Episode #119
This episode discusses the poorly executed US withdrawal from Afghanistan and what we can do.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
DISCLAIMER: The below transcript was automatically generated and has not been reviewed to ensure complete accuracy. Any references or quotes should be taken directly from the audio recording and not the below transcript.
(00:00): Preview
Well, on this episode, we are talking about current events. We have got some incredible things happening over in Afghanistan, and we’re going to talk about what’s going on there and Joe Biden. So let’s get into it right now.
(00:17): Intro
Hey, this is Ryan S. Howard. Thanks for tuning into my podcast. I call it your faith at work, because we want to get your faith out of the church and into the world. We want our faith to be active, and I’m here to help you get unstuck and fulfill all the God-given potential that you were created with. I’m going to help you find your God-given assignment so that you can advance the kingdom every single day. We’re going to do that and work in the culture and in life visit Ryan S howard.com to learn more boy,
(00:45): Episode
Oh boy, is there a lot going on a lot of people infuriated with what is happening, what has happened over in Afghanistan, and I am included in those people who are infuriated. So on this episode, I want to give you a quick overview of what’s going on. What’s happened, why it’s a big deal, and we’re going to talk about some of the fallout and well, just why it’s so crazy and absurd to be in the situation we are in, in a nutshell what happened was, you know, we’ve had this, a war over in Afghanistan. We can argue whether we should have been there and all of that. But you know, in 2001, September 11 we had the terror attack on the twin towers in New York and around the U S and since then we have been on this war, been in this war over in Afghanistan, and we’ve had lots of successes.
(01:49):
And we have had a lot of support for getting out of Afghanistan, lots of you know, pretty much everybody wants that. And Donald Trump, before he left office, as president was had a plan together, a plan for a strong exit to get everything out. We needed probably leave a little some forces behind just to monitor what’s going on there. And this plan was in place, but Joe Biden seems to have unilaterally decided to just remove the military, remove everybody, leave all the people behind thousands and thousands and thousands of us citizens and hundreds, a hundred million or billion dollars worth of military assets, equipment over there. They left. And now, well there, we had the first death in 18 months. That’s just infuriating. And so this is a big deal. Lots of people are very upset and, you know, on this podcast, I want to talk about helping you understand the times, you know, the, the men have is the sons of his, a car, and the Bible understood the times and they knew what they should do.
(03:07):
And so we sh we want to understand what’s going on here. And some, and I was just going to have a little conversation, some commentary on this, my take because I think it’s important that we know what’s going on and that we well, we have a biblical view of that. And if we need to take action, we take action. So let’s get into some of my take on this. You know, well, many agree. I mean, Trump said this, all lots of newscasters are saying this radio talk show, host everybody. This is the greatest foreign policy humiliation, possibly in history, at least in the last middle half deck, a half a century. And so it’s just, it shows either gross incompetence or just a an alternate, an all terrier motive. There had to be something there. He only had to leave some soldiers.
(04:07):
What he could have done was left the soldiers. There, got everything out that we needed to get out like the equipment like American citizens, contractors, all these sorts of people. And even those Afghanis Afghanistan people who helped and were translating and that were trustworthy. And we could, you know, that we had to take out as refugees or, or whatever they were classified as. And then if we wanted to get rid of, you know, we could have bombed the basis, we could have bombed the equipment, we could have destroyed all the stuff. So there’d be no technology left behind and all of that. And you know, Trump said, this is not a withdrawal. This was a surrender. And who knows what’s going on there? It certainly seems that there’s something else motivating it, cause it just does not add up.
(05:00):
But we got out, this is very like I said, humiliating, and we had a deal in order to get out with honor to save face, to wrap everything up, keep lives intact. And now what they’ve done the way it’s been done again, unilaterally pretty much my Biden not with a lot of support withdraw this way, left a huge gap, huge hole. And the Taliban filled it in right away. They were in the president’s palace. They took pictures. They took a picture with ice cream, making fun of Joe Biden. I mean, just humiliating, huge, huge failure. And so even the president of Afghanistan fled with, I don’t know if it was millions, billions in cash. I mean, just unbelievable. And so this just really fell apart. And so it’s sort of hard to believe that, that this was incompetence. I mean, it just seems it could be, but it just seems that there has to be some ulterior motive.
(06:09):
And I would suspect that, you know, maybe Biden’s beholden to someone or perhaps China wanted this to happen. You know, this certainly weakens America and opens the door for them to step up as a world leader in Russia as well. But back to these assets, you know, we had a hundred billion dollars worth of military assets. That’s per general Flynn. These are taxpayer funded equipment. Yep. And you know, we had 25,000 troops in DC for weeks hanging out in parking garages to, you know, for January six stuff. And that was really to maximize the politics of that. And we couldn’t leave troops in Afghanistan to, you know, even guarantee the safe exit of people in equipment. Like I said, so instead he took the military out first without an extraction plan for all the people and equipment. And you know, if you look back now just one week earlier, I believe it was July 8th 2021.
(07:14):
He said, there’ll be no rooftop evacuation. There’ll be no everything’s under control. It’s, it’s all good. And literally the next week, that’s literally what happened. It was a rooftop evacuation from the embassy. And, you know, the, the administration has tried to sort of save face by kind of downplaying some of it. But there’s none of that. Now the dust has settled on that. And while we’ve seen bombs going off now and you have, it’s just unbelievable, you know, at the airport and them giving directions on how to get out and, and the state department, it’s just, it’s a mess. And now the military is going back to try and help. And now they’ve got an impossible mission that w you know, what a waste, I mean, I can’t believe it, right. We take the military out and then let that void happen.
(08:11):
Let it get filled with Taliban terrorists who by the way, are on Twitter. Apparently not violating their terms of you know, using their platform, but Trump’s not allowed on Twitter, but, you know, once this happened, I mean, you know, now we can see it clearly. There’s no covering anything up and now the military is coming back in. And so it’s just a bunch of waste. And so, w you know, we’ve kind of said either we’ve got an issue with intelligence or some other problem there. And, and like I said, another agenda perhaps you know, in some were even talking about, well, now China and Russia can get that equipment. And, you know, if, if Taliban doesn’t know how to operate it, they can certainly sell it or perhaps there’s agreements already in place with that. But, you know, th th when Biden came on, first of all, he was delayed in, in addressing the nation.
(09:13):
And it, which was just very, just really didn’t, it’s not strong leadership. It doesn’t look like strong leadership, and I’m not here just to bash, but it it’s really, it’s, it’s horrible. I mean, it’s really, there’s really no good thing to say about what’s happened. And, you know, when he came out, he just gave excuses. I mean, he didn’t need to give excuses. He basically blamed Trump and the Afghans literally. I mean, that is it. If you watch the speech blaming Trump, blaming Afghans, taking no responsibility, he should have talked about what’s happening in the future. Why his plan for the COBOL, for the airport, you know, what’s going to happen, what we should expect, why Americans should feel safe, you know, why we shouldn’t feel like there’s going to be another nine 11 why we, you know, why we should feel safe, that, that our people are going to get out of there.
(10:13):
And it’s, that’s not at all what he did. That’s that was the, that should have been the gist of what he said was this happened whatever reason, but this is what is going to happen. Now, this is what you can expect is that’s what a leader should have done. And she has inspired hope should have given us direction on what’s going to happen. But none of that just came out and kind of threw the blame game out there with Trump and the Afghans. So, you know, Hey, this is sort of infuriating and many people not being attention. And I haven’t until, you know, the last, you know, five, 10 years last 10 years or so, but Biden’s been wrong on every single foreign policy in his almost 50 years of government. He’s been on the wrong side and now can the allies, can our allies trust the U S did they know what was going to happen?
(11:04):
I mean, leaving thousands of people behind and now, I mean, we talk about women’s rights and just within the limits of Islam, that’s a whole nother topic, but that’s what they said. They said, oh, women’s rights within the limits of Islam. Well, if you know anything about that, that, you know, that means no rights. I mean, that, I heard one guy compare, I think Rob Carson from the Newsmax daily podcast, he said, that’s like Hitler honoring the rights of the Jews under the Hitler policy. That’s like, there’s no rights. So this is this, like I said, maybe the, one of the worst, the worst foreign policy blunder in history. And then the fact that, that the white house came out and even said, well, we have the assurance of the Taliban that everyone will get safely to the airport.
(12:00):
I mean, to even say that is just absurd to even, oh yeah, we’re going to make an agreement. And they’re going to know, the only way to negotiate with him is, is like Trump did, which is with force a show of force you, that they do not want a peaceful or agreement. Their goal is to take over everything that is not going to happen. They’re not going to honor their word they’re right now. W well, what they ended up with right afterward was a hostage, possibly one of the worst hostage situations that’s ever happened. I think they said it was six to 10,000 citizens, their non-military. So and apparently there was a, a June recommendation back in from about evacuating Afghanistan, from the Pentagon and they, that was ignored. So just a very sad thing to have happened. Many people are distraught because of the 20 years that seems to have been wasted and the lives that have been lost.
(13:08):
And again, we can have another conversation about whether we should have even been there, but certainly we needed to get out and there is a way to do it, and it was not done the right way. In fact, now we’re going back and having to deal with this impossible situation. Like I said, so well, that’s, what’s going on. We’re going to see what comes. We just can pray for the grace of God to have no more deaths over there. Unnecessary. I mean, there is just, it’s such a sad, horrible situation, but Hey, we need to know what’s going on. We know God’s in charge and so what should we do? Well, we need to make sure we have the right leaders in office. I mean, this should have never happened. And we can talk about election integrity and all of that. Again, another topic whether he’s even the rightful person to be in office.
(13:56):
Many of us say no, but you know, there’s a lot more to come on that. And so let’s be praying. Let’s be believing God for good things. Let’s stay positive and be praying for the families of those who have, are really in the midst of this. And, you know, we are also seeing this glimmer of hope because Christians are emboldened, you know, Christians throughout the world are emboldened and stepping up. And I was talking to a guy today that they have a global ministry and they are teaching about suffering because here in America, suffering is not the same as over in Afghanistan for Christians or Pakistan or, or you know, different parts of Africa. I mean, it’s just clearly not the same. And, but the gospel will go forward. The Afghan Christians are committed to spreading the gospel. And there’s a lot of people that need hope right now.
(14:52):
I mean, everybody needs, hope. Everybody needs the truth, but it right now times like this has really highlighted. What, what is your hope really in what are you really relying on? And now’s the time to double down relying on Christ, sharing him, sharing God, sharing Christ, what he did for people to die for them so that they could have a relationship with God, be renewed, be filled with the holy spirit and enjoy eternity starting now in this life with God. So that brings us to the close. We want to make sure we understand the times and we don’t need to be obsessed with it, but we want to know what’s going on so that we can be informed. We can be praying and we can be believing God for good things. And we can be reaching out and supporting and knowing what we should do, because we understand the times when we have that relationship with God through the holy spirit. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining. God bless you. And we’ll see in the next episode,
(15:45): Outro
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