Speaker 1: So another long form podcast from the Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 1: If you don't know who we are, Jack Armstrong and
Speaker 1: Joe Getty. We do a radio show all up and
Speaker 1: down the West Coast, big cities. But we we've had
Speaker 1: a lot of guests on our radio show over the years.
Speaker 1: We thought, geez, we could talk to you for an hour,
Speaker 1: So we thought we'd start doing that with some of
Speaker 1: our guests. And what a pleasure it is to have
Speaker 1: another conversation with Laura Logan, a legendary foreign correspondent, Chief
Speaker 1: Foreign Affairs correspondent for CBS News, longtime correspondent for CBS
Speaker 1: is sixty minutes and uh and and not only a
Speaker 1: great reporter, but a thinker and observer of human beings
Speaker 1: around the globe. Laura Logan, here's a couple of things
Speaker 1: have happened just in the last couple of days in Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: Suicide attacks, a midwife training center, a refugee assistants office,
Speaker 1: a cricket match, a convoy of seek and Hindu leaders,
Speaker 1: a customs building, an elementary school, a ceasefire celebration, and
Speaker 1: a crowded prayer service at a Shiite mosque, in addition
Speaker 1: to an attack on a military base that Creek killed
Speaker 1: three foreign soldiers and injured in American all those just
Speaker 1: in the last a couple of days. That's not what
Speaker 1: we were hoping for when we went into Afghanistan seventeen
Speaker 1: years ago. Yeah, so where are we, Well, we're at
Speaker 1: the point of surrender basically, if you um, that's what
Speaker 1: you know. The Afghan um people that I know and
Speaker 1: have known for a very long time, Afghan lawyers, Afghan Americans,
Speaker 1: Afghans on the ground there they right now, the US
Speaker 1: is engaged in peace talks with the Taliban. We have
Speaker 1: given up on precondition from the very beginning, from nine eleven.
Speaker 1: The preconditions were that the Taliban had to embrace the
Speaker 1: Afghan constitution, they had to denounce violence, and they had
Speaker 1: to renounce any um affiliation or affinity to Al Qaeda
Speaker 1: or their ideology. So we've given up on all of that.
Speaker 1: We've thrown that out the window. We also said that
Speaker 1: they had to talk to the Afghan government because the
Speaker 1: only way they could sell peace to their people was
Speaker 1: for this to be a legitimate Afghan process. We've abandoned
Speaker 1: that and uh and we've now sat down three times
Speaker 1: with the Taliban emissaries that their opposite and cutter and um,
Speaker 1: and we are basically negotiating the terms of what many
Speaker 1: afghan see as a surrender. Well and correct me if
Speaker 1: I'm wrong. It's it's probably going to smell a little
Speaker 1: bit like the peace agreement in Vietnam, in which we
Speaker 1: shout peace with honor, peace with honor, and run for
Speaker 1: the door. And then what ensues is anything but peace
Speaker 1: or honor. Well, yes, I mean in some in some respects.
Speaker 1: You know those Vietnam analogies. Um, they're very popular and
Speaker 1: they and they resonate, right. Um. The reason that I
Speaker 1: don't really like them too much, Um, just based on
Speaker 1: what I have seen and learned on the ground in Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: what what what will happen here? Is unlikely that the
Speaker 1: US is to do an absolutely complete withdrawal. I mean
Speaker 1: nobody can say, right. All of us are guessing because
Speaker 1: we're trying to predict what's going to happen in the future.
Speaker 1: But if you look at the sign designs are that
Speaker 1: the US is probably going to maintain a price and
Speaker 1: um in Afghanistan at Bagram Air Base and in the
Speaker 1: south so near the capital Carble, that would be Bagram
Speaker 1: and then the south would be Kanadahar. Why because Pakistan
Speaker 1: has nuclear weapons, it's just across the border, and it
Speaker 1: has the highest concentration of terrorist groups on any patch
Speaker 1: of ground in the world. So the U s is
Speaker 1: is UM is very aware of the consequences of pulling
Speaker 1: out completely, not just because of the experience of Vietnam.
Speaker 1: But Vietnam didn't follow the US home, right, I mean
Speaker 1: the last time the US pulled out of Afghanistan and
Speaker 1: disengaged after the defeating helping the Afghanistan the Soviets, it
Speaker 1: did follow the U s home. It followed the US
Speaker 1: all the way to nine eleven and beyond. So um,
Speaker 1: there is a very real example right now in the presents,
Speaker 1: not just the historical example of that cost on top
Speaker 1: of the fact that that war is not over. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's spread to many different battle fields across the world,
Speaker 1: whether it's y m And or Syria, you know, or
Speaker 1: Iraq or other races. And you will say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: those are different wars. Well, they're not rarely different in
Speaker 1: terms of the ideology and what the groups are fighting
Speaker 1: for and the U and the potential consequences for the US.
Speaker 1: So in Afghanistan. What most people expect is that the
Speaker 1: US will not withdraw completely, They'll maintain some kind of presence.
Speaker 1: And on top of that, if you look at the
Speaker 1: mineral resulces of Afghanistan, the US UM geology report that
Speaker 1: came out recently estimated that worth at around a trillion dollars.
Speaker 1: And what the US saw in Iraq was the moment
Speaker 1: that we walked out of Iraq before the US even
Speaker 1: with through from Iraq. Who is there negotiating for the oil?
Speaker 1: The Chinese, and so they beat the US to it.
Speaker 1: So you sacrifice all that blood and treasure in Iraq,
Speaker 1: and you let other countries around China everybody else read
Speaker 1: the benefits um And so is the US willing to
Speaker 1: do that again in Afghanistan? The Russians, the Iranians, the Chinese,
Speaker 1: they're already engaged Afghanistan, sitting on massive mineral resources. And
Speaker 1: Trump has recently President Trump has been inquiring and asking
Speaker 1: questions about Afghana sentimental resources, So that is definitely on
Speaker 1: his radar. So you have a president who hates nation
Speaker 1: building and state building, who doesn't believe in it, who
Speaker 1: doesn't UM, who has not made his displeasure with the
Speaker 1: situation in Afghanistan unknown. You know, he's on the record
Speaker 1: through the campaign and since he took off as a
Speaker 1: saying we need results. And he's also expressed interest in
Speaker 1: the mineral resources. So how did those those things play
Speaker 1: into where we are now in Afghana? Send him where
Speaker 1: things are going? Wow? That is all very interesting. You know.
Speaker 1: It makes me think of our involvement in all these
Speaker 1: different countries and uh, and I'm not sure we ever
Speaker 1: end up with any different results. I mean, we got
Speaker 1: as engaged as you can get in Iraq, we stayed
Speaker 1: out of Egypt, we got kind of engaged in Libya,
Speaker 1: I mean, and and now with the Afghanistan, it just
Speaker 1: uh does it make any difference? So Okay, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be really cynical here. Did we stay out of Egypt?
Speaker 1: You know? Did we stay out at any of these
Speaker 1: What you were talking about is the levels of engagement
Speaker 1: and the type of engagement, right, It wasn't Clinteston and
Speaker 1: COVID diplomatic? Was it very So you're saying we got
Speaker 1: very engaged in Iraq. Yes, we got very engaged in
Speaker 1: Iraq for all you know, Um, you could argue many
Speaker 1: people would argue that we got engaged for the wrong reasons, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I remember I was one of those journalists
Speaker 1: scratching my head when they were talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: Saddam Hussein, because the only Al Qaeda presence in Iraq
Speaker 1: at that time was up in the north, in the
Speaker 1: Kurdish region, and it was called Ansar Altuna. And of course,
Speaker 1: you know, after the fall of Saddam you had al
Speaker 1: Qaeda strengthened itself enormously and then the birth of its
Speaker 1: UM ultra violence, frontline combat army, UM. You know, come
Speaker 1: to the four in the form of isis but UM.
Speaker 1: But there the reality is is it your form of engagement,
Speaker 1: that UM that dictates your lack of success or is
Speaker 1: it the fact that UM the U S hasn't really
Speaker 1: demonstrated the willingness to win decisively in any of these conflicts.
Speaker 1: You know, in Syria, there were some options in the beginning.
Speaker 1: You could argue that none of them were great. But
Speaker 1: a few years in, once you've lost hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of Syrians had been murdered and tortured, UM and wounded
Speaker 1: and suffered, and Russia had consolidated its hold, Iranic consolidated
Speaker 1: its hold and asside. With their assistance and the failure
Speaker 1: of the Obama administration to keep its red line, had
Speaker 1: had managed to make sure that you have no good
Speaker 1: options left right, So engagement with dise engagement are not
Speaker 1: your only two options. We in political terms, that's what
Speaker 1: we sell to the American people. We get engaged or
Speaker 1: we don't get engaged. Right, that's what works. You live, Yeah,
Speaker 1: perfect example. Oh no, we weren't gonna get engaged in Nebya.
Speaker 1: We're gonna use nature. We're gonna bump from the guys.
Speaker 1: We've got rid of Aa Duffy. And that was the
Speaker 1: signature of farm policy success of the last administration. Well,
Speaker 1: where is Libya today? It's a failed state. It's a
Speaker 1: failed state that's acting as a staging ground and a
Speaker 1: base and um and basically a munitions and weapons factory
Speaker 1: for every terrorist group in the world, including Al Qaider
Speaker 1: and ISIS. So, but nobody wants to talk about that, right, Well,
Speaker 1: it's funny I do politically, I actually do, as long
Speaker 1: as our tour of horror has brought us to Libya.
Speaker 1: I just read Tom Friedman in The New York Times
Speaker 1: said the other day that toppling Kadafi without building a
Speaker 1: new order may go down as the single dumbest action
Speaker 1: the NATO Alliance ever took. Do you agree? But yes,
Speaker 1: I mean, well, you know, um, I would say there's
Speaker 1: a panteon of dumb decisions that NATO has made. But
Speaker 1: I don't like putting things on NATO like that, you know,
Speaker 1: we love to do that as as journalists and men,
Speaker 1: cats and politicians. NATO is made up of countries, and
Speaker 1: those countries are made up of leaders, and those leaders
Speaker 1: made those decisions, and we as journalists allow them to
Speaker 1: get away with it, right, I mean, and we as
Speaker 1: people and voters allowed them to get away with it.
Speaker 1: These things are not anonymous, and we love to sit
Speaker 1: in retrospect and look back on administrations and say, oh,
Speaker 1: look how they failed. But when they're actually in the
Speaker 1: process of making those decisions and carrying out those policies,
Speaker 1: we don't like to hold them accountable because then we
Speaker 1: have to be accountable to right, and we have to
Speaker 1: deal with the consequences. The only exception to that that
Speaker 1: I've observed, you know, very in very neutral capacity. I
Speaker 1: don't say this as a pro or four in a
Speaker 1: very neutral capacity. The only president that I've seen as
Speaker 1: a sitting president who's getting absolutely pummeled for every decision
Speaker 1: he makes. Is the one who is currently in the
Speaker 1: White House, And I don't even want to say his
Speaker 1: name because god, you know, then you unleash a fire.
Speaker 1: Soone coming off to you, right, But I'm not I
Speaker 1: don't there, you know. For me as a journalist, my
Speaker 1: job is and as someone who's been in Afghanistan and
Speaker 1: been on the ground in these places from the very
Speaker 1: beginning of these conflicts. No, that's what I care about
Speaker 1: looking at those things. I I'm not like, I'm not
Speaker 1: a political animal. In fact, it's probably be the death
Speaker 1: of me because I'm a very not political animal. And
Speaker 1: I and the politics is a is just a suicidal game, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's death bipolitics. You get caught up
Speaker 1: in all of that. If you just you step away
Speaker 1: from things and look at them in terms of the
Speaker 1: principles and in terms of the reality, and you take
Speaker 1: the hysteria out of it, the political hysteria out of it.
Speaker 1: That's what I try to do when I try to
Speaker 1: understand and we try to lump all these conflicts together
Speaker 1: when it's too to us, and then we tried to
Speaker 1: separate them. When it suits us, you say, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: kid is not an existential threat to the US. We
Speaker 1: don't care what they're doing in Timbuktu and Molly. That's
Speaker 1: not going to affect us ever. Well, except maybe it
Speaker 1: would have. Maybe it would look different if you look
Speaker 1: at what's the reality the way I'll Tider looks at it,
Speaker 1: and what al Qaida will admit to you is that
Speaker 1: this is all part of their army. That these are
Speaker 1: all different battalions and units. The thing is our battalions
Speaker 1: and units. They're all part of, you know, the same army.
Speaker 1: And they were the same uniforms, and they they you know,
Speaker 1: they take the same they make the same um contract
Speaker 1: with the US government. There's they just they redefined what
Speaker 1: it is to have an army. They redefined what it
Speaker 1: is to fight a conventional war, never mind the terrorist war.
Speaker 1: They've taken all those pieces and they put them together
Speaker 1: and they use them in different ways. And and we,
Speaker 1: for some inexplicable reason, seems that it's our duty to
Speaker 1: help them do that because we helped their propaganda by
Speaker 1: separating them. We helped their propaganda by saying it's all
Speaker 1: our faulks. Because we screwed up everywhere, right, and now
Speaker 1: it's all our faults. We we seem how bent on
Speaker 1: helping them win, which is just a mystery to me.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, who's saying it's all our fault? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: if you if you read um, if you read on
Speaker 1: the media, and you listened to our politicians day from
Speaker 1: because that we created Isis because we invaded Iraq. Really
Speaker 1: is that how it worked. We made it easy for
Speaker 1: Isis to take roots. But those are all if you
Speaker 1: Ryan Crocker home it was ambassador to Iraq said it
Speaker 1: best when he said, these are all the same guys
Speaker 1: that I was I was dealing with when I was
Speaker 1: ambassador and they were kaida In I rock very exactly
Speaker 1: the same people. Even't create them, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: we didn't give birth to them. They're fighting for the
Speaker 1: same thing that they were fighting for when they had
Speaker 1: a different name. So they rebranded. Why Because conventional armies
Speaker 1: hold territory. Clandestine intelligence organizations they spread, They work on
Speaker 1: ideology and intelligence. That's what they specialized in Al Qaeda.
Speaker 1: After Night and eleven went to underground. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: that's why they They they had a network of organizations
Speaker 1: all across the work Unsal al Sharia Libya, Unsu al
Speaker 1: Sharia Tunisia. Why did these organizations exist, who funded them,
Speaker 1: who built them, what to whose allegiance? Who were they
Speaker 1: tied to? And by the way, the Obomber administration, after
Speaker 1: saying that the attack in Benghazi was carried out by
Speaker 1: unsal Sharia Olivia, which was a nondescription, you know, unimportant
Speaker 1: local organization with the Obomber Treasury Department, then sanctioned them
Speaker 1: as an al Qaida organization, which you know, any journalists
Speaker 1: with half a brain would have known. Who knew at
Speaker 1: the time that this was al Qaida Olivia. But what
Speaker 1: al Qaida knew was if you put your Alchaidia name
Speaker 1: on every organization that is part of you, You're gonna
Speaker 1: face sanctions. It's going to be impossible to operate. You're
Speaker 1: gonna have the resources of the U S and all
Speaker 1: of its allies mobilized against you. Right, I mean smart
Speaker 1: clandestine In certain terrorist organizations, they don't put a big
Speaker 1: target on their heads. Not calling yourself like al Qaida
Speaker 1: and like closing down for a day and reopening is terrorism.
Speaker 1: HUT is good enough to do a good enough distraction.
Speaker 1: That's astounding. Of course. In fact, you know many organizations
Speaker 1: that done it. Look if you go back to the
Speaker 1: African National Congress ANC in South Africa when they were
Speaker 1: banned by the South African government, what did they do?
Speaker 1: They created the UDF, the United Democratic Front, and so
Speaker 1: the u d F could then they could campaign in public,
Speaker 1: they could hold rallies, they could have political offices. Who
Speaker 1: were they They would basically d, A and C. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's what terrorists and insurgent organizations do. It's the
Speaker 1: only smart way to survive. And also don't forget to proliferate,
Speaker 1: because that allows you to function and proliferate everywhere. What
Speaker 1: al Qaeda did with nine eleven was they put their
Speaker 1: stamp as the ideological leaders of the global Islamic hid.
Speaker 1: Nobody has been able to challenge them, right, nobody can
Speaker 1: knock them off their pedestals. And the moment that nine
Speaker 1: eleven happened, they knew that the US was all its
Speaker 1: power and might be becoming accidents. That's exactly what the
Speaker 1: US it with its allies. So if you're going to
Speaker 1: live to fight another day, if you're Asamam London and
Speaker 1: you're compare yourself to Mohammed when he fled from was
Speaker 1: forced out of Mecca two and forced out of Mecca
Speaker 1: and Medina and went into the hydra. He spent thirty
Speaker 1: years fighting to get back. Right, that's nothing, That's absolutely
Speaker 1: nothing to these people, because they think in generational terms
Speaker 1: and messianic terms. They go back to the Koran. They're talking,
Speaker 1: you know, they're talking hundreds of years. So what does
Speaker 1: it matter if you go underground for ten people always
Speaker 1: say in you as, oh, well, look we've had no
Speaker 1: no major attack in you as. That shows our policies
Speaker 1: are working. Does it does it tell your policies are working?
Speaker 1: Or does it show that some of your policies have
Speaker 1: had some effects? But actually it also might demonstrate that
Speaker 1: your enemy has shifted its tactics. You know, I was
Speaker 1: just gonna ask whether, in your view, violent fundamentalist Islam
Speaker 1: under whatever banner, is on the rise, on the decline,
Speaker 1: or but you seem to be implying that the game
Speaker 1: is so long that you know, I'm not sure it's
Speaker 1: a worthwhile question. I'm not so see, I'm not implying anything.
Speaker 1: I'm saying very clearly, if you listen to what al
Speaker 1: Qaeda tells you and what the ideology states, it is
Speaker 1: a long game. If you look at what they're doing
Speaker 1: recruiting children, what is the cubs of the caliphates? And
Speaker 1: the isis why did Hitler build the Hitler youth? Because
Speaker 1: he was planning on you know, the next two years? No,
Speaker 1: because he was planning on the next generation, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's not an implication. They say that their actions
Speaker 1: demonstrate that they've proved that they've got the cups of
Speaker 1: the caliphate when they started and when these youth, the
Speaker 1: youth that they were recruiting. You talked about us being
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan for more than seventeen years, right, we'll think
Speaker 1: about it. That ten year old is how old? Now? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's incredible. When you started doing the math on those things,
Speaker 1: you get near thirty year olds that were there from
Speaker 1: the beginning. I mean it's just, Um, that's the thing is,
Speaker 1: I'm not a prophet, right, I can't tell you what
Speaker 1: they plan and what they think or what anyone is
Speaker 1: going to do, you know. I Mean that's what my
Speaker 1: worst thing ever as the journalist is being asked on
Speaker 1: the morning ut. You know, so, what's gonna happen. It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: what let wait, let me let me see I've run
Speaker 1: an expert what I am as a students of these
Speaker 1: people and what they they want to do, because what
Speaker 1: they have demonstrated is is that they carry they mean
Speaker 1: what they say, and they follow their words. They've shown
Speaker 1: that over and over and over again. I can give
Speaker 1: you a hundred different examples. So I tried to understand
Speaker 1: when are they being genuine, when are they being deceptive?
Speaker 1: When are they being strategic? When are they being tactical?
Speaker 1: And I tried to build a base of knowledge on that.
Speaker 1: And you do the same thing with the U S
Speaker 1: of course, you know, it's always um, it's different depending
Speaker 1: on who's in power in the US. And and we
Speaker 1: like to hit the reset button, you know, a new
Speaker 1: administration comes in and they think, oh, they're going to
Speaker 1: change everything. Pakistan's a perfect example. Every new Newish general,
Speaker 1: every new US ambassador, every new US administration goes into
Speaker 1: Pakistan and things, they're going to reinvent the Pakistani story
Speaker 1: and none of them have succeed. Well that that makes
Speaker 1: me playing the same game. So I'm trying to take
Speaker 1: some overarching philosophy out of what you're saying, so is
Speaker 1: is Western Western civilization just not Are we not taking
Speaker 1: this threat seriously enough? Or maybe we're just not built
Speaker 1: for long games? Were built for short games? Well we do.
Speaker 1: I mean it is, you know, it's it's well acknowledged
Speaker 1: and understood that in Western civilization, and particularly in the US,
Speaker 1: we or instant gratification people, right, I mean, look at
Speaker 1: all the technology that's being created. All of it is
Speaker 1: built around instant gratification. And and we think in terms
Speaker 1: of election cycles, we don't. I remember sitting with Jack Ma.
Speaker 1: You know Jack Ma, the Chinese billionaire entrepreneur, genius, change
Speaker 1: the world, bring the Internet to China, um superstar, so
Speaker 1: you know who created Ali barber and you know brought
Speaker 1: uh like ups. There was no delivery service like that
Speaker 1: in China. He bore all of these things to China, right,
Speaker 1: and he's continuing to change China and change the world
Speaker 1: as a result. So Jack Man, I sat in this
Speaker 1: tea shop in China. They had two thousand year old
Speaker 1: tea on the menu. Got to be a little I
Speaker 1: didn't even know t could survive for two thousand years.
Speaker 1: But yeah, no kidding, But I see where you're going there.
Speaker 1: The Yeah, the rest of the world thinks and a
Speaker 1: lot longer terms, and we do. Our entire focus in
Speaker 1: the United States is an election coming up, you know,
Speaker 1: in a month or so, and then we'll focus on
Speaker 1: the next six months. We don't think about two thousand
Speaker 1: year old tea. We think in terms of election cycles.
Speaker 1: And with technology, we think in terms of right now.
Speaker 1: I mean, our kids don't even wait for the next
Speaker 1: episode to come next week. They they binge watched right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We had a boss who once said that there were
Speaker 1: a civilization that paces back and forth and patiently in
Speaker 1: front of a microwave, which I thought was a pretty
Speaker 1: good way to put it. Yes, yes, And you know
Speaker 1: Jack Mark said to me in that conversation and the
Speaker 1: tea shop, he said, you know, we we look at
Speaker 1: the world in terms of thousands of years, in terms
Speaker 1: of centuries and civilizations. Our philosophy goes back a very
Speaker 1: long way. It's fascinating to us to look at you
Speaker 1: and and see how you think. I mean. And he
Speaker 1: defined the relationship how the US relationship with China had
Speaker 1: changed in his lifetime by looking at his grandfather's relationship
Speaker 1: and then his father's and then his you know, here
Speaker 1: he is doing business with the US. He's going to
Speaker 1: the US and bringing seeing the Internet and bringing that
Speaker 1: to China. What was his father, what was his grandfather?
Speaker 1: You know, I mean one of them was a was
Speaker 1: at war, a pow and was at war right, And
Speaker 1: from one generation to the next, that relationship and that
Speaker 1: image of the US change. So it's it's not a
Speaker 1: unique US thing to be instant gratification. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of of the New World is like that. But if
Speaker 1: you look at the philosophy of al Qader and you
Speaker 1: read the ideology bin Laden and Abdullah Zam the Palestinian
Speaker 1: philosopher that he wrote the ideology with, they talked in
Speaker 1: in messianic terms. They talked in generations and years. I'll
Speaker 1: give you a I'll give you one of the most
Speaker 1: visceral examples that I ever experienced. I was in northern
Speaker 1: Iraq when after the fall of Mosl, when Isis were
Speaker 1: in control of the city, and it was such a
Speaker 1: terrifying place to be because James Foley had been beheaded
Speaker 1: in an orange jump. Student Steven salt Loc and all
Speaker 1: the others that followed right and um and I said,
Speaker 1: we're used. They used propaganda so effectively to strike terror
Speaker 1: in all of our how and so we're in the
Speaker 1: small little villages of of northern Iraq that surround Mosel.
Speaker 1: You could see Mosel, which was just a few miles away,
Speaker 1: and you could see the front lines of ISIS. And
Speaker 1: I was the Kurdish forces who were showing us where,
Speaker 1: you know, I the fighters would come and penetrate the
Speaker 1: lines at night and where they were they were fighting,
Speaker 1: like in the trenches right in front of their positions
Speaker 1: and all of that. And and I went to Christian
Speaker 1: villages and I wanted to be able to say in
Speaker 1: my story how old these villages were. When when did
Speaker 1: the first Christians walk on this ground? So, you know,
Speaker 1: you asked people in the village, everybody gives you a
Speaker 1: different answer. You look it up online, Everyone's got a
Speaker 1: different answer. So I became so frustrated trying to find
Speaker 1: the truth. And so I said, Okay, said to the villages,
Speaker 1: take me to the oldest building in this village. So
Speaker 1: this is northern Iraq, which was ancient Mesopotamia. What do
Speaker 1: you think the oldest building was in the village. I
Speaker 1: can't can't even imagine. And I know it's mentioned multiple
Speaker 1: times in the Old Testament. So three thousand years So
Speaker 1: was it a church? Was it a church? You would
Speaker 1: think maybe a mosque? And you think no, Well, because
Speaker 1: you know, you go to Israel is a long argument
Speaker 1: over who was there first? Right, one of the Palestinian
Speaker 1: church trees? Who was there first? Who does it all
Speaker 1: belong to? Okay, so you go there. It's not the moss,
Speaker 1: it's not the church. It's the synagogue, the oldest building.
Speaker 1: And who takes me there the most of mistake me there? Right,
Speaker 1: it's not Jewish people taking me. There's not Christian people
Speaker 1: taking me there. This is the local Muslims who have
Speaker 1: lived their all their lives and actually never lived anywhere else.
Speaker 1: So then you start to look, well wait a minute, okay,
Speaker 1: so then what is the oldest church and they go
Speaker 1: to the oldest church, and what is the oldest mosque? Well,
Speaker 1: the first mosque was built. The first Muslims never set
Speaker 1: foot on that territory of northern Iraq until more than
Speaker 1: six hundred years after the first after Assyrians converted to
Speaker 1: Christianity as they became the first nation to convert to
Speaker 1: Christianity as a nation. So for six hundred years there
Speaker 1: weren't any Muslims in Iraq in nother I rock on
Speaker 1: that piece of grounds. So think about how they are
Speaker 1: looking at the history. If it takes six hundred years,
Speaker 1: that's you know, that doesn't mean anything to them. They're
Speaker 1: willing to fight for six hundred years. You know. I
Speaker 1: find myself wondering whether we're just talking about the life
Speaker 1: cycle of of peoples and cultures and empires, the move
Speaker 1: from the young, hungry and desperate young historically speaking to
Speaker 1: the successful and established, to the affluent and self indulgent,
Speaker 1: and then it goes away, and there could be nothing
Speaker 1: more natural. You can postponent with an incredibly mighty military,
Speaker 1: I suppose, But um, I just I can't see us
Speaker 1: having having sacrificed notions or at least seen a transition
Speaker 1: of notions from history to immediacy, from duty to to pleasure,
Speaker 1: et cetera. I don't see us as a people thinking
Speaker 1: about our great great great grandchildren in a significant way.
Speaker 1: And I don't know why we don't, because you know,
Speaker 1: as a mother, I look at my children and I
Speaker 1: get sometimes really, I get really you know, anxious and worried.
Speaker 1: And I used to you know, I spent so much
Speaker 1: time on the battlefields and talking to soldiers and especially
Speaker 1: you know, officers or commanders or like group leaders or whatever.
Speaker 1: They would always talk about. I mean, yes, so my
Speaker 1: children don't have to be here. And I used to
Speaker 1: think that that was the hokeyest you know, most um
Speaker 1: made up kind of talking point you could get, right.
Speaker 1: I was like alf a kind in a bucket, seriously,
Speaker 1: you know, and other guys telling me that. And now
Speaker 1: I'm a mom and I'm looking at my kids, and
Speaker 1: I'm looking at where we are in these wars, and
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, holy rightly, I mean, on, my children really
Speaker 1: gonna have to tri this? Is that really where we
Speaker 1: are right right? You know? And and to uh the
Speaker 1: question of future um. And we've touched on Libya a
Speaker 1: little bit and um and in the Muslim world and
Speaker 1: transitions and that sort of thing. I think the refugee
Speaker 1: crisis in Europe is the beginning of what could have
Speaker 1: could be one of the great historical twists that will
Speaker 1: happen this millennium. I mean, I don't understand how Europe
Speaker 1: remains Europe for more than I don't know, another half
Speaker 1: century or so. Culturally speaking, well, you know, that is
Speaker 1: a very interesting question. And when you look at the indicators,
Speaker 1: look at Switzerland, Switzerland spanned minarets, the minarets of mosques
Speaker 1: from their landscape, right, because that doesn't fit the image,
Speaker 1: the traditional image of what it means to be Swiss.
Speaker 1: What what defined Switzerland? And many years ago, when I
Speaker 1: was living in London, I remember that curry replaced fish
Speaker 1: and chips as the national dish in England and there
Speaker 1: was an out cry. I mean, you know, it really
Speaker 1: had a real reaction amongst the British people because curry
Speaker 1: became the national dish because more British people were choosing
Speaker 1: to eat curry on a daily basis than fish and chips, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, that became the most popular meals to have.
Speaker 1: And but what it did was demonstrate to British people
Speaker 1: how over time their culture was changing. The difference is
Speaker 1: that when Indian people were emigrating to the UK um
Speaker 1: they were you know, typically there's a high degree of assimilation.
Speaker 1: People hold on to their cultures and their traditions and
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing. But there was never any
Speaker 1: question about becoming British and redefining what it means to
Speaker 1: be British was part of that but at the end
Speaker 1: of the day it was still not seen as an
Speaker 1: assault on British culture. Fast forward to Belgium and the
Speaker 1: last few elections in Brussels, the capital. There have been
Speaker 1: several districts of Belgium, including the Just Trick where the
Speaker 1: paris Um terrorist attackers came from, where there have only
Speaker 1: been Islamic candidates in local elections, and these candidates have
Speaker 1: all campaigned on a basis of replacing Belgian law with
Speaker 1: Sharia law, but also separating public and private basis right,
Speaker 1: so that in public men and women could not be
Speaker 1: in the same spaces, separating the education systems so boys
Speaker 1: and girls don't go to school together. Well, now you're
Speaker 1: talking about a very dramatic change to traditional Belgian Flemish culture.
Speaker 1: And even you know, going to Germany today, all over Germany,
Speaker 1: even when you land in the airport, there are prayer rooms,
Speaker 1: you know, for and the and the picture the little
Speaker 1: side depicts and it's an Islamic prayer sign the ones
Speaker 1: that I saw um and you wouldn't have seen that
Speaker 1: in Germany, I don't know twenty years ago. I'm not
Speaker 1: exactly sure. So there's those do represent a significant cultural
Speaker 1: ship and Um, I mean that's why a number of
Speaker 1: European countries have started to restrict put restrictions on immigration,
Speaker 1: because they're looking at these questions. The US doesn't face
Speaker 1: those questions yet, right, you know. And you've led us
Speaker 1: beautifully into a conversation we've had many times on the
Speaker 1: radio show, and and that is how do you respond? Well,
Speaker 1: you you listed a number of changes, some of which
Speaker 1: are are merely interesting, some of which are incredibly troubling.
Speaker 1: How do you respond to people who would accuse a
Speaker 1: Belgian of racism or xenophobia for resisting that sort of change?
Speaker 1: How do you how do you defend people's right to
Speaker 1: defend their country and their culture. Well, in the modern
Speaker 1: media narrative, you don't. If you do, you're a racist,
Speaker 1: and um it's hate speech, and you're xenophobic, and um,
Speaker 1: you're you know. I mean that's the realit. You just
Speaker 1: look at today, there's one acceptable narrative for everything, and
Speaker 1: if you go outside of that, you'll get attacked and
Speaker 1: you're denigrated. And I'm not saying that that's my narrative.
Speaker 1: It really doesn't matter if I dare to even say
Speaker 1: to you what I just said to you now I'm
Speaker 1: going to be attacked, right, and I'm going to be
Speaker 1: accused of having that. I was as I was asked recently,
Speaker 1: you know what to what do you attribute this rise
Speaker 1: and populism and nationalism? And I said, I'm not really sure.
Speaker 1: And I said, in modern political terms, I guess you
Speaker 1: could call it a rise. I said, but when you
Speaker 1: look at the world, to me, it's one of the oldest.
Speaker 1: As long as human beings have been on the earth,
Speaker 1: they have gravitated towards their own kind. Now that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that you get to discriminate or you know, or
Speaker 1: or um or torture or murder or or you know,
Speaker 1: do anything bad to other people just because they're different.
Speaker 1: Vikings typically stuck to other vikings, right, I mean, you
Speaker 1: look at the tribes in Africa. Typically the tribes in Africa,
Speaker 1: they didn't you don't have Tutus and Zulus historically crossing
Speaker 1: the lines unless they were strategic marriages. What how did
Speaker 1: your what was Europe really by the collection of tribes?
Speaker 1: And um, you know, Catholics they like to marry other Catholics.
Speaker 1: So I'm not spending that as a as a principle.
Speaker 1: All I'm doing is pointing out that it's a very
Speaker 1: human quality and what you're what you see when people
Speaker 1: feel that they're disappearing, that their culture is disappearing, or
Speaker 1: that they're becoming a minority in their own land. They
Speaker 1: expressed that in different ways. And what the point we've
Speaker 1: reached today is where you're not allowed to have a
Speaker 1: conversation about that, or a legitimate conversation or an honest conversation,
Speaker 1: because you're instantly denigrated for doing so. Like some of
Speaker 1: those people may choose make may may make very destructive,
Speaker 1: very bad choices that you or I might not agree
Speaker 1: with at all. But what what you're asking is, how
Speaker 1: do you have that conversation? To me, the absolute heart
Speaker 1: and essence of freedom and liberty is having that conversation
Speaker 1: and having the ability to say to someone I agree
Speaker 1: with you, I don't agree with you. Oh I see,
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about it that way. Well, from your
Speaker 1: point of view, I understand, but I still don't agree
Speaker 1: with you, right, Or maybe I do, or maybe I
Speaker 1: maybe I agree a little bit more than I did before.
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: still gonna take a different position or whatever it happens
Speaker 1: to be. You know, it's not up to us to
Speaker 1: decide the outcome of the conversation and advance as so,
Speaker 1: since we're on this subject um a lot of these
Speaker 1: predominantly almost entirely Muslim countries. Getting back to Afghanistan, that
Speaker 1: laundry list of violence that I mentioned that it has
Speaker 1: happened just in the last three or four days, how
Speaker 1: much of that has to do with Islam? Like I
Speaker 1: I it's it's interesting if my neighborhood becomes less Christian
Speaker 1: and more Muslim or more Jewish or whatever. But as
Speaker 1: long as nobody's hurting me, it doesn't really make any
Speaker 1: difference to me. But how much of the violence in
Speaker 1: the killing, in the zero sum game is tied into
Speaker 1: Islam as you see it traveling around these countries, Well,
Speaker 1: that's a complex question and ruins careers. So you just
Speaker 1: weighed right in. I mean, I don't you know, as
Speaker 1: you might have noticed, I don't really worry. I mean
Speaker 1: I should worry about earning my career. But I just, um,
Speaker 1: I just them to direct into um straightforward and too
Speaker 1: honest to you know, to be political. It's just not
Speaker 1: in my DNA. I mean what I what I would say,
Speaker 1: what I've seen on the ground in many different Islamic
Speaker 1: countries is that it's ties. The religion is part of
Speaker 1: culture in many places, and so you know you have
Speaker 1: Afghanistan is a very different Islamic country to Malaysia, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, um, there are some things that are similar
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of things that are very different.
Speaker 1: If you people used to ask me the same question
Speaker 1: about Africa, you know, why are Africans so violent? Are
Speaker 1: they really more violent um than people here? Or do they?
Speaker 1: They just live at the edge of survival. And when
Speaker 1: you live in that place, um, your choices are much
Speaker 1: more stock and you may be resolved more easily to violent.
Speaker 1: I hate it when people say to me, oh, they
Speaker 1: don't they don't value life the way we do. And
Speaker 1: I also hate it when people say everyone's the same
Speaker 1: all of the world, we don't want the same things,
Speaker 1: because I don't think. I don't think either of those
Speaker 1: I have not experienced either of those things to hold true. Um.
Speaker 1: I find people who value life the same way as
Speaker 1: me and every place on earth, and the same way
Speaker 1: as Americans. That don't mean me as a guy, that
Speaker 1: just be the way the way we do in the
Speaker 1: US and I found people who don't, and I can
Speaker 1: I can show you people who definitely do not want
Speaker 1: the same things as you and I right, because I
Speaker 1: don't want my child. I don't dream of my child
Speaker 1: growing up to be a suicide bomber and think that
Speaker 1: that's going to bring glory to my family. And that
Speaker 1: is a a real thing. There are people who feel
Speaker 1: that way. What I will say, though, is that people
Speaker 1: have experienced, oh wait, all over the earth, that religion
Speaker 1: and God are very powerful recruiting tools. And they're very
Speaker 1: powerful tools. So the first thing that you should know, though,
Speaker 1: is that Islamic terrorists and jahadists and converts, and that
Speaker 1: who I have met over the years, many of them,
Speaker 1: they've all corrected me when I've said Islam is a religion.
Speaker 1: They all tell me that Islam is a civilization. It's
Speaker 1: not a religion, and that part of our problem is
Speaker 1: that we look at it as a religion. And so
Speaker 1: that's a very interesting shift in your in your perspective
Speaker 1: when you approach these things. You know, and what a
Speaker 1: civilization does is it prescribes rules for every part of
Speaker 1: your life. So it's it's an instrument of enormous control.
Speaker 1: And I guess the way I best answer the question
Speaker 1: to people is I say, show me an Islamic country
Speaker 1: where you believe your children will have a better way
Speaker 1: of life than the one they do share, right right,
Speaker 1: It's it's a point well made. I'm so annoyed by
Speaker 1: the naivete. And and well, we'll stick with the naivete
Speaker 1: for the moment. But of of a lot of people
Speaker 1: in the American political scene who think that Islam is
Speaker 1: the same as Presbyterianism um and and not only that,
Speaker 1: but they have what I've characterized as xenophilia. They have
Speaker 1: this desperate need to seem enlightened by embracing that which
Speaker 1: is foreign. And while I'm certainly in no xenophobe, I
Speaker 1: think you'd have to be so misguided by your ideology
Speaker 1: to be half blind to not recognize that there are places,
Speaker 1: there are cultures, there are beliefs that are toxic, that
Speaker 1: yield poorer results in terms of humanity, and and to
Speaker 1: embrace them automatically because they're not white American Christian. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I would say I'm a very I'm a
Speaker 1: very open and tallerant person. You know, I grew up
Speaker 1: I didn't eat meet I was against the fur trade. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't eat meat until there was nothing
Speaker 1: else to eat, right until I was in a village
Speaker 1: where that's all there was to eat, and I was
Speaker 1: really hungry. And then I learned, you know, to to
Speaker 1: eat whatever was available. I didn't believe in the fur
Speaker 1: in wearing furst. I protested that when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: until I was in Siberia with the chukche and I
Speaker 1: had been cold for six weeks and an old chookche
Speaker 1: man put a fur coat on me. And it was
Speaker 1: the first time the wind stopped and I had I
Speaker 1: could feel my limbs right or I was standing in
Speaker 1: an abandoned fox farm and a little chook che lady
Speaker 1: was coming to feed the dying boxes every day. Put
Speaker 1: a little fox hat on my head, and and then
Speaker 1: I so and then I was asked, you know, by sidebarians,
Speaker 1: by the chook she there where all these people that
Speaker 1: shut down the fur industry, Like this little lady, this
Speaker 1: little chukche, she's coming there every day. She's feeding these
Speaker 1: animals which are in cages dyeing. Okay, and where where
Speaker 1: all the people who are congratulating themselves in New York?
Speaker 1: And you know Paris and London and l A because
Speaker 1: they've shut down the fur trade on their great victory.
Speaker 1: So what what I have been lucky enough to do
Speaker 1: and what I have sought out just to try? Why
Speaker 1: do you have to be there in person? Why do
Speaker 1: I go to all these horrible places? Why do I stay?
Speaker 1: I stay five years in Bagdad, right, I didn't go home,
Speaker 1: and when I left there, I would go to Afghanistan
Speaker 1: or to Darfur. Why is it so important to have
Speaker 1: reporters who spend time in these places and don't just
Speaker 1: fly in and out. Because with time, when you live
Speaker 1: and walk in the shoes of those people, you learn
Speaker 1: things and understand things. I mean, I loved living in Iraq.
Speaker 1: It's not what I would want for my children, but
Speaker 1: there were so many things I love about the people
Speaker 1: and the place and the and the history and the
Speaker 1: things that I learned. And what I learned is not
Speaker 1: to abandon every principle I ever had. You know, what
Speaker 1: I learned was which principles really added and how what
Speaker 1: not being judgmental rarely means? Right? What listening to someone
Speaker 1: rarely means. I had to do that in South Africa,
Speaker 1: where I couldn't stand anything to do with the extreme
Speaker 1: white right, and I grew up in a very liberal
Speaker 1: home and I and I fought for the end of
Speaker 1: a party and I believed in it. But I still
Speaker 1: had to go into those areas as a journalists and say, Okay,
Speaker 1: what's your perspective, what's your opinion, and put that out
Speaker 1: because every if you say that, you believe in in
Speaker 1: in being tolerant and being open and trying to understand
Speaker 1: so you can find common ground, or you can find compromise,
Speaker 1: or you can find a way to live together. That's
Speaker 1: what I grew up believing you had to do. So
Speaker 1: I say that because I want you know, it's really
Speaker 1: important for me for that people understand. Is if if
Speaker 1: people choose to live that way, you know, in wherever
Speaker 1: it happens to be, that's fine for like for me,
Speaker 1: I don't have any issues with that. But I'm very
Speaker 1: clear on why life I want for my daughter and
Speaker 1: want life I want as a woman. And I don't
Speaker 1: want to be fighting for the right to have a
Speaker 1: driver's license and drive a car and be celebrating that
Speaker 1: as a victory. Okay, that's not a victory. I mean
Speaker 1: it is a victory, of course, But for me personally
Speaker 1: with the freedoms that I have known and enjoyed in
Speaker 1: my life and what I want for my children and
Speaker 1: my grandchildren. That's not a victory, right, And so what
Speaker 1: I I, what I just don't understand is how we
Speaker 1: got to this point where, you know, you know, how
Speaker 1: we get there? We get there by saying, oh, this
Speaker 1: isn't a war about religion, Well, what nonsense is that?
Speaker 1: Then you're ignoring of what these people themselves are saying.
Speaker 1: You're right in one sense though, it's actually a war
Speaker 1: about power, where the people waging this war, who want
Speaker 1: absolute power, who want to annihilate everybody who's not like them,
Speaker 1: have very successfully and artfully used religion to give their
Speaker 1: struggle and their fights feels authority, the moral authority of God,
Speaker 1: and that takes men into battle, It recruits people, It
Speaker 1: gets be able to give up their lives as doctors.
Speaker 1: It gives us their comfortable lives and comfortable countries. That's
Speaker 1: what it does. That's how powerful it is. So when
Speaker 1: we stand up and say, oh, this isn't a word
Speaker 1: about religion, it's got nothing to do with it. And
Speaker 1: you know, anyone who criticizes or brings religion into it
Speaker 1: is some kind of racist, xenophobic, you know, nasty person. Well,
Speaker 1: all you're doing is save them if you might, as
Speaker 1: you're bending over saying, how else can I help you win?
Speaker 1: What else would you like me to do? In the
Speaker 1: time we have left? If you don't mind, let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about a little more about your job
Speaker 1: and how you do it and how you see it,
Speaker 1: and if you don't mind, starting with one of my
Speaker 1: favorite books that have had the great pleasure of being
Speaker 1: able to discuss with my kids, who are now mostly
Speaker 1: grown up, the things they carried by Tim O'Brien. I
Speaker 1: assume you're are you familiar with that at all? It's
Speaker 1: it's a story, it's a collection the stories about Vietnam. Well,
Speaker 1: the theme of the book is he served in Vietnam
Speaker 1: and writes these incredibly harrowing, beautiful, moving stories about Vietnam.
Speaker 1: But one of the themes of the book is that
Speaker 1: he's not writing factually. He it is fictionalized because there's
Speaker 1: no way to convey the fact without fictionalizing it. You
Speaker 1: can't in your armchair understand what it was like unless
Speaker 1: I fictionalize it, which is, you know, it's an interesting
Speaker 1: notion and I wonder if you ever, as a war correspondent,
Speaker 1: witness things that are practically indescribable, and if you ever
Speaker 1: feel like the way I'm about to describe them can't
Speaker 1: convey the reality. Well, you know, my mother always is
Speaker 1: to say that life is stranger than fiction, right, and
Speaker 1: I think it's true. I'll tell you a funny story
Speaker 1: to illustrate this point. A friend of mine was one
Speaker 1: of the very senior commanders in southern afghanist and under
Speaker 1: the Search led by M. Crystal, and he sent me
Speaker 1: an email the one day from the battlefield which I
Speaker 1: actually had to like stop in my tracks. I was
Speaker 1: in Washington, d C. And when I read this, I thought,
Speaker 1: oh my word. He said he was working with the
Speaker 1: local police in Kandahar and they got called to a
Speaker 1: checkpoint where they believed there was a a vehicle born
Speaker 1: I d so a suicide car bomb, and the Afghan
Speaker 1: police and then they had surrounded it, and the Afghans
Speaker 1: wanted to deal with it because they wanted to demonstrate
Speaker 1: to the Americans that they could handle this situation. So
Speaker 1: they got a line of Afghan policemen to stand up
Speaker 1: next to each other and they all opened fire with
Speaker 1: their a K four seven on the suspected car bomb.
Speaker 1: So needless to say, that's not how an American unit
Speaker 1: would approach it. But um, they all managed to miss
Speaker 1: the vehicle, no bullets hit it, and one bullet hit
Speaker 1: the ground ricochet. There was a tree above the car
Speaker 1: bumb It hits the Taliban trigger man who was in
Speaker 1: the tree, who then fell to the ground, and when
Speaker 1: he hit the ground, he activated the detonator that was
Speaker 1: in his hand, and the car bomb exploded, and all
Speaker 1: the Afghans split the checkpoint because they told the Americans
Speaker 1: that exploding mullas were falling out of the sky. Does
Speaker 1: that illustrate your point? Uh? On the x x X,
Speaker 1: you know, evening news, we bring you the sale of
Speaker 1: exploding mullas. You know you just can't do that, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, but I would say, Look, I'm a person
Speaker 1: who my feet are very firmly planted on the ground.
Speaker 1: I'm not a dreamer. I'm not the great, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not the Elon Musk, but looking into the future
Speaker 1: and changing the world, I'm I'm a person that gives
Speaker 1: everything to the moment and to the people around me,
Speaker 1: and to the things that I'm doing. I know what's
Speaker 1: real and what's not. And that's my greatest guide as
Speaker 1: a journalist. I don't know everything, and of course I
Speaker 1: make mistakes, and sometimes famously so. But um but what
Speaker 1: I do know is when you build up knowledge and
Speaker 1: experience over time, your you strengthen your bullshit meta, right,
Speaker 1: And and that's why beat reporting is so, so so important.
Speaker 1: And I just I want to tell you one other
Speaker 1: thing about Vietnam because I had a very very close
Speaker 1: friend of mine was a man called Tom o'camo. And
Speaker 1: in the intelligence world, that name means more than most
Speaker 1: in the history of US military intelligence. And this is
Speaker 1: a person who's, you know, whose career went back many
Speaker 1: many years. In fact, he's the regarded as the father
Speaker 1: of the modern military intelligence infrastructure that we still use today.
Speaker 1: And Tom is now buried in Arlington Cemetery. But one
Speaker 1: of the last lunch that he and I had together
Speaker 1: at the Army and Navy Club, he told me a
Speaker 1: story about going to Vietnam as a young soldier. He
Speaker 1: was in college and he left and he went to
Speaker 1: go fight, and he said two things that shocked me.
Speaker 1: I asked him, why to the green berets Okay, American
Speaker 1: Green Berets Special Forces to go to their headquarters in
Speaker 1: Fort Brand, North Carolina. In front of their headquarters is
Speaker 1: a huge statue of Bronze Bruce and Bronze Bruce is
Speaker 1: an SF soldier in Vietnam with his hand out holding
Speaker 1: the hand of a young Montagnard child. And Montagnards were
Speaker 1: a local tribe, if you like, in Vietnam, that were
Speaker 1: in Cabotia that we're working with the Americans, and in
Speaker 1: fact became a very potent local force in the Vietnam War.
Speaker 1: And I said, I don't understand why, why would the
Speaker 1: Green Berets take a symbol like that to represent all
Speaker 1: of them, Because to us, that's a symbol of abject failure.
Speaker 1: No greater failure in US military history. Right, is the
Speaker 1: Vietnam War a gain? I don't get it. And he said,
Speaker 1: you know, the war on the ground had changed so
Speaker 1: significantly by the time they made the US made the
Speaker 1: political decision to pull out and withdraw. He said, we
Speaker 1: had just turned the time between the relationship with the Montagnards.
Speaker 1: It took that length of time to build up a
Speaker 1: formidable fighting force that was local and could work on
Speaker 1: both sides of the border, and it had just really
Speaker 1: started to pay dividends. Plus they had a program of
Speaker 1: turning prisoners inside the prisons, and that program had had
Speaker 1: enough time now to really bear fruits. He said. But
Speaker 1: the politics is rarely in line with the military reality
Speaker 1: on the ground, right, And so he said, just at
Speaker 1: the moment that the US political reality was, you know,
Speaker 1: meant that we were pulling out, was when we fighting
Speaker 1: on the ground, felt that we had turned, we were
Speaker 1: turning that either of the war. Now, that may or
Speaker 1: may not be true. It's one man's perspective, and he was.
Speaker 1: He was a soldier on the ground at the time,
Speaker 1: and you know, and father the systems that you see
Speaker 1: in place today, So a formidable individual. The second thing
Speaker 1: he said was when I came home to the US
Speaker 1: after being gone for all those years, I didn't recognize
Speaker 1: the country I came home to. Suddenly people in the
Speaker 1: corridors at my college were smoking marijuana, was drugs and
Speaker 1: tex everywhere, And he said, I didn't even know this place,
Speaker 1: you know, And we might laugh and say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, those are all good positive changes, right, Drugs
Speaker 1: and tex and you know, free love and woodstock and
Speaker 1: hippies and all approaches me in Vietnam. But what it
Speaker 1: meant to me was, how can I know so little
Speaker 1: about this period that's been written about so much? And
Speaker 1: how many perspectives have we rarely explored? Or do we
Speaker 1: just read the same perspective over and over again in
Speaker 1: many different forms? Wow? Wow, Yeah, that is so thought provoking. Boy,
Speaker 1: I have no doubt that your feet are planted firmly
Speaker 1: on the ground. I don't see how anybody could have
Speaker 1: had the career you've had, lived the life you've lived
Speaker 1: and not be pretty firmly or in touch with human
Speaker 1: nature and what human beings are capable of. I think
Speaker 1: the opposite would be the bigger problem. How do you
Speaker 1: how do you keep your head out of the oven?
Speaker 1: How do you? How do you succumbed to discourage? Yeah? Exactly?
Speaker 1: You never do you never ever? Ever? Do you know why?
Speaker 1: Because for every nasty, horrible person I've ever met, I
Speaker 1: have had that moment you know, um, where I'm a
Speaker 1: very I'm a very warm person and um and I
Speaker 1: have great respect for the people and the places where
Speaker 1: I go. And respect is one of those things that
Speaker 1: you cannot fake. You might get away with it for
Speaker 1: a moment here in there. But it doesn't matter whether
Speaker 1: people speak in a language, or they dressed in rags,
Speaker 1: or they dressed in you know, a dishdasha, or in
Speaker 1: Muslim robes or in you know, in whatever, in American
Speaker 1: blue jeans. People know when you're real, They know when
Speaker 1: you truly respect him, They know when you're being honest.
Speaker 1: And and I have never promised more than I can give.
Speaker 1: So for me, I believe. I just believe um in
Speaker 1: the in the good that people can be when we're
Speaker 1: at our best. I believe in that, and I've seen it,
Speaker 1: and I've seen it sometimes, you know, just in in
Speaker 1: the person that you know that just lost their family,
Speaker 1: all their whole family in the bombing that day. You know,
Speaker 1: I've seen it in in like being in a hospital
Speaker 1: with kids with minded to send burns all over their bodies,
Speaker 1: and seeing the nurse that doesn't leave their side, that
Speaker 1: you never hear about, his name, you never know about
Speaker 1: it doesn't even matter. And she's one of many. I
Speaker 1: meet those people all the time, and I believe in them.
Speaker 1: Final question, what would you like to do next? Professionally speaking? Well,
Speaker 1: place Alixtra back now, I just say that because Edison,
Speaker 1: people with jobs. I don't even know if it's worth
Speaker 1: it anymore. Like, seriously, all this, all this, you know,
Speaker 1: all the attacks and the way we we get um silence.
Speaker 1: Really you know what what I would like? Gosh, but
Speaker 1: I would really like most of all. It's not so
Speaker 1: much what I want to do next. I I wonder
Speaker 1: how many Jamas today truly have a free voice? What
Speaker 1: are the things we can't talk about? Interesting we are
Speaker 1: not allowed to say? What are the subjects we're not
Speaker 1: allowed to explore? There shouldn't be any Why are there any?
Speaker 1: What I would like next, not just for me, but
Speaker 1: for all of for you, for for every I would
Speaker 1: like real journalism not to die. I would like the
Speaker 1: true meaning of freedom to come back to the streets
Speaker 1: of the US. I would like we're already pretty militant
Speaker 1: on the idea of defending the free exchange of ideas,
Speaker 1: and you have re energized us, and we thank you
Speaker 1: for that. But look at where we are. This is
Speaker 1: the age of information warfare. Okay, so now companies are
Speaker 1: deciding what's free speech and what's not. They're redefining the
Speaker 1: First Amendment. Who gets to define the First Amendment? Isn't
Speaker 1: it wasn't the whole point of the individual freedom, but
Speaker 1: as long as they don't infinge on the rights of others,
Speaker 1: And who are the people making these decisions? And I'll
Speaker 1: give you just a stupid example. We're having a long
Speaker 1: conversation about Facebook and Russia. Really really, we're not talking
Speaker 1: about all of the other countries doing the same thing.
Speaker 1: We're not to talking about data mining, Like why does
Speaker 1: any apps in the background, Why they're refreshing in the background,
Speaker 1: what are they doing? They're they're minding your data. Who's
Speaker 1: paying for that? You're paying for it, You are paying
Speaker 1: for it. Why are you paying for all of these
Speaker 1: companies and political organizations and so called civil liberties organizations
Speaker 1: and all of them. They're all minding your data all
Speaker 1: the time, and you're paying for it, and nobody's paying you.
Speaker 1: And yet we have a one sided conversation about one
Speaker 1: company and one country. It just said, we're dumb. Our
Speaker 1: primary problem, Laura, is that we're we're dumb. We're dumb.
Speaker 1: People were not serious. It's not true. We're overwhelming. True,
Speaker 1: I don't believe it. And we are we're asleep at
Speaker 1: the wheel. There you go, how yeah, yeah, we're we're
Speaker 1: as a society and we're we're self indulgent and we're
Speaker 1: amusing ourselves to death. And that's a different giant topic.
Speaker 1: But I've never heard a conversation with you or any
Speaker 1: any piece you did that I didn't think was fantastic.
Speaker 1: And to appreciate the opportunity we got to talk to
Speaker 1: you for quite a while today. Yeah, it's it's great.
Speaker 1: Love you guys. I love that you want to talk
Speaker 1: about these things. But the only thing I would say
Speaker 1: is don't fall for that thing that we're dumb. You know.
Speaker 1: I used to get that all the time at work.
Speaker 1: People say, oh, well, our audience won't understand. Really, you
Speaker 1: know what, people really they understand more than uh than
Speaker 1: we think they understand. When you say this tourist organization
Speaker 1: has battalions all over the world, and if we don't
Speaker 1: do something about it, we're gonna pay for it down
Speaker 1: the line. That's very simple. Or they say, oh no, no,
Speaker 1: don't worry not din't none. I'm connected all these little
Speaker 1: groups they're meaningless and we don't have to worry about them. Okay,
Speaker 1: but then we don't have to worry about them, you know.
Speaker 1: You know, there's there's a simple way to put any
Speaker 1: thing that we need, any arguments, and anything that we
Speaker 1: really need to pay attention to. It's what we're not
Speaker 1: doing is we're not holding ourselves accountable, and we're not
Speaker 1: holding our lead is accountable for the lack of freedom
Speaker 1: that we have today. We're not doing any about that.
Speaker 1: We've given up our privacy and we've surrendered it, and
Speaker 1: and what else have we given up? Those are the
Speaker 1: questions we need to ask. All right, we're not dumb
Speaker 1: as much as we're seduced. Yeah, yeah, Well, next time
Speaker 1: we talk, if you're ever so generous with your time again,
Speaker 1: we could spend an hour on turkey. I would love
Speaker 1: to talk turkey with you, no pun intended. Hum oh man,
Speaker 1: that's talking about pivotal places. Uh, Laura Logan. It's always great.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much anytime. Thank you. And that's the
Speaker 1: end of the official thing. And so thanks a Milian.
Speaker 1: It's great to talk and thanks for persevering. We know,
Speaker 1: technically speaking, it wasn't you know, effortless. Thanks a lot. Oh,
Speaker 1: you have no idea. I'm at like the side of
Speaker 1: the road in a tiny little town in it's pitched out.
Speaker 1: We had like a six hour drive ahead of My
Speaker 1: children are bleeding out their eyeballs. Oh my god, great, Scott, Yeah,
Speaker 1: well hang up right now, Yeah, okay, all right, we'll
Speaker 1: talk again. Thanks. I'm gonna start an equivalent of a
Speaker 1: McDonald's on steroids. And I'm just happy it was no
Speaker 1: one's birthday. Every speaker in the place, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: that's awesome. That's great. All right, we'll talk to you
Speaker 1: in Thanks, thank you. Keep it roll, Keep it rolling, Michael.
Speaker 1: I want to continue the conversation from there. Um, So
Speaker 1: you know what she was just talking about there, about
Speaker 1: her The one thing that she could do is bring
Speaker 1: back press freedom. I'll tell you during that conversation I
Speaker 1: felt in the room the things I can say and
Speaker 1: can't say. Absolutely. There is one period in there, something
Speaker 1: about you know, Islam being the cause of this. Whatever
Speaker 1: I thought is it's gonna get us in trouble. I
Speaker 1: was just gonna about her and us, And she's absolutely right.
Speaker 1: If we're in a place where we can't have a
Speaker 1: conversation about what role does Islam play in this without
Speaker 1: being scared, we are freaking doomed. Yeah. And and not
Speaker 1: to get off, you know, to completely on the free
Speaker 1: speech thing and the free exchange of ideas thing. But
Speaker 1: you must absolutely have the right to be wrong if
Speaker 1: there's going to be free exchange of ideas, and you
Speaker 1: must permit somebody to be wrong without, for instance, smashing
Speaker 1: them in the head um as as a number of
Speaker 1: people are are want to do these days. And you
Speaker 1: have to have to have to be able to confront
Speaker 1: things that make you very uncomfortable. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: the First Amendment exists to protect objectionable speech, unpopular speech.
Speaker 1: The only ideas that need protection are the ones that
Speaker 1: make people mad. I came across this quote the other
Speaker 1: day and make I'm sorry, that make you feel uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: that trigger you, Those are precisely the ideas that need
Speaker 1: to be protected. I came across this quote the other
Speaker 1: day from John milton um and it uh from years ago. Anyway,
Speaker 1: air of opinion may be tolerated where reason is free
Speaker 1: to combat it. Yeah, well said and more pithy than me.
Speaker 1: And that's what we need. We need to to be
Speaker 1: able to have these guys at least say them out
Speaker 1: loud and and bounce around. You think this is any
Speaker 1: think this is that, you think Islam is this? But
Speaker 1: what do you think people think this is ruining society,
Speaker 1: having these people going to we ought to be able
Speaker 1: to have that conversation and then be wrong about it
Speaker 1: if reason is there to compete against. But if you're
Speaker 1: not allowed to even have the conversation, to even start
Speaker 1: down that road, we're freaking doomed. Yeah, I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: it was. Thomas Oo said beautifully and succinctly, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to slaughter it now that it is borderline mental
Speaker 1: illness to deny that there are some cultures on earth
Speaker 1: that are better and some worse at yielding happy, healthy
Speaker 1: human beings. To deny that reality is bizarre. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's indefensible. And yet there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: who speak very very loudly on the modern American and
Speaker 1: European for them matter, political scene who want to deny
Speaker 1: that reality and that that, by the way, that reality
Speaker 1: does not justify racism or hate or vilence or denying
Speaker 1: people are constitutional rights. I mean, that's that's an idiocy
Speaker 1: in and of itself, But you must accept that is true,
Speaker 1: or my god, how do we talk about this stuff?
Speaker 1: I was sure as hell is going to bring this
Speaker 1: up during our interview with her. I mean, it's a
Speaker 1: well known story. But when she says, I have my
Speaker 1: firm my feet firmly on the ground, Yeah, you get
Speaker 1: gang raped by a bunch of crazies in a square
Speaker 1: in Egypt, you would have a pretty solid idea of
Speaker 1: what you know humanity is all about. She's riding no
Speaker 1: unicorns over no rainbows. Yeah, well that was good stuff.
Speaker 1: That was fun. Yeah, I just I wish I this
Speaker 1: is me. This is a problem with me that when
Speaker 1: I talked to somebody like that, I feel like I've
Speaker 1: messed up my life somehow. Because God, to have the
Speaker 1: experiences she's had around the world, she would have been
Speaker 1: that top tier of percentage of people who really know
Speaker 1: what humanity is, has seen it. I've read about a
Speaker 1: lot of it, but I ain't seen it up close.
Speaker 1: You know. I almost brought up one place I had been,
Speaker 1: but then I thought, no, that's gonna sound like I'm
Speaker 1: trying to sound like, well wait a minute, because but
Speaker 1: I shouldn't be self conscious, because that's never mind with it,
Speaker 1: Because I mean, she's and I say this lovingly, and
Speaker 1: I love Laura's intellect, So I'm in love with her intellect.
Speaker 1: When she was talking about being with the various people
Speaker 1: in Siberia. It sounded just like j Peterman from the
Speaker 1: Seinfeld name. There I was squatting with them. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the breadth of her travel and how she stays in
Speaker 1: one place and and and mind melds with the humans there,
Speaker 1: I think, is so the partners so important and so powerful.
Speaker 1: And I was going to bring this up, but then
Speaker 1: I started to think, is my goal here to like
Speaker 1: make her cry? What are my Barbara Walters here now?
Speaker 1: Or um? But the to me, the hardest part would be,
Speaker 1: um just meeting the regular people and you get to
Speaker 1: know them a little bit, and there you know their
Speaker 1: lives sucking are going to continue to suck by, you know,
Speaker 1: just just that's just the way it is. And you'd
Speaker 1: think for them, for that guy, her and those two kids,
Speaker 1: the tectonic plates of civilization and these major political movements
Speaker 1: don't freaking mean anything. They're just trying to keep their
Speaker 1: kids alive and survive. And you know that would be
Speaker 1: the tough stuff anyway, owing to boys. So uh yeah,
Speaker 1: So that's Laura Logan were talking to Next time for
Speaker 1: our long form podcast, I believe we've got who's the
Speaker 1: Mike Rodgers, former chairman the guy that played the Incredible Hulk.
Speaker 1: Isn't that who we have? So look for to that
Speaker 1: for our next long form podcast, The Armstrong and Getty Show.