Hello again, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another episode of Freedom's Creed. We've come to the end of another week, and I hope yours was gratifying and that you were able to accomplish all the things that you set out to accomplish. Today, I'm going to be talking about conflict and the nature of conflict in an imperfect world. Eventually, I want to do a little comparing and contrasting of events that have taken place within the last, say, 70, 80 years and that continue to this day. I want to start off talking about World War II and how we got involved in World War II. Most of us recognize that we were very slow to be involved in that conflict until Pearl Harbor. And then once we were attacked at Pearl Harbor, essentially from December 7th, 1941, through the end of the war in May of 1945, almost four years. Now, the US continues to have a presence in Germany to this day. The American people, for the most part, accepted our involvement in the Second World War, essentially to stop the spread of totalitarian aggression. And we can debate the issue about that today, of course, but I don't think there's any mistaking that our involvement in Germany, having a military presence in Germany, deterred that totalitarian aggression, without a doubt. Today we have thousands of American troops in Germany as well as their families. And we've had a great alliance with the country of Germany since the end of the Second World War. That, of course, has really evolved into our support of the NATO mission, which ultimately is to keep power-hungry leaders from invading other countries. Despots who will always exist to one degree or another, essentially trying to mimic the despots of a foregone era. And let's hope and pray that they're never successful in the way that Hitler was successful or any other despotic leader may have been successful to some degree or another in the 20th century. The bottom line here, folks, is that the success of a U.S. presence in Germany is quite notable. No conflict since World War II, at least no significant actual war, has taken place since then. A once divided Germany in post-World War II is now united and has been for the last 30 years. So it's really hard to argue with the outcome of the last three plus decades, not to mention the outcome of post-World War II Germany with an American presence. Another example, of course, is the Korean War. At the end of the Korean War, Korea was divided at the 38th parallel and had to make a transition from control by the Japanese. And what resulted, of course, was a North Korea and a South Korea. Since the end of that war, to this day, the North has remained despotic and totalitarian and with literally no advancement for the people. Whereas in the South, it's much different. It's a thriving economy. There's no comparison if you want to look at North Korea versus South Korea, none whatsoever. Now, the two examples that I've cited for you, Germany in post-World War II and Korea after the Korean War came to an end, are two very glaring examples of what US military involvement, as well as some government involvement too, but mostly the military involvement, can do for a country that had previously been under some sort of totalitarian rule, or in the case of Korea, the inability to rule themselves outside of Japanese control. And of course, the German people had no control after Hitler came to power, and it wasn't until after the defeat of the Nazis that we were able to make an imprint in the country. And there are a lot of people, not just in Germany but throughout the world, who are really glad that the American military presence was in Germany, and in fact still is. I'd like to shift to now something that all of us have paid attention to over the last few days or week or so, and that is Afghanistan. What about Afghanistan? I mentioned just briefly in my last episode that the debate for why the US military is or was, however you want to look at that, given the current situation, how we were in Afghanistan, and how that should have taken place over 20 years ago, more like 25 years ago, the debate that is for our involvement in Afghanistan and whether or not we should have been there. That debate or the time for that debate is long over. We were there. We are there to some extent now, and it's becoming a complete debacle. It seems to me that we're going to be back over there in large numbers unless we just decide that we're going to allow the Taliban to run wild and continue to destroy the lives of tens of thousands of people because that's exactly what's going to happen if we don't do anything about it. The Russians actually had their time with Afghanistan as well in a war that ultimately saw them stick their tail between their legs and run back to Mother Russia, or at the time the Soviet Union. Their withdrawal in the early 1990s gave rise to the Taliban. And it's no secret that the Taliban is a ruthless organization, if you can even call them that. I guess they are organized to some fashion and they're very ruthless. They treat women, children, and other minority groups mercilessly. And what about the Taliban rank and file? Well, they're expendable. They're illiterate for the most part, and really nothing more than fighting machines. That's all they are to the top brass of the Taliban, and I'm giving them way too much credit by calling them top brass, but in any event, they don't care about the rank and file in the Taliban. They're, like I said, they're expendable. I know that hindsight's 2020, and I don't want to be a Monday morning armchair quarterback, but I want to just briefly talk about what should have been the objective since day one if the U.S. military was going to have a presence in Afghanistan. The U.S. government should have been prepared to remain firmly entrenched in the country indefinitely, really much like what our presence was in Germany and how that evolved over time. Unfortunately, the government, as well as the will of the American people, has been very soft when it comes to Afghanistan because of the way it was mismanaged. I mean, it's plain and simple. It was totally mismanaged by every president since the beginning in 2001 under George W. Bush. We have no way of knowing what would have happened if over the last, say, 20 years, we would have made Afghanistan like Germany or the DMZ in Korea. We'll never know. But it seems to me that we should have had the determination to defeat the Taliban, which we actually did for a time, but we let up. We let up on the accelerator and we shouldn't have done that. We allowed remnants of the Taliban to reconvene in Pakistan and wherever else they may have reconvened and tried to get reorganized. And clearly that was a huge mistake. As noted earlier, our presence in Germany and on the DMZ in Korea has made all the difference for the peoples of those countries, except unfortunately, North Korea. But the bottom line with respect to the Taliban is that our pulling out or doing anything similar to that over the last 20 years or so has essentially done nothing because now the Taliban is guess what? They're back in control, which has ultimately nullified any progress that we made in the country of Afghanistan. And I feel most sorry for the citizens of Afghanistan who are just trying to live their lives in the best way possible with peace. And they're never going to have it under Taliban rule. So what's the bottom line? Well, we went there to Afghanistan, that is. So we should have put a plan in place for the long haul. What do I mean by that? What I mean is this, and this can still take place today. That is, it needs to be a place where we are there for the long haul. In other words, we need to make Afghanistan a permanent duty station for American troops, much like what we did in Germany and in Korea, and that military presence, obviously in those countries, is still ongoing. That's what we should do in Afghanistan. If you disagree with that, then just look at the alternative of the past two decades. It hasn't worked well, and in fact, it's playing itself out on American TV screens and elsewhere in the media today. Think about this for a moment. Do you think that the Taliban is worse or not quite as bad as, say, the Nazis? Furthermore, compare the Nazis of that foregone era with the Taliban today. To be sure, it's difficult to quantify any level of evil because both the Nazis and the Taliban are nothing but evil organizations, and they don't care about the lives of the people on the ground in their respective countries, at least at the time that the Nazis were in power. They cared nothing for the German people or anyone else. And the same is true with the Taliban today. They care nothing about but themselves and their agenda. It seems to me then that the only way to defeat the Taliban, at least in Afghanistan, is to have a military presence on the ground for the foreseeable future. And as I said, if you don't agree with that, that's fine. You don't have to agree with that. But how else are we going to keep at bay this evil organization that is hellbent on destroying the life and liberty of their own people? As I alluded to earlier, we are well beyond pointing fingers, ladies and gentlemen. There's plenty of blame to go around. But if we want to overcome this evil of our time, it seems to me the only way we can do that is to establish a presence in Afghanistan so that the Taliban cannot get greater organization and stronger and recruiting these idiots who can't even read into their organization. I mean no disrespect to those who are illiterate in the country and who flock to the Taliban because they give them something to eat and a weapon. I mean, it's it's despicable, it's barbaric, and this is what we're left with. You might say that, well, what about any other country where the Taliban can establish themselves and get stronger and then come to attack the military presence that remains in Afghanistan? Of course, that's a very real possibility. It can happen not only in Afghanistan, but it could happen in other countries as well. It seems to me that we need to root out the Taliban. We need to root out this organization as best we can, and when we decimate it, we need to remain in that country, in this case, Afghanistan, to make sure that they cannot come back. That's the plain and simple truth. But I guarantee you, no one in America, or at least very few in America, will have the stomach to accept such an outcome. But to me, that's what needs to happen. Folks, this is coming from my status as a veteran. I spent three years in Germany, as well as five months in the Middle East during the first Gulf War. By no means am I saying that I'm an expert. I'm simply saying that this is my observation. This is what if I could, this is what I would recommend to our leaders that we need to do. There's no easy way around it. It's it is what it is, as they say. The leaders of our country today seem to think if we just turn tail and run, that somehow everything's gonna be hunky dory, we're gonna sing kumbaya, we're gonna have s'mores under the fire. Well, you don't want to put them under the fire, over the fire. Anyway, it's not gonna happen, okay? It's just not gonna happen. It's a pipe dream. Listen, if we think we can pull out of Afghanistan and then let the Taliban gain greater strength and organization and numbers to their ranks, folks, we are kidding ourselves if we think that's all gonna go away just because we pull our troops out of there. It's asinine. I said earlier that no one then modified that to very few Americans can actually stomach what we need to do in Afghanistan, but I want to rethink that. And I believe that most Americans can understand what a military presence indefinitely could mean for the people of Afghanistan in getting the Taliban out of there. And again, this is not a matter of debate. We're there, we have been there. We simply need to do the right thing for the people of Afghanistan, and that is for us to remain there, to be a military presence there to keep the Taliban from ever having control over the people again. I get it. It's a hard pill to swallow. But what else are we going to do? What is the alternative? What's the next best alternative that anyone has? I can't think of any. Folks, what's at stake? I'll tell you what's at stake. What's at stake is the fact that we promised the Afghan people that we would be there for them. So we're just gonna say, Oh, well, screw you, you're on your own. Our promises mean nothing. We'll see you later. That's pathetic. And if that ends up being what happens in all of this, it's shameful. It's it's I'm disgusted by it. I'm disgusted by our leaders, Republican, Democrat. I don't care. I really don't care. We promised the people that we would be there, that we would help them. We did that to a great extent in years gone by. We have failed miserably over the last several years, no doubt about it. And it's shameful. I have tried to lay out my case for all of this, and I hope that it's made sense to you. I hope that you will think about this, that you will pray for the people of Afghanistan and even for our leaders here in the United States that they'll do the right thing. Loss of life in any way or manner is sad, unfortunately. Loss of life in war is tragic and it's not what any of us want, but it happens. What are we going to do about it? What's going to be the best way to make the blood and sacrifice, the deaths of American citizens in the military and citizens in Afghanistan worth it? I mean, is it just gonna be for no reason at all? And that all of these deaths were just some sort of collateral damage? It's it's disgusting. War is hell. It's not a good thing. But if we're gonna be in a war, we should damn well win it and then do our best to make sure that we keep the promises that we make to the people of that country, in this case, the Afghan people. Well, that's it. I have nothing else that I can add to this right now. It's time to say so long, but before I do, I want to leave you with my quote of the episode. It's taken from a book written by a gentleman by the name of Carl R. Rogers in 1961. The book is On Becoming a Person. He says this quote, I have found it of enormous value when I can permit myself to understand the other person. The way which I have worded this statement may seem strange to you. Is it necessary to permit oneself to understand another? I think it is. Our first reaction to most of the statements which we hear from other people is an evaluation or judgment rather than an understanding of it. When someone expresses some feeling, attitude, or belief, our tendency is almost immediately to feel that's right, or that's stupid. That's abnormal, that's unreasonable, that's incorrect, that's not nice. Very rarely do we permit ourselves to understand precisely what the meaning of the statement is to the other person. End of quote. Do you see how it has application for our time, even still today, some 60 years later? I do. With that, if you can think it, you can plan it. If you can plan it, you can do it.