The Young Turks - Moar War!

Episode Date: August 31, 2021

Richard Engel called the U.S. withdrawing from Afghanistan the "worst capitulation of western values in our lifetimes." Despite what Republican lawmakers, including Ted Cruz, are claiming, the Taliban did not hang an interpreter from a U.S. helicopter. Even with the war in Afghanistan coming to an end, the GOP is attempting to add $25 billion to the military budget. What happens now that the Taliban have access to U.S. military aircraft.  As the battle over mask mandates grows more contentious, Florida has begun to withhold school funding.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. All right. So today's the day that we're doing an hour long Ask Me Anything. So is it time to panic and hit that joint button and at tier three or four and that way you can ask those questions? I guess, hey look at that new picture. Oh, look at that good picture of you, Jay.

Oh, I like it. I'm kind of giving blue steel there. Oh, okay. I'm smising a little bit. Definitely smising. Definitely smising. That's such a fun word, smising. All right, anyways, check that out tonight if you're a member.

and writing questions if you're tier three or four on YouTube. Hit the join button below the video on YouTube. It's so easy. The rest of you guys, t-y-t.com slash join. You know that. We got tons of news, including Afghanistan. I got to yell at the media, so I'm going to let Anna take it away. All right.

So let me set it up, get Jank ready for his yelling, because that will take place in this story. So let's do it. NBC reporter Richard Engel is kind of panicky about the United States's decision to pull out of Afghanistan. In fact, he argues that we are capitulating. With who? Well, he explains in this next video.

Let's take a quick look. The worst capitulation of Western values in our lifetimes. You left behind. I went to Afghanistan. I arrived a couple of weeks ago. It was a republic, backed by the United States, backed by the West. Now it is an emerging Islamic Emirate trying to find its way. It was ruled by the same people who are now in control today, prior to us invading Afghanistan.

And our purpose of invading Afghanistan initially actually had nothing to do with nation building. The Bush administration had no interest in nation building. In fact, the war was pretty aimless after 2002. And I'll get to more details about that in just a second. But, Jank, I mean, we're talking about reporters who are supposed to engage straight news reporting. I guess, you know, they're opening it up to some editorial, you know, content and commentary here, but capitulating our value, like what does that even mean?

Yeah, there's so many things wrong with that. And first, let me just say that I'm really disappointed and it's a funny thing to say because I ripped the mainstream media, maybe more than anyone, and it's probably louder than anyone. But you know, I see Richard Engels report, number one, he's in the world. war zone many times. So I respect that. That takes courage. And number two, he does deliver facts that are important from time to time, including in the middle of that report. He explained that Trump cut out the Afghan government when he was negotiating with the Taliban. And he blamed Trump and Biden, and he was clear about it, but he gave the facts. And the facts are important.

And when the Afghan government was cut out of negotiations, that gave the Taliban tremendous, you basically gave him a green light. Don't worry, these guys are irrelevant. You'll Steam roll him and that was done by Trump. Okay, so though he gives facts, but Noam Chomsky talked about this. Actually in an interview I did with him, he said, oh, it's easy to follow the media. They do have facts, they're not just making things up out of whole clothes. You just have to ignore every piece of framing and editorializing that they don't even sometimes realize is editorializing.

And that is the main problem here. And so now let me get to my anger with how absurd that commentary was by Richard Engel. So number one, Western values, what are we talking about here? Now it's easy to say, oh, Western values, democracy, good guys, et cetera, Taliban are obviously bad guys, we get that. But wait a minute, Western values created the Taliban. We funded and armed the Mujahideen, but the part they never tell you is we also spent a lot of money in media to radicalize Muslims in Afghanistan.

There used to be mini skirts in Afghanistan before we started our propaganda. And our propaganda was the communists are atheists and godless and you have to, and good Muslims, believe in violence and it would cherry pick parts of the Quran and good Muslims would attack the atheists so we created that culture in some ways now of course the culture is also ancient and it's partly Muslim partly regional these are all complicated issues and to boil it down to we're Western we're the good guys when we invaded the country we created the Mujahideen in the first place and they're the bad guys to break it down in that black and white way it's almost

it reminds me of Sam Harris and it's silly it's what children do, okay? So now even worse, Afghanistan was a republic for all these years. What are you talking about? They call the government, the so-called government, the republic of Afghanistan collapsed in 11 days. So that shows you it was never a real government. It was a sham government propped up by the United States military industrial complex for 20 years. If it was a real republic, it would not have folded in 11 days because there would have been a unifying theme there would have been energy and motivation and a culture that surrounded it and that believed in it and that would fight for but that culture

never existed that republic was always a mirage and finally for now the worst part of it is if you watch the whole several pieces that angled it out of Afghanistan and Doha he keeps referring to what the Afghans want which Afghans you're talking about because it looks like what the Afghans wanted was this because the Taliban had a lot of local popular support, that's how they took over so easily. He keeps referring to the Afghans as like the three dudes he knows in Kabul who were like, you know, agree with him. And he's like, oh, the Afghans I know, but he doesn't say the Afghans I know. He keeps saying as if the Afghan people are totally against the Taliban. And that's just living in a total

fantasy land. And that's what makes me disappointed that, that isn't, let alone your enormous bias. That's not real reporting. I mean, when you think about how long we've been there, you can understand how some young people in Afghanistan, I mean, I remember watching reports where journalists were asking young Afghans about the United States and what it was doing in the country, and most of them had no idea, right? And so there was this view that the United States was just occupying Afghanistan, and at the same time, I think that the reaction that we've seen from retired generals and from the very pundits

that go on cable news just makes it clear that they planned on being in Afghanistan indefinitely, right? I think that there was some acknowledgement that it was this weak propped up government, you know, the Afghan government, which is now defunct. And the idea was, well, do we really need to be focusing many resources on this in actual nation building when we can just stay here indefinitely. There was just this plan to be there indefinitely. So let's go to the next video. One more clip from Angles' commentary here. And then I want to give you guys some context regarding the war itself, including some of the conversations and debates that took place in the early years of this war. Take a look. Most Afghans never saw those American troops

did not feel occupied by those American troops, felt comforted by their presence, and their withdrawal emboldened the Taliban, as did the deal signed by President Trump. If you go back, and I'm not trying to get into the blame game in politics, there are many in Washington who can do that. But I was in Doha. I'm in Doha now when that deal was signed. When the deal was signed by President Trump, the Afghan government, which was already weak, was not even invited. President Trump made a deal directly with the Taliban. And the deal was effectively, the country is yours. That undercut the Afghan government tremendously, tremendously.

And then the government was undercut again profoundly when the Biden administration rapidly withdrew troops with very little coordination with the armed forces of Afghanistan and with the government itself. So it was given a first blow by Trump and then a death blow by the Biden administration. So Engel speaking on behalf of the Afghans argues that the Afghans were comforted by the presence of U.S. military within their own country.

And I think that that is honestly an unfair way of describing how Afghans feel. I would much rather hear from Afghans themselves. And when you look at the number of civilian casualties throughout the entirety of this war, you can maybe understand why Afghans would actually be in favor of the U.S. military leaving the country. So let's take a look at this list of casualties. I actually updated this list to include casualties following the suicide bombings that took place at the Kabul airport. But as you can see, I mean, we lost nearly 2,500 or 2,461 to be exact, American service members in the entirety of this war. But take a look at Afghan civilians who died.

in the 20 years that the United States was engaged in this war, 47,415. These are not Taliban members, these are not, you know, insurgent groups. These are Afghan civilians, innocent people who died as a result of our drone strikes, of our missile strikes, you know, of us dropping the mother of all bombs in the country. There are consequences to that. And so you see tens of thousands of Afghan civilians now dead, as a result of this war, and to turn around and say, no, no, I mean, the Afghans were comforted by the presence of the U.S. military. I just think that that is a ridiculous way of describing and also speaking on behalf of

Afghans. No, that's, it's worse than that. That's just flat out propaganda. I mean, that is, that's shameful. And, you know, I think even neoliberals have left the building. The only thing left is just the military industrial complex. And look, when you pay millions of dollars to news networks and advertising, when you don't sell anything to consumers, that is a way of doing marketing. You say, hey, news outlets, do my marketing for me.

And they don't have to write Richard Engel a memo. They just hire the right people to hire people like Richard Engel who are going to do pro-war propaganda unwittingly, not realizing he's basically a stooge at this point. And so I told you, look, the facts are correct, but every part of the interpretation of the facts is wrong. Even look, so anybody who watches, TYT knows how much I loathe Donald Trump. But when he says Trump cut out the Afghan government from the negotiations, that is true. That's a fact. But then he goes on to editorialize that that said to the Taliban, it's your country. No, if the Afghan government was strong and its military was as prepared as we claimed it was,

it wouldn't mean that they were they had to surrender to the Taliban at all they had more they had four times as many men in the Afghan military as the Taliban does they had billions of dollars in American military equipment they didn't have to surrender because Trump cut him out of the deal look I'm giving Trump credit there like no he's not wrong on that every part of the editorializing it's not mixed it's not like hey some is anti-war some of his comments and some is pro war every one of it was pro war it's so like the only people who are the only people who are believe it now, basically people who watch MSNBC and who are just used to just listening to TV and going, oh, okay, whatever they tell me, I guess the generals are always right. And Jake Tapper and Rachel Madder are always right. And Jake Tapper obviously on CNN. And CNN and MSNBC are indistinguishable. But they even lost like Matt Iglesias and Josh Marshall and Kevin Drum. So even a lot of the thinking neoliberals are going, yeah, this coverage was horrific.

And so those are two excellent examples in that one clip there where he says, oh, the country didn't even know it was occupied. Which part of the country are you talking about? When we were in the valleys, they fought us like lions. They knew they were occupied, that's why they were firing at us. How do you think we lost all those guys? How do you think the Afghan military lost 66,000 men? Because they weren't fighting?

Because the Taliban and the locals didn't think they were occupied? That's beyond absurd to say that. And then finally, Anna's right. They comforted by our troops. That's just mental, man. Your three friends in the Capitol in some air-conditioned building were comforted by the troops. The rest of Afghanistan was not comforted by our invasion. The 47,415 civilians dead were not comforted by our invasion, and neither was the overwhelming

majority of the country. Richard Engel there honestly it was so bad that it tipped over into lying because he gave the impression to unfortunately impressionable people that watch television that oh my god the Afghans were so ready for democracy and our occupation had worked so well and if we just stayed another 20 years man Western values would have tried him but instead because we wouldn't do more war because of Biden and Trump and by the way 75 of the American people. Well, that's why Western values lost. If we just tried 200 more years of war, what it worked. So just turn off your TV, this is total utter propaganda. Well, I want to reset to talk about some of the reasons why this war was a failure, almost from the jump, because I think, you know, since it's been such a long war, people forget

about the details of the context as things were kind of getting to the point where we were going to invade Afghanistan. Why are we invading Afghanistan? What is the objective, right? So let's talk about that a little bit. Now that US troops have fully withdrawn from Afghanistan, the war is over. After 20 years and more than two trillion dollars, some are asking, well, what happened? Why did the United States fail in this two decades long? war. Well, you know, if you look at the various debates that were taking place within the Pentagon regarding the objectives of the war and why we were invading in the first place, one can understand why this whole mission was really an aimless one that didn't have an end

goal or really an idea of what it would mean to win the war. So Steve Cole, who's written multiple books about Afghanistan, recently a few years ago, did a talk and he disclosed something about those very debates taking place within the Pentagon. And I think what he says here is incredibly important. Let's take a listen. I was stunned to discover how often our government struggled with the question of al-Qaeda versus the Taliban. Who are we fighting and why are we fighting them?

There was one part of the argument that nobody had any trouble with. We're fighting al-Qaeda, right? They attacked us. They're still trying to attack us. They're small a number. They're dangerous. They cross borders. We know what we're about there.

But the formulations were always al-Qaeda and its affiliates. Ah, so what affiliates do you mean? Are you talking about, okay, if you're talking about a small splinter group that's also active in France and Britain? Yes, okay, they're a qualified affiliate. Well, the Taliban were judged from the very first day after September 11th to be an affiliate. But every administration, starting with President Bush, even in the smoldering anger of September 2001, nobody wanted to go to war with the Taliban because they knew, first of all, the Taliban hadn't attacked us. And second, they were large and really rooted in the country and in the region and that they were also backed by Pakistan.

And it was going to be a really tough project. And it turned out to be an incredibly tough project. And so the Taliban lost control of Afghanistan in 2002, but the Bush administration didn't end the war. In fact, the Bush administration claimed that it wanted to bring Osama bin Laden to justice, but refused an offer by the Taliban to turn Osama bin Laden over. Now, they were going to extradite Osama bin Laden to a third party, not to the United States specifically, because they wanted to ensure that the United States was, you know, willing to provide due process, go through some sort of due process to bring him to justice.

And Bush administration's like, no, no, we're going to go in. Now this whole notion of nation building wasn't even something that the Bush administration had any interest in. In fact, they were pretty transparent about that from the beginning. So once we're in and once we're suddenly fighting the Taliban, what does it mean to win that war, right? And after the fall of the Taliban in 2002, why did the United States decide to remain in Afghanistan? Yeah.

So I always remember this poll that was done. now almost decade ago, where they asked Afghans, what is 9-11? And over 90% had no idea what it was. So now, and let's keep in mind, so the Taliban, as the expert there pointed out, did not attack us. Iraq also did not attack us on 9-11. 15 out of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. Yet we remained not only best allies with Saudi Arabia, but the very first people we allowed to get out of the country on flights when no one else was flying was literally the bin Laden family. The person who did attack us was Osama bin Laden. I mean, that is a very, very curious thing to do. Michael Moore did a whole movie about it.

You guys know about it at this point, I hope. And so you could say, hey, look, the bin Laden's are not necessarily all guilty because of one guy, and it's a big thing. family, but you might want to question them, right? Isn't it weird to fly them out and protect the bin Laden that you know one of their family members did 9-11? So you never attacked the people who actually did it. You attack two different groups of people that didn't do it. And you stay there for 20 years and they don't even know why you're there. And the number one answer for why are you fighting the Americans in that same poll was because they're in my valley. And so this war has always been absurd. It's always been done for profit. And by the way, we all would have known that if it wasn't for the media industrial complex. I love that you brought that up, Jank, because,

you know, there was a fascinating panel debate that was taking place. It was carried on C-SPAN 2 at the time, not even C-SPAN 1, so most Americans probably didn't even see it. But it was a discussion among journalists from both the United States and our European allies. And one journalist from Italy specifically, in 2002, that's when this panel is taking place, decided to call out the jingoistic nature of U.S. media. In particular, the jingoistic nature in the reporting on Afghanistan and, you know, the fearmongering that was taking place at the time in regard to Iraq. So, of course, we hadn't invaded Iraq yet. That happened in 2003. But this conversation is mostly about Afghanistan. And listen to what the journalist has to say here.

What I, from what I've seen, I've spent like a month and a half after September 11th in the States. And what I've seen is that American journalists have become more patriotic. Can we put it this way? Which is not the case for the majority of European or, let's say, of Italian journalists. Italy has been quite critical about everything about what was going on. But going back to your first question about the Guantanamo, the Dittany story, I think that it's a clear indication for the fact that some trouble between Europe and the United States could come up. Because in the past few days, there was a lot of criticism coming out from Europe,

especially from Great Britain, from Germany, from Spain, asking the United States to apply and to obey by the international law. And as someone told me the other day, that might be, you know, the beginning of the end of the honeymoon between Europe and the United States. On July 18th, get excited. This is big! For the summer's biggest adventure. I think I just smurf my pants. That's a little too excited. Sorry.

Smurfs. Only dinner's July 18th. States. So by January of 2002, our European allies, including journalists from European countries that were aligned with us in this war, we're starting to raise some red flags. And they're like, what's going on here? What are you guys doing? In fact, there are possible war crimes taking place, especially when it comes to the detention of these prisoners of war in Guantanamo. I'll get to the response of a U.S. journalist to that statement in just a second. But Jake, did you want to weigh in? Yeah, I want to make one point about what she said because it's so on point, and I don't even know that she knew that at the time. I probably not. So Phil Donahue, it might not even happen yet. Phil Donahue used to be the number one rated host on MSNBC right around the beginning before the Iraq war. But he was very much against the war. And he was pretty much the only one on television who was against the war. And MSNBC fired. And so they then said, oh, no, of course it had nothing to do with that. And they made up some standard excuses, but nobody could understand it because we could all see the ratings.

They were public, he was their number one host. And so later, an internal memo leaked where the executive said, while all the other TV stations are waving the flag, we can't be against the war. Now remember at the time, MSNBC also was owned by GE, which is a massive defense contractor. So whether they thought we have to be jingoistic and not really do news. I mean, that's an admission that they're doing propaganda on behalf of the U.S. government and military of a giant so-called news network in America. And so she nailed it. I don't know that Phil Donnie who was even fired when she was talking.

But she used the same phrase that the MSNBC executives did. Right. You know, we've got to support the American government. We can't question it. That is not journalism. That's just flat out propaganda. There was a representative of the US media as part of that panel discussion. It was a columnist for USA Today.

And remember, the Italian journalist you just heard from raised some concerns about the way that detainees were being treated in Guantanamo and listen closely to how the columnist from USA Today responded to that critique. I see myself as a left of center columnist, but among all of God's creatures who I feel sympathy for the 158 detainees on Guantanamo ranked towards the bottom of the list. Has there been a discrepancy between the U.S. and European media on the specifics of Afghan casualties? And why do you think that might be? Who wants to take that first? I will lay down the marker for the American view, which the Europeans could then dissent on.

We're not being aggressive at all water. I think the first thing why there has, why the unintended casualties in Afghanistan has been a secondary or even tertiary story here is because there are always a certain number of unintended casualties in any warfare situation. And I don't think that the abuses in this war in Afghanistan were systematic. I do not think that if had one look closer, one would have anything that would even be in the same definitional framework with a my lie. I do not think that this is rogue pilots dropping bombs willy-nilly. And I mean that dismissive nature regarding the treatment of civilians and the treatment of detainees in Guantanamo played out through the entirety of this failed war in Afghanistan.

I want to just quickly note that, look, that conversation took place on January or in January of 2002, but by the end of the war, in terms of the number of Afghan casualties, civilians, they lost 47,000, 415 people, right? So to minimize the number of civilian deaths is pretty gross. And he's just very clear there, very transparent about the fact that the treatment of the detainees, not that big of a deal, that's secondary to him, if anything. And the, you know, the unintended consequences or the unintended loss of lives. I mean, that's just, that's what happens in war.

Yeah. So in there he's saying on behalf of the US press, and that's why if you go back and watch on YouTube, you'll see that's why I yelled at the USA today, pretty much at the top of our lungs, because that was their attitude of the entire organization. Guantanamo Bay, who cares? I mean, they rank at the lowest concern. Now here's the great irony of that. Today, the American media is complaining that Biden coordinated with the Taliban in our exit. But who did we coordinate with when we stuff people into Guantanamo Bay? Oh yeah, the Taliban. There was bounties, and the Taliban would

just hand over people for 5,000 bucks at a time, and guess who they would hand over? Ironically, they're enemies. And so we put in a ton of innocent people who actually could have been our allies into Guantanamo Bay and didn't let them out for decades. And that wasn't a callous American government official you heard. That was an American journalist. And I remember Walter Shapiro, I remember reading him, he was terrible, he was always terrible. And so, and these guys, I mean, that's, they're so.

So sophisticated, Sputnik just does Russian propaganda. It's over the top, it's obvious. The North Korean television is over the top and obvious. Our guys are so much better at it. They go, I mean, I am left of center, and I am a humanitarian. I care about these folks, but no one could care about these people in Guantanamo Bay. Remember, we gave them no rights at all. We violated habeas corpus, which is actually the foundation of Western civilization.

Some of the detainees didn't commit any crimes, and we kept them detained anyway. Yeah, and we knew it. We had adjudicated that they didn't, they were innocent, flat out innocent, and we kept them for years after that. And so 47,000 some odd people, Zana pointed out, died in Afghanistan, are innocent civilians. And now you could say, hey, that was earlier, that was in 2002. But at that point, the American military already killed tons of innocent civilians and did it indiscriminately and would constantly use the excuse of collateral damage. We were trying our best. Others are bad, evil terrorists. But when we kill civilians on a massive scale, and they went on to kill hundreds of thousands. Some estimates have it at over a million innocent civilians killed in Iraq. No, no, no, no. That was a million mistakes. In Afghanistan, it was 47,000 mistakes. But we're angels. And it's not the government telling you that. It's a press pretending to be free and independent, and even left of center, that doesn't. that propaganda on behalf of the government.

Exactly. So our media might not have guys with rifles behind them. They might not tell you that their dear leader bowls 300 every time he goes bowling. But their propaganda is in some ways more insidious because of how sophisticated it is. It tricks so many people, so many people in a much better efficient way. All right, we gotta take our first break, but when we come back, even though we just pulled troops out of a failed two-decade-long war, Republican congressmen are calling for an increase in the defense budget, in fact, more of an increase than what

was already being proposed in the latest, you know, Pentagon funding bill. So we've got that for you and more when we return. with you guys, go. House Republicans are calling for more of an increase in the defense budget, even as troops have just left a two decades long failed war in Afghanistan. Now, this is an attempt to show that, A, they don't like Biden and they want to criticize him for withdrawing troops of Afghanistan, and B, they're trying to essentially puff up their chest as if they're more able and willing to protect U.S. national security than the Biden

administration is. Now, led by Representative Mike Rogers, a Republican from Alabama, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, the GOP intends to pursue a National Defense Authorization Act, amendment that would add an additional $25 billion to President Joe Biden's already 753 billion top line military spending request. for fiscal year 2022. Now understand something. Biden has requested an increase in the budget for the new NDAA. And Republican lawmakers looked at that and said, we want more.

Rogers dinged Biden's budget as wholly inadequate and ripped the White House for underfunding national security at the expense of liberal domestic priorities. I'll take it. Rogers and other Republicans have instead called for boosting the budget by three to five percent above inflation. Okay, can I just say real quick, Anna? Sorry, he's like, these liberals, they care about domestic priorities, things that would help you in your life, you and your kids. We don't want that. We got to build more ships for the Navy so that Raytheon and Lockheed Martin could get paid. Bunch of libs. And understand what he's saying there. He's not, and I'll give you the details on what's. they propose to fund with this additional $25 billion increase.

It has nothing to do with boosting the salaries of service members. Of course. It has everything to do with purchasing more weaponry. And yes, funneling more money, redistributing more money from the U.S. taxpayers to a handful of elites that benefit from the military industrial complex. Now, let me also just note that, I mean, we just wasted a ton of money and two decades in Afghanistan to then turn around and claim we need to increase the budget for the military even more is just absolutely ridiculous.

And if Democrats were competent in their campaigning, they would take that statement by Mike Rogers, the one where he's essentially criticizing lawmakers for wanting to be focused on domestic issues that actually benefit the American people. They would take that statement and they would use it in their campaigning. But are they going to, are they going to do that? I don't know, we'll see. But I doubt it. No, of course they're not going to do that.

And I was going to say they're going to cower from him instead of go, but it's not really cowering. We know we've covered this game a thousand times. They'll pretend the cower and then give him the $25 billion because they have the same exact defense contractors as campaign donors. So what do you think this whole two week cable news? propaganda was for. It was for the $25 billion. Boeing and the rest of them give a couple of million dollars to the news networks.

The news networks do nonstop propaganda. Then the politicians they gave a couple of million dollars to go, hey, why don't we give them $25 billion more? And so if you're Lockheed Martin and all those defense contractors, spending $10 to $20 million greasing out politicians and news networks, and in return you get $25 billion, that's a

genius investment. Yes, well, and keep in mind, as the Intercept reported, if you invested $10,000 in the top five defense contractors at the beginning of the war in Afghanistan back in 2001, that money grew to around $100,000. It outperformed the stock market. If you invested in S&P 500 index funds, that money would grow to about $67,000. So it gives you a sense of just how. profitable the war in Afghanistan was for these defense contractors.

Now let's talk about where this proposed increase in funding for the military would actually go. It would add $9.8 billion to weapons procurement accounts. Oh wow, that's shocking, including money for four more Navy ships, more planes and helicopters for the Navy, Marine Corps and National Guard, and upgraded army combat vehicles. For the Taliban. I mean, a lot, all that weaponry that we provided to the, you know, Afghan military that no longer exists is now in the hands of the Taliban. So that's what Jake is referring to. Also, this amendment would pour an extra $5.2 billion into research and development efforts, including emerging technologies and beefing up cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.

Another 3.8 billion would go toward military construction projects and facilities upgrades. And based on the statement by Representative Rogers, you would think, wow, I mean, maybe we've been really underfunding the Pentagon, the military for a while. It sounds like a dire situation. But let me take you to this graphic that shows you just how much the United States spends on its military compared to all these other countries, including China, by the way, which is, which globally comes second in terms of, defense spending, right? We spent $770 billion on defense, whereas all those countries combined don't even get to that amount of money. So China, India, Russia, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Germany, France, Japan, South Korea,

Italy, Australia, all those countries combined. Their defense spending is $761 billion. The United States alone is at $778 billion, and now we have Republican lawmakers arguing that we need more in terms of the spending that defense takes up in our discretionary budget. Let's take a look at the next graphic. So defense, you can see, takes priority. Coming in at second, we've got health, then transportation. I mean, look at how absurd that is. No, but here's, look at the fourth thing on that list. Veterans benefits and services. Okay, that comes in fourth. Look at how small that portion is compared to defense.

spending. And it's still the fourth largest. I mean, the fact that we spend that much more in defense than we do on the health of Americans is just insanity. And it's brought to you by corruption. If they were, if they did not allow for defense contractors to finance both politicians and the media, there's no way we would have a budget like that. Because what's the ostensible reason for the defense budget? To protect American lives, okay? Well, 45,000 Americans die every single year because they don't have health insurance. When's the last time we lost 45,000 people in a terrorist attack? If you take all the terrorist attacks, including 9-11, from 9-11 to now, it doesn't come

anywhere near 45,000 people. And we lose 45,000 people every year, and that's just the people who don't have health insurance, let alone the ones that do and get bankrupted and die anyway, because they started their treatment too late, because they were afraid of the co-pays and the deductibles, etc. No, no, no, no, this isn't for the American people. That's not what a democracy looks like. Look, here, I'll give you more context. The numbers that Anna read you about the research for artificial intelligence and upgrades of their facilities,

those are just the randos part of their budget. Remember, the 778, then they want to add another 25, and then that that 8.2 billion or so is part of that 25. So it's just like an afterthought. It's what the Pentagon found in their couch. And so how much does it cost to do free calls for all? Well, I heard on cable news, how are you going to pay for it? I mean, you can't pay college for everybody. That's outrageous.

No, no, no, we can't afford it. It costs about $7.5 billion a year, less than the chump change buried into the addition of the already gigantic Pentagon budget. So when cable anchors tell you, cable actors, pretending to be news anchors, tell you you that we can't afford things for you and your family, understand that they are lying. We can't afford it. And then when they tell you, oh, we should have stayed in Afghanistan longer, did any of them, did Jake Tapper ever ask, how are you going to pay for that? Nope. Jake Tapper is the number one guy when Bernie Sanders was running. How are you going to pay for?

Oh, yeah, you owe health for Americans? How are you going to pay for? Education for your kids? How are you going to pay for it? 2.3 trillion dollars flushed down the toilet in these nonsense. Wars, it's going to be up to $6 trillion by the year 2050 because of interest and other payments. Jake Tapper and no one else had cable news, including Rachel Mata, never asked, how are you going to pay for that? Okay, there are no journalists on television. Turn it off. All right, we're going to take a break. When we come back, we'll talk about how all that military spending in Afghanistan ended up benefiting the very group we were fighting in the first place. And we're going to take a trip in the debunker to debunk some of the lines.

of lawmakers like Ted Cruz. We'll be right back. All right back on CYT, Jen can Anna with you guys. Quick shout out to our Twitch audience. Elder Mind Pulse gifted 50 subs. It's wonderfully generous. Does it all the time.

The press progressive always makes us happy, gave a thousand bits. I love every part of our audience watching everywhere. And one of these days we'll spend more time on all the folks watching on Roku, Pluto, Samsung, and all the other places too. You guys are also amazing. We're going to do this together. We're going to actually bring news to America. All right, Casper.

Right wing lawmakers like Ted Cruz have been sharing a video that falsely alleges that the Taliban hanged a man from a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter over Kandahar. Now, we're going to show you the video in question. But before we do so, I think it's important to take a trip to the debunker, just so we debunk the lies. You didn't see Republicans when we had control of the Senate try to rig the game. It shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America. Our systems are not racist. by Senator Ted Cruz, where he shares a video and argues the following.

This horrifying image encapsulates Joe Biden's Afghanistan catastrophe. The Taliban is hanging a man from an American Black Hawk helicopter, tragic, unimaginable. Let's take a quick look at the video in question. Now, if you watch that video closely, you can tell that dude's alive. You can tell because he's lifting his arm up. In fact, let's take a look at a still of that photo or a still of that video, I should say. So you can see that he's got his hand up. So a cursory glance at the video reveals that the person is moving around and is strapped

into a chest harness. At one point, the person even reaches up and holds onto the rope, right? So this has been debunked already, but unfortunately it hasn't stopped. The circulation of the video and the allegation among right wingers, Representative Jason Smith is another one. He writes, on the day that we see innocent people hanging from an American helicopter, the Biden administration decides to pull out early, leaving behind hundreds of Americans and even more innocents to die at the hands of the Taliban.

It's unacceptable and heartbreaking. Now, of course, Representative Smith, Senator Ted Cruz, and other lawmakers just like them, had absolutely no problem when more than 47,000 Afghan civilians were killed during the duration of that war in Afghanistan. These are people who died thanks to U.S. airstrikes, drone strikes. They were later referred to as collateral damage. And now you have these neocons pretending as though they actually care about the lives of Afghans.

Clearly they don't. And I think something that will also prove that is how they are very likely to push back against allowing Afghan refugees into the United States. But I do also want to talk about the kind of weaponry that the Taliban has because they do, in fact, have possession of U.S. Black Hawk helicopters. And we should we should talk about that. But first, Jank, why don't you jump in? Yeah, so both the fake politicians and the fake news, yeah, I said the words, have the same fall concern, and hence why I call them fake in this context. So, oh my God, the 13 U.S. service members killed, and they interview every family member and et cetera. Now, I'm not mocking that. You should be concerned about those 13 U.S. service members, and I'm glad they woke up and interviewed their family members and how terrible it is that they died.

Now, did they do that for the 6,294 Americans who died in the occupation of Afghanistan, in the invasion and occupation, both service members and contractors, 6,294? No, they never did it. They wouldn't even show the coffins. Bush and Cheney told him, don't show the coffins. They said, yes, sir, absolutely, sir, we won't talk about the deaths. Who cares? Who cares about it in the American military dying?

Right? Oh, Benghazi, four people died. Let's talk about it 24-7. But there's 6,000 dead there. There's tens of thousands of service members dead in Iraq. Don't talk about it. Don't talk about it. Don't talk about it.

Oh, we're leaving? Oh, my God. A service member died. I'm heartbroken. Let's bring on their niece and their grandniece to talk about it. They're liars. It's not just Ted Cruz. It's all the cable news anchors.

It's Anderson Cooper and the rest of them. And Ted Cruz was, oh, my God, I care so much about the Afghan people. Look at that. They hung someone. 47,000 civilians dead. Did you ever care about them? Never. Oh, there's just collateral damage.

Who cares? Collateral damage. They had it coming. All these people understand his violence. We had to murder them. It was collateral damage. Oh my God, I'm so concerned about one Afghan killed when he wasn't even killed. They're all liars.

Now, look, there are some right wingers, including right wing trolls on Twitter, who probably acknowledged the fact that they don't care about Afghan. And so they tried to make this seem, you know, a little more compelling to right wingers who might not care about Muslims, but would maybe care about Americans who would be hanged by the Taliban. So I'll bring you to the next tweet. This is from Ian Miles Chong, I think his name is. The Taliban are hanging a person, presumably he writes, presumably an American interpreter or SIV. Okay, let's stop for a second. Why do you presume that it's an American interpreter?

Really, can you see like the identity of the person from that wide shot of a guy like hanging from a black helicopter? I mean, it's just so ridiculous and it's so clear that they're using this for propaganda purposes. And as we've already noted, this has been fact checked. And no, the Taliban did not hang someone to kill them from the Black Hawk helicopter. But let's also be clear, yeah, the Taliban, thanks to our incompetence, And our efforts in Afghanistan, if you want to call it efforts, has led to the Afghanistan now having possession of all this weaponry and all this other military equipment that was given to the Afghan military that no longer exists.

So does the Taliban have possession of these Black Hawk helicopters? Yes, they have possession of all sorts of things that I can list for you in just a second. So it's not that far-fetched for the Taliban to use that weaponry against its own people. And that's weaponry that we ended up giving them indirectly, I guess. But the Pentagon had to have known that the government that we were propping up in Afghanistan was weak, would crumble as soon as the U.S. pulled out. But I think that their intention was to remain in Afghanistan indefinitely, which is why that puppet government was really not a big. concerned for them. They were just going to stay there forever. Yeah, it's amazing what the right wing will believe, presumably an American interpreter.

What a weird presumption. I see that speck over there. It's presumably a nurse, probably works on Saturdays and Sundays. Where are these presumptions coming from? It's insane. And so why? Anna nailed it. No question. To evoke sympathy, because, you know, Tucker Carlson during the Iraq war, in the beginning he was in favor of it.

Then he turns around and he says, they're primitive monkeys, I don't care about it. of monkeys, I don't care about them anyway. So any says similar things about Afghans. So that's the right wing mind. And so on top, my favorite thing is right wing trolls that are now going, you know what the Taliban is going to do to women? What are they, what are you doing to women in Texas? We just talked about the six week ban, you know, abortion ban in Texas where you're going

to pay $10,000 to anyone who will rat out a woman in spying on our sex life, her body, etc, et cetera, et cetera. You don't believe in women's rights here. Now you've got fall concerned about Afghan women. And then my favorite, oh my God, the Taliban is so bad against LGBTQ. That's definitely true, and we're actually super concerned about that. You're concerned about LGBTQ? Come on.

Come on. Just two weeks ago, we did stories about how they're saying, well, the Taliban, you know, I bet you they won't let trans people into the wrong bathroom. Ha ha ha, go get them. And Tucker's cheerleading about, oh, they're really, Oh, they're real men, they're not like us. They don't study gender studies. Right.

And you were applauding the Taliban a minute ago. Now all of a sudden, you're fake concern because you want more defense contractors to benefit more from corruption? Shut up. Yeah, I mean, if I recall correctly, Lauren Bobert literally tweeted the words, the Taliban is building back better. Yeah. Remember, there were, there was a, I mean, it's interesting how quickly the right wing in America goes through phases. They went from congratulating the Taliban for its viciousness and cruelty toward various disenfranchised groups. And now because they realize that maybe this could be a strategy to go after Joe Biden,

they've changed their tune to pretend as though they actually care about civilians on the ground or that they allegedly care about U.S. troops. But in reality, look, we see the way veterans are treated in the United States. We see the way, you know, troops have done multiple tours in these wars, whether it was Afghanistan or Iraq, they come back to the United States with all sorts of mental health issues and other physical ailments. And they're just abandoned. So please spare me the nonsense about caring about US troops, caring about Americans. We see the way Americans are treated within our own borders. These people don't care about anyone at all. In fact, all they do is use humans as props for their political goals and, and, you know, aspirations. And it's incredibly disgusting. It really is. So one more thing.

So, you know, there's the number 85 billion going around for how many weapons we, how much we left in weapons and in Afghanistan. And I even said that number yesterday and I want to, sorry about that. I want to retract that. There's a correction on it. It's not that at all. It's 18 billion that went to weapons and transportation over the course of the entire war, right? So, but another guy quoting that.

was Trump, and that's why I'm even more embarrassed. But we actually correct mistakes. So, and Trump is now saying, if the Taliban doesn't give all that back, we should go basically bomb them, go back in, et cetera. So Glenn Greenwald, where are you at? All those guys who are like, oh, Trump is so anti-interventionist. He's such a peaceful guy. He said, he's a peacemaker.

The Democrats are the ones that want war. But wait a minute, Biden got us out of the war. Yeah, Trump started it. We give him credit for that because we're actually fair, right? But now he wants to go back in. What happened? Are you ripping Trump now? No, no. All the fake left-wingers who go on right-wing shows all the time, they're like, oh, Trump, he's such a peaceful man. It's just the kid from Queens, you know, just trying to do the best he can. The elites are keeping him down. No, he's a warmonger. He's, and besides which, he's a freaking liar. He's just criticizing Biden for every single thing because he's out of power. You're the one who signed the deal on May 1st to get out. We actually congratulated you on that. But now you're turning around going, I can't believe Biden got out.

I mean, I got out better. I would have gotten out bad. I should get credit for getting out and I should get credit for wanting to go back in. And yet, fake left winger is like, oh, Trump, he's so awesome. Don't talk about Trump. Don't criticize Trump. Only criticize AOC. Oh, shut up.

Go away. All right, that does it for our first hour. When we come back for hour two, we're going to switch gears, get off of the Afghanistan issue and talk a little bit about what's happening in regard. to COVID. Also, there was a pretty terrible pro-vaccine ruling handed down by a judge. So we're going to talk about that and more. So don't go away. We'll be back in about four minutes. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen to ad-free, access members, only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com at

apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.