Will America EVER LEARN From Our Obvious Foreign Policy Mistakes?

(00:00.866)

Two stories in the news I really want to touch on today that just highlights our foreign policy and the failure that it is, and it continues to be. And I’m gonna ask the question, why don’t we ever learn? Why don’t we ever learn? There was a scene in the movie, The Natural, which I loved as a kid. Roy Hobbs is hurt and he’s in bed.

And he’s asked about his condition and he says, well, I guess some mistakes you never stop paying for. And again, that’s where we’re at this point in time when it comes to our foreign policy and the money that continues to go out the door. First and foremost, I wanna talk about the Taliban. The Taliban is pocketing $2.5 billion in taxpayer money.

$2.5 billion. Now it supposedly has to go to some humanitarian assistance companies, businesses, whatever it may be, but it goes to Afghanistan. The Taliban runs Afghanistan with an iron fist. They’re taking the money and they’re spending it the way that they want to spend it. Period. The end.

where we have to funnel it through these so-called humanitarian assistance agencies because we don’t recognize the Taliban. We don’t recognize them as running the country, which again, how stupid does that sound? I mean, how dumb does that sound? They’re running the country. What do you mean we’re not gonna recognize them? We lost. We lost, okay? Call it what it is. We pulled out.

in 2021, Biden did an absolutely horrible job with that was moronic the way that he did it. Yeah, did I want to get out of the country to absolutely but I had to be done in a much better way. We left how many billions of dollars in military equipment there 810 billion who knows gave up an airbase decided to do the withdrawal from a commercial airport which made no sense whatsoever. But I want to rehash that. We never learn.

(02:23.358)

Some mistakes you never stop paying for. Afghanistan is one of those mistakes, as we will continue to pour money into that country. We never learn. We never learn. We break things as a nation and we keep paying. Another big story that’s in the news right now, especially the right of center.

media outlets out there going after the Biden administration, big time, going after the Biden administration saying, ah, you’re releasing $10 billion to the Iranians. You’re releasing their money. How could you do such a thing? They’re using it to send money to Hamas. All right. First and foremost, OK, I don’t like Iran. OK, but the country that sends the most amount of money to Hamas is Qatar.

We have a base in Qatar, we have our allied with Qatar. They send more money to Hamas than Iran does. And make no bones about it, okay? There are back channel discussions taking place right now. The Iranians have made it clear, they don’t want to get involved directly in this Hamas situation. You think they wanna get hit by those aircraft carriers that are sitting there in the Mediterranean. You don’t think that they’re fully aware.

that we could level the place. Yeah, they’re gonna shoot off some rockets from time to time. They’re gonna target some of our outposts here and there. Some of their groups, Hezbollah in Lebanon and in Syria and whatnot. But they’re not getting seriously engaged. But this $10 billion, I wanna talk about this $10 billion because again, it’s unfortunate that nobody in the media can do any homework whatsoever.

You really see things like, well, why would they do that? Why is that taking place? Well, I’ll tell you why. Iran, that money, that $10 billion, is actually Iraqi dinars. Yeah. Iraq buys its electricity from Iran. Now, I want to go back in time.

(04:50.282)

a little bit. If you do remember, Iran and Iraq were at war for an extended period of time where chemical weapons were used. It was a bloody disaster. And we were supporting the Iraqis and Saddam Hussein at that point in time in that picture of Donald Rumsfeld way back in the day, you know, in Baghdad meeting with Saddam Hussein because we were on the side of the Iraqis at that point in time.

Anyway, neither here nor there. What happened? What happened in 1991? What happened? Everybody remember? Operation Desert Storm. Remember that? Yep, Operation Desert Storm. We go in there and we destroy the Iraqi electrical grid. And again, how many times have we bombed Iraq, went to war in Iraq, you know, bombed it under Clinton?

bombed it, I mean, George W. Bush decides to go under, get rid of Saddam Hussein. We wrecked all of their means of producing electricity. So Iraq is reliant upon Iran for their electricity. And even just a couple of years ago, and many places in Iraq, they had a ration it. Maybe they were getting two to three hours of electricity a day. Now again,

You know, under Saddam Hussein, you’re used to getting electricity all day, all the time. You don’t have to worry about anything. Yeah, you got to deal with this dictator here. Again, you’re going to get some people kind of souring on America and what you did to the country’s infrastructure. Am I wrong there? No, I’m not. So, again, we made a rule, I guess, where all of the Iraqi money that they spent on.

electricity had to go into some sort of escrow account. That’s the $10 billion. The $10 billion has been sitting in escrow that the Iraqis have been paying for electricity to Iran for making them electricity and sending it across. Now, you think at some point in time Iran’s going to be like, you know, they’re going to back channel to the United States.

(07:09.422)

You got to release this money. We’re just going to stop producing electricity. We’ve got to get paid for what we’re doing. That’s that’s what this is at this point in time. What are we going to do about it? Iran. What if Iran shuts off the electricity to Iraq? What type of

What type of crisis would we have brewing there at this point in time? And who’s gonna get blamed for it? Is Iranians gonna get blamed for it or the Iraqis gonna blame us for it? You see that this is more of the story that the media is not telling you. I don’t know, again, it’s more about headlines. It’s more about misinformation, quite frankly, or not enough information. Many of these stories are much, much deeper than the…

than the crap that they’re putting out on TV or in your paper, whatever it may be. Anyway, back to Afghanistan here. We can’t account for the money. We’ve got an, in essence, we’ve got an inspector that’s looking into this, and the State Department has obfuscated delayed reports, ordered their employees not to talk to…

John Sopko, who is the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. We’ve gone out of our way to work with them, but we’re still not getting cooperation. Again, they don’t know where the money’s going. Many would like to believe we’re aiding Afghan people while successfully bypassing the Taliban. This can be viewed as a useful fiction, as it ignores the fact that it’s impossible to entirely bypass the Taliban regime.

Again, we don’t recognize the Taliban-led Afghan government, which can, why? Why, is it gonna change? And what does this accomplish at this point in time? They’re running the country. We don’t recognize you. La la la, you’re running the country, but I’m not listening. What, again, what does that achieve? Again, I don’t know. I don’t understand any of this. I really don’t.

(09:27.466)

Anyway, the Taliban pressures the UN and other NGOs to issue contracts to Taliban affiliated companies to partner with Taliban affiliated NGOs and not to partner with other ones. Again, the Taliban have embedded intelligence officials in UN agencies to supervise their work. Again, this is expecting anything different to take place at this point in time.

Again, oh, here’s the number. We still have over $7 billion in weapons that are unaccounted for. I’m sure at some point in time, they’ll be used against American citizens. Again, I go back to what I said originally, and a great scene in the movie, The Natural. And again, you have to, I’m not gonna go over the entire movie. Again, you know, Roy Hobbs made a really stupid mistake when he was a kid.

and again, changed the direction of his life. Changed the direction of his life, but he learned from it. Yeah, but some mistakes you never stop paying for. And in that scene he was talking about, he could have been the best baseball player, could have broken every single record. And Glenn Close, I think Glenn Close won a Academy Award for best supporting actress for that movie, if I’m not mistaken. She had a great line that was in that same scene.

towards the end. And she says that she believed that we live two lives. The life, the life we learn with, and then the life that we live with after that. The problem we have as a nation is we don’t learn. We don’t learn. Why don’t we ever learn?

from our foreign policy mistakes again and again and again. And we are allow ourselves to get hyped up into one conflict after another, after another, after another. Right now, I mean, now the media’s starting to acquiesce when it comes to Russia and understanding, geez, they’re not going to lose this.

(11:42.158)

They’re not going to lose this. So what is Ukraine going to become? Is it going to become like Afghanistan, another hole that we have to pour money into?

or like, you know, an Iraq situation where, you know, they’re caught in this no man’s land, not able to rebuild, can’t function the way that they did before. People starting to question whether or not it was better with the dictator or better with this newfound government. This is what we do.

At some point in time, again, maybe we’d get some leadership that would push back against that. But again, Eisenhower was onto something with the whole military industrial complex, wasn’t he? Watchdog on wallstreet.com.