Name: The Taliban Taking Over Afghanistan
Uploaded: 2021-08-17T17:06:13.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Taliban Taking Over Afghanistan' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-08-17. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Taliban Taking Over Afghanistan' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-08-17. Transcript available.

I watched Restrepo last night because of what's going on in Afghanistan.
Do you know Restrepo, Sebastian Junger's film on Afghanistan?
Yeah.
Just sort of, just put it in perspective, like what's going on over there now.
And it's, you know, I mean, books are amazing for putting things into
perspective,
but there's something about a documentary, especially a boots-on-the-ground
documentary
by a journalist like Sebastian Junger in Afghanistan while Afghanistan is
falling to the Taliban.
So it feels so, it's so intense when you're watching it.
And you see, you know, guys in the beginning of the film that wind up dying.
And it's, first of all, I forgot, like, I think you have a sense of what they
mean
when they talk about these mountainous areas, this mountainous terrain that's
impossible
really to control because it's very difficult to traverse, very difficult to
get around.
I don't think you really understand it until you watch that film, until you
really see the
mountains and you're like, oh, God, like, how is anybody ever going to control
this area?
Like, no wonder why the Soviets failed, no wonder why we failed, no wonder why,
you know,
the people that live there, they just, they're living in an incredibly
difficult environment
in terms of, like, just getting around.
Yeah, I remember some statistics about, like, 99% of people in Afghanistan,
Afghanistan, no, I sound like Brian Callen.
Afghanistan.
Iran, Iran, yeah, I never know how to say it.
I remember, like, 99% of them didn't know 9-11 happened.
So, like, they're completely disconnected from the world, even...
That's so crazy.
Like, even things that seem relevant to...
Did you watch the videos today of people trying to climb aboard planes and
falling to their deaths?
The planes are taking off, these guys are hanging on to the landing gear,
and as the landing gear pulls up, they're falling to their death.
Trying to save themselves?
Yes, trying to leave with the Americans.
It's fucking crazy.
Just the chaos at the airport is...
You haven't seen any of this stuff?
No, I haven't seen...
I actually have not been paying attention to what's happening with Afghanistan.
Jamie, show him some of the videos, because it's heartbreaking.
Yeah, these are people just literally climbing all over these ladders,
doing whatever they can, trying to force themselves onto these planes.
But the really fucked one is, like, look, these guys hanging on the landing
gear.
Watch this.
Like, falling to his death.
It's fucked.
Yeah, and look at this.
I mean, fucking crazy.
All these guys trying to stop the plane so that they can get on board.
I mean, this is just a tremendous failure.
It's so heartbreaking.
Yeah, but what do you do?
What could be done differently, right?
That's the real question.
Like, could they have designed a better withdrawal plan that scaled over time,
where they gave, particularly the people that helped the American military over
there,
that they're very vulnerable right now.
They're in a lot of trouble.
Could they have protected them better?
Could they have done something?
Could they have designed a plan?
That's what most people who are criticizing this believe.
The people that actually understand what's going on over there,
they think this idea of pulling out immediately.
Yeah.
But half the world is living under authoritarian regimes.
So the question is, how do you help those people?
How do you help?
You had a nice, sophisticated, deep, historical conversation with Andrew Schultz
about North Korea.
Are you being sarcastic?
Yeah, there's a little bit of sarcasm there.
I love him.
He's hilarious.
I'm just joking.
He is hilarious, but he was going hard to paint.
Yeah, a little bit.
But he's having fun.
Well, the one sort of sophisticated criticism there was, well, what the hell do
you do about it?
Right, what do you do about North Korea?
Well, there's a lot of places like that.
I mean, North Korea is probably the worst or one of the worst.
But there's a lot of places where the leader of the government is abusing its
people.
What do you do about it?
The whole cryptocurrency, Bitcoin people say maybe you can change the money.
You can give people power by, like, one of the ways government controls its
people is the monetary system.
So you can, like, swap out, try to give people power through the money.
That's one way.
That's interesting.
Obviously, the old school way is military or also maybe economic pressures.
But then it becomes difficult because you're taking on that project and then
you get the thing that you get in Afghanistan.
And, you know, it's a project that takes 10 years, it takes 20 years, and then
ultimately it's not successful.
The Afghanistan situation is so crazy because, you know, Biden was on
television just a little while ago talking about how there's 300,000 armed
Afghanistan soldiers that were trained by the United States and there's only 75,000
Taliban.
There's no way that they're going to fall.
But they never fought.
They just gave up, like, instantly.
Yeah.
But, you know, it's like the whole situation is very confusing to someone who
doesn't understand it.
If you're a guy who fought over there, too, it's got to be insanely frustrating.
People spilled blood over there.
People lost limbs over there.
And then they're seeing how quickly we just pulled out in an abandoned ship.
Like, what was that for?
Well, we got into that war under false pretenses.
We stayed without much transparency about why we're staying.
For 20 fucking years.
Yeah.
Without a clear plan for the future.
And then we pulled out without a clear, transparent plan.
But I don't know what lesson to draw from that except that we should never have
gone in in the first place.
That's the only sort of solid set of arguments you can have.
And, like, why that place?
You know, it's the people that argue it's all about oil and all those kinds of
things.
And minerals.
And minerals.
And all sorts of natural resources, right?
And natural gas.
Like, Afghanistan is a rich suppository of lithium, I believe, too, right?
Yeah, natural.
But then what about Iraq?
Like, what does that have to do with anything?
And so you start questioning the whole operation, the whole process of making
decisions about foreign policy and the military conflicts.
You know, what lesson do you draw from that when there's places like North
Korea, when there's many people in Africa suffering?
There's many regimes that are abusing its people there.
Then there's people that criticize Russia for certain things in terms of from
an authoritarian regime perspective.
And then the big one is China.
And then what do you do about that?
I mean, I do find the libertarian argument here the most sophisticated and
convincing is we should stay out of other people's business until we have a
really clear, good plan.
And, you know, the majority of Americans, given a transparent communication of
what is going on and what we're going to do, majority of Americans are behind
this plan.
Otherwise, stay out of it, unless you have, you know, when you have like
something like a Nazi Germany, where there's obvious atrocities happening,
where there's an obvious war on the horizon, then that's different.
But everything else.
Well, if that's the case, then why aren't we invading North Korea?
If Wynome Park and all these different people that have escaped from North
Korea are telling the truth, there's a Holocaust going on there right now.
I mean, they're literally starving their people.
They're putting their people in concentration camps.
They're having children born in concentration camps for the crimes of their
grandparents.
And their children will also be born in these camps, in these prison camps.
They're starving their people.
They execute them for, you know, almost no reason.
They do whatever they want to them.
They have full and total, complete control over them.
Well, the dark answer and the reason is because there's no way to do anything
about North Korea without also doing something about China.
Yeah.
And that's why we turn a blind eye to North Korea.
Because, I mean, that's a deeply, I mean, a war with North Korea or invasion of
North Korea is an invasion of China.
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