I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of Antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and the brand new Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism, and I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2003, almost all on foreign policy, and all available for you at scotthorton.org.
You can sign up for the podcast feed there, and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scotthortonshow.
Hey guys, on the line, I've got Dave DeCamp, news editor at Antiwar.com.
That's news.antiwar.com.
I swear he writes 10 articles a day or some crazy thing, and he knows everything in the world, which is why we, including me, are so lucky to have him here today.
Welcome back.
How are you doing, Dave?
I'm good, Scott.
Thanks for having me.
So what is the goddang deal, Bobby?
Go ahead.
Yeah, so today, Friday, August 20th, I just watched Biden just gave us a little update on the Afghanistan evacuation.
So right now, there's currently about, he said there's almost 6,000 US troops at the Kabul airport, and that's roughly what the Pentagon has authorized for the deployment, so I don't think they're going to be sending any more troops at this point.
They're evacuating, airlifting American citizens and Afghan allies, and then there's the European, you know, NATO people and stuff that are also being evacuated.
Biden said, so as of Friday, since they started these airlifts on Saturday, they've evacuated 13,000 people, which means that they're doing it at a pretty good rate now.
So over the past 24 hours, they evacuated 5,700 people, and this is just the US doing it.
There's also civilian charters and stuff.
Before that, the rate was like 2,000 people a day, so it seems like they've stepped up the rate.
And one thing they're not sure of is how many US citizens are left in Afghanistan.
Some people said between 5,000 and 10,000, others said between 10,000 and 15,000.
But yeah, so that's what the US is, what Biden is focusing on now.
There's more troops in Afghanistan right now than there have been in a few years, maybe not a few years, but in a while.
And the US has a ton of air power at the airport, those F-18s, and B-52s doing flyovers of Kabul.
So things are tense.
But right now, Biden, he took questions today.
I know one of his press conferences, he didn't take any, well, I guess it wasn't a press conference, but he gave a speech Monday on Afghanistan.
He didn't take any questions.
And all these reporters kind of screaming at him, are you going to send troops into Kabul to extract US citizens?
And he said no.
Lloyd Austin, Secretary of Defense, took similar questions the other day.
He said no, they don't have the capability.
But they're all saying that the Taliban is letting them, if you're an American with a passport, you're getting through the Taliban checkpoints.
Biden said they're in constant communication with the Taliban.
Now, Afghan, there's been reports of some Afghans that have had issues.
But for the Americans right now, it seems like they haven't had a problem getting to the airport.
Now, at the airport, there's big crowds and it's hectic and things are pretty crazy on the ground there.
But he said that the military had to get, they got 160 US citizens over one of the walls of the airport because they were stuck in a crowd or something.
So I mean, things are hectic, but he seems pretty determined to get everybody out and get out of there.
And the Taliban has every interest to let this evacuation happen.
So hopefully, you know, this wraps up.
He said his withdrawal deadline now is August 31st.
And he said that they would stay longer if need be.
But I really, I don't think that he's going to do any kind of escalation.
I think they're going to finish this evacuation and that's going to be that.
But, you know, it's interesting to see all the reporters just yelling at, you know, why why do you trust the Taliban?
It's like the whole media has turned on Biden for the withdrawal.
And, you know, our criticism of him is is that he broke the deal, the US Taliban deal that was signed in Doha last year by extending the original May 1st withdrawal deadline.
I think that's the only way this could have gone a little better is if he stuck to it, which would have meant as soon as he came to office, he would have started the withdrawal pretty much.
But even then, I mean, considering how quickly everything folded and collapsed, it wouldn't have been much better than this.
So I mean, all things considered, they got the embassy evacuated pretty quickly.
They had like a whole infantry battalion with them the whole time.
And Americans aren't dying.
And you know, there's reports of the Taliban going around door to door.
But they're just kind of reports unconfirmed, you know, the Taliban aren't great, but it kind of seems like the way things are on the ground, it is a general calm and things could be a hell of a lot worse.
Yeah, I mean, that's for sure.
You know, they walked right in, as I said, for years was a distinct possibility.
There might not even be a battle for Kabul.
They just might walk right in and take over that place.
And, you know, everybody ought to be thankful for the ease of the transition of power here.
It was inevitable anyway.
So it would have been a lot worse to just have a bunch more fighting and then they still win.
So and then, you know, also, you know, they have a real incentive to want to play it cool now after inheriting the country, especially with such ease.
And they are ruthless sons of bitches a lot of times.
So they could make bad calls and do vicious things.
I wouldn't put it entirely past them, but I agree with you that I don't see any reason to think that they are now going to start the whole new era of their renewed rule off on the wrong foot by breaking their deal with the Americans and getting themselves carpet bombed in a situation where they just wouldn't have to do that at all.
In fact, aren't they trying to show the whole world that, see, we ain't so bad and that kind of thing?
That's the public relations campaign that they've settled on, at least for now.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
At the first press conference, their spokesman was, you know, saying all these things like, oh, women will be able to work and go to school.
And, you know, they kind of they want international recognition.
So yeah, they don't have you know, because if you think about it, they're pretty much just took over the just about virtually the entire country, except for a few areas.
So they don't want to have to deal with the Americans now, like, you know, this is a new kind of era for them.
And there are protests popping up.
So from their view, why antagonize the Americans and then have to worry about getting bombed when when you're kind of settling into this, their new rule?
And there's and they're in talks with Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah of the old government.
So that's kind of another signal that they're ready to put aside their old beefs and stuff.
And there's there's like a U.N. document, apparently, that says they've been going around door to door hunting people down.
But again, this stuff isn't confirmed.
Something that I did see from Tolo News, which is an Afghanistan news site, is that in one province, the governor and the police chief are like, we're taken and they're missing.
But that's really it.
I mean, maybe, you know, and that's kind of what I would expect, maybe more just high level officials they might throw in jail or kill.
They might kill some of them.
But I don't think that they're going to be hunting down, you know, Afghan every interpreter and stuff.
And that is and they want the Afghans to stay.
They released a statement to the imams for Friday's prayers in Afghanistan to, you know, encourage unity and to encourage the Afghans that are trying to leave to stay.
So again, I'm sure some people are going to get killed.
It's not going to be pretty, but things could be much worse.
So yeah, I did see one thing where and look, I ain't their public relations man, but, you know, truth is the truth.
And I don't really know exactly what's true, but it's interesting the dispute.
Here's a picture, a bunch of Taliban madmen with machine guns harassing these guys, throwing them up against the wall.
And one guy's pointing an RPG at them when it's a crowd with including his own men standing right up against this wall to point your RPG.
What are you doing?
Dumb, dumb.
But anyway, and then this is shown as, you know, the new totalitarianism of the Taliban or something like that.
But then you look at that photo in another context.
And the caption is that these guys were accused of looting and stealing and the Taliban were acting as the police arresting them.
And so, you know, I don't know exactly what was the truth of it, but it just goes to show how easy it is to, you know, a picture's worth a thousand words and you can make up whatever you want.
Yeah, yeah.
No, and it's something we have to kind of be vigilant right now because, again, we don't want to just take the Taliban for their word and stuff.
There's a lot of interest in making it seem a lot worse on the ground than it is.
There are people that want us to escalate.
I mean, Lindsey Graham and his buddy Jack Keane, the general from works for Kim Kagan, they wrote an op ed in The Wall Street Journal today, you know, saying send the troops into Kabul, put them in harm's way.
He made some comments today, Lindsey Graham, that, you know, we got to go get our Afghan allies.
All of a sudden, Lindsey Graham cares about, you know, Afghans and he wants to put the troops in harm's way.
And he's threatening that Biden might get impeached over it.
So, you know, there is a lot of push.
And if you watch these, I mean, if you just the press conference, I just watched the way the reporters are, you know, carrying on about why Biden's trusting the Taliban and isn't sending troops in to get Americans out.
You know, there's just there's a lot of interest behind keeping us there.
Yeah, of course.
Well, and just, you know, for partisan reasons, just making look Biden look as stupid as possible and all that.
But now.
So what about this 15000?
How many Americans, how many American civilians who don't work for the embassy are spread throughout Afghanistan?
And where are they all?
Is it really true that there are hundreds or thousands of people left behind in Jalalabad and Kandahar City and Lashkar Gah and Ghazni and wherever around the country or not?
I don't know.
That's one thing.
It's kind of tough to know.
There's not really any details.
They're all given these ballpark numbers.
Apparently the State Department, they're trying to like get a hard count.
But yeah, where they are, you know, and again, these are all American citizens that were in Afghanistan, I guess, doing their own thing.
I'm sure it was a lot of NGO workers and some, you know, intelligence people, maybe contractors working for the government and in their or, you know, in their own way or whatever.
But, you know, they they chose to stick around.
And I guess, you know, they're blaming the Biden administration because they didn't warn that the government would collapse as quickly.
But still, I mean, and to your point where they're spread out, I really it's really tough to know if they're just in Kabul or if they're across the country.
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It's important to point out here that they would have had to tell the whole truth, which is almost impossible, right?
That look, the Afghan government that we built is a complete joke.
Forget it.
And the Afghan army that we built and police forces, they're just never going to last.
And so based on that calculation, we're taking all their trucks and all their guns and all this stuff.
We're not leaving behind for the Taliban to get.
We're going to go ahead and destroy it all.
And they could never do that because, I mean, their call was that they would just leave the army there armed up and strong enough to defend itself, at least for a while.
And I guess they had to believe their own BS to really stick with that.
And then they ended up leaving all these weapons behind for others.
But they would have had to come all the way clean that this mission is a complete and total failure first.
Because think about all the smear and all the spin from the war party that, oh, man, you took all the last of the ANA's trucks and armored vehicles and weapons away.
Well, no wonder they fell.
You know what I mean?
That would be the blame.
And so just like they said, I guess this makes sense as an excuse.
They said if they'd evacuated the embassy earlier, well, that would have also been blamed for undermining confidence in the government and forcing them to give up.
And so they didn't want to send that bad signal.
And I can kind of see that like they are stuck between a rock and a hard place on that unless they come all the way clean and just say, look, this whole thing has already been a failure.
And even if the Taliban haven't made it to Jalalabad and and Ghazni and Kabul yet, we know they're coming.
And so we're just going to go ahead and and cancel even our attempt at propping up this ANA.
And you can see how politically that would have been bad for them to do.
And Democrats just aren't honest, honest enough people to just tell the truth and and pursue that.
But so they do look really bad for all the weapons that have fallen into the hands of the Taliban.
I mean, like, for example, if there's going to be this kind of final assault on the Panjshir Valley, aren't they going to be driving American Humvees and firing American rifles as the Taliban cavalry comes to roust out the last of these warlords here?
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it is really bad optics and everything looks really bad.
But like you said, you know, and when it comes to the embassy, I mean, they really did evacuate the embassy pretty quickly and kept, you know, the diplomatic staff pretty safe, I'd say.
So yeah, I mean, when you talk about the weapons that there was a report in Reuters yesterday that a Biden official said that they're considering airstrikes on some of the larger equipment.
But that would be the stupidest thing they could do right now, because that would give the Taliban a reason to start attacking and even saying that to Reuters, whoever that Biden official was.
It's very, very stupid.
You know, the fact is they just have to focus on the evacuation and, you know, just deal with the PR stuff later.
But and you mentioned the Panjshir Valley, I mean, they're trying to say, tell me everything you know about that, because I know it's a lot.
You got a great piece about it from yesterday, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So this is like the last holdout against the Taliban, really.
And there's a guy named Ahmad Massoud, who is the son of a kind of famous Mujahideen fighter who fought against the Soviet Union and fought against the Taliban.
He was part of the Northern Alliance.
He was killed like right before 9-11.
So he he wasn't involved in the U.S. war there, really.
And Eric Margulies found in the KGB records, he was a double agent for the Reds all along.
Oh, yeah.
No wonder the CIA liked him so much.
They're idiots.
Anyway, go ahead.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So so his son wrote an op ed that was published in The Washington Post, you know, calling for the U.S. to arm them, arm this the new Mujahideen in the Panjshir Valley.
So, you know, if you look at a map, you know, they're pretty isolated that like to get a supply line into them, like the how realistic it is that this will actually be some sort of resistance force.
I don't really think, you know, maybe they could hold them off out of the valley there, but they wouldn't be able to get spread much more than that.
But also Amrullah Saleh, who was the vice president for Ghani, Ashraf Ghani, who fled Afghanistan last Sunday, apparently he's there, too.
And he's kind of joined in on this little resistance.
But he spoke to The New York Times.
And right now he's calling for like a political settlement.
He just wants to be involved in the talks.
So he says.
But so who knows how far this is really going to go or, you know, they might just make a settlement with the Taliban here.
But just the fact that, you know, that was published in The Washington Post already, like as we're pulling out, it's like, oh, here's an option if you want to continue the war against the Taliban and.
Well, you following this guy, NatSecJeff on Twitter?
NatSecJeff?
No.
Yeah.
He's on your list now.
I don't know who he is.
Maybe somebody does.
But he seems to have a lot of good stuff.
And he talked about how there are a bunch of elders from the Panjshir Valley came to Kabul to meet with the Taliban.
And it looked to him.
Oh, OK.
I'm out of date on this now, by the way, this would have been 12 hours ago or whatever last night.
But the last time I saw it, but he was saying, yeah, it looks like there's at least a good chance that the Panjshir Valley is going to surrender before a fight.
Yeah.
And it'll be the elders who are from there who decide before they let Dostum or whoever else decide.
I'm not sure Dostum and and Noor and Masood and whoever have a say in it.
But, you know, I don't know.
You know what, too?
I thought it was further north than I went and saw on a map where it was marked.
And it's just north of the Bagram Air Base.
Yeah.
So.
Aren't they screwed now that the Taliban owns the Bagram Air Base and can build up all the forces in the world that they want to there?
And then.
Yeah, it ain't the old days, man, in the 1990s, when, you know, it was Hekmatyar versus Dostum where neither side had just inherited 50 billion dollars worth of trucks and arms.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Or how I'm sure I'm underestimating 50 billion.
I think it must be a lot more than that, including helicopters and not just all Black Hawks, but also, you know, Russian hind helicopters that America had India buy for them and stuff.
So they've got a powerful military now.
Yeah, they do.
And we're going to support Iran in the next war against the Taliban in like a year and a half from now.
I mean, look, the Ayatollah is he really cares about women's rights and stuff.
Well, that's another thing about the Panjshir Valley is that nobody really knows how many fighters they actually have.
There is the New York Times quoted some Afghan officials who said that it was between 2000 and 2500.
But then the other guys wouldn't say so.
Who knows?
I mean, if it's that small, then I don't think they can really do much.
But, you know, it is a really interesting aspect of the whole thing is how it's going to shake out with the U.S.
You know, right now they're focusing on the evacuation.
But say we we get out and the Taliban form some government, they put Karzai and Abdul in some, you know, they give them some symbolic council or something.
And then China and Russia and Tajikistan and Pakistan, they all just, you know, trade with them and recognize them, what the U.S. is going to do.
We're already freezing there.
The Afghan government has billions in funds in the U.S. that those are frozen.
But then again, I mean, those are probably just ours anyway, right?
And the IMF is blocking funds to them.
So that that's kind of the question now, is the U.S. just going to sanction the hell out of Afghanistan or are they going to I mean, I feel like there's going to be a lot of heat on the Biden administration.
So they might kind of keep pressure on the Taliban government instead of opening a trade relationship with them or something.
But maybe just in a few years, we might just, you know, be friends with the Taliban government in Kabul.
I mean, who knows?
I mean, that's my fear is that the CIA is already going to work with them to support Uyghurs, the ETI group against China.
And JSOC a year ago was flying as their air force against ISIS.
So they have some kind of, you know, pretty open communication on that level.
And I don't know if you saw this.
It's only half believable to me, the thing about Christopher Miller.
Oh, yeah, it did.
And I don't mean Chris Miller, the greatest skateboarder who ever lived.
I mean, Christopher Miller, who was the secretary of defense for the last couple of months of Trump there, where he said Trump was never going to get out on May 1st.
He was just using that as a cudgel to pressure the Taliban to let us stay for counterterrorism, like they're just going to let us keep one Bagram airbase, something like that.
So I guess I believe that they might have thought that they were going to try that.
But I don't I don't think that there's any reason in the world why the Taliban would think that they need America to help them kill ISIS guys.
Not at this point.
And they want to kill ISIS guys anyway.
So yeah, yeah, it's tough to know with those like former Trump officials, even if it seemed like he was kind of defending the Trump administration, like we didn't actually plan to leave.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
I think that's right.
It's true that they say.
Yeah.
But I mean, Trump, he's been like just going after Biden, like, you know, I think about when Trump said he's going to pull out of Syria, he ultimately reversed that, even though there was some official, I forget who it was, I think James Jeffrey, he was like the U.S. on board of Syria.
He said that they were playing shell games to hide the real number of troops in Syria.
What Trump did ultimately refers to the decision.
Now imagine the media storm.
I mean, they've all turned on Biden over this.
Imagine the media storm if this was happening under Trump.
You know, I don't know if he would be able to stand up to it.
Well, you know, I went on Fox News and the whole narrative was Biden sucks and look at what a disaster this is.
And I told him, get it straight.
This is the best thing Biden's ever done in his life.
Him and Trump, too.
And they should all be congratulated and thanked.
This is just a little thing compared to ending this horrible war.
Yeah.
So that to me is, in fact, the guy I was on with was saying the worst thing about this is it discredits withdrawal.
You made withdrawal look so bad that then they get to say, see what happens when you withdraw or whatever.
And that's kind of true.
But then so what's the solution that we've got to push right back on that narrative and say, no, still withdraw is still awesome.
I don't care how bad Biden is at it.
You know?
Yeah.
And the shame of it is that there's a bunch of Americans paying attention to Afghanistan right now that didn't probably didn't even know we were still there a few months ago.
Like people barely pay attention to these wars.
And then as we withdraw, it looks really hectic and chaotic.
But I mean, look at how it's been even just the past few months, all the fighting and the violence against civilians and stuff compared to now.
It's really not that bad.
And, you know, a successful, quote unquote, successful withdrawal in the eyes of the U.S. establishment would have meant that Afghanistan would have just been they would have been fighting a brutal civil war for probably years to come and that we would have been funding, giving them three billion dollars, three point three billion dollars each year to fight and kill each other.
So they're just mad that Afghans aren't decided not to keep killing each other.
I mean.
All right.
Listen, it's not fair, but I got to kick you off my show right now.
I'm all out of time.
Some guy's going to interview me in a minute.
But listen, everybody, you got to read Dave all the time.
He's the best thing we got right now at antiwar dot com.
So good.
Right.
So much great stuff at news dot antiwar dot com.
Him and the great Jason Ditz holding it all down for you.
Keep a track of every one of these wars and the cold wars with the major powers and all of the corruption and every bit of it.
News dot antiwar dot com.
Thank you so much, Dave.
Thanks, Scott.
Thanks for having me back.
The Scott Horton Show, Antiwar Radio, can be heard on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A., APS Radio dot com, Antiwar dot com, Scott Horton dot org and Libertarian Institute dot org.
