what's astonishing about this is we've proven really our inability to learn from even our most proximate experience.

Well, I really hope you're wrong, but it has the ring of truth. Well, I hope I'm wrong, too, because I know so many Afghans. A young officer, a great major who I met when he was a cadet, you know, training to become an officer in the Afghan forces was just killed. There are leading special forces, Afghan special forces against the Taliban. You know, there are Afghans every day making sacrifices to, to try to,

to try to hold on to a better future for their children. Right. And, you know, I'll tell you, I think a lot of the drive toward disengagement oftentimes is, is what I would call bigotry masquerading as cultural sensitivity. I mean, these days we tend to view other peoples as fundamentally different from us.

But I think we oftentimes then overlook our common humanity. And there are these courageous Afghans who I've gotten to know over the years. I mean, they have worked so hard, dedicated themselves to escape the decades of brutality and war that that society has experienced. And they represent the best of our fellow men and women. I guess young compared to us, maybe, who have come together in really a multi-ethnic movement for reform and building a better future. And to see that go away, I mean, people just don't know. I mean, Afghanistan is fundamentally transformed in education. It is a place where freedom of speech and freedom of the press is more prevalent than in any other country in the region, right? It is a society that is tolerant of other religions generally, which was the case in Afghan history as well. I mean, people think, oh God. In the 70s, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Up until the Mujahideen era resistance

to the Soviet occupation, right? And all the Saudi money and the support for Salafi jihadist ideology and the neo-diobondism movement in Pakistan, that, you know, that was an aberration in Afghan history. So when Americans say, hey, man, we're not going to change Afghanistan. I agree, right? We only need Afghanistan to be Afghanistan. And I think that's what it was. And that's what was on the path to being again until we surrendered to the Taliban, which we hadired as some sort of colonial cultural imposition. And that there's something more honest about the, and true to the culture when people throw off those Western manifestations and, and,

and do something that's a little bit more Taliban-esque. I know it's strange. It's odd. It's peculiar, but that's how some people think. No, I think it's, I think it's,

it's a form of Stockholm syndrome where victims kind of identify with their abusers too, man. I mean, I, I mean, I think this, this sort of affinity for the Taliban is ill-placed, right? I mean, these are the most heinous people on earth,

and they are the enemies of all humanity. And those who have suffered the most are those who are most proximate to these groups. But what does Taliban mean? The students, right? They are the ones who want to destroy the pre-existing set of knowledge and replace it with what they have, which is messianic, which is much like the left and the progressives in this country.

That's a whole different discussion. And we talk about anti-modernity, anti-modernity, anti-modernity. That's a whole different discussion and we... Anti-modernity. Anti-modernity. That's where we'll end right there. We could ask you about China or Europe or Iran or any of the rest of it, but that, you know, maybe another podcast quite soon. I hope it's not too soon, too late, and we thank

you for being on Nature McMaster. No, hey, thanks for what you guys do every day. Great to be with you. Thank you. Thanks. I do it every day on Ricochet. Rob sort of swans in from time to time. Zero, zero. Rob, of course, being in New York, which means that he has to monitor carefully what he says on the internet, because you never know whether or not that's going to come back and bite you sometimes. And they're going to say,

you have beliefs that are slightly out of tune and step with the rest of the city, Mr. Rob Long. So what do you do? Well, you know what you do. You use a VPN. But not every VPN is the same. Oh, no, there's ExpressVPN. Hey, have you ever read the fine print that appears when you start browsing in incognito mode? It says your activity might still be visible to your employer, your school, your internet service provider. I'm going to call that incognito. To really stop people from seeing the sites you visit, you need to do what we all do here. Use ExpressVPN. Think about the times you've used Wi-Fi at a coffee shop.

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many years. They are a fantastic, fantastic product and they are loyal, loyal advertisers. And I sleep soundly knowing not only are they advertising with us, but also I sleep soundly on ball and branch. Okay, James, go ahead. What do you think? That wasn't bad, right? Well, I had to go call the vet and I was away for about three minutes. When I came back, you were still in the middle of the setup to the spot, which really is,

I thought you'd finished the spot and moved on to something about coffee shops, but actually you were just, that was a segue that was like the length of Abel Gantz's Napoleon. And I admire that more than you can possibly know. It's good to know, Padawan, that you were learning. But I also thought while I was on the phone with Yvette and everything is fine.

Yes, the dog does not have heartworm, which is great because that's really expensive to treat. And we've already been through that once. And I don't want to do it again. I was thinking that I expect to turn on the news today and find that Joe Biden has said, stated to the microphone, I've signed a bill of attainder for Donald Trump to arrest him. I might not be, might not hold up in court, but we're going to give it a try. And there would be great noddings of approval because that was the right thing to do. It is interesting with this whole eviction

moratorium thing to see the people who are trumpeting the norms. Norms, we got to get back to norms. We have to get back to the precious norms. And I'm a norms guy. I really am. Now, all of a sudden saying, well, you know, there's a high, there's a better thing at work here. There's a, there's a higher principle and that's keeping people from being kicked out of their houses, which apparently is now the specific duty of the CDC, because we have this marvelous little clause in there, this enabling act that essentially says the CDC can do anything damned well, please. If it's going to stop the spread of an infectious disease. It goes back to what you were saying before about zero COVID.

We can't evict people. They might get COVID. You want to say it in a very cruel fashion. I don't think so because if they're on the street, outdoor transmission is a lot less likely. It's also weird because there's this kind of shrugging attitude about like, yeah, you know, it's probably illegal. And as if that is, if that's OK, whereas before it would have been, oh, my God, you know, incredibly illegal. But also the idea that like there's no we've been doing this now.

I mean, we had 18 months of this, almost 24 months of covid. Covid drama. had 18 months of this almost 24 months of covid and covid drama um surely there's a better we there's a better way to solve these problems than this kind of ad hoc uh unconstitutional power grabby uh made up bs that i mean whoever the president is today, that person has had the benefit of 18 months of this. And the arms of government have had a benefit of 18 months of COVID and et cetera. So surely at some point, they could have shown leadership and come up with policies and decision-making trees that avoid this kind of bizarre made up i mean the idea that they thought that the center for disease control had the ability to issue a eviction moratorium is so insane uh and And the idea that,

and I read recently in the report, that Brett Kavanaugh, Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh, gave them an opportunity, said, look, what should happen now is Congress should go and pass a law. And then, of course, if Congress passes a law, that's a law.

And they didn't do it. And there's this kind of shambling amateur hour that you see from this administration, especially that I find so weirdly, so weirdly unexpected considering they've had all this time to prepare. None of these things, issues are new. This eviction moratorium is not a new thing. No, there are two ways of governing it right now. The idea that you could craft a specific law about a specific thing and not have it just with Christmas tree ornaments hanging off every single bough, spending money for earmarks here, there, that, the other, and giving money to a museum and also paying extra money for curb cuts in Keokuk, Iowa.

No, craft a law that says Congress shall have the power to declare an eviction moratorium. Sunset, that's the law. Everybody votes up or down. But we don't do that anymore. We pass these huge blobby, brobdignagian bowls of jello that contain everything that nobody reads, but they sign off on because it's got a magic word, infrastructure, defense, the rest of it. And we pay no attention to what's inside of it. Or we govern by executive order, which people like because it's decisive and executive. So, I mean, yes, you're

right. They should have done that, but there's no reason to expect that they did. It would be great if after the greatest, one of the most interesting impacts blows to American culture, society, politics, and the rest of it, as we had with the COVID reaction, not COVID necessarily, but the reaction to COVID, it would be great if from this, we could take a variety of revelations about our various institutions and move forward knowing what we know. But the only thing that we seem to know now is that every one of our institutions is incapable of dealing with these things on a rational basis, that it flails, it looks for the best look, it repeats its mistakes, it doubles down. I mean, everybody who saw the movie Outbreak expects that the CDC sends in, I don't know, you know, Gillian Anderson or Kate Winslet or whatever, and authoritatively tells everybody

what to do. And by God, it happens. And then later, Lawrence Fishburne passes out the viruses. We have what they used to call in the old sci-fi movies, the authorities. Remember that? There's a giant ant outside of town. I'll alert the authorities. There's a huge crop of locusts moving. I'll alert the authorities. And the authorities in every single case in those old movies knew what to do.

The sirens would go off. The generals would be on the phone. The jeeps would come out of the garage and they'd get something done because we believed in the competence of the authorities. We don't anymore. And I don't know where we go forward from that. But is it terror? I mean, yes. And I agree with you. But is it the worst? I mean, I guess what I'm looking for is moments, moments, revelatory moments for some people, like in the 70s, 80s, whatever, all the science fiction alien movies, you know, suddenly the guys in the dark suits and the vans would show up and you get this idea that there's this ruthlessly efficient government black ops thing and that they've got it all controlled.

And when they close encounter a spaceship comes down, actually magically like there's apparently there's a whole, you know, apparatus. Yeah. And they don't and they don't have it. None of this stuff really works. And it seems like it's a good thing for conservatives when this happens, because you can remind people,

like, you know, it doesn't really work. It doesn't actually work. I mean, that was one of the things that I think was this great moment. And they Mary hold it, which when the Obamacare website failed, it was a disaster. Right.

And if you're a conservative, like, of course it was because you got the government built it. And if you were at Obama's, we're like, I can't believe this happened. Well, of course it happens, because whenever you centralize things like whenever you like, of course, that's one reason why you want to bust up all sorts of power centers um i don't know whether so i don't know i guess what i would say is like maybe it's time to make hay or that i mean nothing well make hay how when you have one party the concern you know the gop which is not necessarily running away from the idea of big government it just wants big government to do the things that it wants it to do. It's not against corporatism. It's not against regulation. It's just our kind of stuff.

So you have this instrument and we're not, we're no longer arguing about the legitimacy of the instrument. We're just arguing about which side gets to get is supposedly the best at wielding. That's the problem. I mean, we, this is the anniversary this week, I believe of the air traffic control result being fired. Right. Yeah. So there was an instance of somebody cutting through and doing something

and affecting what it was. And it was clear. It made a clear statement and you could tell where the guy was going to go going forward. We're going to have less of this, but now both sides seem signed on to the idea of lots of it. So what do you do? Again,

Rob, I would go. I would just say Again, Rob, I would go. I would just say like, okay, I was walking yesterday in New York City and a young man stopped me and said, are you Rob Long? And I said, yes, I love your podcast.

Now this guy is young. I will be, if you're listening, I'm sorry I didn't introduce myself and get your name. I would say your name. He was walking with some friends. So, like, okay, this is a young guy. So, I don't know, maybe 20-something in his 20s, maybe 30.

Who knows? Didn't look over 30. Reagan fired the air traffic controllers 40 years ago. So, this is a piece of black and white memory that he doesn't even know. Right. But people should know that there was a time when there was a president and the air traffic controllers, which were a federal union, went on strike. And you're not allowed to go on strike. And they went on strike. And there were two choices for Reagan.

One is to sort of capitulate and weasel word and come back to the bargaining table. And the other would say, OK, well, you struck, so you're fired. And he fired him it was remember i mean you know we're both old remember that was like yes please you're gonna fall out of the air james we're all gonna die and it didn't happen no i don't know what the collusion is i just wanted to dramatically recite what happened i know i wasn't making a point i was just being dramatic well perhaps the point was that a young person might not know this, but perhaps that young person did. And perhaps we, again, the very fact that somebody, a young person may not know that or may not know what it actually meant goes back again to

the educational system. So every time we start to talk about what needs to be done, we need to talk about every single structure and system that we have, including the educational system, which itself, again, after this year, you would think we would have a little bit of clarity on who has the students best interest. We do, we do. And you're right to say before that what the Republicans ought to do is spend an entire week talking about schools

and nothing but. But for the most part, it's going to muddle on exactly as it has for all of this time, because the chances of somebody coming along right now and being able to craft the proper message seems small, but not entirely nil. And you know, probably who we're talking about, who's out there waiting in the wings that everybody wants to run because they just, if nothing else, want to see him on the debate stage with joe biden which would be i i i don't know i think that

would be almost cruel so i i expect that the the desire for televised presidential debates will probably be non-existent in the next election because but you don't look i mean you know i i'm not but i'm certainly no republican but i would say that if I were if I were a Republican, I'd be saying there are all if you're not talking about crime, then you should be talking about education. And if you're not talking about education, you might make crime and you should not talk about anything else. There are no there are only two subjects. And I would only talk about those two. I wouldn't talk about Hunter Biden's laptop. I wouldn't talk about critical race theory.

I would talk about our cancel culture or any other things that are kind of fun and interesting, and I get it. Red meat. Crime. Education. That's how you get the 12% in the middle back. Right, but CRT works into the education. You can't talk about education without talking about ideological indoctrination.

Well, Rob, I have the feeling that we could probably blather on here for another 20-25 minutes, if not two or three hours, on here for another 20, 25 minutes. We don't need three hours about what needs. No, absolutely not. And I know completely that when I'm gone, you guys say the same thing about me. So and we rest assured we'll say the same about you. Well, that's just that sort of that sort of backstabbing lack of. Bahami that we have.

Yeah, I get it. No, just kidding. Absolutely. We look forward to Peter coming back next week and telling us where he was. And we look forward to you folks coming back as well and seeing what's up. We also look forward to you going to WordTune, ExpressVPN, and Bolin Branch.

You support them, you support us. And by the way, P.S., Nudge and Nudge joined Ricochet today. Best of Ricochet can be heard by, oh, hosted by some short Minnesotan dude. You can find it weekends on the Radio America Network, so check your local listings. And of course, that five-star rating at Apple Podcasts

would certainly be appreciated. Don't know what's kept it from you yet. I'm going to go there in about 30 seconds, 40 seconds after the show to watch those five-second reviews just all of a sudden populate by magic. So do your part. Thank you. Rob, good health to you.

I hope everything is steady. Thank you. Ste, good health to you. I hope everything is steady. Thank you. Steady on, as they say. Me too. Steady on, as they say in England. Thanks to everybody who showed up in the chat room to listen to the show. Thanks to all of you who are listening to this later

in the Ricochet Audio Network. I'm James Lilex. We'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet 4.0. See you soon. Sorry, guys. Cut through the bone. Ricochet 4.0. See you soon. Sorry eyes Cut through bones Make it hard To leave you alone

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