NBC reporter Richard Engel is kind
of panicky about the United States'
decision to pull out of
Afghanistan.
In fact,
he argues that we are capitulating,
with who?
Well, he explains in
the next video.
Let's take a quick look.
>> The worst capitulation of
Western values in our lifetimes.
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 Cenk, I mean, we're talking
about reporters who are supposed to
engage in straight news reporting.
I guess, they're opening it up
to some editorial content and
commentary here.
But capitulating our values,
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
probably louder than anyone.
But I see Richards Engel's report
and number one he's in the 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
Taliban tremendous, basically gave
them a green light, don't worry,
these guys are irrelevant.
You'll steamroll them.
And that was done by Trump.
Okay, so he gives facts, but Noam
Chomsky talked about this actually,
in an interview I did with him.
He said, it's easy to
follow the media.
They do have facts.
They're not just making things up
out of whole cloth.
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 Western values,
what are we talking about here?
Now, it's easy to say,
Western values, democracy,
good guys, etc.
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 point they never tell you
is we also spent a lot of money in
media to radicalize Muslims in
Afghanistan.
There used to be miniskirts in
Afghanistan before we started our
propaganda.
And our propaganda was
the communists are atheists and
godless 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 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 reminds me of Sam Harris and
it's a silly,
it's what children do, okay?
So now even worse, Afghanistan was
a republic for all these years.
What are you talking about?
The so called government,
the Republic of Afghanistan,
collapsed in 11 days.
So that shows you that 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 it.
But that culture
never existed,
that Republic
was always a mirage.
He keeps referring to Afghans as
the three dudes he knows in Kabul,
who agree with him.
And he was like,
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 total fantasy land.
And that's what makes
me disappointed,
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 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,
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 Engel's 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 the 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 that 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 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
US 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 US
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 servicemembers 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 insurgent groups.
These are Afghan civilians,
innocent people who died as
a result of our drone strikes, our
missile strikes, 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 US military,
I just think that is a ridiculous
way of describing and
also speaking on behalf of Afghans.
>> No, it's worse than that,
that's just flat out propaganda.
I mean, that's shameful.
I think even Neo liberals have
left the building.
The only thing left is just
the military industrial complex.
And look, what 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 had to
surrender to the Taliban at all.
They had four times as many men in
the Afghan military as
the Taliban does.
They had billions of dollars of
American military equipment.
They didn't have to surrender
because Trump cut
them out of the deal.
Look, I'm giving Trump credit, no,
he's not wrong on that.
Every part of 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.
The only people who believe it now
basically people who watch MSNBC
and who was are just used to just
listening to TV and going okay,
whatever they tell me, I guess
the generals are always right.
And Jay Tapper and
Rachel Maddow are always right.
And Jake Tapper obviously on CNN.
And CNN and
MSNBC are indistinguishable, but
they even lost Matt Yglesias and
Josh Marshall and Kevin Drum.
So even a lot of the thinking
neoliberals are going, yeah,
that this coverage was horrific.
And so those are two excellent
examples in that one clip there
where he says, 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, Ana's right,
the 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.
A, and neither was the overwhelming
majority of the country.
Richard Engel there,
honesty, it was so
bad that it tipped over into lying.
Because he gave the impression to
unfortunately impressionable people
that watch television,
that, my God, the Afghans are so
ready for democracy and
occupation had worked so well.
And if we just stayed another 20
years, man, Western
values would have triumphed.
But instead, because we wouldn't do
more war, because of Biden and
Trump, and by the way,
75% of the American people,
that's why Western values lost.
If we just tried 200 more years of
war it would have worked.
So just turn off your TV.
This is total utter propaganda.