hi everyone this is charles hoskinson broadcasting live from warm sunny colorado always warm always sunny sometimes colorado so today is august 17th 2021 and from time to time i opine or discuss current affairs and events because they are relevant to all of us you know i'm 33 years old and every generation has some form of defining event when i was younger uh more than 20 years ago now almost 20 years ago september 11th occurred so barely a teenager and september 11th kicked off the defining event of my generation which was the war on terrorism the prior generation got to witness the fall of the soviet union and the generation before that got to witness the loss of the vietnam war in many ways afghanistan is our generation's vietnam and it was the endless war it was a war that four u.s presidents presided over and many of my peers in my generation fought in the war and they faced tremendous hardship i personally know a lot of people who lived in afghanistan fought in afghanistan and came back with less of themselves than when they traveled there missing limbs bodily injuries mental problems ptsd broken families and divorces a lot of blood and treasure was spilled over the last 20 years and we lost this is the equivalent of saddam hussein coming out of the grave and returning and becoming dictator of iraq again it's the equivalent of hitler taking back germany at the end of world war ii the taliban is returned and what's extraordinary to me is that if you look at the facts and circumstances the taliban never really fielded more than 100 000 people current strength is about 75 000 and from 2007 and on uh the taliban was operating a shadow government all throughout afghanistan every providence and it had a governor there was a taliban governor as a police chief there was a taliban police chief and they would effectively run a shadow government in that respect its biggest open secret of the occupation for the last 14 years and those shadow regimes had in many cases more popular support than the kleptocratic government that afghanistan had under president ghani and karzai and the others in that regime in a country of more than 10 million less than 1.9 million people participated in the democratic process for the election of the recently deposed president there really was no democratic legitimacy or expectation thereof billions of dollars were spent training over 300 000 soldiers in the afghan defense forces and those forces when it came a decision time for whether they would fight or not decided not to because they were fighting for nothing the leaders that they had there were not legitimate the government that they had there was not accepted in a sense and there was no reason to continue the fiction anymore and now the world is left with a reality that a regime that's more comfortable with the 8th century is now in charge of a country in the 21st century it's a very bad day for women's rights it's a very bad day for gay rights it's a very bad day for human rights and books will be written memoirs will be written people will try to answer the question why did we lose i honestly don't know myself read a lot of books on afghanistan i've talked to so many people there a lot of good people tried their best you know it certainly wasn't for lack of fighting a lack of money a lack of brain power and ambition and technology and yet still we were beaten by people who have no business running a country who have no business being in a global community and now we see the horrible aftermath just like a prior generation saw in the fall of saigon there are videos on twitter where bodies are lining the streets because for 20 years the taliban has kept a list of who's a friend and who's not and those who are not friends on the list are currently being drag court shot tortured and worse the people who supported the united states they were promised that they would get some form of relief they would get an opportunity to not suffer the consequences of being on the wrong side of war and we abandoned those people thousands if not tens of thousands a lot of veterans and this whole week they have been showered with messages emails panic things saying can you help us get out of the country unfortunately as much as the desire is there the political process is not going to save the majority of the people who want to leave who earned the right to leave and even if they could leave they're not allowed to take friends family and other people who will serve as a substitute for their perceived crimes against the taliban our companies in the systems business and what that means is that we think a lot about how people should live and how the world should be what rights we as human beings have and how do we build governments that push power to the edges and ensure that you can live your life the way you'd like to and yet somehow some way the world can take care of its problems regressive totalitarian theocracies are artifacts of the past we saw that during the middle ages the brutal reign of the old catholic church that was so willing to cling to power and dominate every aspect of people's lives that just mere opposition to doctrine could result in an inquisition and being burned at the state saw that during the crusades and we've seen that all throughout human history the roman persecution of the christians for example and we see it today in isolated examples of evil regimes that are so in love with their doctrine that they're willing to punish anyone who doesn't subscribe to their beliefs i like to believe in the better parts of humanity and that overall things are getting better but i was deeply dismayed to see china say that they're prepared to legitimize the taliban regime the same for moscow because it benefits them geopolitically regardless of whether it's the right thing to do so i get asked a lot what do we do well we have to figure out some meaning in all of this and recognize that in every tragedy there are people at the end of it there are a lot of women in afghanistan who have a lot of uncertainty right now they lived lives where they were trying for the first time in their lives to integrate into society as equals instead of subordinates learned to read they built a digital life they started working driving doing basic things that we take for granted on a daily basis they will now be punished for taking those steps into the uncertain future the number one thing that people in afghanistan are doing right now on the internet is trying to figure out how to scrub their social media delete their facebook accounts clear their twitter pages get rid of any social footprint because they understand that the mere expression of their lifestyle is now a liability and those 20 years of history can potentially be used against them for torture execution humiliation or exile from any notion of society i wonder if staying was the right idea or leaving we were not as a nation prepared for empire building we don't have the stomach for it we're not the roman empire we don't subscribe to decades-long integration and slavery and crucifixion and the level of brutality necessary to transform a society over a long period of time into subordination we aren't the british empire and being prepared to do the things that were done in china and india in the 19th century we like to believe we're the good people but we weren't prepared to be the people necessary to defeat an enemy like this so while we never lost a battle we never lost an operation that mattered and we killed certainly a lot of the people that pissed us off and were responsible for why we started the war in the first place we lost the war because the war was redefined as changing afghanistan's nature to become more like us not recognizing that we had to become more like them to beat them and yet we were told this again and again and again if you go to amazon and just enter in afghanistan you'll see books written in 2006 2008 2010 2011 2012 2015 and many more to come now that we've lost and every single one of them said we're not going to win this we're not going to win this and stubbornly we as a nation clung on to the fantasy that if only we stuck around for a little bit longer somehow someway at least the stalemate will occur and then we can responsibly leave i see american helicopters today blackhawks with the taliban flag flying on them we didn't give it to them we gave it to the army that we bled for and trained and when they cowardly fled their posts those weapons american weapons are now in the hands of our enemy who is better equipped today than they were when we invaded in 2001. it's a devastating blow for my generation and the many veterans who fought in that war they were asked to make a sacrifice and they did time blood energy body mind soul all of them have come back with scars in one way or the other and they keep saying to themselves why were we there what did we fight for this is one of the core reasons why i joined the ron paul movement back in 2007 didn't have a lot of things in that campaign but there were three and one was sound money two was follow the constitution and three arguably the most important was a humble foreign policy understanding that if you go to war the objectives must be clear you must have a path to victory and you must have a way of coming home with dignity basic simple things that we used to remember as a nation and we have forgotten the reality is that the war in afghanistan went on so long because it was the most comfortable war our nation has ever fought we didn't feel it cleaned out my grandfather's basement years ago he lived through the great depression and world war ii and as a kid he had to deal with rationing during that war so they had little ration booklets that gave you the right to buy things needed more than money you had to embrace scarcity every single american was unified in that effort and they felt the pain of it they bought war bonds they did everything in their power to try to win that and it was a collective pain that we all felt until victory came the last 20 years society has gone on we have our reality television shows we have life as normal the vast majority of americans who weren't connected to the military complex or had children in the military or were in the military didn't feel for a moment the war in afghanistan so we tolerated the endless operations the endless occupation the endless dogged pursuit of the unobtainable and now as a nation we're pulling back we look to the future of our foreign policy and instead of an attempt to gain a moment of clarity and wisdom about perhaps where should we go what should we do there are those in the foreign policy infrastructure who think perhaps it's a better idea to start exploring other nation states whether it be qatar or jordan or syria or south america and getting back into something else somewhere else i think the best thing we can do is ask ourselves why does the system we have want to keep doing this keep making the same mistake over and over and over and over and over again and why have we become all too comfortable with a professional class of people mostly poor who have to sacrifice so much and at the end of the day recognize that they've been misled and lied to that's the greatest tribute we can have we can't undo and fix the evil of the taliban at this juncture and for some reason the global community of nations will tolerate them as they do tolerate north korea we just have to accept that for the moment that's where the human race is at i firmly believe if we change our money and we change the institutions of how our democracy works collectively over time as nation states even if they exist in their existing form we will stop tolerating these things but today as an american i'm just a little sad and disappointed and worn down we didn't deserve this as a people we didn't and we have to really ask how much more of this is going to happen before we demand change and accountability before we demand a different path forward from our part we're just going to keep doing research and writing software and changing the hearts and minds of the people in the industry and outside of the industry you know cardano is a movement millions that will turn the tens of millions which will turn to hundreds of millions and each and every person in this movement tends to believe that things can be better but we can be better individually collectively even at the government scale and little by little the tools that we construct as an industry if adopted will allow us to build social structures that inhibit the demons of our nature and prevent us from making these catastrophic errors again and again and even if we do make them seldom incentivize their repetition that's i think ultimately the best we can do there there is going to be compassion and empathy especially to the women of afghanistan and to those in the groups who will be brutally punished the gays the christians and others who don't form uh love with the orthodoxy that is now dominant there and the best we can do there is send him our prayers and wishes and if there's opportunities for them to escape or attempt to moderate the brutality fight for that and isolate those and exile those who do business with the people who are purveyors of human misery and i pray that we find some wisdom as a nation in all of this the current regime doesn't seem to have any the prior regime doesn't seem to have any they're just blaming each other there will be a new generation of politicians in the next 5 10 15 years who fought in this war who bled in this war and i imagine right now feel very betrayed by the people currently in charge and that next wave of politicians won't tolerate oh well we're sorry better luck next time let's try something else they're going to want answers they're going to want a restoration of their dignity if not for themselves then for the people that they loved and cared about who didn't come home they're going to want a different system that ultimately will prevent this from ever happening again this is one of the greatest opportunities in my view for our industry to demand decisions to be made differently to demand accountability and transparency and for those who profit from the misery domestic or abroad to be brought to justice and at the end of the day as frustrating as all of this is closing i do have hope because i've traveled all around this world i've been to every continent except for antarctica i've seen so many of you i've met so many of you shaken so many hands heard so many stories people email me they send me letters the old and young and i see the good in people and the desire that people have for things to be better and i honestly believe that the good will win over the bat and i honestly believe that we will come together and as horrible as these moments can be as terrible as it is to see the flag of a truly evil group of people flying in places it shouldn't that is only a reminder that each and every one of us has a responsibility to stand up and fight in our own way so that we can overcome and with great adversity comes great opportunity for strength so that's what we're gonna do and i think each and every one of you in your own way will find a way to do that thanks for being part of this community those who serve thank you for your service and for those who sacrificed thank you for that too you'll never be forgotten we'll get out of this one way or the other even if our leaders let us down you know what we won't let each other down thank you everyone have a good night
