Current Events with Noam Chomsky: Afghanistan | Withdrawal of Troops & History of Military Presence

[Music] [Laughter] welcome to the origins podcast and the origins project foundation i'm your host here lawrence krauss and i want to introduce what may be a new continuing series which is uh really um goes back to one of our first guests and one of our most popular podcasts with none other than noam chomsky i asked gnome if we could periodically update our discussion by talking about current events so here you go current events with noam chomsky removal of uh troops from afghanistan that on september 11th 2021 that that biden talked about which which at least the press is saying was done against the recommendations of military leaders what do you make of that well my view infuriates most of my friends i think before undertaking precipitous withdrawal which take into account the opinion of afghans wow we invaded in 2001 against the a strong opposition of the major afghan resistance movements they were bitterly opposed to the invasion the leading figure of the hawk later killed most respected sharply condemned the bush's invasion he said it's gonna kill plenty of afghans that you're doing it without any concern for afghans you want to show your muscle make sure everybody's afraid of you it's going to undermine our efforts to overthrow the taliban from within which is what we're slowly achieving but you just want to show your muscle it was a brutal murderous invasion had a devastating effect on afghanistan uh they want to get rid of al-qaeda small police action probably with the cooperation of the taliban would were the taliban wanted to get rid of them uh that would have done it but that way you don't show your muscle and frighten everybody all right afghans turned into a wreck it was a wreck before worse rick now uh there's something that happened in the late 80s which you're not allowed to talk about in the late 80s the russians were which it was a murderous invasion yeah yeah they were sort of finally getting their act together late 80s there was considerable progress this is reported by very credible figures like the u.n reporter for women in afghanistan a very distinguished international feminist figure was talking about how much situations improved for women the main problem that young women were facing in kabul was the u.s backed islamic terrorist fanatics who were throwing acid in their face when they wore the wrong clothes well under you a tremendous u.s pressure the russians just pulled out there was a fairly popular government najibullah government probably the most popular in the history of the country they uh it did manage to hold out for a couple of years under the russians stopped any support the u.s was continuing to support the jihadi maniacs who were tearing the place to shreds and finally it fell apart jihadis took over so murderers that when the taliban came in the population mostly welcomed it do we want to duplicate that experience i think we should think a little instead of following formulas i'm talking to the left too uh he came in smashed the place up should never invaded in the first place it was obvious at once now are you gonna allow some hope that uh afghan peace forces which do exist they do exist will have some role in working out something that might be less destructive than a taliban takeover which is what's going to happen well i think that's worth thinking about and and to be clear what you're arguing that i think if i understand you correctly you're arguing that a precipitous or symbolic withdrawal with no with no necessary immediate rationale except for the date uh without thinking of the consequences is inappropriate so you're saying that that that one should think about a a more a withdrawal that works in accordance with the afghan uh peacekeeping forces themselves is that what you argue we should take into account the opinion of afghans and their objects what are their opinions what what right now there are afghan peace forces which are they're not strong shouldn't exaggerate but they exist and they're working trying to work out some kind of maybe local accommodations or something or other give them any kind of support we can now actually this pull-out is not a pull-up what it means is you get american troops out of afghanistan replace them with mercenaries called contractors south african killers and so on and so forth that's what's happening much of the world and keep bombing the out of everybody okay that's withdrawal no you know i should still people who say we have to end their forever wars what are they talking about first of all we've been a war forever ever since 1783 you know so it's not a forever war but the it means we've got to do it for our benefit because we don't want to spend any more money and time on it we've labored to help the afghans didn't work now we're going to get out has nothing to do with reality i mean that we should if we should be getting out it's for their benefit not for our benefit absolutely do you do you are you you've talked about the peace afghan forces do you have any optimism that um that if we if we if we listen to the afghan public and acted accordingly that um that that that broken country might actually resolve itself well let's look back at the russians at the time when they were pulling out at the time of the najibullah government who is predicted by everyone they'll just be overthrown at no time well they hung on for a couple of years even though they were under sharp attack by a major military force backed by the united states and they were getting no support well that suggests something if we could get a government that's acceptable to some sector of afghans if it could work maybe at local accommodations other arrangements that maybe work something out maybe there's a possibility it's a long shot it's a long shot we can't disregard it i don't yeah well okay given it's a long shot what are you um we can we can have a discussion later on about this i don't know whether you want to make a prediction what what's the prediction assuming this percep this quote quote pull-out happens september 11th what what what do you predict for the next couple year or two or three don't claim any expertise in this but from all the information it seems to me available the taliban will take over the afghan army will just collapse the way the iraqi army did as soon as a couple of people started coming and pick up trumps and aiming guns at them they just ran away that's the u.s created army i doubt that it'll be any different in afghanistan try to create an army the way we create it it's not going to be an army so i presume they'll flee collapse hand over their guns something or other pretty soon the taliban will take over it's a pretty ugly regime we've seen it do you suspect do you think that well that's the other thing i was going to ask you don't think there's been any changes album you think once they take over it reverts back to what what it was before well there are reports that there are changes i don't know i think you really have to be on the ground to know that yeah you know that the so-called expert analysts have mostly been totally wrong yeah okay well it's that i'm not yeah it's certainly uh not an optimistic uh situation in any way and um and the likelihood of the the interesting thing is i i mean you know of course trying to trying to go beyond the us media in any way is sometimes difficult but but the reason i asked you is what what the afghan people want is that i as i never i can't find sources well i'm not as i to be fair i haven't worked very hard to find them or hard enough but i really have no idea of what the afghan people want at this point based on anything i read i don't think anybody does first of all if you take polls they don't mean anything yeah i mean if you take polls to a population that's terrified yeah what does it mean they'll tell you what you want to hear [Laughter] [Music] you

Channel: The Origins Podcast

Views: 64,474

Rating: 4.9077492 out of 5

Keywords: The Origins Podcast, Lawrence Krauss, The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss, The Origins Project, Science, Podcast, Culture, Physicist, Video Podcast, Physics

Id: htLMIMwne1E

Length: 10min 24sec (624 seconds)

Published: Tue May 25 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/AttakTheZak]

For anyone who tries to tell you that Noam Chomsky is a fraud and should stay in his lane, I challenge you to consider how a man like that could have such a coherent argument for what's happened over the last 20 years.

We should all strive to be as analytically honest

[u/TazakiTsukuru]

Just noticed someone else also posted this interview a few hours ago, but without the timestamp. I'll remove this if people think it's not needed.

[u/Nick__________]

It wasn't that hard to figure out that the Taliban would takeover they had control over half the country even before the us withdrawal.

The only question was how fast they would take over and I don't think anyone thought that they would do it as fast as they did.

[u/hunkyfunk12]

unrelated to the topic but i love how he has embraced this wild hermit look. i’ve also noticed his philly accent has become more pronounced in recent years. this is probably the strongest i’ve ever heard it, actually. you can specifically hear it in his O’s and the cadence of his syllables (ex. the way he says “united states”)

[u/PatheticMr]

I love that Chomsky is doing this interview while sat on the toilet. Dedication.

[u/Johnnysfootball]

Chomsky mentions that we can't know what the Afghanis want because they would feel coerced to say something positive about the Taliban for fear of retaliation.

I'll leave this snippet from a 2019 study done by the Asia Foundation:

"This year, the proportion who say they have no sympathy with the Taliban has grown by almost 3 percentage points, from 82.4% in 2018 to 85.1% this year. The proportion of respondents who have a lot or a little sympathy for the Taliban is 13.4%, similar to 2018. But among respondents who express sympathy for the Taliban, the proportion who say they don’t know why they feel this sympathy has increased four-fold, from 6.2% in 2018 to 28.6% in 2019."

Has anyone heard of this NGO? Here is the study: https://asiafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/2019_Afghan_Survey_Full-Report.pdf

[u/Tucan-dan-]

Aw we surprised

[u/Foster_I_Am]

What are everyone's thoughts on "pulling out" of Afghanistan? I agree with Chomsky that we should listen to the opinion of the Afghanistan people and for their benefit, not ours. We haven't even tried giving the Afghan peace-keeping forces a try (still a long shot). But we already had a similar situation in the 1980s when Russia was in Afghanistan. Do we really want a repeat of it? (Which has pretty much already happened sadly).

I'm a bit torn but I think Chomsky is right. I have a few buddies who are basically saying "we've been there for 20 years, it's not our fault if they can’t defend their country once we leave, we did enough". Though I don't think that's a fair assessment. I listen to Kyle Kulinski on YouTube from time to time (not sure if any of you do) who's basically a social-Democrat. He's been very critical of Biden but he thinks Biden actually made the right decision - video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpIsUzvBe1I

Still, I'm not not sure this was the way to go about it. Many Dems seem to be against Biden on this and and of course, Republicans will scream about anything Biden does and believe we should stay there - but simply for all the wrong reasons mind you. But I'm just interested what you all think of Chomsky's comments and if we are going about this the right way - What are your thoughts?

[u/thebbc79]

Damn, he looks like he is about to give a shot to a luck dragon.