← Common Sense with Dan Carlin
Common Sense with Dan Carlin
Show 322 - Betting on Long Shots
00:55:24
After 20 years in Afghanistan the U.S. exits the country thus ending the longest war in American history. Are there any lessons to be learned?
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Dan Carlin
It's common sense with Dan Carlin. If the energy level seems just a tad off, let's blame that on the fact that I'm recording this at night. And normally I am a morning guy when it comes to, you know, the brain working the sharpest and the energy level the highest and all that, you know, things clicking mentally with me. But sometimes these things are just inspirational and you got to do them when the mood hits you. And it's in the evening right now. So strangely enough, before we get started, I just want to point out how fabulously interesting it is that people can get mad at you for deciding you don't want to do something anymore. And not mad at you because they're mad that they won't get to hear your golden voice anymore, but mad because they see it as a political statement or an outing. Right? We finally get to know about you because you decided to not talk about current events anymore now that Joe Biden's in office and he's your guy. I got the same stuff from the other side in a different sort of twist. When you had to do the show because Trump was president, and if you weren't speaking out, then you were shirking your duty. I mean, one way or another, if you ever signed up to talk about politics or current events once upon a time, you're shirking your duty. If you don't keep doing it forever and it's a conspiracy. If you decide to talk about other things or that perhaps the climate is not right for people listening and engaging, which is sort of the climate I operate in, right? I'm not talking to preach to a choir. And Lord knows, after I went on for a while, there'd be fewer and fewer of you left because eventually I'm going to piss all of you off. We used to weave that into the marketing and branding of the show, remember? Just to keep you on your toes. Look, you're all gonna hate it at some point, and then when it would happen, you go, oh, well, there it is. So maybe that'll be you today. So I'm doing this show under protest at night. I'm speaking to some people in a government agency Tuesday, it's Sunday right now. And they gave me some questions where I had to sort of put together some answers. And I was looking at the answers tonight, and I was going, okay, well, maybe you could do a show with some of this stuff. But I don't know, we'll see. I'm not in the mood to be doing current event shows, as I said. But as you know, if you're listening to this anywhere near the time that we release it, stuff's going down in Afghanistan. The most predictable stuff in the world, which is the scandal, of course. I mean, everybody knew this was coming. I picked up a book the other day from 2008 and they were talking when Afghanistan reverts back to the Taliban. So this was going to happen and it's a scandal that you sit there forever going, well, we know it's going to happen, but we're still going to stay there. This happens in all these wars that we sort of look back on, not fondly later. Gee, why did we have all those? I mean, the Vietnam War, I think you can say, not sure, didn't read this in advance, didn't check it, but I think you could say that about as many Americans died in that war after the government was convinced there was no way we were winning it, then died before. So I mean, that's the kind of thing where you kind of go, gee, at the point you decide you have to leave at some point, the sooner the better. Right? Because it's the lives and limbs of our soldiers, not to mention the treasure. But lives and limbs come first. And frankly, lives and limbs on all sides should come first, including the people that are paying the price for this, that are just born and living there. We sort of acknowledge on one level the casualties that are caused as part of the, you know, in air quotes, collateral damage. But those numbers add up, folks. And when you talk to somebody about a strategy of killing terrorists that they'll call sometimes cutting the lawn or mowing the grass, meaning we're just going to kill this generation of terrorists and then when they rise up, the next generation could kill them too. Well, you're creating the next generation of terrorists. When you bomb people who aren't terrorists who then hold you accountable for bombing their relatives who weren't terrorists, I mean, this is a cycle that isn't like a worst case scenario. This is a cycle that's going on right now. None of this stuff is controversial. And if you think it's controversial, well, there are books, lots of books on all this stuff. I mean, this is not anymore an issue. It never was an issue, actually, ever since the Afghanistan campaign started. Although we should talk about when that really was. But this isn't a controversial issue. There's been lots of books written about it, right? There's a military maximum or idea or point or understanding about trying to disengage from an opponent, an enemy in the field. This is A known problem. It's always a dicey situation. It's like trying to turn your boat in a giant storm at sea. And you just know it's dangerous, right? There's a certain way to do it and it's dicey. All throughout history, right? And at the tactical level, disengaging from the enemy, like you're in a hand to hand combat and you decide you want to move backwards without running away. Dicey, hard to do, right? But that applies at the strategic level too, right? The higher level. It applies at the grand strategy level, the very highest levels. Disengaging from Afghanistan. And you can do it two ways, right? Messy or not messy. The problem is waiting for the proper time and timing it correctly to get to the not messy. Time can keep you in there another decade. I mean, you look at the Vietnam War's history, when they start the peace talks, or even in Korea, same thing, peace talks. And what they're trying to do is, is create the conditions for either a disengagement or a cessation of hostilities in a way that isn't messy. And it can take forever. Now, clearly we had a transition between two presidents here where one president crafted a deal with the Taliban and the other person apparently kept to it. It's one of those things where I'd like to see the paperwork, you know, I mean, going on like, you know, here's what was promised. I don't know what was promised. I just know that this is a handoff between two presidents. And it's funny to read on like Twitter, people blaming the last president for basically the entire thing, losing Afghanistan. And you just want to go, holy cow. I mean, this thing was about at the halfway point. That's assuming it's done now, which it isn't. This thing was at the halfway point when we went in after 9, 11. This has been going on a lot longer than that. And you all know that, don't you? Here's the problem. If you don't know that, it's like you came into this movie in the last five minutes, it's been going on for hours. And you're trying to explain to me or your friend or your son or daughter what's going on in the movie when you just got there, right? This is a movie that's been going on for a long time and it was part of a reality that doesn't exist anymore. This is one of the better examples you will ever find in history of that term. Blowback 1979. The situation in Afghanistan has been weird. Since the King was toppled in 1973, you've got an issue with it's a combination. And I don't want to get into it too deeply because then everybody's going to tell me I get it wrong, which is probably true. But I mean, you have the Soviet influence right there because Afghanistan's right there, right? It's Mexico to them. You have the Soviet influence very strong. This is the years when it is the Soviet, not the Russians. So this is communism involved in all this. Afghanistan's in one of those locations where the great powers often have some wrangling with each other. If this is the giant risk board of the world, Afghanistan's a key spot because of all the places it touches and all that. Right. So that's why it was part of something that was called the Great game in the 19th century between Russia and the British in India, because the British controlled India at that time. And Afghanistan was a place that the Russians tried to take it. Obviously in 1979, they got thrown out. The British tried to take it. They fought three wars there, I believe. And you can take it, you just can't hold it. Right. And they got thrown out. And Afghanistan has this nickname, rolls off the tongue. Not sure how much it deserves it because the Achaemenid Persians took it and held it. But basically they call it the graveyard of Empires. Why would you ever want to invade a place called the Graveyard of Empires? Well, this is another military problem. We just talked about the military maxim. You know, disengagement's historically difficult, messy. But why would you want to invade a place called the graveyard of Empires? So militaries have a problem all throughout history. Once again, you don't need an amateur like yours truly to tell you this. This is known stuff in the ancient writings. It used to be basically connected to hubris, but it's the idea that you don't have to pay attention to sort of they're not historical lessons, because they really aren't historical lessons. But you could say that there are things out there that influence the historical odds. If you're gambling you're called the graveyard of empires, those are gonna influence the odds. Right? If you saw multiple empires, some of which would be perfectly comfortable being a lot more rough and tough. I hear people saying sometimes we just weren't rough and tough in Afghanistan. Well, the Soviets were. I mean, the Soviets really were. And they took like 10 years and thought, we're out. And when their own government asked for help, the Afghan supported government that the Soviets had left in place. When it was under attack and they asked Gorbachev for help. They considered it and they said, no, we're not going back. You're on your own. By the way, they did the same thing that we did. They left an army in place. Soviet supplied the whole thing. The mujahideen, as they were called, didn't have much of a problem. The Islamic fighters, by the time they kicked the Soviets out, were quite a nasty force. And you have to remember when you talk about Afghanistan, right, we all know it's all about the terrain. I mean, look at the terrain. It's crazy. There are other places on the planet that have terrain like that, but it's as bad as it gets. There's a couple of flat spots here and there in a couple of well known areas that get fought over a lot. But the rest of it, oh, my Lord. Alexander the Great had his issues up there. I mean, it is just really tough country. And the military sort of truism that you see all throughout history that gets people into trouble is this idea that, yes, yes, yes, other people have had problems in those situations, but because of X, Y or Z, we don't have to pay attention to that historical burning of our hand on the stove. It doesn't apply to us because of, well, night vision goggles or heat sensors or satellites or whatever it might be. Whatever happens, we have got the Maxim gun and they have not. This is connected both to hubris, this idea of overvaluing your position and undervaluing the enemy's. Thinking more highly of yourself and your cause and, and your capabilities than perhaps is warranted. You know, in the old morality tales, the ones with the hubris always, you know, get their comeuppance. It's also connected to the idea that sometimes different people have different definitions of success. I mean, the country, the United States of America, looks at this debacle in Afghanistan and sees a defeat, right? There's no good way to spin that. Lost our people both dead and wounded, paid a fortune, left a lot of Afghans hanging, literally. But some people did pretty well. I mean, that's the funny thing about foreign affairs, is that things that can be bad for a lot of people aren't necessarily bad for other people. Some people profit from all this stuff. It depends on what you were after. And that's sort of the key thing that is so tragic about a conflict like Afghanistan. The idea of what the odds were from the get go, because it was not a problem that could be solved with just the military. And we've gotten ourselves into A lot of those sorts of things since the Second World War. You know, Clausewitz had that point, right? The famous military theorist that war is policy or sometimes politics, they'll say by other means. And what this is sort of a maxim to explain is that you go to war for a particular outcome, a political outcome, or one that is a policy sort of an outcome, right? Or your interests. In the end, the military affair, the part of it where war fighting is involved, is a means to an end the military is required to make. To get you to step one, you have to defeat the opponents who would prevent you from getting your goal in Afghanistan. Push back the circumference of violence, if you will, route the other side, whatever it takes. But that doesn't get you the Clausewitz policy by other means goal, because that involves things like building a government that can stand on its own two feet, that has enough support amongst everybody but the Taliban and those types. In other words, you've got to create a nation. It's nation building in the old style meaning of the word. And this is something that's gotten us into trouble before that. And supporting regimes that just have the taint of corruption about them in a way that discredits them and then associates the United States with that in the minds, it becomes something that the other side in these countries can use as an arguing point. I mean, look at who the United States are supporting. Those guys in that government, those corrupt. I mean, even the Taliban sold themselves early on. And maybe still I'm ignorant on the subject as purifiers, right? They were students, they were positioning themselves and I'm sure they sold this to their acolytes. And so it was really believed in the rank and file as people that were fighting the corrupt warlords. Now where do these warlords come from? Ah, well, that's what I mean about coming into the story in the last five minutes and it's a five hour movie and you've missed everything. But you know, you want to start making policy pronouncements or judgments without understanding how we got here. 1979 is when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. Even before they invaded, the United States was working underground to figure out a way to drag the Soviets in. Now I get that information just because I was reading just the other day, Chalmers Johnson's book Dismantling the Empire, where he quotes Jimmy Carter adviser Zigne Brzezinski talking about what essentially was a plan, a plan to once again utilize a key piece on the Cold War risk board to hurt the Soviets. Because what they were trying to do was do to the Soviets what had been done to the Americans in Vietnam, draw the Soviets into an area where they would just get bled. Johnson's an interesting guy, by the way. Dead now, really sort of buttoned up old school early on, turned more liberal later in life. This quote, by the way, is about Afghanistan. And he's basically quoting Carter's official at the time, so it's not his contention, but he writes in Dismantling the Empire, quote, it should by now be generally accepted that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on Christmas Eve 1979 was deliberately provoked by the United States. In his memoir published in 1996, the former CIA director Robert Gates made it clear that the American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahideen guerrillas not after the Soviet invasion, but six months before it. In an interview two years later with Les nouval observateurs, sorry for massacring that people of France. President Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, proudly confirmed Gates assertion, now quoting the former Carter national security advisor. According to the official version of history, Brzezinski said CIA aid to the mujahideen began during 1980, that's to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan. But the reality, kept secret until now, Brzezinski says, is completely different. On 3rd July 1979, President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro Soviet regime in Kabul. And on the same day, I wrote a note, meaning Brzezinski wrote a note to the President in which I explained that in my opinion, this aid would lead to a Soviet military intervention, end quote. Johnson then writes, asked whether he in any way regretted these actions. Brzezinski replied, quote, regret what? The secret operation was an excellent idea. It drew the Russians into the Afghan trap. And you want me to regret it? On the day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter saying, in essence, we now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its own Vietnam War. Excuse me, it says its Vietnam War, end quote. Then the magazine, this is all very relevant. Then the magazine presses Brzezinski, because this is after some of the downside of all this. Some of the blowback had already become apparent. So they're pressing him, the magazine interviewer says, and neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists. And Brzezinski answers with this, not saying that's not what happened, but saying it was the lesser of two evils. What is more important in World history, the Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire, some agitated Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War. End quote. So it's in Johnson's liberal book. But those are quotes and what it shows, because this was. I mean, it may have a different sort of a color on the lens, shall we say, to some of you younger folks today. But during the Cold War, this sort of using third countries as proxies, if you will, because remember, there might have been a third World War between the west and the Soviet Union had it not been for nuclear weapons. But how do you fight a war or have some sort of a global superpower struggle if you know real war is going to quickly lead to nuclear weapons? Well, you do it through third parties and stuff, right? So the US Will be operating in some country in the Soviet Union, will support the other side there and keep them going and give them training and weapons and that kind of. And then usually denied at the United nations. It's even going on. And the other side would do it, too. And Afghanistan, as we had said earlier, is one of those really coveted places. Brzezinski there is pointing out in the same way that the Soviet Union was helping the other side in the Vietnam War. We could play that game, too. What's more, we'll get you dragged in here. It's a coup. We're weakening the Soviet Union. And as Brzezinski said, I mean, what's the bigger deal? Anything involving Afghanistan or this giant Cold War thing? Well, you can talk that way because you haven't seen buildings fall down in major cities and all that kind of stuff yet. And maybe, listen, I could see Brzezinski, who's dead now, so I don't want to put words in his mouth. I could see him saying, it still is the better deal, right? Get rid of the Cold War, which could lead to the annihilation of mankind, or worry about terrorists maybe someday getting their hands on one nuclear weapon. I don't know. I could play the devil's advocate on both sides, maybe again, angering just about every one of you with one of the point of views I would certainly try to take on that. The rest, by the way, is history. In Afghanistan, the Russians, the Soviets did get dragged into was very much like our situation in the sense that they were able to get control of things in the major centers they were after pretty quickly. But then how do you leave and have it not be messy? How do you gain enough security so the government you leave behind has a chance of Standing on its own two feet and resisting. And they run into the same problems we did. Tribalism, endemic corruption, I mean, you name it. I mean, the Pashtuns there might just want a Pashtun stand and just forget this whole Afghanistan thing. That's hard to work out in a sort of a. A collective unity government, if you will. I talked to somebody the other day, was talking about the loyal Yirga, when a lot of the different tribal leaders would get together and agree on things, and that he thought that they would have agreed on bringing the King back. Who knows? The bottom line is, though, by the time the Reagan administration's in power, they're upping our support for these freedom fighters, as the President called them. And then we gave a bunch of Stinger missiles, and I hope they used them all because, you know, you don't want Stinger missiles falling into the wrong hands, do you? But that becomes the problem when you're supporting a bunch of people who are doing something, you know, for themselves. I mean, they've got their own agenda. We just like that they're killing Soviets. This doesn't make us out to you younger folks out there to be all that wonderful sounding. But the other side was all at it, too. I mean, this was just how it was going. This was war in the latter part of the 20th century between the major powers. This was as big as it could get. But we were always worried that any little false move, boom, and the whole world explodes. So that's what kept everybody from. That's what kept things. I mean, even in the Korean War, I mean, there was this wonderful moment when the Chinese intervened in the war and streamed over the river and started attacking American forces that the, The Chinese would pretend it wasn't even really them. And they were volunteers. I mean, the US Everybody had an interest in keeping the lid on a potential nuclear holocaust. Fighting these proxy wars was one of the main ways to do it. And Brzezinski, and let's be honest, hardly the only one, by 1979, seeing that the internal contradictions in the Soviet Union made it vulnerable, we were just, we'd been in a period that was called detente for some time, trying to live in some sort of mutual coexistence, if you will, hostile mutual coexistence. But those societies were closed for the most part. And that just wasn't going to work in the modern world. I mean, look what was coming right afterwards. Within five, six, seven years, we were going to have the home computer revolution. I mean, you could see what this was going to do to try to keep a giant chunk of the world sort of like North Korea is now, not quite that bad, but sort of. People traveled in the Soviet Union, people traveled out of the Soviet Union, but it was. It was not an open society like we would think like Russia is today. Actually, Russia's much more open society than the old Soviet Union was. The point is, is that this whole affair where we're looking at the last five minutes of the movie goes way back, because when the Soviets left, the people that we had supported, that had built up a more and more powerful and sophisticated organization that were resisting the Soviets for us, with us, you know, as part of our side of the world, these people didn't stop because we lost interest. They had the support of Pakistan. And that's another element in this whole affair. If you're saying, gee, why were the odds so bad for us in Afghanistan? You got countries next door that have their own geopolitical interest involved, right? Their regional power relationships are served in the case of Pakistan by having the Taliban take over. I mean, that's a group that they should have a considerable amount of influence with, I would think. Makes it tough, though, to fight a war there because Pakistan is an ally of ours in the war on terrorists, officially with money spent and all this other kind of stuff. So it's weird enough so that you could just say, okay, whatever the odds were about a successful outcome in Afghanistan when we went in, and you keep adding these various things on top of it, right? You have the terrain, you have the problem of nation building there. You have the tribal experience, you have the Pakistan problem. I mean, they just keep adding up, don't they? Every one of them changing the odds in Vegas a little bit less in the favor of this all working out. Well, can you throw a Hail Mary? Sure you can. You want to risk your sons and daughters going to Afghanistan on a Hail Mary? Which brings us to 9, 11 and that whole thing. So Afghanistan was having its own civil war warlord type thing going on in the 1990s. We mostly didn't pay much attention to it, although there was arms and stuff being funneled. You can just bet a group of warlords got together, formed something called the Northern alliance and they'll fight with the Taliban. Then the Taliban take over at one point and they're blowing up sacred statues of other religions and pre Islamic religions. And you know, listen, they're not Western. I don't say that about them. Right? I mean, by our standpoint, they do evil things and they treat women abysmally in their minds, they're treating them in a traditional religious sense. Maybe they say, you know, go ask the Turkish folk who are much more adherence to a less strident version of the faith. Ask them if they feel the same way. But my point being that it's very easy to not like the Taliban and to be happy when they're pushed back away from the rest of the Afghans who've been enjoying 20 years of freedom from the Taliban. If you lost a limb in Afghanistan, I can understand why you would just be going through the worst sort of hell right now, wondering what all this was for. I think you can console yourself and say you gave 20 years for a seed that you planted a little space for not just women, but a whole lot of other people in that society to try to get an education or any number of other things. I mean, there was space for some goodness for the people that saw that as goodness. Maybe that's a good way to put it. And I don't think that's something that can be wiped out by a Taliban takeover. I think that some of those seeds are lifelong seeds. And as long as the people are there, let's be honest, as long as they're writing and transmitting their thoughts to other people, that influence and that change and that seed will still be bearing fruit and thriving somewhere, maybe for a while through the cracks in the concrete, but only to bloom later. Remember, Afghanistan was a place where, by Western standards, they looked like they were keeping up with the rest of us for a while, you know, wearing beehive hairdos and skirts. And I mean, well, maybe not skirts, but, you know, nice dresses. I mean, it was the kind of place where it looked very Western indeed. But that's the very kind of thing that someone from the very strident side of the religion in the Taliban, for example, would look at as exactly the problem what happens in these situations. And it goes right to that point we talked about earlier, about messy endings, right? And how it can lock you into a war for twice the length of the whole conflict, just trying to disengage cleanly. What do you do with all these people that helped us? You don't think they're going to get reprisals? Listen, everybody does repri. Not having reprisals is unusual. It's a human thing, though. And somebody's been working with the perceived bad guy. People get mad. I mean, go look at. And this is not stuff that was heavily pushed forward, as you might imagine, gets drowned out by all the other news. But after the second World War people that collaborated with the Germans in France to just name one country. I mean, there's photos of shaving their hair and beating them in the streets. And in some of the more dictatorships oriented societies, it was a lot more bloody, brutal and gulaggish than that. They string up collaborators in a lot of places. So this is totally predictable, which is one of the things that I think you can turn, because I know there's a whole bunch of people out there saying, is he going to criticize Biden? Biden's his man. I hate that about you all. This is the problem. We told you forever. It's partisanism. And look how bad it is. And look, I'm gonna. Both sides arisen with you right now. It's just the other. I got problems with all of you. Just need a place where I can speak my mind, be free, have conversations, really get into this sort of stuff and have people listen for more than one second, the minute they think they hear what you're about, that's the end of that. But you want me to criticize Biden, I'm happy to. This could have been done a lot better. First of all, we know we're having a messy disengagement. And we also know and should acknowledge that in some ways, if he's trying to keep to the Trump deal, which I don't know what the hell that looks like, there may be things that lock him into other things. I personally would think that it would be completely presidential to say, I'm sorry, but I'm going to change a couple of these things last minute in the sake of saving human life. I think you could get away with that as an asterisk to the deal and risk something with the Taliban. Because at this point, and I am falling right into the trap, right, of how you can't extricate yourself from Vietnam. So if you're Nixon, just bomb Vietnam a few more times. Bring him to the peace table. Bombs away. Carlin, you can call me, but you can see how it sucks you in, right? You gotta get that moment where you can say, these people who helped us because they threw their Lottie with us and it would be dishonorable to leave them. And how about all of our soldiers who had to work with those people? I mean, it's exactly a repetition of the heartrending end of the Vietnam War where it's like, well, that's where, you know, I hate the term because it's become derogatory. But it was when the boat people, as they were called it was a giant and long term wonderful infusion of Vietnamese blood into the American melting pot. But a lot of those people were people that were working closely with us and probably weren't going to survive the transition in power. Right. But it infused this country with, I mean, maybe that's one of the honorable things that happen in there. And we still left a lot of people behind. Right. It's still messy, but this needed to be handled better, I think. Is this going to be a place that gives us trouble in the future? I think absolutely. I mean, you can go back to 1979 for why that might be. Right. A little blowback. It doesn't go away just because we leave. The problem that Brzezinski didn't understand in 79 is it can follow you home. Going to have a giant lawless area in Afghanistan or something again where these Al Qaeda types can thrive. Because let's remember we went in there in 2001 because they had, or we thought they had, and they probably did have Osama bin Laden hiding out there. And I'm telling you, as a guy who was there in terms of living at that time and watching what was going on, we were going to get the man. And you weren't going to be able to say to us, I'm sorry, you can't get him because he's here and we're protecting him. But I would suggest that no matter how those negotiations go down, the one thing that you should avoid at all cost is putting significant numbers of ground troops on the ground in a place that's called the graveyard of empires at all costs. I've mentioned before, I had a military history class with a professor and it was one of the greatest things. I used this tool all the time. It wasn't even a military history really lesson, it's just a great lesson. Take out the most obvious easy solution from your consideration, take it out of the factoring in your thinking and then try to solve the problem. Because that sometimes teaches you that what seems to be the only option sometimes isn't. If it weren't even in consideration, that's why I always think we would have gone to war without the nuclear weapons there. Nuclear weapons during the whole Cold War was the option that forced us to take full out total war off the table. Right. It was off the table. So you had to find other ways to fight wars. And we did. See, that's good old human ingenuity there. We'll still figure out how to fight wars. Not going to give that up just because of some Nuclear weapons. But in the case of Afghanistan, what you say is, okay, how can we get Osama bin Laden without invading Afghanistan? Or what sort of pressure can we put on regional players like, oh, I don't know, the Pakistanis have a lot of, let's just call it, diplomatic sway with the Taliban, although they also, I mean, there might have been elements in Pakistan that didn't want to give up Osama bin laden to the U.S. so again, we're working with friends there that may have differing interest at times from us, which makes the situation that much more difficult to overcome in the end. The war in Afghanistan, folks, has been over since very early on, and it's over not because we can't defeat something militarily. It's because we can't build what has to be built there so that we don't have to stay there militarily doing this forever. And some people will say, listen, Dan, we've stayed in Germany a long time, still have elements there, stayed in Japan a long time, still have elements there. Why can't we just do this? South Korea, this is a different level of state development than those other places. Those had governments that were much more the sorts of things where we could change the leadership in some cases, but not always root out the former people from the sort of the population control centers and the government and sort of rework it. Like iron that you heat up again and then bend into different shapes, but the iron is missing, the base element's missing. In a place like Afghanistan, you're building up from a much lower level and you got a lot of people in a country that maybe shouldn't even be in the same country. Should it be Pashtun Stand? I don't know. I don't think the Tajiks are going to be very happy with that. Right. So, I mean, some of the problems you'd have to solve in Afghanistan, I even feel like, I mean, you talk about the corruption problem, you can solve the corruption problem in Afghanistan. Can't really get that done in a very effective way right here at home. If you have to solve the corruption problem in Afghanistan, what do those Vegas odds look like after that's taken into consideration? I mean, my goodness, this is starting to look like a total sucker bet, isn't it, with our troops and our treasure. But, I mean, it's at a much lower scale. There are ripples of pain in the society, folks. Ripples of pain. I got a relative, did his three tours in Iraq and finally got in touch with him. He wasn't talking to the family. Still not talking to the family, but told a family member, listen, I'm not sure I'm safe to be around. And if something goes wrong with me mentally, I don't want the people that I love the most anywhere near my life. It was the best excuse I ever heard, best reasoning I ever heard for something like that. But the point is that he's just one person, but we feel everything that goes on with him in a sort of a ripple effect right in our little node, our little family node. But there's lots of families like that. And sometimes it's much worse than that. I mean, this is what war really costs. And we've done this for 20 years, longest war in American history. And it was going to be messy when you get out, because there's not going to be a perfect time, because there's never a perfect time. And that's how you stay fighting forever. And this could have been handled better. I mean, I don't know what else you could say. I mean, my goodness, the visa process, I mean, should have been handled. I mean, I don't even know all the ins and outs. And you can just go, come on. Really couldn't do any better than this. And I know we kind of had a deal. We're not going to try to panic people. And as far as the Afghan military goes, 300,000 men, an air force armor, Taliban maybe has a little armor, no Air Force, 75,000 men, maybe. I saw an estimate. Come on. And listen, I'm not blaming them. This is something that goes back way into history, this practice of having imperial powers or great powers go into places, destroy or dissipate some local army, try to put in their own ruler of the people that were there locally, and then get them to build up their forces. And it fails a lot of times. And I'm not quite sure I can put my finger on the reason. I'm not smart enough to say, well, it's absolutely a case of they never really had their hearts in it to begin with or whatever. You can't say what it is, but it happens. It's not abnormal. And when just the momentum starts, by the way, it just snowballs. I mean, that happened in South Vietnam, too, after we'd. We'd been gone from the war for a couple of years, especially on the ground for a couple more years. But when the momentum all of a sudden started with the North Vietnamese against the side, it just rolled like dominoes. It can be stable for a while, then just like a ship capsizing, boom. All of a sudden, with great speed and panic, and all of a sudden, the last photograph you have in the Life magazine is the choppers taken off from the rooftops of buildings in Saigon with people hanging onto the rotors and falling off. Sound a little familiar? So what does this argue for, though? I mean, here's my problem. This is what I get angry about. I'm going to have a talk in a couple days where they're going to say, what can we learn from history? Well, the first thing you can learn from history, that's a real lesson, as opposed to these lessons people think they learn, which are never real. They never take into account all the variables and things involved that make it a moot point. But there are sort of broad things you learn. Right. Like I said, the historical odds can change on figuring for things based on factors. Right. But what we should learn from history is simply people's actions, conduct, and the choices that they made earlier in recent history and then take that into account when it comes to listening to them again. When people ask why we don't learn from history, partly because we simply keep the same people who made the initial mistakes in similar positions of power and never changed. I mean, if you were in a private company and somebody made a really big bet on the company's assets and it really went horribly wrong, would you let that person make decisions again? What would happen to that person? And if you let that person make decisions again and push it a point of view and a direction for the company again, and it happened again, then what? I guess what I'm saying is that if you look at all the people who thought going into Afghanistan was a good idea, and this to me also goes with the Iraq war too. I mean, if you were somebody that thought that was a good idea, we were going to be welcomed with flowers and liberators. If that was you, that's the mistake. This isn't a three strikes in you're out game. If we want to avoid similar outcomes and we want to learn from history that person's recent history. If you're wrong about big things, I'm not going to put you in jail. This isn't one of those dictatorships where the king cuts your head off if you're wrong. But you don't get to. If you want a meritocracy, you don't get to be the advisor anymore. That job goes to the person that called it correctly. Listen to the people on TV right now, these advisors and people that the media gets to comment. These are all the people that got it wrong. I'm like the last guy to say that, but it's the most obvious thing in the world. You want to look at them and go, why would we listen to you? You were wrong about Iraq. You were wrong about Afghanistan. Now, this is not a flex, but I was against Afghanistan. I was against the Gulf War. I was against the Saddam Hussein war, the first one that won over Kuwait. And my thinking at the time, and my thinking is still this way, that when it comes to American national interest, if we need to do something, do what my military history professor said, take ground war off the table and then try to figure out how to achieve your Clausewitzian goal of achieving your policy goal by other means, in this case. Other means other than a ground war somewhere getting sucked into the ground. Well, there's an old line, I think Bernard Montgomery, the British Second World War general, called it, one of his maxims. I don't know if he invented it, but it's the famous, don't get involved in a ground war in Asia or a land war in Asia. The same can really be said for the Middle east and Afghanistan, too, right? I mean, there might be any number of ways to skin a cat here in terms of achieving your policy goals, but don't get sucked into a ground war in these places. And if you made the mistake once, okay, fine, you can still go be a lawyer somewhere or go on speaking tours, but you don't, you know, I mean, why would you bring a person like that back in the government? And why would you listen to them again? If you want a meritocracy, you keep promoting the people and you keep putting these people on television. You keep asking these people, the people that were right. And eventually, as you keep going, that process should winnie the field down to people who are more often right and more often right instead. The people that were right about not going into Afghanistan and not going into Iraq and all these kinds of things are, you know, you hear it even today, they're still completely marginalized. The debate, by the way, is never undertaken. It is simply a question of your views are outside the political spectrum of what is considered to be rational thought on this subject. Well, but those are the people that were right. If you wanted a meritocracy, you wouldn't have a secretary of defense in power again, who thought that Iraq was a good idea, that was wrong about Afghanistan. No offense, no hard feelings. Everyone's allowed to be wrong. But you don't get to keep jobs like that. And you have somebody in there that was right about it. And if they're wrong about the next thing, they're gone. And you put someone in who was right about both of those things and eventually, theoretically, you get better and better leadership, you know, with the advisory positions. I mean, what if you said to the people who serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the head of the various service branches, I'm sorry, but none of you who are on here can have been in favor of the Iraq war, either one of them, or especially the second one, or the Afghanistan invasion. Could you find replacements? I mean, that's what I mean about not even considering other options. This becomes a problem or falling in line. Maybe there were people who felt terrible and I'm sure they were actually just. They don't come to mind about going into Afghanistan as an idea, but fall in line because, well, that's what's expected of them, right. Theirs is not the reason why there's about to do or die. But if we keep listening to the people that are consistently wrong about these things, then we are unwise. I would be remiss, by the way, if I didn't bring up the most common. Well, sometimes it's a legitimate point, but the most common excuse that you will hear from people, rather than admit they were wrong about something like Afghanistan or Iraq or whatnot, they will say that the plan itself was sound, the mission was sound, but somebody, usually a political opponent or a political opposition party, that somebody botched the implementation, right? They screwed it up when they were trying to get it done. Now this can happen. That's a real thing. So how does one differentiate between the cases where the implementation really was botched and the cases where it's somebody trying to not take ownership of a mistake that they made, whether for themselves or their political side or whatever it might be? I think you have to base it on what the odds of success were in the affair. Right? I mean, if it's an easy sort of deal, let's say our military just has to crush the other side's weak and pathetic military and its Clausewitzian mission and policy goal achieved, right? So the odds are great and you somehow lose. Well, that to me is a case where it would be reasonable to turn around and go, well, this was an easy slam dunk mission. How did we botch the implementation of that? On the other hand, if the mission itself has the odds stacked against it from the get go, if it's terribly difficult to imagine us doing all the things that would have to be done to achieve the Clausewitzian policy goal, well, Then it's a lot harder to say that the problem was in the implementation of the idea. It might even be more reasonable to say that later people trying to grapple with this problem were hamstrung with an unworkable and unachievable mission. Right. And I would also say that when you say something like, we're going to take over Afghanistan, we're going to govern it, and then we're going to set up its own government that can rule by itself, keep the Taliban at bay, deal with all the tribal issues, I mean, well, that's a botch. The implementation, Goodness gracious. In any case, I thought it would be remiss if I didn't at least address the point that some people will make. It's a legitimate one sometimes, but depends on how doable the mission was in the first place. As far as what we're going to see now, well, listen, the Taliban were relatively horrific when they were in charge last time, so I'm not expecting anything good. Needless to say, there's another easy prediction for you, Dan. It absolutely destroys me to see the destruction of the historic artifacts of that fabulously interesting land. There's a reason that Afghanistan's one of those great places on the risk board. It's always been one of those great places on the risk board. And the history is fascinating in that region, and to see it blown up and destroyed hurts me. But I think of myself, and I always get mad because I shouldn't feel that way about. I mean, I should feel that way about everybody getting killed in Afghanistan. Right. People are more important than artifacts. But what's going to happen, I imagine, is that with the US Taken out now, this becomes something that the regional players have to iron out for themselves, and one might make a case again. It's a variation of my military history professor saying, take the easiest solution, take it out. Well, for all those powers, either the easiest solution or the one that they had no control over anyway was the US Solving it or at least dictating how it was going to be. When we have troops on the ground there, it doesn't matter what the surrounding powers really think. They can funnel guns to people and do things sort of clandestinely, but the United States is running the show. When the United States leaves, it's an open show. And we always worry here in the US about who's going to have influence in the region, all that kind of stuff. Well, I mean, in the way I used to learn about this stuff, the most likelihood is that you're going to get competing powers, right? They're going to, in certain ways balance each other out. Maybe now that might not be what happens, but at least whatever happens there now is going to involve the regional players. And in the same way that if something happens in Central America and someone from the Central European area decides that they want to have an interest in it, it's going to look a little strange to me. The Central Americans probably think it looks a little strange for me to have any interest in what goes on there. But you know how that works if you're close by and Afghanistan's close by a number of different powers who don't see eye to eye on everything. So maybe we'll see some balancing act stuff going on there. And who knows how long the Taliban will be around. And there are other things that can be done. They're not very effective. It's not like military force, but it's not like you have to play nice with the Taliban. And it's not like there won't be some things that can be used perhaps as incentives for certain better behaviors or changes. But look, this is a hard line view of Islam of the most sort of Middle Ages kind of style. And the Taliban, by the way, are hardly the only group of people like this, as we all know, right? ISIS was like this, Boko Haram's like this. I mean, there are groups like this all over the place and there are nation states that support them in one way or another, underwrite them, you know, teach their people in religious schools certain things like this, and then send them to. I mean, we all know this. But that's not a problem that you solve with Western armies. If they're going to be solved, they're going to be solved from people who are within the religion itself. I mean, look, the west and the United States are not the only entities subject to blowback. Blowback is an equal opportunity force. And it's positively Newtonian when you think about it. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. How do you think the extremes of the Taliban or ISIS or any of the groups like that, how do you think that plays in the realm of global public opinion as an advertisement for the wonders of Islam? Right? If you're an Islamic country, that must make you feel like that is an awful view for the rest of the world to get of your religion, right? There will also be geopolitical reasons, as we spoke about earlier, about having a terrible, vicious, violent, Middle Ages style regime in Afghanistan is not good for the regional powers around it. So I think There's a chance here that some sort of counter reaction to the extremes of the Taliban might end up getting us a better outcome in the region than appears possible at this very low point in time. When we're looking at it, just shaking our heads and thinking about the tragedy once again. I'd like to point out, though, that the very things that led us to this are only tempered for a little while. I'm worried, just like after Vietnam, that whatever reticence we have to do something like this again, or lessons that we think we've learned now, how easy it is for those things to wear off. They called it the Vietnam syndrome in the late 80s, right. This idea that we were being too cautious with our military because we wanted to avoid another Vietnam. Some of us looked upon that as a feature, not a bug. But when you turn that into something that has to be overcome. Right. We need to behave more like we did back then. Well, then you get the situation that you saw in the 1990s. For example, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, which is part of the Democratic Clinton White House, gave an interview with Matt Lauer in 1998 where it looked like we met it to send soldiers again into the Middle East. I think it was at that time, hard to keep track. The Middle east, the Balkans. I mean, we're going somewhere all the time, aren't we? And Lauer basically says to Secretary of State Albright, can you give us an assurance that, you know, Americans are not going to once again go in harm's way? And he asked this quote, will you speak for me, Madam Secretary, to the parents of American men and women who may soon be asked to go into harm's way and who get the feeling that many countries in the rest of the world are standing by silently while their children are once again being asked to clean up a mess for the rest of the world, end quote. She then goes in to try to say, well, we did have a little help, and there were people that were helping us, but, yes, we did most of the work. And then she says this. Let me say that we are doing everything possible so that American men and women in uniform do not have to go out there again. It is the threat of the use of force and our lineup there that is going to put force behind the diplomacy. But if we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us. I know that the American men and women in uniform are always prepared to sacrifice for freedom, democracy and the American way of life. End quote. That was 1998. Three and a half years about later, we rattled sabers at North Korea and Iran, making them both charter members of what was called the Axis of Evil. And we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. I'm not sure what you call that, but it sure looks a lot like hubris in hindsight, doesn't it? If you think the show you just heard is worth a dollar, Dan and Ben would love to have it. A buck a show, it's all we ask. Go to dancarlin.com for information on how to donate to the show.