1
00:00:00,360 --> 00:00:04,559
Speaker 1: Welcome to this evening's classic episode. Guys, do you remember Afghanistan?

2
00:00:04,840 --> 00:00:06,920
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, how could I forget? It was a golden

3
00:00:06,960 --> 00:00:09,320
Speaker 2: time in Afghanistan that we all spent together.

4
00:00:09,960 --> 00:00:15,240
Speaker 1: The Breaker of Empires. The US invaded Afghanistan on October seventh,

5
00:00:15,360 --> 00:00:20,360
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, and back in twenty twenty, weirdly enough,

6
00:00:20,400 --> 00:00:25,760
Speaker 1: on New Year's Day, we started looking into this, into

7
00:00:25,800 --> 00:00:27,720
Speaker 1: this excellent work by the Washington Post.

8
00:00:28,800 --> 00:00:32,800
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, back in twenty nineteen, Craig Whitlock of The

9
00:00:32,880 --> 00:00:37,279
Speaker 3: Washington Post published at War with the Truth and the

10
00:00:37,320 --> 00:00:40,919
Speaker 3: world said, uh what.

11
00:00:42,560 --> 00:00:44,200
Speaker 2: That was a really good impression of the world.

12
00:00:44,200 --> 00:00:46,200
Speaker 1: Matt, Yeah, what do you say?

13
00:00:46,200 --> 00:00:48,200
Speaker 2: We jump right into this classic episode.

14
00:00:49,600 --> 00:00:54,080
Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is

15
00:00:54,160 --> 00:00:58,480
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or

16
00:00:58,560 --> 00:01:00,520
Speaker 1: learn this stuff. They don't go on you to know.

17
00:01:01,480 --> 00:01:05,119
Speaker 1: A production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.

18
00:01:13,560 --> 00:01:16,360
Speaker 3: Hello, Welcome back to the show. I'm not wearing a hat.

19
00:01:16,760 --> 00:01:18,080
Speaker 2: You're wearing pants, though.

20
00:01:17,959 --> 00:01:19,880
Speaker 3: I am wearing pants. My name is Matt, my name

21
00:01:19,920 --> 00:01:20,360
Speaker 3: is Noah.

22
00:01:20,480 --> 00:01:22,679
Speaker 1: They call me Ben. We are joined, as always with

23
00:01:22,720 --> 00:01:26,440
Speaker 1: our super producer Paul Mission Control Deck. In most importantly,

24
00:01:26,800 --> 00:01:29,640
Speaker 1: you are you, you are here, and that makes this

25
00:01:30,040 --> 00:01:34,240
Speaker 1: stuff they don't want you to know. This is a

26
00:01:34,280 --> 00:01:38,720
Speaker 1: wartime episode. As we record today's episode, the United States

27
00:01:38,720 --> 00:01:42,360
Speaker 1: of America is still in the middle of the longest

28
00:01:42,480 --> 00:01:46,120
Speaker 1: war in the country's history. That means there are literally

29
00:01:46,240 --> 00:01:50,440
Speaker 1: people listening to the show today who were not alive

30
00:01:50,840 --> 00:01:55,200
Speaker 1: when this war began. Think about that. The United States

31
00:01:55,240 --> 00:01:59,760
Speaker 1: invaded Afghanistan on October seventh, two thousand and one, and

32
00:01:59,800 --> 00:02:03,440
Speaker 1: we are still there as we speak. Why how much

33
00:02:03,480 --> 00:02:06,400
Speaker 1: did our leaders know and when did they know it?

34
00:02:06,920 --> 00:02:11,240
Speaker 1: To answer that, oddly enough, even though this country has

35
00:02:11,320 --> 00:02:14,200
Speaker 1: been at war in this other country for the better

36
00:02:14,240 --> 00:02:19,079
Speaker 1: part of two decades, many people, many voters, aren't one

37
00:02:19,160 --> 00:02:24,720
Speaker 1: hundred percent sure what Afghanistan is, where it is, and

38
00:02:24,760 --> 00:02:26,080
Speaker 1: why it's such a big deal.

39
00:02:26,200 --> 00:02:28,919
Speaker 3: And it's also now the first time we've been engaged there.

40
00:02:29,200 --> 00:02:34,160
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, no, this has an interesting name.

41
00:02:35,240 --> 00:02:38,880
Speaker 1: First things first, here are the facts. Afghanistan is located

42
00:02:38,960 --> 00:02:43,680
Speaker 1: in what is commonly called Eurasia, right the vast stretch

43
00:02:43,800 --> 00:02:49,000
Speaker 1: of land between Asia and the continent we call Europe.

44
00:02:49,639 --> 00:02:55,040
Speaker 1: It's landlocked, It's bordered by some greatest hits countries. In

45
00:02:55,080 --> 00:03:00,880
Speaker 1: the rogues gallery of the United States historically Pakistan, Iran, Tajikistan, Zbekistan,

46
00:03:01,000 --> 00:03:05,119
Speaker 1: and China. Its capital is a place called Kabul. Outside

47
00:03:05,160 --> 00:03:11,560
Speaker 1: of several cities, the country is extraordinarily rural. We're talking

48
00:03:11,880 --> 00:03:15,640
Speaker 1: places that are simply physically hard to access in the

49
00:03:15,680 --> 00:03:20,800
Speaker 1: mountains or in the rugged wilderness. The country itself was

50
00:03:20,840 --> 00:03:25,480
Speaker 1: not officially formed until seventeen oh nine, but as you

51
00:03:25,520 --> 00:03:28,920
Speaker 1: alluded to, Matt, it has a history, a long and

52
00:03:28,960 --> 00:03:33,160
Speaker 1: bloody history of being a battleground. In fact, Afghanistan is

53
00:03:33,240 --> 00:03:36,920
Speaker 1: sometimes called the Graveyard of Empires due to just the

54
00:03:36,960 --> 00:03:41,920
Speaker 1: sheer number of militaries that tried and failed to control it.

55
00:03:42,200 --> 00:03:45,280
Speaker 3: And it's an interesting thing there because and just when

56
00:03:45,320 --> 00:03:48,720
Speaker 3: we're talking about it's the battleground, right the place where

57
00:03:48,760 --> 00:03:51,960
Speaker 3: the wars are fought or the battles are fought, and

58
00:03:52,080 --> 00:03:55,680
Speaker 3: generally controlling the area is kind of the goal. But

59
00:03:55,760 --> 00:03:57,880
Speaker 3: a lot of times, and this is what we're going

60
00:03:57,920 --> 00:04:00,880
Speaker 3: to kind of outline here, is that it's the the land,

61
00:04:01,040 --> 00:04:05,920
Speaker 3: the place where two different warring powers end up where

62
00:04:05,920 --> 00:04:08,600
Speaker 3: they just kind of go right. So it's not as

63
00:04:08,640 --> 00:04:12,320
Speaker 3: though Afghanistan itself is rising up to you know, fight

64
00:04:12,440 --> 00:04:15,560
Speaker 3: A lot of the battles. It's generally it's where proxy

65
00:04:15,560 --> 00:04:20,159
Speaker 3: wars happen. It's where it's interesting. We're gonna continue on

66
00:04:20,200 --> 00:04:22,159
Speaker 3: with this throughout the show. So let's just keep going

67
00:04:22,200 --> 00:04:24,599
Speaker 3: down into the history of Afghanistan.

68
00:04:24,760 --> 00:04:27,720
Speaker 2: Okay, let's do a little ancient history, shall we, Yes, okay, So,

69
00:04:27,760 --> 00:04:30,360
Speaker 2: experts believe that early humans were living in Afghanistan as

70
00:04:30,400 --> 00:04:33,360
Speaker 2: long as fifty thousand years ago because it was rich

71
00:04:33,400 --> 00:04:38,240
Speaker 2: soil for farming. There were communities of farmers in Afghanistan

72
00:04:38,520 --> 00:04:41,000
Speaker 2: that were some of the very earliest farmers in the

73
00:04:41,160 --> 00:04:44,200
Speaker 2: entire world, and for a time the area was known

74
00:04:44,279 --> 00:04:47,760
Speaker 2: as Ariyana, or the land of Arians. This is because

75
00:04:47,839 --> 00:04:51,960
Speaker 2: multiple waves of people from Central Asia migrated to the region,

76
00:04:52,680 --> 00:04:55,400
Speaker 2: and many of these settlers were in fact Arians. They

77
00:04:55,440 --> 00:04:58,719
Speaker 2: were speakers of the parent language of Indo European languages.

78
00:04:59,279 --> 00:05:03,040
Speaker 2: Arians also, so migrated to Persia and India in those

79
00:05:03,080 --> 00:05:04,160
Speaker 2: prehistoric times.

80
00:05:04,400 --> 00:05:06,960
Speaker 3: And then let's jump to the sixth century when the

81
00:05:07,000 --> 00:05:12,160
Speaker 3: Persian Empire of the Akimenid dynasty controlled Ariana. And good

82
00:05:12,240 --> 00:05:15,040
Speaker 3: luck saying, Achimenid, it's really fun and to look at

83
00:05:15,160 --> 00:05:18,280
Speaker 3: and write. In about three hundred and thirty BC, the

84
00:05:18,360 --> 00:05:22,200
Speaker 3: little guy you might remember named Alexander the Great, defeated

85
00:05:22,279 --> 00:05:26,880
Speaker 3: the last ruler of the Akimenid dynasty there, and he

86
00:05:26,920 --> 00:05:29,279
Speaker 3: made his way to the eastern borders of the place

87
00:05:29,360 --> 00:05:33,880
Speaker 3: that was called Ariana. Now after this guy, old Great

88
00:05:33,920 --> 00:05:37,839
Speaker 3: Alexander himself died in three hundred and twenty three BCE.

89
00:05:38,080 --> 00:05:40,880
Speaker 1: In his early thirties, feeling that he was a failure

90
00:05:41,040 --> 00:05:41,360
Speaker 1: by the.

91
00:05:41,279 --> 00:05:44,279
Speaker 2: Way, Yeah, no, that Alexander, he sure was great, wasn't he.

92
00:05:44,839 --> 00:05:48,120
Speaker 3: I mean he was, Uh, he's a guy.

93
00:05:48,279 --> 00:05:48,880
Speaker 1: Who's a guy.

94
00:05:49,000 --> 00:05:50,040
Speaker 2: He did great things.

95
00:05:49,880 --> 00:05:53,560
Speaker 3: He did some huge stuff. Whether it was great or

96
00:05:53,960 --> 00:05:57,400
Speaker 3: terrible is depending on which side of the battles you

97
00:05:57,400 --> 00:05:57,599
Speaker 3: were on.

98
00:05:57,680 --> 00:05:59,320
Speaker 1: I said, it had some large scale stuff.

99
00:05:59,360 --> 00:06:03,520
Speaker 3: Let's leave it. Okay, that's yes, there we go. So

100
00:06:03,560 --> 00:06:06,320
Speaker 3: he died three hundred and twenty three BCE. All these

101
00:06:06,360 --> 00:06:09,479
Speaker 3: other kingdoms that were out there, let's name them off here,

102
00:06:09,839 --> 00:06:17,359
Speaker 3: the Seleucids, maybe Seleucids Seleucids, the Bactria, and the Indian

103
00:06:17,520 --> 00:06:21,400
Speaker 3: Mayuran Empire, they all were fighting to attempt in an

104
00:06:21,400 --> 00:06:24,440
Speaker 3: attempt to control this territory that was known at the

105
00:06:24,440 --> 00:06:25,200
Speaker 3: time as Ariana.

106
00:06:25,279 --> 00:06:27,760
Speaker 2: So understandably, there were a lot of folks jockeying for

107
00:06:27,920 --> 00:06:33,040
Speaker 2: position and a lot of kind of power grab situations.

108
00:06:31,839 --> 00:06:36,800
Speaker 1: In the vacuum. Yes, the history of afghanistun involves a

109
00:06:36,920 --> 00:06:40,520
Speaker 1: ton of handoffs and power grabs with a lot of

110
00:06:40,600 --> 00:06:44,039
Speaker 1: names that might be unfamiliar to you know, unless you

111
00:06:44,120 --> 00:06:48,320
Speaker 1: have specifically studied this history. So strap in, we're just

112
00:06:48,360 --> 00:06:51,040
Speaker 1: going to do some highlights. A lot of these empires

113
00:06:51,080 --> 00:06:56,000
Speaker 1: are no longer around and the names will sound unfamiliar.

114
00:06:56,440 --> 00:07:02,440
Speaker 1: In the seventh century AD, or whichever way you want

115
00:07:02,480 --> 00:07:06,440
Speaker 1: to go with that, Arab armies carried this brand new

116
00:07:06,480 --> 00:07:11,360
Speaker 1: religion of Islam to Afghanistan, and the western provinces of

117
00:07:11,440 --> 00:07:15,360
Speaker 1: Harat and Sastan came under the rule of these Arab forces.

118
00:07:15,680 --> 00:07:20,920
Speaker 1: But the people of these provinces revolted. They returned to

119
00:07:21,120 --> 00:07:25,600
Speaker 1: their old, pre existing beliefs as soon as these military

120
00:07:25,640 --> 00:07:29,280
Speaker 1: forces were not you know, literally using violence to make

121
00:07:29,320 --> 00:07:34,680
Speaker 1: them pretend to practice Islam. In the tenth century, Muslim

122
00:07:34,760 --> 00:07:38,560
Speaker 1: rulers called Samanids from Bukara and what's now is Pakistan

123
00:07:39,280 --> 00:07:44,320
Speaker 1: extended their influence into the Afghan area. And this kind

124
00:07:44,360 --> 00:07:48,240
Speaker 1: of when we see extending influence, it means that there

125
00:07:48,400 --> 00:07:52,840
Speaker 1: was a soft hegemony, you know, expanding there. People started

126
00:07:52,840 --> 00:07:57,080
Speaker 1: to use the currency of those rulers, they started to

127
00:07:57,200 --> 00:08:04,360
Speaker 1: speak similar languages they acquire their culture. Sos Samanid established

128
00:08:04,360 --> 00:08:09,080
Speaker 1: a dynasty in Gazhni called the Ghaznavids. And again matt

129
00:08:09,320 --> 00:08:12,360
Speaker 1: prescient with that pronunciation, we do not speak these languages.

130
00:08:12,920 --> 00:08:17,320
Speaker 1: The greatest of the Ghaznavids was a king named Mahmoud

131
00:08:17,440 --> 00:08:20,920
Speaker 1: who ruled from nine ninety eight to ten thirty. He

132
00:08:21,040 --> 00:08:25,520
Speaker 1: is the one most responsible for establishing the solid foundation

133
00:08:25,640 --> 00:08:29,840
Speaker 1: of Islam throughout the area of modern day Afghanistan. He

134
00:08:29,960 --> 00:08:33,400
Speaker 1: led a lot of military expeditions into India. Even back

135
00:08:33,440 --> 00:08:39,880
Speaker 1: then people started thinking of of Afghanistan to as the

136
00:08:39,960 --> 00:08:44,240
Speaker 1: gateway to these kingdoms of India. That state falls in

137
00:08:44,280 --> 00:08:46,880
Speaker 1: the middle of the twelfth century to the Gurud Kingdom

138
00:08:46,920 --> 00:08:50,200
Speaker 1: which arose in gur that's a west central region of

139
00:08:50,280 --> 00:08:53,839
Speaker 1: present day Afghanistan. Those guys get kicked out early in

140
00:08:53,880 --> 00:08:58,240
Speaker 1: the thirteenth century by another Central Asian dynasty. And these

141
00:08:58,240 --> 00:09:01,600
Speaker 1: folks are all swept away around twelve twenty CE by

142
00:09:01,679 --> 00:09:02,440
Speaker 1: Jengas Khan.

143
00:09:02,679 --> 00:09:06,520
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, that Genghis Khan. Guy that's actually called Jengis Khan.

144
00:09:07,200 --> 00:09:12,559
Speaker 3: I like to call him Jangi Janki, k j Janki sure.

145
00:09:12,960 --> 00:09:14,800
Speaker 2: Reminds me of that tower game Djenga.

146
00:09:15,000 --> 00:09:15,959
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.

147
00:09:15,960 --> 00:09:19,959
Speaker 1: And so we we include some of this ancient history

148
00:09:20,840 --> 00:09:24,880
Speaker 1: because it's important to know that. Already it's twelve twenty

149
00:09:24,960 --> 00:09:28,240
Speaker 1: Already two of the greatest conquerors in the world have

150
00:09:28,400 --> 00:09:32,000
Speaker 1: come through this place, and now a third one appears.

151
00:09:32,040 --> 00:09:35,800
Speaker 1: Near the end of the fourteenth century, the Central Asian

152
00:09:35,920 --> 00:09:41,040
Speaker 1: military leader timor Lang or the Lame Timur, also known

153
00:09:41,080 --> 00:09:45,760
Speaker 1: as tamer Lane in the West, conquered Afghanistan. Then he

154
00:09:45,840 --> 00:09:49,000
Speaker 1: immediately moved on to India. And when he moved on,

155
00:09:49,559 --> 00:09:54,480
Speaker 1: his children and his descendants couldn't hold the empire together.

156
00:09:54,920 --> 00:09:59,120
Speaker 1: They couldn't rule everything. Their grandfather, their patriarch, took over,

157
00:09:59,240 --> 00:10:02,880
Speaker 1: but they were able to keep a hold on Afghanistan

158
00:10:03,160 --> 00:10:07,400
Speaker 1: roughly for a little while. And now we get to

159
00:10:07,600 --> 00:10:13,720
Speaker 1: where it eventually becomes an independent nation, as we said,

160
00:10:13,760 --> 00:10:18,120
Speaker 1: you know, in seventeen hundreds, becomes independent. But there's a

161
00:10:18,280 --> 00:10:21,280
Speaker 1: story behind that too. There's even more switching off. People

162
00:10:21,320 --> 00:10:24,520
Speaker 1: are trying to control this. They're dying left and right.

163
00:10:24,559 --> 00:10:27,120
Speaker 3: And we're going to talk about let's say a strategy.

164
00:10:27,160 --> 00:10:30,240
Speaker 3: You're something that's going to ripple across time here that

165
00:10:30,280 --> 00:10:34,240
Speaker 3: occurs in the eighteenth century, the king of Persia around

166
00:10:34,280 --> 00:10:36,840
Speaker 3: that time, a guy named the Deer Shaw. He was

167
00:10:36,880 --> 00:10:41,559
Speaker 3: employing this tribe of Pashtuns, an Abdhali tribe of Pashtuns,

168
00:10:42,000 --> 00:10:45,400
Speaker 3: and he was using them in his wars in India.

169
00:10:45,520 --> 00:10:50,120
Speaker 3: So he's got a contingency of other fighters. I wouldn't

170
00:10:50,120 --> 00:10:53,560
Speaker 3: call them mercenaries, but they're fighters for under another flag,

171
00:10:53,679 --> 00:10:58,040
Speaker 3: essentially fighting under his flag. Right. And Ahmad Shaw, this

172
00:10:58,320 --> 00:11:02,240
Speaker 3: Abdhali chief who'd gained this high post within the army there,

173
00:11:02,640 --> 00:11:06,720
Speaker 3: he established himself after Nadir Shah's assassination, that the guy

174
00:11:06,720 --> 00:11:09,079
Speaker 3: we're talking about, the King of Persia, after he was

175
00:11:09,120 --> 00:11:13,800
Speaker 3: assassinated in seventeen forty seven. So Ahmad Shaw is, you know,

176
00:11:14,120 --> 00:11:17,200
Speaker 3: looking to move up a little bit, and thankfully this

177
00:11:17,240 --> 00:11:21,360
Speaker 3: assembly of tribal chiefs proclaim him the new Shaw. And

178
00:11:21,400 --> 00:11:24,520
Speaker 3: then the Afghans extend their rule as far east as

179
00:11:24,679 --> 00:11:28,520
Speaker 3: Kashmir and Delhi and then north to the Amu Daria

180
00:11:29,040 --> 00:11:32,640
Speaker 3: and west into northern Persia. So they really just begin

181
00:11:32,760 --> 00:11:36,400
Speaker 3: expanding there under the rule of Ahmad Shah.

182
00:11:36,800 --> 00:11:42,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he retires from the throne in seventeen seventy two.

183
00:11:42,440 --> 00:11:46,199
Speaker 1: He's one of the few people with the distinction of retiring.

184
00:11:46,679 --> 00:11:49,800
Speaker 1: He dies in Kandahar. He has a son, Timor Shah,

185
00:11:49,960 --> 00:11:55,480
Speaker 1: who assumes control the Afghan Empire survives mostly intact through

186
00:11:55,520 --> 00:11:56,960
Speaker 1: the next twenty years.

187
00:11:57,080 --> 00:12:01,559
Speaker 3: Now think about that time. Yeah, seventeen seventy two. America

188
00:12:01,920 --> 00:12:05,120
Speaker 3: is forming right right in this time period.

189
00:12:04,840 --> 00:12:09,840
Speaker 1: Here, increasingly irritated colonists half a world away are dreaming

190
00:12:09,920 --> 00:12:13,120
Speaker 1: of revolution and saying, hey, one day there will be

191
00:12:13,120 --> 00:12:18,840
Speaker 1: a popular Broadway play about us. And you may be wondering, rightly, so,

192
00:12:19,080 --> 00:12:20,679
Speaker 1: when does all this have to do with me? When

193
00:12:20,720 --> 00:12:25,640
Speaker 1: does all this obscure Eurasian history have to do with me?

194
00:12:27,040 --> 00:12:29,640
Speaker 1: When does my team enter the game? A lot of

195
00:12:29,640 --> 00:12:32,840
Speaker 1: people in the West are wondering, Well, there is an

196
00:12:33,000 --> 00:12:38,679
Speaker 1: entire era of history involved, heavily involving Afghanistan that concerns

197
00:12:38,840 --> 00:12:42,319
Speaker 1: just this. It's called The Great Game. We did an

198
00:12:42,320 --> 00:12:46,640
Speaker 1: episode on this earlier, longtime listeners may recall. But let's like,

199
00:12:47,120 --> 00:12:48,319
Speaker 1: what's the quick and dirty way.

200
00:12:48,880 --> 00:12:54,120
Speaker 3: The Great Game is world dominance? Really, that's what it is.

201
00:12:54,600 --> 00:12:58,760
Speaker 3: It's a bunch of extremely powerful countries and people deciding, Hey,

202
00:12:58,880 --> 00:13:01,760
Speaker 3: I want to maybe be the ruler of all this.

203
00:13:02,600 --> 00:13:04,880
Speaker 3: Let's see what we can do, but there are all

204
00:13:04,880 --> 00:13:07,480
Speaker 3: these other people trying to do the same thing, so

205
00:13:07,760 --> 00:13:11,800
Speaker 3: we have to play these mind games and diplomatic games

206
00:13:12,000 --> 00:13:15,040
Speaker 3: and resource control games. Yeah.

207
00:13:15,080 --> 00:13:18,000
Speaker 2: So for most of the nineteenth century, eighteen thirty to

208
00:13:18,040 --> 00:13:21,240
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety five to be precise, the British and Russian

209
00:13:21,280 --> 00:13:24,959
Speaker 2: Empires were vying for control of Central and South Asia,

210
00:13:25,679 --> 00:13:28,319
Speaker 2: including the country of Afghanistan.

211
00:13:29,240 --> 00:13:30,240
Speaker 3: This period was.

212
00:13:30,280 --> 00:13:33,520
Speaker 2: Known, as you mentioned Matt, as the Great Game, where

213
00:13:33,559 --> 00:13:37,080
Speaker 2: both empires were trying to protect and secure their own

214
00:13:37,160 --> 00:13:41,319
Speaker 2: territories they already held and also expanding outward into others.

215
00:13:41,600 --> 00:13:44,960
Speaker 2: Britain was a huge player in this game, and that

216
00:13:45,000 --> 00:13:48,920
Speaker 2: they were very concerned that Russia might take control over India,

217
00:13:49,160 --> 00:13:52,319
Speaker 2: which was the crown jewel of the British Empire, despite

218
00:13:52,320 --> 00:13:55,439
Speaker 2: the fact that Russia this wasn't really something that they

219
00:13:55,480 --> 00:13:58,800
Speaker 2: had designs on. But you know, Britain that you got

220
00:13:58,840 --> 00:14:00,120
Speaker 2: to protect what she got, and they were to be

221
00:14:00,160 --> 00:14:05,720
Speaker 2: a little paranoid. Afghanistan became once again, as you mentioned matt,

222
00:14:05,920 --> 00:14:08,400
Speaker 2: a very fertile battleground.

223
00:14:08,880 --> 00:14:13,040
Speaker 1: Right you can see you can see some excellent fiction

224
00:14:13,360 --> 00:14:16,679
Speaker 1: based on this period of time. A work by Ridard

225
00:14:16,760 --> 00:14:20,800
Speaker 1: Kipling intensely problematic author, but I would I would say

226
00:14:20,840 --> 00:14:25,480
Speaker 1: a talented poet. He wrote a novel called Kim, which

227
00:14:25,520 --> 00:14:29,160
Speaker 1: is about a child becoming embroiled in what they later

228
00:14:29,280 --> 00:14:30,440
Speaker 1: learn is the Great Game.

229
00:14:31,040 --> 00:14:31,320
Speaker 3: Rudyerd.

230
00:14:31,400 --> 00:14:34,160
Speaker 1: Kipling, of course would be uh. I would be remiss

231
00:14:34,240 --> 00:14:38,640
Speaker 1: not to mention this is the person is the person

232
00:14:38,720 --> 00:14:42,320
Speaker 1: most responsible for the phrase white man's burden. So he's

233
00:14:42,360 --> 00:14:46,520
Speaker 1: not a good dude. But that was a well written book.

234
00:14:47,280 --> 00:14:50,440
Speaker 1: A series of conflicts transpire in real life, not just

235
00:14:50,480 --> 00:14:53,880
Speaker 1: in the book, and these are these are breaking out

236
00:14:53,920 --> 00:14:57,080
Speaker 1: to wars, but they don't really turn into world wars

237
00:14:57,280 --> 00:15:01,040
Speaker 1: at this point. One of these conflicts, the Second Anglo

238
00:15:01,160 --> 00:15:04,920
Speaker 1: Afghan War, which was from eighteen thirty eight to forty two,

239
00:15:05,800 --> 00:15:09,400
Speaker 1: ended in a treaty that gave Britain control of Afghanistan's

240
00:15:09,440 --> 00:15:12,320
Speaker 1: foreign affairs, so it turned into a vassal or a

241
00:15:12,360 --> 00:15:18,920
Speaker 1: puppet state until nineteen nineteen, when Amanala Khan declared independence

242
00:15:18,920 --> 00:15:24,000
Speaker 1: from British influence. He tried to introduce some social norms,

243
00:15:24,040 --> 00:15:31,600
Speaker 1: such as abolishing the practice of product which is the

244
00:15:31,640 --> 00:15:35,680
Speaker 1: idea that women should not be allowed to be seen

245
00:15:35,880 --> 00:15:38,880
Speaker 1: or interact in public. So he was a more forward

246
00:15:38,960 --> 00:15:42,119
Speaker 1: facing leader in some social regards.

247
00:15:43,280 --> 00:15:44,160
Speaker 3: He was trying to do that.

248
00:15:44,440 --> 00:15:46,520
Speaker 1: He was trying to he ended up fleeing the country

249
00:15:46,520 --> 00:15:50,520
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty nine. People did not really people were

250
00:15:50,560 --> 00:15:55,440
Speaker 1: not receptive to this change. Next, Zahir Shah becomes king

251
00:15:55,800 --> 00:16:01,000
Speaker 1: and for the following four years, Afghanistan is a monarchy.

252
00:16:01,360 --> 00:16:05,160
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty three, a guy named General Mohammad Daoud

253
00:16:05,280 --> 00:16:10,080
Speaker 1: became prime minister. He turned to the Soviets, to the USSR,

254
00:16:10,120 --> 00:16:12,200
Speaker 1: and he said, help me out with the economy. Helped

255
00:16:12,240 --> 00:16:15,560
Speaker 1: me out with military assistances. Also, I want to introduce

256
00:16:15,560 --> 00:16:20,320
Speaker 1: some social reforms, including the abolition of pradah. He was

257
00:16:20,360 --> 00:16:23,320
Speaker 1: forced to resign in nineteen sixty three. It's a ten

258
00:16:23,400 --> 00:16:27,080
Speaker 1: year rule there. But in nineteen seventy three he regained

259
00:16:27,120 --> 00:16:30,560
Speaker 1: power in a coup and he said, okay, now we're

260
00:16:30,600 --> 00:16:35,040
Speaker 1: a republic, and he said, you know what, I get

261
00:16:35,120 --> 00:16:38,720
Speaker 1: the trend of history here, So I'm going to try

262
00:16:38,720 --> 00:16:42,360
Speaker 1: to play these world powers against one another. It doesn't

263
00:16:42,560 --> 00:16:45,080
Speaker 1: work the way he wanted it to, because just a

264
00:16:45,080 --> 00:16:48,200
Speaker 1: few years later, in nineteen seventy eight, he is murdered

265
00:16:48,280 --> 00:16:51,720
Speaker 1: or assassinated in a pro Soviet coup. There's a new

266
00:16:51,760 --> 00:16:55,320
Speaker 1: governing faction, the new kids on the block in this situation,

267
00:16:55,400 --> 00:16:58,280
Speaker 1: and the People's Democratic Party they come to power, but

268
00:16:58,320 --> 00:17:01,480
Speaker 1: they have a lot of infighting in their own, jockeying

269
00:17:01,560 --> 00:17:04,280
Speaker 1: for position in the hierarchy. And then of course they

270
00:17:04,320 --> 00:17:07,600
Speaker 1: are eternally battling the Mujadin groups that are backed by

271
00:17:07,720 --> 00:17:12,240
Speaker 1: Uncle Sam. That was at one time seen as controversial.

272
00:17:12,320 --> 00:17:17,679
Speaker 1: That is clearly a proven fact. And let's pause for

273
00:17:17,760 --> 00:17:20,720
Speaker 1: word from our sponsor, and then we'll get to the

274
00:17:20,760 --> 00:17:32,360
Speaker 1: modern history. So the Soviet era, Paul, can we get

275
00:17:32,359 --> 00:17:36,640
Speaker 1: some kind of you know, like really authoritarian sounding big

276
00:17:36,680 --> 00:17:39,520
Speaker 1: but yeah, that kind of music. There we go. Soviet era.

277
00:17:39,880 --> 00:17:47,399
Speaker 3: Yes, So the USSR, it's in Afghanistan in nineteen seventy nine,

278
00:17:47,920 --> 00:17:50,200
Speaker 3: and it really is trying to shore up this newly

279
00:17:50,320 --> 00:17:53,000
Speaker 3: established regime. Right that we talked about, the People's Democratic

280
00:17:53,040 --> 00:17:56,440
Speaker 3: Party that's running things over there, and those guys are

281
00:17:56,440 --> 00:17:59,960
Speaker 3: by the way in the capital Kabul, and in short order,

282
00:18:00,440 --> 00:18:05,119
Speaker 3: nearly one hundred thousand Soviet soldiers took control of a

283
00:18:05,119 --> 00:18:08,560
Speaker 3: lot of the major areas, the cities, the highways, the ways,

284
00:18:08,640 --> 00:18:13,399
Speaker 3: things are being transported by all means. And here's the

285
00:18:13,480 --> 00:18:18,719
Speaker 3: thing people didn't really take to that there was rebellion.

286
00:18:19,119 --> 00:18:22,000
Speaker 3: It came quickly. It was all over the place. The

287
00:18:22,000 --> 00:18:27,000
Speaker 3: Soviets were dealing harshly with the Mujahadeen rebels and the people,

288
00:18:27,080 --> 00:18:31,440
Speaker 3: you know, the families, the small groups that were supporting them.

289
00:18:31,800 --> 00:18:35,879
Speaker 3: They were just taking out entire villages. Again, it like

290
00:18:36,040 --> 00:18:38,200
Speaker 3: sounds so familiar with the course of our history, with

291
00:18:38,280 --> 00:18:42,040
Speaker 3: the things we've talked about. They're trying to deny any

292
00:18:42,080 --> 00:18:45,280
Speaker 3: place where or that would be considered a safe haven

293
00:18:45,359 --> 00:18:49,000
Speaker 3: for enemy soldiers to be hanging out and you know, regrouping.

294
00:18:49,480 --> 00:18:53,280
Speaker 3: And while this is happening, there are outside foreign supporters

295
00:18:53,320 --> 00:18:55,639
Speaker 3: who were propping up all of these diverse groups of

296
00:18:55,680 --> 00:18:58,560
Speaker 3: rebels that are fighting back against the Soviet Union.

297
00:18:58,400 --> 00:19:00,240
Speaker 1: Playing the great game once again.

298
00:19:00,160 --> 00:19:04,720
Speaker 3: Exactly that that whole the proxy the proxy battle thing

299
00:19:04,800 --> 00:19:08,560
Speaker 3: is in full effect here. And you know, you've got

300
00:19:08,720 --> 00:19:13,480
Speaker 3: rebels pouring from Iran, Pakistan, China. The US even has

301
00:19:13,480 --> 00:19:17,160
Speaker 3: some people over their training folks and having fighters over there.

302
00:19:17,400 --> 00:19:20,920
Speaker 3: And there's this brutal nine year conflict that just goes

303
00:19:21,000 --> 00:19:24,600
Speaker 3: on and on and on, and an estimated one million

304
00:19:24,760 --> 00:19:29,600
Speaker 3: civilians are killed in this conflict Afghanistan civilians as well

305
00:19:29,600 --> 00:19:34,000
Speaker 3: as others, and there are also ninety thousand Mujahideen fighters,

306
00:19:34,400 --> 00:19:40,600
Speaker 3: eighteen thousand Afghan troops, and fourteen five hundred Soviet soldiers,

307
00:19:40,720 --> 00:19:43,760
Speaker 3: all of them who are killed in this battle, these

308
00:19:43,760 --> 00:19:45,400
Speaker 3: battles in this conflict.

309
00:19:45,160 --> 00:19:50,640
Speaker 1: And the US support varied in many different ways over

310
00:19:50,680 --> 00:19:52,879
Speaker 1: the course of this conflict. This we do have to

311
00:19:52,880 --> 00:19:58,960
Speaker 1: remember this is Cold War era, right. So, so originally

312
00:19:59,680 --> 00:20:03,360
Speaker 1: they had some suits and some agents from the company.

313
00:20:04,520 --> 00:20:07,920
Speaker 3: The company right right right, and it starts with a C.

314
00:20:08,520 --> 00:20:10,040
Speaker 3: It does, this company, it does.

315
00:20:10,320 --> 00:20:14,879
Speaker 1: And by nineteen eighty six they were becoming more they

316
00:20:14,880 --> 00:20:18,960
Speaker 1: were being less subtle, Uncle Sam was. They started supplying

317
00:20:19,119 --> 00:20:22,520
Speaker 1: Stinger missiles to the mosh Din, which were a game

318
00:20:22,600 --> 00:20:26,119
Speaker 1: changer because these Stinger missiles allowed people on the ground

319
00:20:26,119 --> 00:20:31,760
Speaker 1: to shoot down Soviet helicopter gunships. In nineteen eighty eight,

320
00:20:33,280 --> 00:20:38,400
Speaker 1: four countries, Afghanistan, the USSR, Pakistan, the US signed peace accords,

321
00:20:38,440 --> 00:20:42,240
Speaker 1: and the Soviet Union says, okay, we'll start pulling out troops.

322
00:20:42,520 --> 00:20:44,800
Speaker 1: The last of the troops leave the next year in

323
00:20:44,880 --> 00:20:50,119
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine, and civil war consumes the country, which

324
00:20:50,880 --> 00:20:52,400
Speaker 1: should not have surprised anyone.

325
00:20:52,720 --> 00:20:55,640
Speaker 3: Let's talk really quickly about some of the landscape there

326
00:20:55,720 --> 00:21:00,679
Speaker 3: and the mountains, the mountain ranges, the mountains areas, the

327
00:21:00,800 --> 00:21:05,600
Speaker 3: very hilly, sometimes very stark areas where if you know,

328
00:21:05,680 --> 00:21:08,879
Speaker 3: as the Mujahadeen, if you're given something like a stinger missile,

329
00:21:08,880 --> 00:21:11,600
Speaker 3: when you're just troops on the ground, it's very difficult

330
00:21:11,640 --> 00:21:16,080
Speaker 3: to battle against something like these Soviet gunships, the helicopters

331
00:21:16,080 --> 00:21:18,800
Speaker 3: that can roll through. They can just travel across these

332
00:21:18,920 --> 00:21:21,639
Speaker 3: landscapes to wherever they need to be in They're heavily armed.

333
00:21:22,080 --> 00:21:25,240
Speaker 3: But you know, if you're on the ground as just

334
00:21:26,240 --> 00:21:29,160
Speaker 3: a single person or even a battalion, small battalion anywhere

335
00:21:29,200 --> 00:21:33,399
Speaker 3: from one hundred to ten people, fighting back against a

336
00:21:33,440 --> 00:21:36,800
Speaker 3: gunship is very, very difficult. But if you're given a

337
00:21:36,840 --> 00:21:40,080
Speaker 3: stinger missile and you can hide out somewhere within you

338
00:21:40,080 --> 00:21:43,600
Speaker 3: know that terrain, you can easily have an upper hand there.

339
00:21:44,000 --> 00:21:47,600
Speaker 3: And again these are ripples throughout time of things that

340
00:21:47,640 --> 00:21:50,720
Speaker 3: we are going to see. We're an explosive in the

341
00:21:50,760 --> 00:21:55,480
Speaker 3: hands of somebody that understands the area, that has lived there.

342
00:21:56,920 --> 00:21:59,000
Speaker 3: You only need a few people to gain the upper

343
00:21:59,000 --> 00:22:01,120
Speaker 3: hand on large military forces.

344
00:22:01,240 --> 00:22:02,720
Speaker 2: It's one of those things where you see it. I mean,

345
00:22:02,760 --> 00:22:05,160
Speaker 2: it's even in like SNL sketches from the time, and

346
00:22:05,520 --> 00:22:07,600
Speaker 2: going back and watching a lot of Will Ferrell sketches

347
00:22:07,800 --> 00:22:09,280
Speaker 2: from those days, and there's the one where he's the

348
00:22:09,280 --> 00:22:10,119
Speaker 2: old prospector.

349
00:22:10,320 --> 00:22:11,520
Speaker 3: You know, oh yeah, you've seeing this.

350
00:22:11,600 --> 00:22:14,560
Speaker 2: It's great, but it's well, Chris Catan is playing the

351
00:22:14,600 --> 00:22:17,080
Speaker 2: sergen or whatever, and he keeps making the joke that

352
00:22:17,320 --> 00:22:20,159
Speaker 2: it's an unconventionable, unconventional war, so he got to use

353
00:22:20,240 --> 00:22:22,440
Speaker 2: unconventional methods, which in this sketch is having an old

354
00:22:22,440 --> 00:22:25,880
Speaker 2: prospector to lead them through the terrain. But it's true,

355
00:22:26,000 --> 00:22:27,800
Speaker 2: that's what they're talking about. That's the thing you heard

356
00:22:27,880 --> 00:22:30,720
Speaker 2: thrown around constantly in the news was what an inconventional

357
00:22:30,720 --> 00:22:33,480
Speaker 2: war was and required unconventional tactics.

358
00:22:33,760 --> 00:22:37,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, and in this case, an old prospector, I forget

359
00:22:37,280 --> 00:22:39,480
Speaker 3: the premise with an old prospector who is like a

360
00:22:39,520 --> 00:22:42,800
Speaker 3: cousin of somebody who was in command of the military

361
00:22:42,960 --> 00:22:44,919
Speaker 3: isn't going to do you much good. You need somebody

362
00:22:45,000 --> 00:22:48,200
Speaker 3: who has lived there and knows the history and the terrain. Yeah.

363
00:22:48,280 --> 00:22:52,080
Speaker 1: And also, for the record, the old Will Ferrell sketches

364
00:22:52,119 --> 00:22:55,080
Speaker 1: in general, hold up, oh yes, my god, not saying

365
00:22:55,080 --> 00:22:57,760
Speaker 1: that because he's technically a coworker of ours, just saying

366
00:22:57,760 --> 00:22:58,960
Speaker 1: it because they do hold.

367
00:22:58,800 --> 00:23:02,880
Speaker 3: Up shoes, sentiment, and gravy.

368
00:23:03,960 --> 00:23:07,879
Speaker 1: So who comes out ahead in this next iteration of

369
00:23:07,920 --> 00:23:10,600
Speaker 1: the power vacuum that would be a group known as

370
00:23:10,720 --> 00:23:15,680
Speaker 1: the Taliban. They seize control of Kabul. By nineteen ninety seven,

371
00:23:15,800 --> 00:23:18,959
Speaker 1: they have they have a solid grip on about two

372
00:23:19,040 --> 00:23:21,640
Speaker 1: thirds of the country, and they're starting to be recognized

373
00:23:21,640 --> 00:23:25,360
Speaker 1: in the international sphere. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, for instance,

374
00:23:25,440 --> 00:23:32,320
Speaker 1: both recognize the government. Until that is the US enters

375
00:23:32,400 --> 00:23:35,680
Speaker 1: the Great Game as a full on combatant. And it's

376
00:23:35,680 --> 00:23:44,080
Speaker 1: different because before proxy wars, right, let's call these people rebels. Yeah, yeah,

377
00:23:44,119 --> 00:23:47,240
Speaker 1: And so fast forward, as we said at the top,

378
00:23:47,440 --> 00:23:51,000
Speaker 1: in October of two thousand and one, US led bombing

379
00:23:51,040 --> 00:23:56,000
Speaker 1: of Afghanistan begins. And this is right after the attacks

380
00:23:56,119 --> 00:23:59,240
Speaker 1: on September eleventh, two thousand and one on the US

381
00:23:59,400 --> 00:24:05,560
Speaker 1: soil anti Taliban Northern Alliance Forces Intricrable, pretty much right

382
00:24:05,600 --> 00:24:09,360
Speaker 1: after and this marks the official beginning of what has

383
00:24:09,400 --> 00:24:12,720
Speaker 1: become the longest war in US history. Across the next

384
00:24:12,880 --> 00:24:19,400
Speaker 1: eighteen years, multiple presidents, three different administrations from both sides

385
00:24:19,640 --> 00:24:24,920
Speaker 1: of the US political divide would continually escalate the conflict.

386
00:24:24,960 --> 00:24:27,360
Speaker 1: They would send more troops. They would propose what they

387
00:24:27,400 --> 00:24:30,800
Speaker 1: called surgis. They would vow we were making progress in

388
00:24:30,880 --> 00:24:34,880
Speaker 1: a war that we knew we could win. Today's question,

389
00:24:35,320 --> 00:24:39,400
Speaker 1: what if they were lying? Here's where it gets crazy.

390
00:24:40,840 --> 00:24:45,479
Speaker 1: So behind the scenes, yeah, everyone knew, All of the

391
00:24:45,520 --> 00:24:49,480
Speaker 1: decision makers knew this was a disaster. And Matt, you

392
00:24:49,640 --> 00:24:52,919
Speaker 1: recently had a conversation that touched on some of this.

393
00:24:53,000 --> 00:24:56,800
Speaker 3: Is that right? Yes, quite a bit. And I spoke

394
00:24:56,840 --> 00:24:59,360
Speaker 3: with the gentleman named Steve Hooper that I very much

395
00:24:59,400 --> 00:25:01,239
Speaker 3: want to have on the show. We want to have

396
00:25:01,280 --> 00:25:06,160
Speaker 3: on this show. I forget his exact titles within the FBI,

397
00:25:06,720 --> 00:25:10,840
Speaker 3: but he was a high level person. I hope he

398
00:25:10,880 --> 00:25:14,520
Speaker 3: doesn't mind me saying his name. He has a podcast

399
00:25:14,640 --> 00:25:17,680
Speaker 3: on the iHeart network that he talks about some of

400
00:25:17,720 --> 00:25:20,199
Speaker 3: this stuff, so I think it should be okay. But

401
00:25:20,280 --> 00:25:22,639
Speaker 3: he was just talking to me about how the United

402
00:25:22,640 --> 00:25:27,080
Speaker 3: States was keeping was aware, very much aware of one

403
00:25:27,280 --> 00:25:32,760
Speaker 3: Osama bin Laden and Taliban forces, you know, after all

404
00:25:32,800 --> 00:25:37,240
Speaker 3: of the conflicts and help that we've essentially given to

405
00:25:37,320 --> 00:25:42,480
Speaker 3: that area, and we know our intelligence agencies know a

406
00:25:42,520 --> 00:25:45,199
Speaker 3: lot of the operators, We know a lot of the

407
00:25:45,280 --> 00:25:48,920
Speaker 3: mechanisms that exist out there with some of these forces,

408
00:25:49,240 --> 00:25:51,960
Speaker 3: and they also knew just from past bombings like the

409
00:25:52,040 --> 00:25:55,359
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety three attack on the World Trade Center where

410
00:25:55,440 --> 00:26:00,439
Speaker 3: a writer truck was used and thankfully did not destroy

411
00:26:00,520 --> 00:26:03,320
Speaker 3: the entire building then in nineteen ninety three, but it

412
00:26:03,359 --> 00:26:06,760
Speaker 3: was certainly a disaster and a terror attack and a

413
00:26:08,000 --> 00:26:10,760
Speaker 3: major warning sign basically that oh, we need to be

414
00:26:10,760 --> 00:26:13,199
Speaker 3: paying attention to this. And he was just telling me

415
00:26:13,280 --> 00:26:17,640
Speaker 3: that after that attack in ninety three, the intelligence apparatuses

416
00:26:17,680 --> 00:26:20,639
Speaker 3: were so aware of it. However, we went right back

417
00:26:20,720 --> 00:26:23,800
Speaker 3: to the FBI at least went right back to focusing

418
00:26:23,880 --> 00:26:29,760
Speaker 3: on drug gangs and drug cartels that existed and were

419
00:26:29,760 --> 00:26:32,960
Speaker 3: operating within the US, and they didn't turn their eyes

420
00:26:33,040 --> 00:26:35,639
Speaker 3: towards terrorism at that point.

421
00:26:35,359 --> 00:26:40,000
Speaker 1: Because there was a lot of siloing of information and gatekeeping, right.

422
00:26:40,119 --> 00:26:43,679
Speaker 3: Yes, Because again, you think about operating outside of the

423
00:26:43,800 --> 00:26:47,520
Speaker 3: US where intelligence is gathered, operating inside the US, a

424
00:26:47,560 --> 00:26:51,840
Speaker 3: lot of times it separated and this whole thing, it

425
00:26:51,920 --> 00:26:54,240
Speaker 3: kind of became a mess, at least according to Stephen

426
00:26:54,480 --> 00:26:58,960
Speaker 3: our conversation, after you create the Department of Homeland Security

427
00:26:59,000 --> 00:27:03,240
Speaker 3: and as that behemoth of organizations begins trying to keep

428
00:27:03,280 --> 00:27:06,399
Speaker 3: tabs on things like that and organize. You know, who's

429
00:27:06,480 --> 00:27:10,760
Speaker 3: controlling what, who's looking into what I say, a mess.

430
00:27:10,760 --> 00:27:12,639
Speaker 3: But that's not true. Anyone who's out there working in

431
00:27:12,680 --> 00:27:16,320
Speaker 3: any of these organizations. You know that's not necessarily true.

432
00:27:16,840 --> 00:27:21,199
Speaker 3: But it was certainly the birth pains of something bigger.

433
00:27:21,400 --> 00:27:25,240
Speaker 1: Oh that's poetic. I like that. Yeah, it's it is.

434
00:27:25,920 --> 00:27:29,600
Speaker 1: It is unfortunately true that many of the same people

435
00:27:29,720 --> 00:27:35,160
Speaker 1: publicly touting progress in this quagmire, we're often the very

436
00:27:35,200 --> 00:27:39,600
Speaker 1: same people lamenting the doomed situation, at least doomed as

437
00:27:39,600 --> 00:27:42,359
Speaker 1: they saw it behind closed doors. We know this is

438
00:27:42,400 --> 00:27:46,159
Speaker 1: not a conspiracy theory. We know this is indisputably true.

439
00:27:46,240 --> 00:27:51,040
Speaker 1: Thanks to the fantastic journalistic efforts and of the Washington

440
00:27:51,080 --> 00:27:55,920
Speaker 1: Post and the recent publication of something called the Afghanistan Papers.

441
00:27:56,200 --> 00:28:00,000
Speaker 1: On December ninth of this year, the Washington Post finally

442
00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:03,200
Speaker 1: won a legal battle that was three years in the making,

443
00:28:03,520 --> 00:28:07,959
Speaker 1: and like the war in Afghanistan, continues today. But what

444
00:28:08,040 --> 00:28:11,240
Speaker 1: did they get? What happens, We'll tell you after a

445
00:28:11,280 --> 00:28:12,600
Speaker 1: word from our sponsor.

446
00:28:19,800 --> 00:28:22,840
Speaker 2: So three year legal battle, Washington Post acquires more than

447
00:28:22,840 --> 00:28:27,359
Speaker 2: two thousand pages of quote lessons learned end quote. And

448
00:28:27,440 --> 00:28:29,119
Speaker 2: these are interviews that were conducted by the Office of

449
00:28:29,119 --> 00:28:33,800
Speaker 2: Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction or cigar Yeah, yeah, no,

450
00:28:34,200 --> 00:28:39,240
Speaker 2: give me. I love a good cigar, and it's not pretty.

451
00:28:39,400 --> 00:28:44,000
Speaker 2: What's uncovered here. There was no internal consensus on any objective,

452
00:28:44,160 --> 00:28:48,240
Speaker 2: any reasons for going to war. The country was spending

453
00:28:48,400 --> 00:28:52,880
Speaker 2: billions of dollars with no idea whatsoever, what any kind

454
00:28:52,920 --> 00:28:57,320
Speaker 2: of endgame. Looked like they literally had no idea how

455
00:28:57,600 --> 00:29:00,000
Speaker 2: to get out of the war. There was no exis strategy.

456
00:29:00,360 --> 00:29:03,000
Speaker 3: Well yeah that if you guys recall back. And this

457
00:29:03,240 --> 00:29:07,080
Speaker 3: was just to date myself a little bit. This was

458
00:29:07,280 --> 00:29:10,320
Speaker 3: occurring right around the time that I was going to

459
00:29:10,360 --> 00:29:13,160
Speaker 3: be finishing and graduating from high school. As all of

460
00:29:13,200 --> 00:29:16,160
Speaker 3: these conflicts are occurring, as the debates about this stuff

461
00:29:16,240 --> 00:29:20,400
Speaker 3: is happening, and I remember for the first time, not

462
00:29:20,440 --> 00:29:23,120
Speaker 3: for the first time, but maybe for the first time

463
00:29:23,320 --> 00:29:26,480
Speaker 3: looking at the news with a little more understanding of

464
00:29:26,560 --> 00:29:29,920
Speaker 3: history after some classes that I was taking and hearing

465
00:29:29,960 --> 00:29:34,520
Speaker 3: people discuss this, They would argue on the news like, well,

466
00:29:34,520 --> 00:29:36,920
Speaker 3: what what does it actually? What does this conflict actually?

467
00:29:37,360 --> 00:29:39,239
Speaker 3: What does victory mean? What does it look like? And

468
00:29:39,280 --> 00:29:42,440
Speaker 3: you have even the president coming on and kind of

469
00:29:42,440 --> 00:29:45,320
Speaker 3: giving you a vague you know, it's a victory. You

470
00:29:45,360 --> 00:29:51,360
Speaker 3: know it's good. We're gonna victory, right right, It's like,

471
00:29:51,400 --> 00:29:53,080
Speaker 3: what what does that mean?

472
00:29:53,480 --> 00:29:58,080
Speaker 1: Yeah? The thing is that there was not There were

473
00:29:58,160 --> 00:30:01,600
Speaker 1: some metrics for ideas of success, but there was nothing

474
00:30:01,680 --> 00:30:06,000
Speaker 1: that people agreed on with concrete steps. There was no

475
00:30:06,360 --> 00:30:12,880
Speaker 1: universal definition, and without a universal definition, as Chenua Chaba

476
00:30:13,000 --> 00:30:19,360
Speaker 1: would say, things fall apart. The Post got hundreds of

477
00:30:20,000 --> 00:30:24,239
Speaker 1: memos that are really they're almost like they're almost like

478
00:30:24,320 --> 00:30:29,640
Speaker 1: YouTube er Reddit comments from Donald H. Rumsfeld. They were

479
00:30:29,680 --> 00:30:32,080
Speaker 1: called and this has nothing to do with the current

480
00:30:32,160 --> 00:30:35,560
Speaker 1: usage of the word today, Yes, but they were called snowflakes.

481
00:30:35,920 --> 00:30:39,880
Speaker 1: You know, that's a more of a right wing pejorative

482
00:30:39,880 --> 00:30:43,320
Speaker 1: on the internet today, But in this case, they were

483
00:30:43,360 --> 00:30:47,040
Speaker 1: called snowflakes because they would just sort of be sprinkled

484
00:30:47,080 --> 00:30:52,920
Speaker 1: on all these communications, brief instructions or comments that Rumsfeld

485
00:30:53,000 --> 00:30:56,880
Speaker 1: would tell his employees during the course of his time

486
00:30:56,960 --> 00:30:59,760
Speaker 1: working on the war. And they are things that are

487
00:30:59,840 --> 00:31:04,360
Speaker 1: so so informal, like there's one where it says, I'm

488
00:31:04,400 --> 00:31:08,840
Speaker 1: not sure who the enemies are here. We don't know

489
00:31:09,880 --> 00:31:14,080
Speaker 1: we're shooting at someone for sure. So all together these

490
00:31:14,120 --> 00:31:20,280
Speaker 1: memos and these two thousand plus pages revealed by this

491
00:31:20,400 --> 00:31:25,200
Speaker 1: Freedom of Information Act. They function as a genuine secret

492
00:31:25,240 --> 00:31:28,600
Speaker 1: history of what we know about the war, and some

493
00:31:28,640 --> 00:31:32,200
Speaker 1: people taking a longer view of history would say, well,

494
00:31:32,240 --> 00:31:36,479
Speaker 1: this is just another act in the ongoing war that

495
00:31:36,760 --> 00:31:40,600
Speaker 1: has been occurring on the land of Afghanistan for much

496
00:31:40,680 --> 00:31:44,560
Speaker 1: much longer than eighteen years. But here's what we learned

497
00:31:45,280 --> 00:31:49,800
Speaker 1: the reports. The journalist and the analyst at the Washing

498
00:31:49,920 --> 00:31:54,880
Speaker 1: Post found four common and disturbing themes running throughout these papers,

499
00:31:54,960 --> 00:31:58,600
Speaker 1: and they're pretty brutal to hear, but we look through

500
00:31:58,640 --> 00:32:01,600
Speaker 1: them and they are well re searched, and there's not

501
00:32:01,760 --> 00:32:06,959
Speaker 1: a ton of editorializing. So every single year covered by

502
00:32:07,000 --> 00:32:12,200
Speaker 1: these papers, US officials, at least some of them, purposefully

503
00:32:12,640 --> 00:32:15,280
Speaker 1: refused to tell the public the truth about the war.

504
00:32:15,400 --> 00:32:19,600
Speaker 1: In some way or another. They would issue these pronouncements,

505
00:32:19,600 --> 00:32:22,520
Speaker 1: they would say stuff that they straight up knew wasn't true,

506
00:32:22,840 --> 00:32:27,240
Speaker 1: and they would hide unmistakable evidence that for one reason

507
00:32:27,320 --> 00:32:31,080
Speaker 1: or another, the war had become unwinnable, which was.

508
00:32:31,080 --> 00:32:35,240
Speaker 3: An odd concept of it being winnable or unwinnable, because

509
00:32:35,640 --> 00:32:37,960
Speaker 3: it just didn't seem like there was one or the other.

510
00:32:38,240 --> 00:32:42,920
Speaker 1: Right, Chocolate rations have been increased, right, yeah, and now

511
00:32:42,960 --> 00:32:44,920
Speaker 1: they're going to be eighty percent less than they were.

512
00:32:45,320 --> 00:32:50,720
Speaker 1: So they also in these papers we see that officials

513
00:32:50,720 --> 00:32:54,240
Speaker 1: who were interviewed, and again this was all internal documentation,

514
00:32:54,400 --> 00:32:58,680
Speaker 1: and so they wanted to tell the truth. They depicted

515
00:32:59,040 --> 00:33:04,400
Speaker 1: purposeful explain efforts by the US government to mislead the public.

516
00:33:04,680 --> 00:33:09,880
Speaker 1: And then they also it's you could describe it. Maybe

517
00:33:09,920 --> 00:33:12,680
Speaker 1: this is a little bit too much editorial voice here,

518
00:33:12,920 --> 00:33:19,120
Speaker 1: but you could describe it as a sort of collective

519
00:33:19,640 --> 00:33:23,719
Speaker 1: disbelief in the facts, kind of cherry picking the stuff

520
00:33:23,760 --> 00:33:27,880
Speaker 1: that would be good, ignoring the stuff that would run

521
00:33:28,000 --> 00:33:32,480
Speaker 1: counter to the narrative. So everybody is like, everybody's doing

522
00:33:32,480 --> 00:33:34,480
Speaker 1: a thing where they're like, all right, we're going to

523
00:33:34,920 --> 00:33:38,120
Speaker 1: all agree that this is fine.

524
00:33:38,680 --> 00:33:44,160
Speaker 3: Everything's great, We're gonna win, and stuff's gonna be good afterwards.

525
00:33:44,280 --> 00:33:46,840
Speaker 1: You know what, You know what that guy who said

526
00:33:46,880 --> 00:33:49,200
Speaker 1: the house is on fire, what he meant was it's

527
00:33:49,240 --> 00:33:50,480
Speaker 1: warm and cozy in here.

528
00:33:51,120 --> 00:33:55,400
Speaker 3: Just look at this banner. What does it say, mission accomplished,

529
00:33:55,440 --> 00:33:56,120
Speaker 3: We're done.

530
00:33:56,240 --> 00:33:58,960
Speaker 2: Look at that sweet bomber jacket. I mean, look at

531
00:33:59,000 --> 00:34:02,280
Speaker 2: that shrutt and gate that the president has.

532
00:34:03,240 --> 00:34:08,600
Speaker 1: Seriously, and again, it's funny because people who consider themselves

533
00:34:08,960 --> 00:34:15,520
Speaker 1: domestic political partisans in the US, like someone who would

534
00:34:15,560 --> 00:34:20,680
Speaker 1: definitely hate the right side of American politics would be

535
00:34:22,560 --> 00:34:28,839
Speaker 1: would levy valid imbiting criticism of the misleading pr that

536
00:34:29,000 --> 00:34:32,520
Speaker 1: the Republican side was doing when they had a presidential administration,

537
00:34:32,960 --> 00:34:38,080
Speaker 1: And then people who hated the left side would levy

538
00:34:37,560 --> 00:34:45,920
Speaker 1: the same again valid criticism at the Democrat administrations because

539
00:34:45,960 --> 00:34:48,799
Speaker 1: they were doing the same thing. All that changed was

540
00:34:48,840 --> 00:34:51,879
Speaker 1: the brand names on the facts. It was still a

541
00:34:51,920 --> 00:34:55,080
Speaker 1: bucket of poison pills. They just had different labels.

542
00:34:55,680 --> 00:34:59,920
Speaker 3: Dude, you're still right though, And I remember seeing that

543
00:35:01,160 --> 00:35:01,560
Speaker 3: we're going.

544
00:35:01,560 --> 00:35:03,480
Speaker 1: To have a surge, right, and a surge will thing.

545
00:35:04,000 --> 00:35:07,440
Speaker 1: But that's okay. So that's just one deliberate, at the

546
00:35:07,520 --> 00:35:12,320
Speaker 1: very least at the most generous, deliberately misleading the public,

547
00:35:12,360 --> 00:35:14,920
Speaker 1: who is, by the way, paying billions of dollars for this.

548
00:35:15,360 --> 00:35:17,280
Speaker 3: And here's the thing we kind of mentioned up above.

549
00:35:17,880 --> 00:35:21,200
Speaker 3: This is number two. By the way, the officials from

550
00:35:21,680 --> 00:35:24,440
Speaker 3: you know, the United States and the Coalition of Forces,

551
00:35:24,520 --> 00:35:27,919
Speaker 3: the allies that were going into Afghanistan with us, they

552
00:35:28,320 --> 00:35:32,680
Speaker 3: pretty much admitted openly that the mission had really no

553
00:35:32,800 --> 00:35:36,640
Speaker 3: discernible strategy, like we don't know. There doesn't seem to

554
00:35:36,640 --> 00:35:38,720
Speaker 3: be a strategy. We've got a lot of people there.

555
00:35:38,840 --> 00:35:42,080
Speaker 3: There are a lot of troops there and some facilities

556
00:35:42,080 --> 00:35:47,319
Speaker 3: that we're building. But yeah, we really don't have great objectives.

557
00:35:47,480 --> 00:35:48,439
Speaker 3: We're not sure what we're doing.

558
00:35:48,560 --> 00:35:51,440
Speaker 1: There's stuff on the level of like, well, have you

559
00:35:51,440 --> 00:35:55,360
Speaker 1: guys talked to Todd, because to Todd put it really well,

560
00:35:55,400 --> 00:35:58,520
Speaker 1: Like I remember walking out of a meeting and I

561
00:35:58,560 --> 00:36:00,600
Speaker 1: was like, this is for sure what we're doing, and

562
00:36:00,680 --> 00:36:04,239
Speaker 1: UH just can't I can't recall one hundred percent of

563
00:36:04,320 --> 00:36:04,960
Speaker 1: it right now.

564
00:36:05,000 --> 00:36:09,520
Speaker 2: He just seems so confident, you know, he's just he's

565
00:36:09,680 --> 00:36:12,239
Speaker 2: such as got such a good haircut. I mean, I

566
00:36:12,280 --> 00:36:13,520
Speaker 2: just love the cut of his jacket.

567
00:36:13,840 --> 00:36:16,400
Speaker 1: You can tell he man like he goes to a manicure.

568
00:36:16,680 --> 00:36:20,360
Speaker 2: Absolutely, his cuticles are impeccable, and you just you can't

569
00:36:20,480 --> 00:36:21,920
Speaker 2: really disbelieve.

570
00:36:21,360 --> 00:36:22,080
Speaker 3: A guy like that.

571
00:36:22,200 --> 00:36:24,760
Speaker 1: So, as far as I was concerned, if Todd's good, we're.

572
00:36:24,560 --> 00:36:29,759
Speaker 3: Good, right, Yeah, you're right. Hopefully hopefully Todd can just

573
00:36:29,880 --> 00:36:31,879
Speaker 3: keep us keep that morale up, you know.

574
00:36:31,920 --> 00:36:35,640
Speaker 1: And the interviewers like Todd, who I think, oh that's

575
00:36:35,680 --> 00:36:39,600
Speaker 1: a great uh you got disappeared. There are a lot

576
00:36:39,640 --> 00:36:42,840
Speaker 1: of he worked. You weren't somewhere in the building. It

577
00:36:42,880 --> 00:36:45,400
Speaker 1: may have been the subway, he may have been in general.

578
00:36:45,520 --> 00:36:48,560
Speaker 1: I just look you guys, You'll know him when you

579
00:36:48,560 --> 00:36:49,000
Speaker 1: see him.

580
00:36:49,280 --> 00:36:49,759
Speaker 3: It's true.

581
00:36:49,880 --> 00:36:53,279
Speaker 1: At first, there was this pretty solid rationale they were

582
00:36:53,320 --> 00:36:56,720
Speaker 1: going to we were aiming to destroy al Qaeda. Who

583
00:36:57,520 --> 00:37:01,120
Speaker 1: was you know, we're involved in these very US terrorist acts,

584
00:37:01,200 --> 00:37:06,120
Speaker 1: not just being accused of involvement in the September eleventh attacks,

585
00:37:06,120 --> 00:37:09,000
Speaker 1: but also being active in attacks throughout the nineties that

586
00:37:09,000 --> 00:37:10,560
Speaker 1: you had mentioned earlier, Matt.

587
00:37:10,520 --> 00:37:12,759
Speaker 3: With certain leaders with names that you might know or

588
00:37:12,840 --> 00:37:14,640
Speaker 3: people that were purportedly a part of them.

589
00:37:14,880 --> 00:37:19,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, but Todd would never do that. Once once al

590
00:37:19,960 --> 00:37:26,799
Speaker 1: Qaeda been you know, largely muzzled, the officials involved said

591
00:37:27,480 --> 00:37:31,600
Speaker 1: they had mission creep. The goals got muddy and unclear,

592
00:37:31,960 --> 00:37:36,560
Speaker 1: and they began adopting strategies that might contradict the strategies

593
00:37:36,600 --> 00:37:40,080
Speaker 1: of other agencies or institutions, and they started having goals

594
00:37:40,080 --> 00:37:44,240
Speaker 1: that were unattainable. And people who were running this war,

595
00:37:44,560 --> 00:37:47,319
Speaker 1: folks are dying, billions of dollars going down the drain.

596
00:37:47,880 --> 00:37:51,080
Speaker 1: The people in charge were saying, I have problems with

597
00:37:51,120 --> 00:37:53,560
Speaker 1: basic questions. Who is the enemy here.

598
00:37:53,840 --> 00:37:54,680
Speaker 3: I am not being.

599
00:37:54,600 --> 00:37:58,439
Speaker 1: Hyperbolic when Donald Rumsfeld said that who is the enemy here?

600
00:37:59,120 --> 00:38:04,880
Speaker 1: Who amidst these various complicated groups and alliances can we

601
00:38:04,960 --> 00:38:10,120
Speaker 1: count on as allies? And also, you know, I know

602
00:38:10,120 --> 00:38:12,319
Speaker 1: there's a weird question to drop at four thirty on

603
00:38:12,360 --> 00:38:16,600
Speaker 1: a Friday, But how do we know when we've won?

604
00:38:18,360 --> 00:38:23,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's no bell that goes off, or specific person

605
00:38:24,239 --> 00:38:28,680
Speaker 3: you have to defeat, or a king to overthrow r

606
00:38:29,000 --> 00:38:31,959
Speaker 3: you know, there's no goalpost like that. Yeah.

607
00:38:32,160 --> 00:38:35,239
Speaker 1: And it turns out that the Third Revelation, years into

608
00:38:35,280 --> 00:38:40,040
Speaker 1: the conflict, the United States still had a very poor

609
00:38:40,239 --> 00:38:45,520
Speaker 1: understanding of the country overall. Officials from not just the

610
00:38:45,640 --> 00:38:49,080
Speaker 1: US but also from the Afghan government told interviewers that

611
00:38:49,160 --> 00:38:52,240
Speaker 1: a lot of the policies and initiatives coming from Uncle Sam,

612
00:38:52,560 --> 00:38:56,759
Speaker 1: everything from like training Afghan forces to trying to I'm

613
00:38:56,800 --> 00:39:01,680
Speaker 1: going to say it again, trying to woosh, trying to

614
00:39:02,360 --> 00:39:06,080
Speaker 1: stop the opium trade, all of them felt like they

615
00:39:06,080 --> 00:39:10,680
Speaker 1: were designed to fail. Whether that's because of incompetence, because

616
00:39:10,719 --> 00:39:13,319
Speaker 1: they were based on flawed assumptions, or whether because there

617
00:39:13,360 --> 00:39:15,880
Speaker 1: was some sort of ulterior motive, or whether it was

618
00:39:15,920 --> 00:39:18,560
Speaker 1: just a country they did not understand.

619
00:39:19,680 --> 00:39:22,880
Speaker 3: Or you know, I don't want to put my biases

620
00:39:22,920 --> 00:39:25,839
Speaker 3: on it, but a country that maybe some of those

621
00:39:25,840 --> 00:39:29,320
Speaker 3: people in charge just didn't care about at a certain level.

622
00:39:29,440 --> 00:39:35,120
Speaker 1: There are disturbing accounts or allegations and interviews in some

623
00:39:35,200 --> 00:39:39,120
Speaker 1: of these papers where an officials say something like we

624
00:39:39,120 --> 00:39:43,960
Speaker 1: were just giving consultants tons of money, and you know,

625
00:39:44,080 --> 00:39:46,439
Speaker 1: somebody would fly on a plane and they would read

626
00:39:46,520 --> 00:39:48,840
Speaker 1: the Kite Runner or something while they were on the plane,

627
00:39:48,880 --> 00:39:52,120
Speaker 1: and they would hop out and think that they understood

628
00:39:52,200 --> 00:39:55,759
Speaker 1: everything about this place that has been a battleground for

629
00:39:56,000 --> 00:40:00,560
Speaker 1: centuries and centuries and has been trod upon by one

630
00:40:00,640 --> 00:40:05,560
Speaker 1: outside empire after another, the fourth one, which clearly is

631
00:40:05,600 --> 00:40:08,759
Speaker 1: a bit of a cheap scape. Myself, I've been having

632
00:40:08,800 --> 00:40:11,680
Speaker 1: a hard time not mentioning this. Yet the US flushed

633
00:40:11,719 --> 00:40:15,080
Speaker 1: billions and billions and billions of dollars down the geopolitical

634
00:40:15,200 --> 00:40:21,640
Speaker 1: drain trying to nation build in Afghanistan. Nation building is

635
00:40:21,800 --> 00:40:26,239
Speaker 1: a risky endeavor that can pay great dividends if you

636
00:40:26,360 --> 00:40:27,440
Speaker 1: get it off the ground.

637
00:40:27,600 --> 00:40:29,400
Speaker 3: It was once called colonialism.

638
00:40:30,080 --> 00:40:34,000
Speaker 1: That's building a different kind of nation, I know, but

639
00:40:34,040 --> 00:40:37,920
Speaker 1: that's I mean, yeah, so they wanted to, I don't know,

640
00:40:37,920 --> 00:40:42,120
Speaker 1: they were just so out of out of touch with

641
00:40:42,280 --> 00:40:48,600
Speaker 1: what was happening. So they's this, there's this great comparison.

642
00:40:49,920 --> 00:40:54,080
Speaker 1: Or similarly, in the accounts of the early days here,

643
00:40:54,360 --> 00:40:57,480
Speaker 1: it was an economic boom for the military industrial complex

644
00:40:57,640 --> 00:41:02,480
Speaker 1: obviously for the associated energy and defense industries. It was

645
00:41:02,520 --> 00:41:04,920
Speaker 1: a boom contractors, of course.

646
00:41:06,200 --> 00:41:09,080
Speaker 3: And we can just say like that was immediately affected

647
00:41:09,120 --> 00:41:14,080
Speaker 3: by the September eleventh attacks and the public acceptance essentially

648
00:41:14,160 --> 00:41:17,000
Speaker 3: that yeah, we should probably protect ourselves more and spend

649
00:41:17,000 --> 00:41:18,360
Speaker 3: a lot more money than we were.

650
00:41:18,360 --> 00:41:21,440
Speaker 1: Sure, so we'll pay for it. You handle the details. Yeah,

651
00:41:21,520 --> 00:41:23,600
Speaker 1: I want to feel good when I see the news

652
00:41:23,680 --> 00:41:29,239
Speaker 1: and feel like I've done my part. So since so

653
00:41:29,760 --> 00:41:35,160
Speaker 1: here's the simile. One of the sources says money is

654
00:41:35,239 --> 00:41:38,560
Speaker 1: like water, and Afghanistan was like a desert, and when

655
00:41:38,560 --> 00:41:43,840
Speaker 1: you pour too much water too quickly, the land cannot

656
00:41:43,880 --> 00:41:47,080
Speaker 1: absorb it. Yeah, and it becomes a wash with this money.

657
00:41:47,640 --> 00:41:55,040
Speaker 1: And that that struck me because it not only does

658
00:41:55,080 --> 00:41:59,360
Speaker 1: it feel true, but it has the unfortunate quality of

659
00:41:59,400 --> 00:42:02,480
Speaker 1: being true. Since two thousand and two, the US has

660
00:42:02,719 --> 00:42:08,360
Speaker 1: allocated more than eighty three billion dollars in security assistance

661
00:42:08,400 --> 00:42:13,840
Speaker 1: to Afghanistan that dwarfs the defense budget the entire defense

662
00:42:13,880 --> 00:42:18,960
Speaker 1: budget of other developing nations. In twenty eleven alone, at

663
00:42:18,960 --> 00:42:22,080
Speaker 1: the peak of the war, this country got eleven billion

664
00:42:22,120 --> 00:42:25,879
Speaker 1: dollars in security aid from Washington. That's three billion more

665
00:42:25,920 --> 00:42:29,359
Speaker 1: than what Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons and a way

666
00:42:29,360 --> 00:42:34,160
Speaker 1: bigger army, spent on its entire military that year. That's nuts.

667
00:42:34,239 --> 00:42:39,680
Speaker 1: They spent eight billion, and the US gave Afghanistan eleven billion. Now,

668
00:42:39,680 --> 00:42:42,120
Speaker 1: I do want to say it may sound like we're

669
00:42:42,160 --> 00:42:48,080
Speaker 1: being unfair here, we have to remember that the military operators,

670
00:42:48,719 --> 00:42:54,600
Speaker 1: people working for the US government, and the contractors involved,

671
00:42:54,640 --> 00:42:59,960
Speaker 1: they're not in these rooms, they're not in these board rooms,

672
00:43:00,080 --> 00:43:03,600
Speaker 1: in these war rooms and so on. They're being sent

673
00:43:03,680 --> 00:43:08,239
Speaker 1: to a place to risk their lives, and they are

674
00:43:08,400 --> 00:43:11,800
Speaker 1: trying to save people on the grounds, you know what

675
00:43:11,880 --> 00:43:14,040
Speaker 1: I mean. They're trying to help civilians, they're trying to

676
00:43:14,080 --> 00:43:16,120
Speaker 1: prevent these deaths.

677
00:43:16,239 --> 00:43:19,200
Speaker 3: Yes, But the other side of that coin is that

678
00:43:19,880 --> 00:43:26,040
Speaker 3: the almost the feeling of a goalless occupation like that

679
00:43:26,840 --> 00:43:31,520
Speaker 3: caused a lot of situations where, you know, a few

680
00:43:32,040 --> 00:43:36,200
Speaker 3: a small amount of those contractors and military personnel felt

681
00:43:36,200 --> 00:43:39,279
Speaker 3: as though or at least acted as though there was

682
00:43:39,320 --> 00:43:42,080
Speaker 3: no rule of law. There were no rules. That's really

683
00:43:42,120 --> 00:43:44,480
Speaker 3: good things could happen there, and I think it's because

684
00:43:44,520 --> 00:43:47,840
Speaker 3: that top down guidance just didn't exist.

685
00:43:47,880 --> 00:43:49,920
Speaker 2: Well, we talked too about how you know, maybe this

686
00:43:49,960 --> 00:43:52,600
Speaker 2: is hyperbolic, and I've heard people kind of poopoo this idea,

687
00:43:52,680 --> 00:43:55,920
Speaker 2: but comparing Afghanistan to Vietnam in the sense that it

688
00:43:56,040 --> 00:43:59,400
Speaker 2: was very difficult terrain, it was an enemy that they

689
00:43:59,400 --> 00:44:03,640
Speaker 2: didn't fully understand, and it seemed to have empowered a

690
00:44:03,680 --> 00:44:07,439
Speaker 2: lot of military personnel to commit some.

691
00:44:07,400 --> 00:44:10,840
Speaker 1: Atrocities, right, we also have to consider I think that

692
00:44:11,160 --> 00:44:13,839
Speaker 1: is I don't think that's not based comparison. We also

693
00:44:13,880 --> 00:44:16,960
Speaker 1: have to consider that a lot of the horror stories

694
00:44:17,000 --> 00:44:21,719
Speaker 1: we hear came from the crimes of private contractors, so

695
00:44:21,800 --> 00:44:24,560
Speaker 1: people were working in private industry that have been subcontracted

696
00:44:24,560 --> 00:44:28,439
Speaker 1: out by the US government or NATO, or they come

697
00:44:28,560 --> 00:44:32,400
Speaker 1: from people who were supposed to be the authorities in

698
00:44:33,760 --> 00:44:37,880
Speaker 1: like from Afghanistan. Yes, so you know there are stories

699
00:44:37,920 --> 00:44:44,720
Speaker 1: which are true of military service members being brigged in danger,

700
00:44:44,800 --> 00:44:52,080
Speaker 1: being dishonorably discharged because they refuse to tolerate the sexual

701
00:44:52,080 --> 00:44:57,200
Speaker 1: abuse of children which they saw firsthand. Not in not

702
00:44:57,320 --> 00:45:01,319
Speaker 1: in some like, not in some sketchy part of town necessarily,

703
00:45:01,360 --> 00:45:07,600
Speaker 1: but like in the police chiefs compound in the police station,

704
00:45:08,360 --> 00:45:12,520
Speaker 1: or having to make nice with warlords and crack a

705
00:45:12,560 --> 00:45:15,680
Speaker 1: deal with them because of their influence over a you know,

706
00:45:15,840 --> 00:45:20,360
Speaker 1: a region of the area. Adjusted for inflation and for

707
00:45:20,600 --> 00:45:25,840
Speaker 1: just as they say talking Turkey, for perspective, eleven billion

708
00:45:25,960 --> 00:45:30,799
Speaker 1: US dollars is more than the US spent in the

709
00:45:31,000 --> 00:45:34,439
Speaker 1: entirety of Western Europe with the Marshall Plan after World

710
00:45:34,520 --> 00:45:39,040
Speaker 1: War Two. Think about that, the entirety. But after almost

711
00:45:39,040 --> 00:45:42,520
Speaker 1: two decades of help from Washington, or attempts at help

712
00:45:42,520 --> 00:45:46,200
Speaker 1: from Washington, the Afghan army and the police force are

713
00:45:46,400 --> 00:45:51,360
Speaker 1: still not probably not going to be capable of fending

714
00:45:51,400 --> 00:45:54,279
Speaker 1: off all these insurgents. It's not just the Taliban, It's

715
00:45:54,640 --> 00:45:59,000
Speaker 1: is the Islamic State and others without outside assistance, without

716
00:45:59,000 --> 00:46:00,560
Speaker 1: backup from the US military.

717
00:46:01,160 --> 00:46:02,840
Speaker 3: I just want to jump in there really fast before

718
00:46:02,840 --> 00:46:05,680
Speaker 3: we keep going. Just to we mentioned the Marshall Plan,

719
00:46:05,760 --> 00:46:09,880
Speaker 3: which was uh the the program we mentioned it was

720
00:46:09,920 --> 00:46:11,520
Speaker 3: after World War two as well, but that was the

721
00:46:11,560 --> 00:46:14,200
Speaker 3: program of aid right that we that we gave to

722
00:46:14,560 --> 00:46:17,400
Speaker 3: most of or a lot of Europe just to rebuild

723
00:46:17,600 --> 00:46:19,920
Speaker 3: after the battles were fought in that region.

724
00:46:20,840 --> 00:46:24,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, and thank you. So back to

725
00:46:24,920 --> 00:46:28,320
Speaker 1: the money, which I promise I'll stop, I'll stop harping

726
00:46:28,320 --> 00:46:28,919
Speaker 1: on at some point.

727
00:46:28,960 --> 00:46:31,520
Speaker 3: It's just like it's crazy.

728
00:46:31,600 --> 00:46:34,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, what could eleven billion dollars do you know what

729
00:46:34,640 --> 00:46:34,960
Speaker 1: I mean?

730
00:46:35,600 --> 00:46:40,600
Speaker 3: Superpowers could be rocked there, it could be brought into life. Right.

731
00:46:41,440 --> 00:46:47,400
Speaker 1: There was so much money flowing that bribery, fraud, and corruption,

732
00:46:48,480 --> 00:46:54,880
Speaker 1: they became superpowered as tendencies and trends. One advisor who

733
00:46:54,920 --> 00:46:57,360
Speaker 1: was working for the US said that when he was

734
00:46:57,400 --> 00:47:03,040
Speaker 1: working this particular air base, any Afghan people, meaning native

735
00:47:03,080 --> 00:47:06,800
Speaker 1: Afghan people who were working there regularly reeked of jet

736
00:47:06,800 --> 00:47:09,680
Speaker 1: fuel because they were just smuggling so much of it

737
00:47:09,800 --> 00:47:12,600
Speaker 1: out to sell on the black market. And then we

738
00:47:12,680 --> 00:47:17,480
Speaker 1: have another point about corruption within the police force. And

739
00:47:17,560 --> 00:47:21,359
Speaker 1: this this comes from an INTERVIEWEE who was comfortable being

740
00:47:21,440 --> 00:47:22,279
Speaker 1: named yes.

741
00:47:22,320 --> 00:47:24,719
Speaker 2: And one interview Thomas Johnson, who was a Navy official

742
00:47:25,040 --> 00:47:29,720
Speaker 2: serving as a counter insurgency advisor in Kandahar Province, said

743
00:47:29,760 --> 00:47:34,840
Speaker 2: that the Afghans viewed the police as predatory bandits. He

744
00:47:34,960 --> 00:47:39,720
Speaker 2: called them quote the most hated institution in all of Afghanistan.

745
00:47:40,520 --> 00:47:45,799
Speaker 2: And then another interviewee, an unnamed Norwegian official told interviewers

746
00:47:45,800 --> 00:47:50,239
Speaker 2: that he estimated thirty percent of Afghan police recruits deserted

747
00:47:50,280 --> 00:47:53,200
Speaker 2: with their government issued weapons so they could quote set

748
00:47:53,280 --> 00:47:57,840
Speaker 2: up their own private checkpoints aka highway robbery.

749
00:47:58,200 --> 00:47:59,320
Speaker 1: Right, literally.

750
00:48:00,480 --> 00:48:03,960
Speaker 3: Just extorting people that were traveling through what they were doing.

751
00:48:04,160 --> 00:48:11,120
Speaker 1: Right, right, And the other statements these officials make don't

752
00:48:11,160 --> 00:48:14,880
Speaker 1: sound pretty. But of course we you know, we have

753
00:48:14,960 --> 00:48:18,640
Speaker 1: to point out again that part of this is a

754
00:48:19,160 --> 00:48:22,040
Speaker 1: maybe a function of these shifting goalposts, right, But to

755
00:48:22,080 --> 00:48:24,239
Speaker 1: not know who your enemies are and not know who

756
00:48:24,640 --> 00:48:29,760
Speaker 1: the difference between your enemies and your allies is, that's tough,

757
00:48:30,160 --> 00:48:33,400
Speaker 1: especially in a situation like this. There were other revelations.

758
00:48:33,640 --> 00:48:37,279
Speaker 1: It turns out that several senior US officials believe there

759
00:48:37,320 --> 00:48:40,120
Speaker 1: was a realistic opportunity to cut a piece deal with

760
00:48:40,160 --> 00:48:42,839
Speaker 1: the Taliban back in two thousand and two or two

761
00:48:42,920 --> 00:48:45,440
Speaker 1: thousand and three. Again, we're not saying it's definite, we're

762
00:48:45,480 --> 00:48:49,000
Speaker 1: saying that's what they felt was in the cards. Also,

763
00:48:49,040 --> 00:48:51,600
Speaker 1: when this stuff came out, you know who else was surprised?

764
00:48:51,800 --> 00:48:57,400
Speaker 1: Congress And with Congress, it's tough, like how many is it? Performative?

765
00:48:58,239 --> 00:49:01,360
Speaker 3: Right? I have to be upset at the for my constituents,

766
00:49:01,400 --> 00:49:04,040
Speaker 3: so they know that I was definitely upset at this.

767
00:49:04,440 --> 00:49:09,400
Speaker 1: Right, And there's bipartisan there's bipartisan anger at this. At

768
00:49:09,520 --> 00:49:13,840
Speaker 1: least if we look at Senators Richard Blumenthal and Josh Howley,

769
00:49:14,239 --> 00:49:17,479
Speaker 1: they're both on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and they've

770
00:49:17,480 --> 00:49:21,080
Speaker 1: already called for hearings based on these reports. Even former

771
00:49:21,160 --> 00:49:24,719
Speaker 1: Afghan President Hamen Karzai gave an interview to the AP

772
00:49:24,920 --> 00:49:29,560
Speaker 1: Associated Press recently and he said the Afghanistan papers proved

773
00:49:29,560 --> 00:49:33,480
Speaker 1: the US was at fault for his country's corruption. However,

774
00:49:34,080 --> 00:49:37,040
Speaker 1: Praig Whitlock, one of the journalists who brought the story

775
00:49:37,040 --> 00:49:40,960
Speaker 1: to light from the Post, said the US was at fault,

776
00:49:41,120 --> 00:49:44,319
Speaker 1: but the Afghan government did not prosecute many people for

777
00:49:44,400 --> 00:49:46,560
Speaker 1: corruption or fraud, that's for sure.

778
00:49:47,880 --> 00:49:48,520
Speaker 3: Geez.

779
00:49:50,360 --> 00:49:54,480
Speaker 1: And this is where this is where this leaves us.

780
00:49:55,160 --> 00:49:56,799
Speaker 1: I know it's a high level look, but there's so

781
00:49:56,840 --> 00:49:58,000
Speaker 1: many other things to report.

782
00:49:58,120 --> 00:50:00,399
Speaker 2: Well, there'll be new revelations surely, right, I mean there's

783
00:50:00,400 --> 00:50:01,480
Speaker 2: a lot of documents here.

784
00:50:01,640 --> 00:50:03,920
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought that up, because, yeah, as we

785
00:50:03,960 --> 00:50:06,920
Speaker 1: record today the Washington Post, we said it was an

786
00:50:07,000 --> 00:50:10,680
Speaker 1: ongoing war for them, right, they're still in court fighting

787
00:50:10,719 --> 00:50:15,640
Speaker 1: for more documents, and they're pressing Cigar to identify everyone

788
00:50:15,760 --> 00:50:20,000
Speaker 1: they interviewed for the Afghanist on papers, which they haven't yet. Currently,

789
00:50:20,000 --> 00:50:23,600
Speaker 1: the Trump administration is holding direct peace talks with the Taliban.

790
00:50:24,560 --> 00:50:27,879
Speaker 1: A lot of the experts that The Post spoke with

791
00:50:28,120 --> 00:50:30,839
Speaker 1: said that they believe the only way to end this

792
00:50:30,960 --> 00:50:33,759
Speaker 1: war is to cut a deal that militarily, it is

793
00:50:33,800 --> 00:50:38,279
Speaker 1: impossible to entirely defeat the Taliban unless it's something like

794
00:50:38,840 --> 00:50:42,880
Speaker 1: sewing the Earth with salt aka nukes, which no one wants.

795
00:50:42,719 --> 00:50:46,799
Speaker 3: Scorched to earth policy, right, Yeah, please don't do that.

796
00:50:47,160 --> 00:50:49,280
Speaker 3: Anyone who's listening who has one of those things?

797
00:50:49,600 --> 00:50:55,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, and and this has given these out of civilians now, yeah, costco, baby,

798
00:50:55,480 --> 00:50:57,239
Speaker 1: it's the only things you have to buy three to

799
00:50:57,239 --> 00:50:58,319
Speaker 1: get the deal, got it?

800
00:50:58,400 --> 00:51:01,560
Speaker 3: Yeah? Don't you remember in twenty twenty three that whole

801
00:51:01,600 --> 00:51:04,920
Speaker 3: declaration happened and we all got nukes. That it was

802
00:51:05,280 --> 00:51:09,000
Speaker 3: the Mutually Assured Destruction Agreement of twenty twenty three.

803
00:51:09,040 --> 00:51:10,760
Speaker 2: I'd rather have a giant psychic squid.

804
00:51:11,760 --> 00:51:14,880
Speaker 3: Those are coming too. Have you heard the news, the

805
00:51:14,880 --> 00:51:17,960
Speaker 3: good news? Yeah, there's this guy, he's working on a

806
00:51:18,000 --> 00:51:21,560
Speaker 3: giant the intergalactic squid. Thing. I don't know. I don't

807
00:51:21,560 --> 00:51:26,239
Speaker 3: know the details. I have no comment. Well are you

808
00:51:26,400 --> 00:51:27,440
Speaker 3: the guy I know?

809
00:51:27,600 --> 00:51:30,360
Speaker 1: Look, let's go to a different abb yours. This is

810
00:51:30,400 --> 00:51:33,480
Speaker 1: another thing about this story that is still continuing, and

811
00:51:33,520 --> 00:51:37,560
Speaker 1: this I don't know, This is just my I want

812
00:51:37,560 --> 00:51:40,680
Speaker 1: to be too conspiratorial. I do want to note it

813
00:51:40,760 --> 00:51:47,040
Speaker 1: is a fact currently Afghanistan still dominates global opium markets.

814
00:51:47,560 --> 00:51:51,360
Speaker 1: Last year, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crimes,

815
00:51:51,400 --> 00:51:57,280
Speaker 1: so twenty eighteen, right, eighty two percent of the world's

816
00:51:57,280 --> 00:52:03,600
Speaker 1: opium supply was produced in Afghanistan. Some of the biggest

817
00:52:03,600 --> 00:52:07,959
Speaker 1: problems in the US, they're drug related, come from opium. Yeah,

818
00:52:08,040 --> 00:52:10,560
Speaker 1: they're not growing a ton of it here, are they. No,

819
00:52:10,800 --> 00:52:16,040
Speaker 1: Like you know, the different the different pharmaceutical companies that

820
00:52:16,200 --> 00:52:22,600
Speaker 1: are probably gonna avoid too many serious consequences of creating

821
00:52:22,760 --> 00:52:23,880
Speaker 1: the opium crisis.

822
00:52:24,360 --> 00:52:29,239
Speaker 3: Nobody's saying conspiracy here, people, We're just we're just going, hey,

823
00:52:29,239 --> 00:52:33,239
Speaker 3: look at this. I'm just saying we talked about this

824
00:52:33,320 --> 00:52:36,799
Speaker 3: in a previous episode. Just how much security was devoted

825
00:52:36,920 --> 00:52:41,120
Speaker 3: to what looks like from the reporting and the images

826
00:52:41,160 --> 00:52:43,359
Speaker 3: that were sent back over the course of years up

827
00:52:43,480 --> 00:52:48,200
Speaker 3: until very recently, that we are protecting the poppy fields,

828
00:52:48,280 --> 00:52:50,000
Speaker 3: I guess from allowing anyone to.

829
00:52:51,040 --> 00:52:54,120
Speaker 1: Use them, right and well, it's also tough because you

830
00:52:54,120 --> 00:52:57,400
Speaker 1: can see interviews with farmers in the area who say,

831
00:52:57,520 --> 00:53:02,000
Speaker 1: you know, I'm a subsistence farmer. Yeah, Like there were

832
00:53:02,040 --> 00:53:08,920
Speaker 1: different plans to institute new crops for cash, but obiam

833
00:53:08,920 --> 00:53:12,279
Speaker 1: makes the most money to sell and the markup is huge.

834
00:53:12,320 --> 00:53:15,000
Speaker 1: The worst part is those farmers are not making what

835
00:53:16,360 --> 00:53:19,200
Speaker 1: you know, nobody's going to be buying a mansion doing that.

836
00:53:19,239 --> 00:53:22,520
Speaker 2: Well, it's the same way with cocaine in Colombia and stuff, right,

837
00:53:22,560 --> 00:53:25,600
Speaker 2: I mean, largely the cartels put the burden of cultivating

838
00:53:25,640 --> 00:53:28,799
Speaker 2: it and growing it on these families who look at

839
00:53:28,840 --> 00:53:32,200
Speaker 2: it as you know, some sort of subsistence living, but

840
00:53:32,239 --> 00:53:35,680
Speaker 2: they're not sharing in the profits of the criminal enterprise.

841
00:53:36,280 --> 00:53:40,359
Speaker 1: Again, elephants war and grass. Right, when elephants make war,

842
00:53:40,440 --> 00:53:44,759
Speaker 1: the grass suffers. It's there's a lot of stuff that

843
00:53:44,800 --> 00:53:48,200
Speaker 1: we missed and we've got to emphasize. Just on the

844
00:53:48,280 --> 00:53:51,000
Speaker 1: ending note, we have to emphasize the human element, you

845
00:53:51,000 --> 00:53:54,880
Speaker 1: know what I mean. People who are soldiers are not bad.

846
00:53:55,440 --> 00:53:59,960
Speaker 1: People who are civilians in a country that is being

847
00:54:00,040 --> 00:54:03,960
Speaker 1: subjected to a conflict are not bad. Either this is

848
00:54:04,640 --> 00:54:07,719
Speaker 1: these are all human beings who are trying to survive.

849
00:54:08,360 --> 00:54:11,600
Speaker 1: And the horrific thing is that a lot of decisions

850
00:54:11,680 --> 00:54:15,320
Speaker 1: upon which lives hinged are made by people who will

851
00:54:15,360 --> 00:54:18,759
Speaker 1: never physically travel to the places where they see their

852
00:54:18,800 --> 00:54:25,920
Speaker 1: consequences of their decisions made real. And that's our classic

853
00:54:26,080 --> 00:54:29,800
Speaker 1: episode for this evening. We can't wait to hear your thoughts.

854
00:54:29,840 --> 00:54:30,920
Speaker 3: That's right, let us know what you think.

855
00:54:30,960 --> 00:54:33,200
Speaker 2: You can reach to the andlic Conspiracy Stuff where we

856
00:54:33,239 --> 00:54:37,560
Speaker 2: exist on Facebook x and YouTube on Instagram and TikTok

857
00:54:37,600 --> 00:54:38,719
Speaker 2: or Conspiracy Stuff Show.

858
00:54:38,760 --> 00:54:41,040
Speaker 3: If you want to call us dial one eight three

859
00:54:41,120 --> 00:54:46,240
Speaker 3: three STDWYTK. That's our voicemail system. You've got three minutes.

860
00:54:46,320 --> 00:54:48,480
Speaker 3: Give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if

861
00:54:48,520 --> 00:54:50,600
Speaker 3: we can use your name and message on the air.

862
00:54:50,920 --> 00:54:52,480
Speaker 3: If you got more to say than can fit in

863
00:54:52,520 --> 00:54:55,319
Speaker 3: that voicemail, why not instead send us a good old

864
00:54:55,360 --> 00:54:56,120
Speaker 3: fashioned email.

865
00:54:56,360 --> 00:54:59,239
Speaker 4: We are the entities to read every single piece of

866
00:54:59,280 --> 00:55:03,719
Speaker 4: correspondence we receive. Be aware, yet not afraid. Sometimes the

867
00:55:03,800 --> 00:55:26,840
Speaker 4: void writes back. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

868
00:55:27,000 --> 00:55:29,040
Speaker 3: Stuff they Don't Want you to Know is a production

869
00:55:29,160 --> 00:55:33,680
Speaker 3: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

870
00:55:33,760 --> 00:55:37,000
Speaker 3: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.