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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to coast AM on

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Speaker 1: iHeart Radio, Robert Young Pelton. He has become the inspiration

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Speaker 1: and role model for a new generation of intellectual adventurers.

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Speaker 1: He's an author, journalist, filmmaker, photographer, adventurer, explorer, expert, author

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Speaker 1: of some great books. Licensed to Kill is one of them.

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Speaker 1: And of course Robert has trained Navy seals and survival techniques,

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Speaker 1: participated in secret special Forces training, motivating young people to

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Speaker 1: do meaningful things with their time on this planet. Robert,

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Speaker 1: welcome back. You're one of my favorites. Good to have you. Hey,

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Speaker 1: George's always one of my favorite things to do late

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Speaker 1: at night is to hang out with George Nary and

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Speaker 1: your listeners. Gosh, just yesterday as soldier in Afghanistan in

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Speaker 1: American was killed, another one was wounded from someone who

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Speaker 1: was basically inside the camp. When is Afghanistan, Robert gonna end? Uh,

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Speaker 1: you start up with the toughest question, so uh, A

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Speaker 1: couple of things I'd like to point out. And one

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Speaker 1: of the things that we get wrong is that our

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Speaker 1: war in Afghanistan did not start in two thousand and one.

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Speaker 1: You know, our war in Afghanistan started in July of

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Speaker 1: ninety nine when Jimmy Carter signed a bill to fund

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Speaker 1: the Mujadeen, which then drew the Russians into Afghanistan. And

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Speaker 1: we've been there ever since. And these things we're hearing

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Speaker 1: about the news, like Insider attacked or whatever, have been

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Speaker 1: going on for twenty thirty years. So we are just

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Speaker 1: starting to realize that we're starting to read the same

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Speaker 1: headlines over and over and over again. So to answer

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Speaker 1: your question, we can leave Afghanistan anytime we want, and

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Speaker 1: obviously it will collapse. It'll be like Somalia or any

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Speaker 1: other region that doesn't have outside support. It is truly remarkable. Now,

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Speaker 1: when we helped the muss Haadin because we wanted to

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Speaker 1: get the Soviets out of Afghanistan, didn't they turn out

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Speaker 1: to become the Taliban? No, so the Soviets weren't actually

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Speaker 1: in afghan when we started UM. The government was turning

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Speaker 1: towards communism, right, and remember after World War Two and

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Speaker 1: in the Cold War, the Soviets would sneak in and

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Speaker 1: start funding things and getting involved in politics and doing

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Speaker 1: dirty tricks, and and we wanted to keep them out

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Speaker 1: and ended up coming in UM. What happened was that

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Speaker 1: those fighters that we funded, which they ranged from the

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Speaker 1: Hakani's to various groups, were the Taliban. They essentially went

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Speaker 1: back in in the mid nineties and kicked out a

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Speaker 1: lot of the warlords and people have been left over,

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Speaker 1: and they stabilized the country very briefly, you know, just

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Speaker 1: for a couple of years. Uh. And then of course

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Speaker 1: a guy named Samad bin Laden showed up in Jelalabad

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Speaker 1: and began to suck up to Malahomar. And that's when

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Speaker 1: we realized that we need to not create empty spaces

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Speaker 1: for people like ben Laden to hang out. And and

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Speaker 1: we've been there ever since, and how long are we

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Speaker 1: going to stay there? Well, Uh, there's a theory and

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Speaker 1: if you remember Eisenhower and is military industrial complex, that

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Speaker 1: the money that you see are spending in Afghanistan is

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Speaker 1: actually propping up large parts of the American economy. The

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Speaker 1: military industry is one of the few uniquely American sectors

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Speaker 1: in which everything has to be made in America, bought

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Speaker 1: in America. We hire retired people to work there. So

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Speaker 1: it's a multibillion dollar industry. So we we are creating

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Speaker 1: a sector of our economy that's dependent upon military action.

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Speaker 1: Now there is nothing stopping anyone from just leaving Afghanistan.

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Speaker 1: I mean, the Europeans are trying to support the Afghan government.

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Speaker 1: We're trying to support the Afghan government, and we truly

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Speaker 1: feel that we're making a difference, if only just in

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Speaker 1: the massive amount of money we're pushing into the country.

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Speaker 1: But it doesn't make could safe or tear a free.

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Speaker 1: So we have very very few troops in Afghanistan. As

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Speaker 1: a matter of fact, we have more troops in the

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Speaker 1: continent of Africa than we do in Afghanistan. But it

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Speaker 1: is a is a sore spot, you know, it's a

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Speaker 1: constant Vietnam era reminder that we don't seem to win

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Speaker 1: these colonial wars, if you want to call them that,

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Speaker 1: And everybody gets angry because why are we there? Why

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Speaker 1: are we spending money? So depending on our foreign policy,

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Speaker 1: we're either helping the poorest countries on Earth rise up

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Speaker 1: from chaos or we're just creating that chaos. Listen to

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Speaker 1: more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at one a m.

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Speaker 1: Eastern and go to Coast to Coast am dot com

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Speaker 1: for more