The Afghanistan Crisis

Former Green Beret Tu Lam of Ronin Tactics talks about the Afghanistan Crisis. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website - https://www.shawnryanshow.com Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/VigilanceElite TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnryanshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/shawnryan762 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:26Shawn Ryan?

  In my next two episodes, I talk with my friend, former Green Beret Tulam. We talk about the situation in Afghanistan, the disaster of us pulling out, and what that means for China. This is not my typical content. If you want to see more content like this, I need you to go to iTunes, leave me a review, even if it's just one word. I need to know if you guys want this. With that being said, let's get on with it. Hey, how's it going, Tulam?

• 2:03Shawn Ryan?

  Good seeing you, man.

• 2:07Shawn Ryan?

  Wish it was under better circumstances, but, but, uh, thanks for, for taking the call and, and, uh, so kinda what we're doing here, uh, we got Two Lam here, former Green Beret, retired Green Beret, and, uh, me and Two have been having a lot of offline conversations about, uh, what's going on in Afghanistan and, uh, and maybe even more importantly than that, what that means, uh, for China now that we're leaving. And, uh, so we're just gonna give our perspective, uh, some of these, uh, we're gonna do a little series here, uh, Two's gonna put some videos on his YouTube channel, uh, depending on how we wind up breaking this up, uh, to different

• 2:52Shawn Ryan?

  subjects, and, uh, I'll be putting this on my YouTube channel, obviously, um, the version, if you're watching this on YouTube, uh, this is the, uh, YouTube-friendly version, uh, we're doing an uncut version over on Rumble, uh, we're just able to talk about a little bit more in-depth on what we would like to, uh, get out to both of our audiences on Rumble, and, um, so if you're interested in, in the uncut version, it's over there, and, uh, I'll link it in top comment and in the description of this video. But anyways,

• 3:33Shawn Ryan?

  um, Two, I, you know, we, we talked about doing this video and, and sharing some of our thoughts, concerns, and, and, and what this means, uh, for China and, and for our country, and, um, and, uh, I wish we could've do, done this a little sooner, but I thi, I think it's best that we waited a little bit, uh, and kinda gathered and collected our thoughts rather than, than done this on pure emotion. And, um, and so, we got a little timeline here, or a guideline of what we're gonna do, and we're gonna start with Afghanistan, um...

• 4:13Shawn Ryan?

  Kind of what that means with us pulling out, how the plan sucked, how

• 4:19Shawn Ryan?

  a little bit about the Taliban, what could have been done, maybe a little bit better. And then in a separate video, we're going to move on to China, you know, and what that means for them and everything that's been happening.

• 4:33Shawn Ryan?

  In the past, what, year and a half, and even before, before it was the main, the main topic of discussion here. So.

• 4:43Shawn Ryan?

  I'll let you kick it off with the, with what just happened, you know, just a few days ago.

• 4:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, man, I first I want to send out, you know, my prayers to, you know, our troops out there. May they come home safe and, you know, God bless our Marines and corpsmen, their families. God bless them and hopefully everybody comes back home safe, man. That's the biggest concern for me. Let's just talk about Afghanistan, man. You know, people don't understand why Afghanistan was such a key terrain in the global war. And what I said that is, you know, people think it was us going in and eliminating, you know, Osama bin Laden, and that was one of it, you know, he was the master behind, mastermind behind, you know, al Qaeda and

• 5:33Speaker 04

  and being able to execute that, you know, be able to execute that attack on America. But for us to hold Afghanistan, you know, as a key terrain was, was key in the global war. That's what people don't understand. And for the last 20 years, we've been fighting this war where we took the Taliban out of official government and they've been hiding in caves up north, you know, now they're coming down, now they're in Kabul and now they're establishing themselves as a government system. So that's a huge concern for me because now, you know, other superpowers, when I say that is, you know, China, Russia, they're recognizing them as a government system.

• 6:17Speaker 04

  Which is, you know, sheer law, which is, you know, um, you know, it's, it's, it's not pleasant, man, you know what I mean? It's now you recognize terrorism as a form of government and that's going to echo throughout the world.

• 6:34Shawn Ryan?

  And we're negotiating with them. Um, you know, there's a lot of speculation on, when I hear kind of the, the, the left side's argument, uh, and, and I read in the comments section, uh, which I try not to do, but there's a lot of, well, we've been doing this for 20 years and, and so what's the difference now, uh, with the, with the decision-making, uh, and, and the consequences that are happening? I think a lot of people don't understand what the difference is between what's happening right now and what has happened in the last 20 years. And while the last 20 years were far from perfect, uh, they were definitely

• 7:17Shawn Ryan?

  effective. And the major difference here is we're, we're no longer on the offensive roll. And, um, and when it comes to those Marines that just, that just died, they died because of a major, uh, a major poor decision-making process, uh, the poor decision-making process on how we pulled out and then, and, and, and, and equipped Taliban with the best warfighting equipment in the world and leaving people there and now having to go back in,

• 8:00Shawn Ryan?

  uh, and, and extract Americans and allied forces with one of the, one of the most well-equipped

• 8:12Shawn Ryan?

  Armies in the world now with what we left behind. I mean, we were talking the other day on the phone and they have, what, 200 helicopters now, Black Hawks, Apaches?

• 8:23Speaker 04

  And, you know, and there was intelligence, you know, stating from the administration that they don't have, you know, the knowledge, the technical advances to even fly it. Now they have videos of, you know, the Taliban flying these helicopters. It's happening, you know, and, you know, helicopters is one thing, but when you have overhitting strike capability, which is a drone, right? And they're known, there was intelligence that we left drones, that technology. And there was imagery of them tracking the Taliban disassembling these drones and then moving into the border of Pakistan. And we know

• 9:06Speaker 04

  that China runs Pakistan because they have that, you know, the highway Pakistan corridor, you know. So they're working with Pakistan and Pakistan eventually is going to hand this over to China because China owns Pakistan. Pakistan's in yet to China.

• 9:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, China owns, it seems to be just about everything now. And whether you want to admit it or not, and we're going to get into that, you know, here shortly. But, you know, even some of the other equipment, I mean, just for the, those Marines that are in there now. I mean, before, and make no mistake, the Taliban and Al Qaeda and ISIS were all extremely effective fighting units. And one of the things that we're going to see now is when we left Iraq and the rise of ISIS happened, they were extremely well-equipped. They had our armored vehicles. They had some of our weapons. Now, what we have is...

• 10:13Shawn Ryan?

  Not just armored vehicles, but they have our body armor. They have our guns. They have our, our IR lasers. They have our night vision. They have, they have our, our, our, our rocket launchers, our javelins, our drones, our helicopters, our vehicles.

• 10:29Speaker 04

  Why we won the war, right? That's the element, what, what kept us alive and what, what made us a superpower. And now they have that technology. And in China, you know, we always know anytime we went into China or operate around that region for dealing with the Chinese, we knew that, hey, we have to lock up this technology. All right. Because the Chinese is all about getting that technology. And now they have the blueprint. They had the blueprint in their hands now, right? So, um, that's a huge concern.

• 10:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Um, and so you can imagine having to go in there and fight an already effective enemy. Now that is even, even just as capable as, as, as we are at this point, and they know the terrain.

• 11:14Speaker 04

  And they're more funded than, they're more funded than any other organization in the world now because they have, you know, obviously the interests of China and Russia.

• 11:25Shawn Ryan?

  And they don't have rules to play by.

• 11:27Speaker 04

  They don't care about rules.

• 11:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Unfortunately, uh, 50% of the population here in the U S does care about rules, but they're going to find out, you know, what it's like to not play by rules and what an enemy looks like, uh, as they start coming under, uh, coming across the border. So,

• 11:46Speaker 04

  But you know, I want to talk about Afghanistan too, is that, you know, we had, man, we had intelligence, man. We had eyes on in that region. You know, we had the capabilities of, and you know, having operatives that we trained for years, you know, Afghani operatives. That meant that we had a human, uh, intelligence capability. Uh, we had a SIGINT capability there. We could find, fix and locate these Taliban fighters. You know, we built this infrastructure that we just left, uh, behind and we left these allies, you know, um. To fend for themselves now. And you know, that's heartbreaking, but in return,

• 12:27Speaker 04

  you know, America should be concerned for our homeland security now because we gave them a country now to train, well-funded and equipped with the modern technologies in a region. We have no intelligence. We have no eyes. We have no human capabilities. That mean we have no intelligence gathering capabilities, nor can we forward stage any offensive force within that region.

• 12:55Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, which actually, uh, since we're talking about that now, the latest drone strike that happened, uh, last night, I, I don't under, how are they getting that intelligence? There is nobody left on the ground. Everybody is, is in escape and evasion mode now. And so,

• 13:19Shawn Ryan?

  who's running the assets? Who's, who's, where are they getting this information from? Do you think that was even a legitimate drone strike?

• 13:27Speaker 04

  You know, I have my personal opinion, Sean, you know, and, um, I, I just know that having worked at certain levels in the military, I know deception. You know, I know how we, um, deceive our, um, citizens to please them. So, um, I have been a guy on the ground before doing that type of work. You had to, and we understand that we don't just strike that fast and we can't gain intelligence off of a pred feed. We have to have a human source. We have to have a Sagan source to find, fix and locate the mastermind behind the planning. How can you strike a mastermind behind planning by following a pred feed or a drone feed?

• 14:13Speaker 04

  You know?

• 14:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:15Speaker 04

  We have to have the guy on the ground.

• 14:18Shawn Ryan?

  I'm very skeptical, uh, of, of any intelligence that's coming out of there at this point, uh, with the, I mean, we've turned,

• 14:28Shawn Ryan?

  we've turned everything, everything over. Um, you know, what?

• 14:36Shawn Ryan?

  We turned Bagram over, we turned Kandahar Air Base over. Uh, the only foothold that we seem to have at this point is Kabul Airport, which uh is, I mean, it's, it's.

• 14:49Speaker 04

  You know, and to me, it's like we, you know, any military planning at the, at the special operations level especially is, you know, we have a primary alternate, it seems to be a mercy plan. We have these plans that we fall into. We have contingencies planned set in place. We have phase lines on how we shrink a force, right? And it's not, um, gosh, man, you said it perfect this morning. You, you said, uh, you know, it's like a active shooter. Can you say that again to our?

• 15:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you know, when people, there's a lot of, uh, you know, controversy on, you know, oh, Trump was gonna have us out May 1st. Yes, he was gonna have us out May 1st, but he also had a, uh, a plan to make that happen. And what happened now is we just yanked the rug out from under it. And essentially what happened, uh, the, the best way I can think of to describe it to civilian types is,

• 15:47Shawn Ryan?

  let's go back to, uh, let's say there's an active shooter in a school. You don't, and, and, and there's multiple active shooters, you don't. What we basically did is we went in and we pulled all of the teachers out. And all of the, uh, um, the, the police, you know, that are in the building. I don't know what you call them anymore, but the police that patrol the schools. We've pulled them out first and we left the children there to die. And that's exactly, uh, what the current administration did in Afghanistan. They pulled, they pulled the military out, the protection, the offensive and defensive forces out.

• 16:28Shawn Ryan?

  And they left unarmed, helpless Americans and allies and Afghans, uh, our counterparts there to die. With no protection. And we turned over all of our weapons to the Taliban, which took full advantage of it. And.

• 16:49Shawn Ryan?

  And then, we asked our warfighters to go back in there with a fully-equipped Taliban that has everything plus more, you know, than a lot of conventional units have, and said, "Go back in there and get these people."

• 17:08Speaker 04

  No intelligence, no intelligence.

• 17:11Shawn Ryan?

  And now, what we're seeing is, we're seeing civilians, former Spec Ops guys that are going in there and saving these people on their own dime, risking their own lives. And that's civilians. Those are no longer active service members. And so, what we're seeing is, we're seeing a population that's beginning to take matters into their own hands, because whether the current administration is incompetent, or under somebody else's control, I don't know. But, you know, when he comes out and speaks to the audience and

• 17:51Shawn Ryan?

  says, "I've been instructed to," or, "I'm sorry, I have to go, I have another meeting," you're supposedly the most important, most powerful human being on the planet. What meeting do you have that's more important than to address the American people? You know, and so, I guess what I'm getting at is, what you're seeing is, you're seeing civilians starting to take matters into their own hands, and that can lead to a very scary place when the population has lost complete confidence in our leadership.

• 18:32Speaker 04

  You kind of see a pattern here. You know, Hillary Clinton left our troops.

• 18:39Speaker 04

  You know, in Libya to die, you know, when the annex got attacked. You know, you see the same administration with the same executions on it's okay to leave our Americans to die to defend for themselves after being ordered by our country. You know, to for deploy under our orders, under his orders. You know, and the evacuation was not the issue. We knew we had to evacuate. But when do we ever evacuate a hundred percent in any war? Right? We left our troops in Germany. We left our troops in Korea. We left our troops. You know, I mean, all through the world to stabilize that region. And to gather intelligence, right? So we can't just strike an area.

• 19:19Speaker 04

  And you know, having been one of the guys on the ground doing it before, I understand how long it takes to build that intelligence up. And you don't, you don't have that intelligence anymore because you don't have that infrastructure anymore. You don't have the ability to, to use the people because we abandoned them now, you know, we withdrew. But that's going to echo in America because, you know, of the war, right? The war, the, the war within our, our country right now, you know, the divide within our country. Um, with some waking up to what's going on and some are supporting um the new ideology of America.

• 19:59Speaker 04

  But the thing is this, man, you gotta worry about your safety because we've been in war for the last 20 years. The only thing that kept our country safe was our brave, you know, soldiers for deploying over and out of Afghanistan and in the Middle East to try to stabilize that region because we saw the blueprints. Yeah. You know, in some trades, we saw the blueprints. They want to take us down in America. They have every plan to take us down in America. And then now we're negotiating with the Taliban, which is a declared terrorist group. With the funding of China and Iran, Iran having nuclear capabilities.

• 20:43Shawn Ryan?

  You know.

• 20:43Speaker 04

  It's really scary.

• 20:45Shawn Ryan?

  Back to the relationships too. These. I think most people don't understand where intelligence comes from and where all this information that leads us to terrorist leaders and different cells and across the globe. It comes from the 20 years of relationships that we've built with Afghanistan.

• 21:14Shawn Ryan?

  Informants, sources, people that were being paid, bad guys that were being paid, that everybody, you know, that we were, that was, it was a trade for information. And we developed these, these assets and these, these, these people that are giving us information over 20 years. Well, guess what? Because of the way that we pulled out, we just lost all confidence in any asset that we had flipped onto our side that was giving us intelligence. Now we have nothing. We have nothing. We've destroyed all of those relationships. And you know who's going to build those relationships now? China. Did China close the embassy when we pulled out?

• 21:59Shawn Ryan?

  No, they were open for negotiations. With Taliban.

• 22:06Speaker 04

  They don't go by our rules, you see. I mean, the biggest enemy of democracy is communism. You know, we've been dealing with this since, you know, the, you know, after World War II. That's the rise of, you know, communism and democracy. Communism sides with socialism and dictatorship. Democracy is freedom and equal opportunity. But you know, the thing is that when we start losing our allies, right? And we, we built, and the communism builds a stronger force, right? Then the world is going to be dominated by communism and we're going to lose our freedoms. And that's not just here, it's all of our allied forces.

• 22:51Speaker 04

  Like India, you know, that's bordered by.

• 22:55Speaker 04

  Pakistan and you know China, they they're you know us turning our backs in Afghanistan is a huge border security concern for them, you know, and we turn and we we turn our back on our allies there too, you know, so we're losing our footing within that region as well. If if if Asia doesn't want to deal with us, we lose our footing with that region. Now we lost our footing military wise, intelligence wise, homeland security wise in the Middle East. We had them, we don't have that anymore. So regardless if you are a supportive of Afghanistan or not, it doesn't matter. I understand we needed withdrawal, but there's a way to withdraw, right?

• 23:39Speaker 04

  And unfortunately, that's going to hurt us in in in the near future.

• 23:46Speaker 05

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