Weekly Skews - Weekly Skews 8/17/21 – Wrath-ganistan

Episode Date: August 18, 2021

Tonight we discuss, what else, the Afghanistan debacle. We are joined for this conversation by Stan Mayer, a former clandestine intelligence officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency who served four tours in Afghanistan working counterterrorism operations. We also have some fun dumbasses to lighten the mood. Join us. Support the show

Hello there. Welcome back and Happy Skews Day. Today is August 17th, 2021. I'm Trey Crowder, and that's Mark Aegee. What's up, Mark? What's up, Trey? Before he came on, I got through the first two episodes of the new, there's like five Cocaine Cowboys documentaries,

and Billy Corbyn makes great documentaries. He did the U, this 30 for 30 stuff on Miami, university on stuff. But I'm watching it and I'm thinking about how, you know, American wars jumpstart drug epidemics domestically for no reason at all. And, uh, right. Uh, and, uh, there's a, like, two things struggling about it. One, these are all like, the cocaine, Florida epidemic was all, like, these are all, like, the two dudes, the seasons focusing on are, are some Cuban, uh, first generation Cuban immigrants. And they're all, these are, these are smuggling networks created by CIA for the Bay of Pigs and shit.

And but also like every pill documentary is so sad. And every cocaine documentary is just a great time. It's just a party. Everybody's fucking got like floral shirts on and sunglasses and fucking. Yeah. Yeah. Man, you're 100% right about that. Pills just way more sad than cocaine.

And there's like, yeah, this guy was called what $2 billion worth of pills. Like that's unless you're a Purdue farmer, that's just not the kid. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Much less of a party thing going on where pills are concerned, mostly just poverty and depression. I mean, John DeLorean ended up in federal prison for trapping cocaine, but that's how he funded the DeLorean. We got a cool car with doors up and like this at a cocaine. Fucking time machine, yeah, man. What we get out of pills? Dude. Well, you know, arguably me and my career, I can't stand up to the Delorian because my mama was on pills, I'm saying.

So I was this whole thing, product of pills in a certain way. But, but, but yeah, listen, if we're keeping a car with doors, it open this way. Dude, no, if we're keeping it real, cocaine gave us many gifts as a society. The entire 80s, you know, like all that shit, all cocaine. So, you know, you got to give it up to cocaine at some point. Disco, Alf. Alf. Yeah.

Grimlins. to all right so real quick and we'll remind y'all a couple of things i'm on tour again go to well read comedy dot com for ticket information i'm in denver this weekend with the boys that'll be a good time hope to see y'all there uh also secondly brand new thing i have started a patreon uh so if you're into that i'm doing a couple of patreon exclusives one of them is i learned the news in real time and comment on it. It's mostly horrifying, but I attempt to make it funny. And the other one is, I rate and

review American politicians. I started with Marsha Blackburn, did Lindsey Graham this week. We'll get to all these motherfuckers eventually. So, if you're into that or just want to support your boy, which I would very much appreciate, you can go to patreon.com slash Trey Crowder. Thank you all very much. Okay.

Me and Mark are here with us, as always, producer Matt. This is weekly skews. Tonight, the ongoing debacle that is the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. We came, we saw, we fucked everything up, and then we left. We will do our best to make sense of a horrific situation. And for that, we'll be joined by our guest tonight. Stan Meyer, who is a former clandestine intelligence officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency who served four tours in Afghanistan working counterterrorism operations.

In other words, this guy's head to toe legit. That will be the bulk of our conversation tonight, I believe. But first, we will attempt to lighten the mood. And with that in mind, the Daily Dumbass. Matt, graphic, please. Tonight's D.D. Texas Governor Greg Abbott for, well, everything, really,

but his inclusion in this segment this evening is particularly karmic in nature. Breaking news, everybody. Matt, play the clip. We are continuing to follow breaking news from the state capital where in just the last half hour, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has announced he has tested positive for coronavirus. New videos and photos from the governor's social media show just last night that he was at a public event greeting guests while not wearing a mask.

KPRC2's Bill Spencer is joining us live from the newsroom now with the latest. bill yeah how about that so listen you know it's not generally uh cool to applaud someone contracting an infectious disease but when that person has spent uh their recent career ensuring that the maximum amount of his constituents possible contract said disease i feel like it's noteworthy yeah and the double infuriating part of this is like he gets daily testing because he's the governor, which I guess is appropriate, if you're going to be seen that many people. But also, they already put him on monocle and what do you call it, monocle antibodies or whatever. He's getting like free Cadillac treatments, taxpayer expense that no one else can even get to your own of ventilator as a precaution.

Right. And he's also fully vaccinated. So, I mean, like, you know, presumably and statistically, he will be fine, which is what? you want for somebody who's vaccinated because the vaccine fucking works but uh yeah just after all his bullshit it's just you know there's a little bit of schadenfreude involved with him uh contracting it i think maybe desantis will be next let's talk like just got a new alert he's just like is announced penalties for school districts that have mass mandates and by the way they started drive through regeneron treatment facilities so if you don't want to get the free thing that definitely

keeps you from getting it for the most part. You can get the very expensive treatment to assuage the symptoms. The fact that one of his campaign daughters has a big stake in regenerize, just a coincidence, I'm sure. He is such a fucking bag of shit. Actively working against the preventative measures while pushing the reactive measures that he has a large financial stake in is just like top shelf fucking lizard person bullshit, you know what I mean? Like, he's such a fucking scumbag. Yeah, more and more, I'm reminded of that quote

from season two of the wire. Frank Sabacca says, we used to make things in this country, build things. Now it's just one man stick his hand in another man's pocket. It's like it pretty much explains everything. It's just a ponsie scheme being run by the governor. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, let's see.

Her first honorable mention for Daily Dumbass is fucking birds. dumb-ass goddamn birds for not having not wearing flame retardant feathers. This is Louis Gohmert. Is it Gohmert or Gomer?

I can never remember. It's Gohmert. Right, yeah, because it's like, right. He's, yeah, he's American, so it's Gomert, you know. This ain't no French bullshit. Yeah, I know Frue, Frue, Parisians up in here. All right, anyway, listen to what Louis Gomer had to say, talking about the Green New Deal.

But some of the crazy things in it, let's plant flowers on the side of the road. Let's study impact collisions between animals and humans on the road. What about the windmills? The windmills kill so many birds, and yet they're taking us toward the Green New Deal. Yeah, well, and another part of that Green Deal is the huge solar farm that they have out on the border of California and Nevada, thousands of acres of concave mirrors that magnify the sun. toward three towers, heat up the liquid in there and turn turbines, but they weren't anticipating that there would be hundreds and thousands of what they would call flamers, because when the birds

fly through, if they survive the windmills, then they hit that magnified sun, explode in flame, and down they go bird guts all over the mirror. So that takes some cleaning up. This is the green stuff that's just out of control and is going to bring the nation down. Think of the birds, Mark. Think of the bird children. Who will think of the bird children? Louis Gohmert, that's who. I'm just thinking ahead to like once climate change is undeniable or should be undeniable.

Like we're still going to hear all this disinformation because they'll be like, oh, that forest fire wasn't because of global warming. It's because a solar panel caused a bird to explode and it flew to California and set the redwoods on fire or whatever um i mean we're just like we trapped like somebody's the other days like this is what's going to happen is like yeah it'll be hot outside but instead of being global warming is real it's going to be like china hacker thermostat you know right it also so like first of all they don't give a fuck about birds they like they love to shoot birds the most popular you know show and the history of their side of the fence was all about a bird shooting

family you know what i mean like the fucking the emperors of shooting birds, they don't give a fuck about birds, but secondly, like, also, we're talking about ultimately the fate of mankind, you know what I mean? And I think, like, millions of birds fly into the side of buildings every year and die. And listen, I'm not for birds dying unnecessarily, but I'm just saying no one is trying to cancel buildings, you know, we've got to have buildings and I feel the same way about solar panels like yeah I'm sure that that he didn't just make that up I'm sure that is like a thing that does happen but it's in no way an invalidation of renewable energy sources going forward first of all birds don't hit for almost anybody

wake you up in the morning secondly a couple weeks ago we played a clip of Trump's saying the Green New Deal was going to make you get rid of Windows. And he was mad about that. But windows kill more birds than solar panels by large Martin, my bet. Right. Pick a lady, pro bird or anti-bird. I can't figure out. The public board platform has to come down on a side of where they stand on birds.

Them, in an effort to prop up fucking oil and coal and stuff, them going like full-bore pro-bird would be a person. appropriately hilarious, I think, like them picking up the pet calls of we're trying to save birds' lives while burning the planet down. The funniest outcome would be some Republican congressman turning hugely pro-windmill because they kill birds, like after a seagull steals his sandwich. Yeah, I mean, that would make a lot more sense, you know, if they became pro-windmill because they killed birds.

Like, we're trying to kill as many birds as possible, and windmills are doing. they have to be personally they have to be personally impacted you got to like seagulls please steal leon goreman sandwich uh they all have to be personally impacted like i was listening to a podcast like about how much like for example this is off topic a little bit the supreme court stephen prior sucks real hard on criminal justice issues and i'm trying to figure out why he hates why he hates crime and criminals so much makes he shouldn't have rights but then someone discover that he's been mugged like five or six times yeah he's It's like we don't have no Fourth Amendment because Stephen Breyer is a really punchable, muggable face.

All right. Our next honorable mention for Daily Dumbass is Americans for just assuming that we have a right to be alive. Here's Marjorie Taylor Green doing what she does. Play it, Matt. So while the news tries to tell us the hospitals are slam-packed with COVID, that's just not the case. Everyone needs to get back down, back down to common sense, and remember that, you know, we're human. We can't live forever. We are going to catch all kinds of diseases and illnesses and other viruses, and we get hurt sometimes.

So I'm all for, let's be rational with this. Let's be careful. Let's be cautious. And let's not turn into an authoritarian regime that forces shots in arms of people that don't want it. We're all going to die. yeah suck it up uh i first of all just how stupid we've gotten about this shit she's like only 30% of i see u things are

covid like we have an extra 30% of iCU beds laying around in america right i know that that's the whole that's the context of the clip you just saw as she's saying she's talking about the overcrowding of hospitals and ICU beds and stuff and she's like listen it's not just covid it's car accidents it's cancer patients whatever it's like yep everyone everyone knows we that is the point the point is we need this space in these hospitals for those people the general like things that happen to human beings and they are being overcrowded and taken up because of all these unnecessary COVID patients like that everyone well no they don't everyone doesn't know that clearly but I'm saying like that's just assumed again that's

the whole point of the thing, but she's trying to make it just like, gotcha moment where she's like, you know, people get hit by buses too. It's like, yeah, no shit. And they need somewhere to go. Yeah. And like if I have my brother's, the Green New Deal stuff would be a lot stronger. And we mandate the cars have to get smaller and have better sight lines and be less heavy. So we're better fuel mileage, but also so less pedestrians will get hit. We could do that too. But like, you don't want to do that. So just let's all go to the hospital. Let's all be permanently injured and go to the hospital in every possible way all the time uh let's all shoot each other stab each other hit each other with cars and cough at each other and that's what freedom is and it's just like

i can't wrap my head around like you want cheap health care like but you can't you can't have an extra 30% of people going to hospital and you don't have the capacity for it and this we don't we just we can't draft a million people to be doctors and have them graduate medical school by Thursdays I don't know what the fuck you want to happen I remember what's saying with these people yeah but she's been yeah go ahead oh I was going to cue that next

clip because I she car is on a break and she's fucking using her time whinesley baby check out this clip she's fully on one here $1.5 million budget is an Antifa Jobs program I'm going full-time

Antifa. I got my resume lined up what what is that supposed to mean just that it's like it's for a bunch of fucking liberal shit which means antifa is going to be benefiting from it or something is that what's she's saying i think it's that everyone to the left of mitt romney is definitely in antifa and the people who would work in wind and solar are not doing it for the money because they have technical expertise, it's because they want to overthrow America. So, uh, if you, if you, if you, if you want to get a job, a high pay, like, it pays like three times what, like working on a oil rig works, if you want to work on a solar

form, therefore you paid America. So yeah, that's pretty much what we're going for. All right. So producer, Matt, listen, let's, uh, in an effort to get to the primary topic, let's do, I just want to do one more honorable mention. It's, uh, house geo, leader Kevin McCarthy or maybe I guess his fans so much that he has fans

for just being who they are look at this sweet new merch that Kevin McCarthy has put out for true Patriots on his website if you're only listening it's a bright red t-shirt that says in white letters

moron in very large font on the front of it and then in markedly smaller font, it explains that moron is a term coined by Nancy Pelosi referring to freedom-loving Americans who oppose mask mandates. So if you're walking down the street and just pass, you know, any given person, all they're going to see is that you have labeled yourself a moron, which I find convenient. I hope these shirts are a big hit.

I hope they really go for it, you know, I hope he, he, yeah, I hope he sees the result he's looking for. But on his website, it says that they should buy this moron shirt if they consider themselves to be a, quote, top patriot. They got top patriots working on this, Mark, top patriots who are morons. It's just so, it's one of those things that seems fake. It's like self-parity, you know? Like, how do you make that funnier than it just already is in and of it?

You ever seen those parody of a parody I'm with stupid shirts with the arrow pointing straight up at your own head? It's sort of like what's going on there. But it's like, so the context of this is like

the Senate doesn't have a mass mandate and the House does. The reason is all the senators are vaccinated and the House is like 170 people who weren't. But they always be like, how come they have freedom on the Senate side but we're being oppressed over here

and you're a U.S. Congress where you're not being fucking oppressed. You get paid almost 200 grand a year plus a ton of perks to act like an asshole. and it's also they're trying to we talk all the time how the likes people

they try to do Trump ship but they don't have the juice for it but they're trying to recapture the magic of deplorables right right

but deplorable is not you're kind of being called like an edge lord or a little bit naughty there's like a badass element to the word deplorable

like for those people it's like yeah it's like I'm a maverick I'm fucking you know I'm a rebel I'm deplorable, but Moron is just

moron. There's no badass element to calling yourself a fucking moron. Nope. None at all. Yeah. Kevin McCarthy is telling us to support is exactly what he thinks of them

and they're going to buy the t-shirt. Yeah. All right. Well, so speaking of Moronic, let's get into it. Mark, the the, uh, the Afghanistan quagmire, the conclusion, will it ultimately be the conclusion, who knows,

but how it's unfolding right now. You want to, won't you get us into this, please? Yeah, so Trump signed a negotiated, a ceasefire in exchange for us leaving Afghanistan with Taliban a while back, and the deadline is coming up. Right, and he did that without, the Afghan government wasn't part of those negotiations. It was just with the Taliban. Yeah, I mean, I think everyone understood the Taliban. Taliban was going to be the Afghan government eventually. So, yeah, so we pulled out, the Taliban walked into Kabul

and took a city of 6 million people without firing a shot, basically. And you want to see what the vibe is like in Kabul right now. We've got a couple different videos, but here's a CNN's report from yesterday about what's happening right now. As soon as we leave our compound, it's clear who is now in charge. Taliban fighters have flooded the capital. Smiling and victorious, they took the city of 6 million people in a matter of hours, barely firing a shot. This is a site I honestly thought I would never see scores of Taliban fighters and just behind us the U.S. Embassy compound.

Some carry American weapons. They tell us they're here to maintain law and order. Everything is under control. is under control. Everything will be fine, the commander says. Nobody should worry. What's your message to America right now? America already spent enough time in Afghanistan. They need to leave, he tells us. They already lost lots of lives and lots of money. People come up to them to pose for photographs. America, but they seem friendly at the same time. It's utterly bizarre.

Yeah, just your friendly neighborhood jihadist, Mark. Yeah, I mean, like, we're going to get into a little bit more, but the Taliban isn't al-Qaeda, and we keep playing this game, we conflate the two of them. And they are, the Taliban sucks. I mean, this is not, you've got to hand up the Taliban, but I'm seeing people being like, like, there was a press conference. The Taliban had a press conference where people were Afghan journalists who asked them pretty aggressive questions and they weren't killing people.

And there's actually a really funny exchange where somebody asked them, are we going to have freedom of speech in Afghanistan? And the guy said, how can you ask us about freedom of a speech when America doesn't even have it? Because Facebook is censoring conservative. So I was like, oh shit, that fucking talking point is all way to Afghanistan. And then, of course, John Jr. thought that was hilarious because he's a moron. But I was thinking about this morning when I was like flipping through HBO,

Max found something to watch while I did my cardio. and the uh there's like a bunch of new home alone movies on there that i didn't know existed like home alone four okay and home alone one called holiday heist i think and i was sitting oh is it a different kid every time or what i think so yeah and uh so i was then thinking oh i'd no idea they're out there still doing that but i guess somebody's making a buck off of it and i guess that's been how most americans think about the afghat war for the last 15 years right it's just like none of this I don't know

man it's all bad it's all fucking right it's like well that's kind of the bit like that's sort of the big

the only takeaway that I think there is to this is just that it's all fucking tragic and awful like there's a lot of finger pointing

throwing blame and stuff like that the blame falls on fucking America as as a country and a government and just an entity at large like

this whole thing is I think that initially going into Afghanistan after 9-11 was, you know, I think justified at the time, but everything that transpired after that, the way it all played out. Like, we never should have been there for 20 goddamn years. But also, you can't just, you can't just say, fuck it. After having already done that thing, you never should have done, you then have an obligation to, uh, handle it a little better than this has been handled, I think. And it's a deal that Trump made that Biden, I guess he felt like his hands were tied. So what's he going to do? He's got to follow through on it.

But I'm just, it happened right now. And right now, Joe Biden is the president. So, like, you know, he has to bear some of the responsibility. But anyway, we'll keep talking about it. But what are you thinking about it? I mean, the root call, like, people are arguing. about who's fault, what president's fault this is and all that shit. And it's like

it's so many people's fault that I don't right. Right. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney held through the whole entire Obama administration the shit was going on. Countless diplomats and different cabinet members and shit over the years. Like you said, it's fucking, it's a ton of people's fault.

You know? Yeah. People are like, why did the Afghan police and army surrender so quickly or whatever? It's like there was like something that I found astounding is that the Afghan police hadn't been paid in like almost two months. So the Taliban offered them all

150 bucks just to go home. So they did. It's like, how does the Taliban have better supply chain logistics for dispersing money than the U.S. government? And that's, it's just so much graft and corruption, but it was never going to work. And we built that into the system. Like,

um, the thing is like, we don't talk a lot about four posse on the show. That's for, uh, you know, what reason? It's like, I don't, understand enough about Afghan politics and which warlords are outlawed with who and with the different tribal factions and rivalries that go back a thousand years and there are different religious beliefs and languages. I don't understand that shit. The problem

is neither is George W. Bush or Condoleezza Rice or Donald Rumsfeld. And that's the core fucking problem of all this. Um, is we all went absolutely insane after 9-11. We all did. We wanted to fucking lash out and punish somebody for, for feeling unsafe and we think we're entitled to feel safe as Americans on our own shores. And, somebody had to pay and this is and we've been doing it for 20 years and no one can explain what the fuck we're even trying to accomplish there was a there was a report the special this special inspector general for afghan reconstruction it came out in 2015 and people were posting clips from it today uh screen grabs and it's just like just an utter failure

like like in 2015 this guy was like there's we don't know what we're doing still it's 14 years in we don't know like we're not right not accomplishing jack shit there is something I found astounding like the the diplomatic staff the state department's like i think 7900 people which is about the same number of people the department of defense has in its various bands like there are like there are more color like color bar color guard tuba players in the military than that are diplomats in the i in america it's like what the fuck are we doing man like yeah um yeah it's like they said because i worked in the fed i worked for the d oe in oak ridge none of this shit, but still, I've been worked for the federal government a little bit, and being in show business, there's a very famous quote in show business from William Goldman, who says, he said, the number one thing you need to know is nobody knows anything. Like, no one. No one knows what the fuck they're doing. They're all just like throwing darts at the wall or whatever. And in my experience, working for the government, there was a lot of that going on too. Like, it's just fucking, you know, the blind leading the blind in a lot of ways.

political appointees and shit, people get put in positions. They don't know what the fuck they're doing. There are people who do, but they're outweighed by just this, you know, massive machine that generally doesn't, it seems like. So we've got a lot more to talk about on this topic, obviously, and I want to go ahead and get our guest out here to join us for it. Our guest tonight, as I mentioned up top, is a former clandestine intelligence officer, with the Defense Intelligence Agency who served four tours in Afghanistan working counterterrorism operations. He also served in Iraq as a Marine Infantryman and is now a writer, actor, and playwright living in California's high desert. Everybody, please welcome Stan Mayer.

Hey, Stan. How's it going, Jans? Hey, good to see you, man. Yeah, also, yeah, Stan, he's also done the well-read podcast. I've known Stan for a little bit. and he's a good dude. So it's good to have you here. Stan, if you could just sort of give us kind of an overview of your general experience,

just kind of your background, you know, so people know where you're coming from. Sure, sure. I feel like I just came out of the closet a little bit. I don't know that I've ever publicly told anyone that I was a clandestine intelligence officer, but here I am. Oh, is Trey going to Gitmo? It's fine, there. You love it.

They have good jerk chicken. I got recruited in the agency out of the hospital. I got wounded in Iraq as a Marine, and I was in the Naval Hospital in D.C. And I ended up rubbing elbows with some intel guys. I thought they were hiring me to be a security guard. But anyway, I went through the training pipeline, and I ended up spending the better part of seven years

sitting in shipping containers with Taliban commanders, low-level guys, some higher-level guys. talking to them, trying to get them to dime out their friends, and that's basically how we would establish relationships and figure out the priority of who we're going to kill first and who are going to capture, and who gets to stay off that naughty or nice list, you know? And that was essentially my job in, you know, write reports and send them back to D.C. And maybe they ended up in the presidential daily brief. And then he wouldn't read it or misinterpreted or whatever.

And we continue to, you know, wag that. dog essentially i stopped doing that when i realized that the war wasn't meant to be one which took me 16 years that it just kind of was meant to go on forever and uh right maybe that's my foil hat speaking but i kind of saw that and i was like i feel like i killed that guy like or was part of the operation to kill some guy or i hunted some dude for like four months and some other guys went out to kill him and i'm like that's like the hundred time we killed that same guy and somebody looked at me across the table just eating a bowl of lucky charms well i just watched the dude engaged with his rifle in combat and he just kind of smiled at me he said yeah dude same

guy it's always the same guy and i was like holy shit we're here for some other reason that i thought and then i'll send my little firecrackers and american flag you know underwear went out the window and i just want to come home um yeah i mean that's one thing i've wondered about with you guys everybody that served over there like is there a i mean it seems like you kind of came to a conclusion like this before now and that's part of why you left but is there this feeling of like all that shit was for nothing you know like massive sacrifices were made by so many Americans and the seeing this unfold is it like god damn that was there was no point to any of that or do you kind of just understand that even you know at a certain point well brother

this is my uh my second back-to-back you know L for wars I got to tell you I kind of do I got to digest and I'm still digesting it'll be a life process you know I had I was in a unit that was in a lot of combat in the Marines I had 48 KIA and one tour this summer 2005 when I was 23 years old that's a lot I mean not by nom standards but by right country global war on terrorism that's a lot and and then Iraq just kind of shut down everyone went home and said like no we're good so what the fuck and then we're in Afghanistan and uh this shit's been going on for 20 years brother i mean like i i'm like rage typing like kermit the frog the past like two days like manifestos that i'm like threatening to send to the washington post but they're all like anger at everyone else at like americans for shutting their brains off for nobody gave a shit and then all a sudden this this happened right now i'm trying to exercise a little empathy right now because I didn't start, I didn't come home becoming, you know, like an activist, which I surely could have.

I'm exhausted, man. And I'm not saying it's, you know, like I promised a lot of guys, you know, Taliban guys, local guys, guys are helping me that I could, you know, if they worked with me, that they might have a better chance of staying alive. And they all kind of hedged our bets, you know, some of them had two daddies. and there was me, and then there was the Taliban, right? And you kind of have to do both. Stay off the list for, you know, both sides. Anyway, the point is that we saw this coming a million miles away. We knew that there was no way that we're going to protect those guys.

All those promises were for not. It was all just kind of to continue moving the ball forward until maybe somebody woke the fuck up in the United States and said, hey, are we still at war? But everyone forgot. Right. I don't feel like that's hyperbolic. I mean, like, we all kind of been insulated from this Afghanistan thing that's been going on for two decades. And I was never there as a Marine. Those guys in Lashkargaa and sang in, holy shit, right?

And it continued. And we didn't even see the stuff in the newspaper. We're not talking about the news, nothing. so you were talking about how you know we saw it coming a million miles away we're like this is just it's just you know it's the same guy over and over again it's the you know the forever war basically so like was there ever at that by the time it got to that point was there ever a you know acceptable way out was it just like it's going to go on forever or something like this was going to happen eventually you know you know In your opinion, I mean. Yeah, I mean, when we step foot out there, right? So we had a good show of force, a good team effort coming out the gate, you know, Operation Anaconda, we're up in the Toribora Mountains, smoking out, you know, Taliban, hooking up with the Northern Alliance, finding all the old Muge fighters from back in the day. And, you know, we got SF dudes on horseback riding through.

and then we stayed, right? And it was kind of a little operation, and then Iraq happened, and that was a big operation. Afghanistan kind of happened in the background. We weren't planning on getting out of there. We waited until we could retrieve our assets from Iraq and put them in Afghanistan. And then what happened?

2008, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, Afghanistan blows up all of the asses there all the equipment everything out of these bases start popping up and uh I mean that we we never intended to pull out but some politician was going to end up you know rolling snake eyes and and you know like the musical chairs and he was going to end up without a chair and this one's Biden right and like I'm not really impressed with how he did it because we could have really put some shit in place to take care of some of these people that we promised that they'd be taken care of or even, you know, setting up women to be mayors of villages or provinces even. I don't think anyone's a mayor of a province that's a female in Afghanistan. But, but like, and to take the happy snaps with them, the politicians to stand there next to them and say, look what we've done.

Here's a woman in Afghanistan. She's in charge. And then to not send her a plane ticket before we pull out in the night without telling anybody, you know. And these Afghan fighters, man, look, the A&A, the Afghan National Army, the Afghan National Police, right? We're not talking about a well-oiled machine of war fighters, but we are talking about some guys who made a choice and was not safe for them. You don't put on an A&A uniform and expect to live every day, right? Like everyone's trying to kill you. And maybe they're putting that uniform on because they don't want me trying to kill them.

right so so they're hedging their beds too but those guys died as many of them died yearly as uh as americans died in the entire 20 year duration right and you know you can fact check me on that but it's ballpark is what we're looking at and uh they didn't always get paid on time right the gasoline that we'd give them to put in their trucks their little danger rangers with their technical, you know, turrets on the back and whatnot. They're driving around. They have low armor, low anything.

They're kind of trained, you know. RSF guys have taught a lot of dudes how to do some cool stuff, but they don't really have it. That gasoline kind of disappears as soon as it goes in the tank. You know, we'd have lots of these rangers that we'd have the A&A guys patrolling in, no fucking wheels on them because the second we'd put them out there brand new, they would just get kind of scrapped, you know, and it all kind of go away. and we didn't have the point.

I don't know where my point is anymore. I'm just ran. No, it's all right. You're doing fucking great, buddy. Those guys you're talking about, they've become part of the narrative too,

I think, of people talking about asking like, what were they doing? Why didn't they do anything about this? You know, like they're fucking running. They're not doing anything. We trained them all this time for nothing.

But like, that's fucking, that's bullshit, right? Like you said, like it's a massive choice to have even made to be there in the first place. And it's not like,

Like, they just, like, putting it out there as though they just don't give a fuck or they turn tail at the earliest, you know, opportunity or whatever is pretty fucked up, right? Like, that's not the deal. That was my point. They're just, they're screwed. The Afghans were fucked when we decided that Afghanistan was the enemy or that the bad guys were in Afghanistan. Right. You know, five minutes after the plane hit the tower, the tower, right? has been Lottin, right?

We're not talking about going after the guys in the nice clean, you know, Shalwar counties or whatever they call them in Saudi Arabia. But, you know, like, we're not over there knocking on their door. We're in, man, I went into villages in Kandahar. I would kind of roll up, man, and it was cool. Like me is just a 6'4 white dude and coming out of a striker vehicle because I kind of, I could go tap an army unit and say, you guys go in this village? They say, nope, but we will.

And I just jump in. They drive me there. And I could hop out. I'd say, who's in charge here? And some key, you know, local elder would jump out. And he'd invite me to like a chicken fight, a cockfight or something like that and, like, feed me. And we'd talk. And they would think that I was Russian because they had no fucking idea about 9-11, right?

Holy shit. That happened. All right? Yeah. Wow. They're screwed. We weren't going over there to get refugees out someday, but we're going to use every single last one of these people, these human beings.

I mean, some of these kids that I used to sit with that would help facilitate what I needed them to do, bring the information about other guys or they were young, you know, like, I mean, not minors because we're not supposed to be talking to minors, but, like, in their 30s, right? Yeah. And watching this and feeling pretty betrayed, and I don't blame them. They'd have to, right? You'd have to feel betrayed after.

I mean, they were just, like you said earlier, talking about the things that could have been done better, just like, they were just fucking left hanging out to drive, man. Like, I mean, kind of literally. Who are people hanging off of airplanes trying to get out of the country, you know? And people died doing that. I mean, it's just a fucking nightmare. And talking about the refugees, I wanted to producer Matt, if you have that clip of Laura Angeram, if you could put that up whenever you've got it, she said.

And is it really our responsibility to welcome thousands of potentially unvetted refugees from Afghanistan? All day, we've heard phrases like, we promised them. Well, who did? did you did you well what your uh yeah i mean like it's like that's that's the fucking right a stat that i saw yesterday that blew my mind is like the median age of an afghani is 18 years old so the majority of afghans were even born on fucking 9-11 and it's just wild to me the complete lack of sympathy that people in power in america seem to have for you know right yeah as somebody who's just you know sat on my ass and watched it all unfold

I see that clip, and my response is also, yes, we 100% do have an obligation to do that. It seems to me, but I'm wondering, Stan, what you think about that mentality. Well, we're not really in a nation of accountability anymore. Yeah. We were kind of taught slowly over time that we could say it wasn't me. And in the last four years, it was really hammered in there. like it wasn't me is good enough and then you just walk away and watch it you know let it burn you have to look at it sure you know stand out there promising the role to anybody that's willing to

dime out their buddy so that I can send some seals after you know you know mohammedy or whatever they're not going to honor those promises right and these are things that are just kind of part of the game. The deal is that these people, like I keep saying, we're hedging their bets and they were kind of hoping that maybe this time, you know, maybe these people were young enough, maybe these like 20-year-old local grape farmers were saying, like, maybe if I work with Stan, you know, maybe I'm not old enough to remember what happened when the Russians were here or, you know, the Northern Alliance or anything like that or what happened before then. But like these guys might, might be my ticket, you know. Yeah.

And they're not, you know, they get it now, they get it now, but my guys is like what happens with our next bullshit war, right? And it's going to be bullshit, whatever it is. And they send some new kid that is doing what I used to do, just trying to find who the bad guys are and where they are and when they're there so that our special operators can go out and find them and kill them. And nobody wants to talk to them because I remember what happened, right? It's the same thing when what's his nuts with a white hair came out and dumped all that WikiLeaks bullshit with all the files and the source data and everything. And now how are you going to get a CIA case officer in a room with somebody that's going to talk to them and trust them that they're not going to sell them out or that they can even protect their information, right?

Who's going to talk to us? It's credibility and we're running out of it, but we don't need it anymore because, Nobody, I mean, the diplomacy is not there. We're just, we're just on our knees sucking off defense industry. That's all we care about. All we're going to do. That's what's running it. We can't vote.

Right, because that, well, that's. We're stupid to figure out anything. We're, we can figure out we should put a mask on, right? Like, it's, it's going to continue, and it's going to be them running the shit, right? Right. But like you were saying, so I saw it infuriated me. It was like, something like, are the $2 trillion dollars we spent in Afghanistan? something like 80 to 90% of it

it went in American contractors' pockets so it went back in the American economy but it's not spent on anything useful. It always went to buy guys from Raytheon a pool or whatever houseboat and it's just fucking maddening man. Yeah, sorry.

I can't imagine how you feel about it. It must be like grief is only that I can imagine it must be, you know? Well, brother, I have a kind of wonder yours kind of vibe coming out of Afghanistan. I grew up there, right? Not like 10-year-old BMX bike growing up, but, you know,

late 20s, early 30s, I went through that transition of like what was, you know, a young man into an actual adult male and saw a lot of war. And I spent a lot of, you know, spent my holidays out there year after year. And I, I won't say I don't miss it, but I won't say that I belong there either. I can't expect that there's going to be some great evil someday that's going to be wearing a uniform that we're going to be charging up hills after. And our generation just got to fight the war that was meant to cost money. You know, there's a book.

I mean, this is not a new concept. There's a book by Smedley Butler, who was a Marine that, had two medals of honor and uh it's called war as a racket very short taking it you know like one good shit to read and uh it's uh it's as relevant now as it's ever been there's not one piece of dated information in that it is absolutely nuts and it was just that's a general in the marines that figured it out when somebody sent him like i don't know back in the day what would be now like a billion dollars worth of mosquito nets that there were no mosquitoes for it. He was like, what the fuck is this?

Yeah, just what fuck it was. Yeah, well, that's... If you don't know who, uh, Smedley Butler is my favorite American characters. That dude's, uh, has a fascinating a, he was the center of a bunch of American controversies and foreign adventurism. And he ended up being, uh, I'm not sure you have described his eventual ideology, but, uh, you know, you get the, the bonus army and the business plot and all that shit. The discovery is, just get his Wikipedia page if you want to see like 60 years of American

and weirdness, I'll live by one guy. Yeah, but you just, you look at how all this is unfolding and you were saying, but they're not going to trust us anymore and like what we've left in place over there. And it's not hard to see another eventual war, you know, in the future coming up over there, in which case it will be the same people who get rich as fuck off of it and the same people who die over there and it'll just be the same fucking bullshit over and over again

and it's just you know, I don't know it's just disheartening to say the least. It'll be a, it'll be some guy with weird facial hair. They always have weird facial hair and they'll tell us he's just as bad as Hitler

and yeah, that's always the case. Well, I mean, look, you guys know where the opium comes from and you know what they make with opium and it's not just you know the guy in the alley um we there's a lot to be invested in in Afghanistan and uh the Taliban might look like they're running shit now but like we're not talking about again a well-oiled machine now they can do a lot more with a lot less right they can basically spank the shit out of America with a sandal you know um but they're not in

charge of the opium they're not going to be for long you know wait until they find out their new daddy is China. And then where are we going to be back there begging Afghans to, you know, tell us where the bad guys are? This shit's not ending. We're pulling out now and it's ugly. I'm mad. I don't, look,

I'm happy that Biden said like, it's enough. We're done. I'll be the one that pulls the plug on it because like somebody's got to end the fucking thing. But God damn, man, like a plan,

any kind of plan whatsoever would have been real cool. Like just, just anything, you know? anything like a leaflet drop get your shit and get the fuck out anything you know but nothing not a damn and we got we still got soldiers out there that are they got their asses hanging out they're you know laying down suppressive fire on the runways trying to get people

from clinging off the side i mean that's the most terrible thing that i've seen in recent history since i guess george floyd right like we're just can't top one thing after another is a guy stuck to the landing gear. Not even the guy is falling off the plane, the dude just flapping on the side of a C-17, flying probably at 20,000 feet, you know, frozen, stuck. Yeah. It's like a wooden sock.

I wonder what that looked like when they landed. Just fucking desperation, man. So is that kind of like, I feel like you sort of alluded to it. You're watching all this shit, and me and Mark were talking about how, like, I don't even know what the takeaway is other than this is. all just fucking terrible. Everything about this fucking sucks.

You know, all the fucking blaming and finger pointing is ultimately moot because it's just a shit show top to bottom. But like, if you could kind of, this is like kind of a bullshit question, but sort of summarizes how you've been feeling when you're looking at this recently. Is it that, yeah, like you said, I'm glad Biden, somebody had to get us, somebody had to end it. It had to end at some point, but there were a lot of things that could have been done a lot better. Is that basically how you feel about it overall? I mean, everything could have been done a lot better. I mean, like any single aspect of it could have been done better. The only thing

that was done correctly was the ending of it, right? The pullout, right? But I mean, damn, like a little fed side manner and like look i'm not talking just for the sake of you know humanitarian effort saying like we have a lot of assets down there on the ground and people right and and some of these afghans are are are important to america you know uh i met one of these guys in the united states once and uh i i remember him telling me the last time I saw him how difficult it was going to be for him to be an American. I say, hey, man, a lot of guys that look a lot like me are going to always tell you your piece shit because you're from over there. But I will tell you that you are the American

dream, right? I don't know anything about that. They immigrated over here and got to work. And they did what some of our grandparents did, the hard thing, leaving home. And like, there's an American spirit there. We just fucking just shit all over. it. We just, you know, too, too sad, too bad, buddy. Welcome to the Taliban run Afghanistan. There's a, these people were important to the United States. Our equipment was important to the United States. It really chaps my ass thinking about whose hands that gear ends up in. Yeah. What about that? What about that part specifically, man? Like what, like, because there's been a lot of talk about all the shit that was just basically abandoned that now the Taliban has control of, apparently.

Like, how does that happen in the first place? It was hasty, man. There was no time. I mean, it was funny to say that. They had 20 years to get their shit together. Right, right. We could have just got a parking lot somewhere, Bagram. I mean, anything we declared was our land, we could have taken. And they could have just parked them all on any of the bases that we're annexing or closing down or something like that, which is all... ridiculously wasteful these bases we'd build and they'd be like oh never mind we don't like this area anymore all the cool bad guys and the good targets are in jolalabad shut it down and uh and we would leave right spend 30 million dollars on some shipping containers and some wire and some satellites and now we're moving someplace we could have moved all this shit somewhere and hit it with some

thermite some white phosphorus or whatever just melted the shit out of it and went home but now we have Taliban command look some of these these Taliban guys are guys that used to work for us right some of them were A&A some of them were in these little you know special operations groups that the our green berets were training for years out there that are not unfamiliar with you know and then said fuck this I'm going I'm going over and now they're working for the Taliban and now they have a scan eagle right and now you're a 20 year lance corporal in the Marines that's humping through some bullshit shale covered mountain you know with a tripod on your back. And the bad guy could see exactly where you're shitting, right? And now you can't figure out why they always know exactly where to blow you up, at least before we had the element of, you know, like happenstance that they might miss us, you know. But it's all out there, armored vehicles, all that shit just makes every, and it's because they don't give a fuck about soldiers, man. They don't care.

Right. You all wait flags at them afterwards, right? We're all going to tell them good job and thank you for your service. and the politicians are going to, you know, cry when Lee Greenwood sings, you know, I'm proud of the American, whatever the fuck. It doesn't matter. They don't care. If they cared, they would have made sure that didn't happen.

We almost, it's like we almost want them to have the upper hand. It could justify maybe spend another $100 trillion or whatever in 10 years. Once the shot, got a good foothold over there. Yeah. Yeah, man. that won't be surprising at all if that's exactly what happens mark what you got what you got anything just the opioid thing made me think the the the poppies you know the Taliban did my understanding to air quote good things was cracking down an opium trade and trying to

crack down on child molesting but the uh like I remember when I gave up and trying to figure out what the hell was happening over there I saw this news story about two DE agents getting killed to remote province in Afghanistan. And I was like, what the fuck is the DA doing it? Oh, they're trying to stop. We have the CIA is doing it. Now I understand. It's just like, just like, eh, what are you going to do?

I don't know. Yeah. Well, uh, listen, Stan, this has been awesome. Always awesome talking to you. Uh, you're, uh, fucking, like I said, uh, top head to toe legit. We appreciate you being here. I didn't want to ask. I don't know if you have anything, but like,

I don't know if you even want people to follow you or anything like that. But if you do, you can now tell people how they can do that if you want to. Or you can tell them all to fuck off. That's fine. It's up to you. No, I'm looking at these comments over here. I don't think anyone likes me. I'm kind of a downer.

Look, I'm a writer. And I pontificate. And I put that on Instagram. I don't tweet. I don't give a shit. I'm working on a novel. If you want to see pieces of that coming through, it's in my Instagram and stuff. actual um that's it right on they give us a bunch of shit in the comments too stans so i wouldn't

worry about it all the time but there's plenty of people over here uh giving you love too uh but yeah no one's glad i'm happy all right well thank you so much buddy i'll uh you know i'll see you for too long we'll hang out and get a beer whatever and thanks for coming on uh well producer matt wants you to say your instagram again okay it's uh I'm putting it in this comment box, said it to them, mustache actual. Yeah, Trey, Matt, is a play. All of you gentlemen, it's just a pleasure every time I get to talk to you. Thank you for having me.

Thank you, Starr. Any time you need me, I'm more than willing to, you know, make everyone sad. Now, all you're doing is just talking about what the fuck. fucking shit is. So thank you for doing that. And yeah, we'll see you for too long. Thanks, Stan.

Appreciate it. All right, have a good one. Thanks there. See you. Stan Mayor, everybody. Here we got.

You're still sitting there. I'm trying to fucking... Matt, producer Matt, get rid of Stan so he doesn't just have to sit there staring at us wondering what the fuck is going on because I can't do it.

um thank you i'm back thank you stanne all right i'm just going to shut my computer off all right i love you guys take care uh dude i so one thing i was trying to figure out why they can't just the refugee process but a bunch of like you know horrible racism about foreigners and immigrants uh like has filtered into a political process and there's like how to get refugees in is really stringent and strident. And Trump not admitting any refugees until the clock was almost already running out. Fucked us, unless Congress is going to pass a new law. Or like, what it, it's very, it's just all awful. And you'd think that the president could just reach down to the bureaucracy and be like, no, we're going to take 100,000, 100,000 people out. You guys get on it. We'll figure it out,

you know. Yeah. But it's wild. Yeah, but that's what I'm like, we were talking earlier about, just that report that came out about sort of the strategy such that there was one over there, which there really wasn't on behalf of the federal government, you know? And it's like, like I said, they don't know what they're doing. You know what I mean? And they're all just like they have these like lofty goals or whatever, but they don't have a way to actually accomplish them or anything. People just say like, oh, it'd be good if we didn't have no more of this anymore. or somebody make that happen, you know what I mean?

But they don't know how to actually make it happen. And it just went on like that for 20 fucking years. They were promising to turn all the world's theocracies into democracies and to rid the world of terrorism. Now, think about how dumb you have to be to believe that promise and how naive. Like, it's like, you might as well promise we can all, like, have ponies. And it's, it's like, it's so weird how. small we think with their domestic priorities and how much we think we can just completely remake the world in our image. It's like Hillary used that ponies thing about

Medicare for all, right? But that's a much more easy thing to deliver than turning the entire Middle East into functioning parliamentary democracies or whatever. You know, at gunpoint. Yeah, right. No, yeah, no. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. It's like you just say shit. They just say shit. You know, it's like it would be good. if it was this way. But you can't just make that happen, you know, but that's sort of a politician's whole deal, I guess. I know we've got to wrap up.

We're talking to how crazy miracle went after 9-11, and I keep thinking about this buddy I used to have, I used to work with, who was like, like, pretty lib, he, you know, he was in the Peace Corps, right? And then 9-11 happened, and it completely shifted his worldview, and he became basically a neocon, right? And my whole thing was like, if you never, if you never factored in there being evil in the world

into your worldview, then you didn't actually have any beliefs to begin with. But like, we have these arguments. You'd be like, we need to turn these places to democracies because democracies don't go to war with each other, which is a rhetorical sleight of hand because Germany was a democracy until Hitler took power, then they went to war. So you're really, you're just, you're changing definitions of shit, right? And then also the reasons democracies don't go to war as often is because we're voting to send ourselves to war and our children to war and to spend our tax dollars on wars.

And we get tired of it if you feel lied to. So when we pulled out of Iraq, he got real mad. It's like, this is short-sighted. This is how this is going to end up backfiring. It's like, but the reason you want to turn those places in democracies is they won't go to war for the exact reason you're seeing Americans want to get out of this war. So you can't be like, America must become fascist. So we follow through a war to turn other places in democracies. It's also fucking crazy.

And it just ends up being the sick loop. And I don't know, man. It's a really sad day. Sorry for depressing everybody. No, well, again, it's just, you know, what are you going to do? just is what it is. There's no other way to talk about it. Something so fucked up other than acknowledging how fucked up it is. And on that uplifting note, we will leave you. I will take this very opportune moment to once again, plug my tour, go to well-readcomedy.com,

and also, if you want to see extra shit for me and want to support your boy, go to patreon.com slash Trey Crowder. But you ain't got to, and I love you like chicken either way. Thank you all very much for joining us, and you got some more. Go see Trey on the road. It'll be more fun than talking about Afghanistan. Yes, we're going to put that on the website. That's the plug. It's more fun than talking about Afghanistan. That is our bar.

Now, we try to have a good time. Come see us. Thank you all very much for joining us, and we'll be back next week on the skews. So you love you by.