The War In Afghanistan Was Just One Hideous Grift

Today we say everything there is to possibly say about a 20-year war in just about an hour.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Worst Year Ever, A production of I Heart
Radio Together Everything, So don't don't this is the worst

(00:21):
year ever. But I thought the previous one and the
previous one to that at the previous one of the
previous one. Yeah, and you were wrong. How time works,
I see, we all thought that, and it was until
the new year arrived, and here we are in it,
the current worst year ever. Guys, how's it going. I'm

(00:43):
just enjoying Cody's hair right now. We're doing great. It's
perfect for an audio medium. Grimly stuff going on. I mean,
as we've always said, Cody has the perfect hair for radio.
I I had a guy that was dating who once
told me I had a face for radio, well for

(01:08):
an excellent face. Did He was joking and he didn't.
He thought we were young. But but I want to
finish the story. I'll say that at the time went
right over my pretty little head. Uh, and I took
it as a compliment. I was like, thank you. I've

(01:29):
always wanted to work in radio anyway. Um, can we
all email him? Yeah? Yeah, you're sure. He's a really
great guy. A pop punk band did write a song
about him. Um, that was mean? What about him? Yeah? Yeah. Yeah,
he got into like a fight with the lead singer
in high school and they wrote uh their one hit

(01:51):
wonder about him and played it all over local radio.
I hope I'm not listening. He is a wonderful person anyway.
Well I don't like him. I hate him. Yeah, no, no,
there's only one X we don't like, and this one's fine.
Let's talk about the show. Okay, what what? What? What
do we? What is our show? What do we do

(02:12):
for a living? Who are we? What is my name?
Why are why are we? Actually? What's question? Yeah? This
is what I described to my relatives as on demand
radio a k A podcast and there and the three
of you are the hosts upset podcasts. So today, uh,

(02:34):
we're just stalling here because the subject that we're going
to dig into is very dark. Today. We're gonna be
talking about Afghanistan, of course. Yeah yeah, like yeah, people,
I saw some comments like that. I saw some comments
after our our last last week's episode, like no talk

(02:57):
about Afghanistan, guys. There's a lot going on in the world.
The Caliban went from like you know, fighting in the
mountains to taking over most of the populated areas of Afghanistan.
In roughly a week, so yeah, about the time, like
news was breaking after we recorded of stuff. You have

(03:20):
to give things a beat before you talk about them. Yeah.
I feel like one of the one of the problems
we run into these days, especially, is that everybody has
to have an opinion a second something happens, and then
make claims about things the second it happens. And with
that in mind, Cody, how would you have invaded Afghanistan? Uh?
Faster and bigger, bigger, much more money? Yeah, I would have.

(03:46):
I feel like twenty five years would have given it
to us, right, I would have. I would have said, like,
all right, in twenty five years, if things aren't going
our way, five more years, like layout a plan right yeah?
Aft ye big into all of this, um yeah, twenty years,

(04:09):
twenty years. It's interesting because all of this, uh, you know,
Biden's big, big idea would be to have everybody out
of there before the twentieth anniversary of September eleven, UM,
thinking that would be symbolic and beautiful in some way,
but instead what we're seeing is a catastrophe. Um. And

(04:32):
the soldiers and people that have fought in this twenty
year war, a lot of them a lot of soldiers,
people who fought in this war then had children who
grew up to fight in this war, or you know,
and and instead of seeing this as a beautiful moment
of symbolism, it is there. No, there's nothing about this
has ever been beautiful. Beautiful that's the absolute wrong word.

(04:56):
But whatever reason Biden out of here by yeah, well
we'll look back and we'll be like we did it.
Whatever it was, we're not gonna talk about, but we
definitely did it. Leaving Afghanistan is the new invading Afghanistan.
Twenty years later, we left and nothing has been accomplished.

(05:18):
Some stuff has been accomplished, A lot of bad things
have been accomplished, depends on your definition of accomplish Um.
I have been chatting a little bit with um Uh,
an anarchist activist in Afghanistan and an Afghan woman. UM
and I've got a little bit on that. I'm still
getting her response translated, So I think we'll afghanarchist. Yeah. Um,

(05:40):
she's currently trying to get out of the country because, um,
all hope is more or less lost. As many people
would like to leave the country now, Yeah, many people
would like to get the funk out Um, we'll talk
about that a little bit, probably in a later episode.
I'll kind of give more of her responses because I'm
still getting them. It's a whole chain of translations that
need to happen in order to make this. But UM,

(06:02):
I think it might be interesting to start. I think
it might be valuable to start kind of with each
of our Like, when did you first learn that Afghanistan
was a place? I'm gonna guess it was around nine eleven. Yeah, yeah,
But I'm kind of curious as to everyone, like just
kind of what was what were you all because we
haven't talked about, like, you know, what were you doing
on nine eleven? What were you doing when we just

(06:23):
when we started now end this series of Wars. My
dad woke me up in the morning nine eleven, uh,
and I was in high school to watch the news coverage,
and we went to school and got to first period
and they sent everybody home and a bunch of my
girlfriends came over and we continue to watch the news

(06:45):
during the day, and UM, I felt very afraid, you know,
you know, it was bizarre. Similarly, I was I I
was in high school the h we were I guess
it was like A three or different, So that actually
makes sense that I was not woken up and told
about it. I was in class and then they're like,

(07:07):
you know, every class rolled in the TV uh to watch.
I'd want a class where the teacher was like, no,
we're not we're not thinking about that, We're doing school.
And that didn't go well. Um y, it's very it's
very surreal. Um And at that age, you also don't
have like a super solid grasp of the world right,

(07:29):
and you don't know yet to question, or at least
I didn't know to question what you're being told. I
think one of the things that's harder for you know,
younger folks or folks who kind of you know, maybe
we're too young to really be super cognizant at that time.
You go back at the how h sterical all of
the media was, and I think there's two things that

(07:49):
are necessary, which one of which is understanding that, yes,
all of the adults in our world at that period
of time lost their goddamn minds entirely or nearly all.
There were people who were desperately trying to be voices
of sanity, but nobody listened to them. Um. Yeah. But
as a child, Like I think I was like thirteen
when that happened. It was perfectly reasonable to be like

(08:12):
blindly terrified because as a child, you take your cues
from the adults around you. And when those those planes
hit the towers and the Pentagon, every single adult in
my world lost their entire goddamn mind for months, Like people,
we're out of their gourds. Um, kids in my high
school and not high school and my middle school were
like panicked that al Qaeda was going to attack our

(08:35):
suburban middle school and stuff like, and that was Those
were pretty common reactions. Um, yeah, especially since I mean
we started this by you asking us when was the
first time we'd heard of Afghanistan or uh, you know,
and obviously we were kids, so that's part of it.
But in general, America is not a place that is

(08:55):
concerned with what is happening in other places. So I
would say that a lot of the adults in our lives. Yeah,
if people know very little about the region now they
knew virtually nothing, then yeah they they I mean it's
hard to say because they knew they thought they knew,
I mean they should less. They may know less now
because of how much disinformation there is but whatever, yes, yes,

(09:19):
but you get my point. Yeah, um it's it's you know,
people lost their minds. And there was this like what
people have been sharing kind of some of the images
from popular magazines, like that famous drawing of like Osama
bin Laden's cave fortress that never existed, like just just
was complete fancy, like somebody paid a graphic designer to

(09:39):
draw like a fucking D and D castle under a
mountain as um. And then everyone was convinced that like
bin Laden was a part I had a whole army
there in the like the motherfucker left almost immediately, like
and it was like the realities of the situation. Um right,
you can you can talk about how much blame gets
apportioned to the tal band for nine eleven, but at

(10:01):
the end of the day, a lot of them and
like most of the Taliban leadership were very unhappy with
bin Lawton because like they didn't want a hornet's nest
kicked up. Um. And in fact, the Taliban made an
offer in two thousand one, like hey, we'll give you
the guy, like we'll we'll fucking get him for you,
Like you don't have to you don't have to come
in here and funk up our ship. And you know

(10:21):
there were peace overtures, there were, and you can It's
one of those things I think, prior to what's happening now,
when you would try to tell people like, hey, the
Taliban tried to give him up, they were willing to
like negotiate and talk and even potentially form a coalition
government to avoid years of war, Folks would say, well,
it's the Taliban. They were clearly lying. They never would
have agreed to any arrangement, like they would have wound

(10:42):
up in charge anyway. And it's like, well that but
they still wound up in charge and it costs us.
Maybe we could have tried, Yeah we could. It was
they're not they're not giving him up, so we got
to go. But they absolutely offered to give him anyway.
I don't know, it's um, it's very I mean, like
you know, freedom fries, all that kind of stuff. Yeah,
I think that. I think the reaction from adults kind

(11:05):
of helped me quickly realize how silly the whole thing was. Yeah,
like looking around like wait, what is what what did
this do to you? And like why are we even
doing this? But then twenty years passed and babies from
that period. Yeah, and like people for whom the actual

(11:28):
like they were, they they did a pretty good job
they being the Bush administration of convincing people in the
immediate lead up to the war that like we were
in immediate danger and like this was and it was
obviously nonsense. I'm not saying there was anything to it,
but they convinced a lot of people of this. But
most of the soldiers who have fought over there like

(11:49):
can't like many of them probably can't even remember a
time in which they legitimately believed that there was a
threat emanating from Afghanistan. Um. It was just like a
place where we sent young men to get hurt and
to hurt other people, um for unclear reasons, the vague
specter of terrorism. Yeah. And you you know, there's always

(12:11):
people you find a reason some of it is like
there were I know a lot of guys over there,
you know. You you you find ties with with locals,
with like Afghan commandos, with um you know, uh, activists
and the real people who are trying to like improve
their lives, and you kind of focus on that little
narrow thing. But there's never been um, there's never been

(12:34):
a cohesive like vision for what we should have been
doing there other than that one brief moment of panic,
and that's carried us into there for the last twenty years.
And part of the reason why is that, like as
soon as we invaded Afghanistan, it became obvious to even
the irrationally exuberant that like, this was not going to

(12:54):
be a cleaner and easy process and there was probably
never going to be the kig end of pr victory
where you you know, yeah, anyone a couple of years, well, yeah,
very immediately we were like, oh, this is a bad idea.
If the quote enemy is like this sort of amorphous
like yeah concept, then like, what's the what are the

(13:18):
conditions for victory? What do you win? What's the thing
that needs to happen for you to say we did it?
Because also if we went in specifically because we wanted
to get bin Laden, like well will we will, and
then we go in, we got He's dead. He'd been
out of the country for years by the time we didn't.
He didn't die in Afghanistan, No, he did not. It's

(13:40):
it's all like there's so many frustrating aspects to it,
but it's one of those I guess what was getting
at is, like, one of the things that's most frustrating
to me right now is that all of the coverage
of what a disaster this is is focused on either
Trump if you're a Biden supporter, or Biden if you're
a Trump supporter, and well it's got to be one

(14:01):
or the other. A little, a little, a little tricky
minx named George W. Bush has just kind of skittered
away from accountability like some stealing garbage in the night.
And it's very frustrating. Yeah, one of the one of

(14:21):
them and said that we're gonna stop, We're gonna get out,
and he increased our military presence there. Yeah, he had
a surge. That was a disaster. He had it because like, look,
the the bulk of the black In my opinion, if
you're if you're a portioning blame to presidents as presidents,
and I want to stay here for the purposes of Biden,

(14:42):
I'm talking about his blame as president as opposed to
like whatever you want to apportion to him as you know,
a member of the time, but as as presidents, the
blame in order of most to least goes in the
actual order of the presence most Bush, second, most Obama, third,
Strup fourth most Biden. Right, Like that's because and and

(15:03):
and really Obama does deserve a lot of focus in
blame because he did have a choice as to whether
is this going to be a funk up? The Republicans
did that, like I'm we're we're at this was a
bad idea from the beginning. Um, we never had a plan.
And I'm not going to just keep murdering people for
for nothing in the desert um and well not the desert,

(15:24):
but I'm not going to keep murdering people for now.
I'm not going to just like escalate these drones strikes.
I'm not gonna I'm not going to find it was
Obama who made Bush made. Its accepting the framing of
of the situation, Like it's saying like, well, you know
it was, they're doing it wrong, but we should still
be there, we still have to be there. It's accepting
the framing. And it was also what Obama did was

(15:46):
found a way to make it sustainable. And I don't
mean that like a financial sense, but I mean in
a publicum, public opinion sense. He found a way to
keep the war going and keep the killing going without enough,
but in such a way that few enough American soldiers
died that it was never new because because we didn't

(16:07):
want to be or people in general, uh, you know
who would generally be upset with the war, leve Obama
and look away. That's the years of complacency. Those are
the years where everyone's like, I'm tired of being upset.
Let's just like it's not so bad. And I tell
you Obama, Obama is a good guy. He's going to

(16:29):
make the right choices. UM. I would push back just
slightly on your framing of of um order of responsibility
and say that Trump and Biden are tied. In my mind,
maybe not. I just think that the way that this is,
we can will will unpack this. We're gonna have to
take a break through. But I do not appreciate the

(16:50):
way that this has rolled out, in the complete and
utter failure to ply careful our allies and the people
that we need to be acting right now, because is
he already blew through the deadline that Trump established and
has already you know, but also what are all of

(17:12):
these months, all of these months since that may first deadline, etcetera.
And there's plenty to talk about did you If you
listen to his speech, which I did, it was fucking nonsense.
Like one of the one of the key claims he
made is like, well, we couldn't evacuate them because they
didn't want to leave. Yet it was like Joe that
there were eighteen thousand Afghans waiting for special immigrant visas

(17:36):
denied because the visa system. And in fairness, it was
the Trump administration that fucked up the USAS system more
than it had been sucked up. But you could have
pushed that ship. You couldn't that, Like you're the president
of the United States, at least, like you got two
thousand Afghans out right roughly roughly as like when since

(17:58):
the start of the poll we got about two thousand
of our the Afghans who are working with us out
eighteen thousand of them had said prior to Biden taking office,
I need to get the funk out of here. Um, yeah,
we've known and like the whole point, like the whole
framing of like Biden as presidents, like we're back, We're
gonna fix all the things that we all said we're bad.

(18:19):
And obviously that wasn't gonna be the case. But my
God saying, well, so they don't all want to go,
I mean, Joe, we should. We should take a quick
break and then come back and talk a lot about
this next messaging because you know who's messaging on Afghanistan
is entirely consistent Lockeed Martin, Lockheed Martin primary sponsors, Lockheed

(18:42):
Martin and Ray, who say, Man Schmalaban. As long as
they need targeting software for drone based missiles, we don't
care who they are where. That's the Lockheed raytheon guarantee
together everything and we're back and we love, we love

(19:13):
to be back. Yeah. So we're talking about Biden and
his speech and the shifting uh. And you know eighteen
thousand UM Afghanistan citizens did not want to leave their country.
And then there's also the line of what we needed
people there, otherwise it would have not instilled confidence that

(19:35):
we believed the Afghan government would succeed. So there's that, UM,
very good yes, and shifting the bucked Donald Trump, all
of it. I love. Uh. There's a Kamala Harris tweet
today like this is sort of the general framing is
like now now now the important like now, the mission

(19:56):
is to get people out now now it was part
pardon me, you just you just thought of this, and
the the other part of his speech that really upset me.
And I don't have the direct quote, what was the
framing of it. So Biden has assured assured the public

(20:16):
and has talked about how uh the government would last,
how it would at least for a while, that the
Taliban wouldn't take thing goes over immediately, and he was
obviously very very wrong. But in the speech he mentioned
how he put that on Afghanistan. They're not willing to

(20:40):
do it. They're not willing and ready to fight. They
don't care. That's that's particularly I want to find the
statistic I was looking at. But like, uh, there's a
lot of women. We'll talk about them, a lot of
I mean, the the Afghan military was on balance a
fucking disaster stir largely it's sort of the operational command level, um,

(21:03):
but a lot of Afghan security forces died fighting. As
of April, they were taking thirty to fifty sometimes more
casualties a day um. And that was without logistical support.
They lost more people in the last like year than
the US did in the entire war. Like to say
that they were not fighting thousands of people, Like it's

(21:25):
it's disgusting, Like, yeah, they were fighting, at least a
lot of them were fighting. They also had no legit.
We'll talk you, we'll talk about we have created this situation. Yeah,
we create. So the Afghan military was built in imitation
of the U. S Military in certain ways and by that,
so the way the US military functions and what makes

(21:47):
it so so deadly in an operational capacity at kind
of like a unit level, UM, is that we have
very effective combined arms strategy. So you've got you've got
your infantry, you've got your armored units, you've got field
our hillary and you've got air support and they all
kind of UM and drone support and they all kind
of they act to provide each other with information, um,
to provide each other with fire support. It's it's a

(22:09):
very effective way of fighting that they've developed over the
last couple of decades, and we built the Afghan military
and imitation of that. The problem with that kind of
military is that it requires an enormous logistic tail and
significant number of people for everyone fighter in the field.
Not only people to like keep the the infantry and

(22:29):
stuff supplied, but like you need people to maintain the drones.
You need people to fly the drones. You need people
to interpret the signal information that drones are getting. You
need people to maintain the aircraft that are providing close support.
You need people to load those craft, you need people
to pilot them. You need people to maintain the armored
vehicles and whatnot. You need all of this logistical tail um,
which we never trained or equipped. We used mercenaries PMCs

(22:55):
to do all that work in Afghanistan um. And we
did that because those PMCs were made your donors to
US politicians and very influential in the Defense Department, and
it was hugely profitable for them. It's what one of
the most disgusting things is that like Fox brought Eric
Prince Mercenary Warlord on to talk about like wi Biden
fucked up and he was like, well, people like me
weren't listened to, and the reality chunk of why the

(23:18):
strategy like we always basically the entire time we were
in Afghanistan, there were more PMCs in country than US
servicemen and women. And part of the reason for that
is that their deniable assets doesn't matter. How many of
those fuckers died, doesn't matter what happens to them or
what you do with them, because none of that needs
to be reported. Right Ever, you a soldier who dies,
that's a matter of public record, right you have a
right to information about that. Doesn't matter if it's some

(23:40):
blackwater motherfucker. And Prince was one of the was the
the number one dude who lobbied to make our two
two lobbied four things to work that way in both
Afghanistan and Iraq. And that's how things worked in both
Afghanistan and Iraq. And the downside of that is that
when Biden pulled out, he pulled those PMCs out, He
pulled that logistical support out. So not only did the

(24:01):
Afghan military lose US air support and US fighters, they
lost access to the people who made their logistical tail
possible and there was just no real chance that they
were going to continue function. Now, there were other issues.
From one thing, there was something like ten thousand generals
in the Afghan military, which number about three fifty thousand people,
which is ridiculous. And I encountered similar things in Iraq. Right,

(24:26):
you meet all these people who are like quote unquote generals,
and the reality is that like there's somebody's cousin, there's
somebody's uncle. They're they're getting and their their their grifters, right,
a huge amount. Basically everyone at the top of the
Afghan military was a grifter. And the way it works
is like those guys, the high ranking dudes are getting
kickbacks from these p m c s and from from
sometimes straight from the State Department of the Defense Department,

(24:48):
and they're grifting money from all these you know, Oh,
Haliburton comes in to build a hospital and they pay
this this local warlorder, this general a bunch of money
and he arranges security and he also gets So the
Afghan government's says like, okay, you're in charge of ten
thousand men, here's their payment. Here's salary for these ten
thousand troopers. You have to hand it to them. And
so you decide, as this corrupt asshole, like, well, I'm

(25:09):
getting paid for ten thousand dudes. What if I just
have a thousand dudes and I pocket the salary for
And so that was and that was the same thing
happened in you know, when Mosel was taken by Isis.
It was like they're supposed to be like ten thousand
Iraqi army soldiers well equipped with US weapons in the
city and like isis guys defeated them. And it's because
there was actually like nobody there, because like the whole

(25:30):
army was existed on paper for the process of getting
a couple of people rich. Right, So there's a there's
a huge amount of blame for the people on the
top of the Afghan military. And that's important to talk
about because in part the reason why it was that
way is because we let it be that way, because
we wanted, because it was very profitable for a lot
of Americans for it to be that way. Um. And

(25:52):
so that should be acknowledged and it should be in fact,
people should be punished for it over here. Um. But
saying they were willing to fight for it ignores again
the tens of thousands of Afghan soldiers who died fighting yea,
which is pretty fucked up. It is fucked up. It
is just I mean, it's it's it's destroying. Uh. I

(26:15):
already have no legitimacy anyway, but this just further does
it for us. We yeah, we never I mean, one
of the things that's interesting to me, there's this this
thing that's actually kind of admirable about the military um,

(26:37):
which is that if you actually read a lot of
their their documentation, it's extremely accurate and extremely clear. Mind.
This has been the case for climate change right for
like fifteen or twenty years. The Defense Department has been
article that you sent us everyone a yes, and that

(26:57):
was try to hide like that the Afghana stand is
like because obviously, and I'm not saying there's a lot
of blaming d O D. A lot of particularly like
all of our high ranking military leaders over there were
attempting to hide the problem, but they also were producing
a significant amount of documentation that any American could have
access to know how they fucked up things were, which

(27:17):
is not to the Afghanistan papers. A fascinating story the
Washington Post Scott and there's a lot of mouth feasance
on behalf of the d O D. But this Vice article,
which was written by Matthew galt Um include like it
is just sort of it's talking about specifically, um the
uh what's the acronym here, oh cigar. Yeah. So the

(27:38):
Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, which was a government
agency that started keeping track of the war and its
material costs in two thousand eight UM, and so they've
been they've been, you know, primarily investigating the hundred and
forty four billion dollars the US put aside for reconstruction.
So this was just covering kind of US efforts to

(27:58):
build a functional state an economy in Afghanistan, not like
after it, not fighting and stuff, like specifically our attempts
to actually make Afghanistan a functioning country. And like twelve
years of these documents, not a single piece of good news,
like just an unmitigated disaster. One of the stories embarrassing,
like shameful. I'm just gonna quote directly from about the goats. Yeah,

(28:22):
this is Matthew Galt Riding. Whenever I think about the U.
S government's failure in Afghanistan, I remember the goats. In
two thousand and thirteen, a government project meant to kick
start Afghanistan's economy granted Colorado State University one point five
million dollars to start a goat farm in Heroit Province, Afghanistan.
It bought five Kashmir producing Italian goats and transported them
to Afghanistan for the purposes of breeding them in large

(28:43):
numbers and turning Afghanistan into a Kashmir producing hotspot. But
CSU ran into problems immediately. It had three hundred goats,
only nine of them the expensive Kashmir goats from Italy.
The college was bad at farming, and the expensive Italian
goats caught a disease that killed most of them. Worst,
they were spending fifty dollar there's a year to feed
the rest, an incredible amount of cash to spend on
an animal that will lead almost anything. When CSU tried

(29:06):
to turn the farm over to locals and told them
that what they were spending to feed the goats, the
Afghans called the farm at poisoned chalice. Keep in mind
that Afghan farms have been raising goats for generations and
already had Kashmir producing animals. According to a goat expert
who testified the fallout, the college had no idea what
they were doing, and the CSU staff determined what the

(29:26):
project should cost despite no one at CSU having any
experience with Kashmir. I feel like I know thirty people
who could have done this project on their own for
fifty grand total, because again, not hard to keep goats alive.
The goats white savior bullshit of like the school project
of let's go there. Afghans just don't know how to

(29:48):
raise goats. About the goats. They've they've been raising goats
longer than you have about raising the sentence raising goats
for generations and already had Kashmir producing and what did
you keep doing? And again it's yeah, it's and everything
every single attempt to like build up the economy, to

(30:10):
build up like so yeah, there was a this is
also from a Cigar report and this came out in
two thousand sixteen, and it was about the Guardes Hospital,
which was a hospital that the United States built in
the Pactia Province in eastern Afghanistan UM as part of
our you know, efforts to to nation build UM. It
was built to treat civilians. Construction began in two thousand

(30:32):
eight as part of a three year contract with the
US Agency for International Development UM, and it was supposed
to be handed over to the Afghan Ministry of Health
in two thousand eleven. UH. That never happened. For one thing,
the completion date kept being pushed back, first to two
thousand thirteen UM as a result of issues with an
Afghan building contractor. In October of two thousand thirteen, when

(30:52):
it was supposed to be done. Cigar found that they
had overpaid the contractor by half a million dollars for
diesel fuel alone UM and so this cause like a
bunch of issues. By this summer of two thousand fourteen,
the hospital still was not completed. It was supposed to
be done in two thousand eleven. UM took another year
and a half for the hospital to be completed. UM.

(31:14):
The almost done hospital costs the US fourteen point six
million dollars. And then an inspection immediately after construction by
Cigar auditors found forty two construction deficiencies quote despite millions
of dollars. This is from an mp A article. Despite
millions of dollars and years of work, parts of the
roof were leaking or contained standing water doors were missing handles.
One of the water towers was leaking. The hospital had

(31:36):
not been reinforced to withstand earthquakes. The hospital was built
on the active Chairman fault line. Fire alarms were missing
in some parts of the hospital, and if there was
a fire, there was no emergency lighting. Some exit signs
pointed in the wrong direction, Like that is that a
tad for like a hospital? Yeah, it's not great. Um,

(31:57):
it's just a tiny example that the hospital eventually. Yeah,
it's it's full of hospitals that like either never got
built or were never built. Practically, there's a million of
these stories from this is one more from the Vice article.

(32:17):
There was Camp Leatherneck, a US base and the Helmet Province.
It cost thirty six million to construct the sixty four
thousand square foot command center. It came with an air
conditioning system, expensive electronics, an office furniture. The US never
used it and couldn't decide if it should demolish, demolish
the facility or turn it over to the Afghans. The

(32:37):
Pentagon eventually turned it over to the Afghan National Army,
leaving behind four d and twenty thousand water bottles, but
setting fire to ten thousand m r s and destroying
undred computers. The Pentagon televisions just destroyed all the computers,
like like the invade your unbelievable computers with you and

(33:05):
just like but just like the debate of like they
were sure if they should demolish it or turn it
like after why are you there? What are you doing there?
Thirty six million dollars to demolish it? Unbelievable anyway, I
just really wanted to share that one as well. Oh
there's the other one about the facilities that they made
that they put something that they like sealed it with

(33:31):
and they've never changed it. They said that the soldiers
staying there are fitting fast, they could get out quickly. Yeah,
it's it's not funny. So one of the things that
is important to understand is the we talk about how
the military industrial complex is a big rift, how like
all these wars are grifts. I don't think people understand

(33:54):
the degree how shameless. There's this idea that the grifts
are like you know, congressmen and defense contractors working out
in exchange for votes. You know, we'll make sure there's jobs,
will keep producing these tanks in your area, or like
you know this idea that like, yeah, you're hiring mercenaries
and like so these companies profit there, or you're you're
taking the oil or something like the and and you know,
that kind of stuff happens. But when I'm talking about

(34:15):
the degree to which the War on Terror was a
shameless griff, there's the best story that that that kind
of illustrates that came from Iraq in two thousand seven,
which is The largest transfer of cash in the history
of the Federal Reserve was done in Iraq, and it
was done after the invasion, when the United States flew

(34:36):
twelve billion dollars in shrink wrapped hundred dollar bills into
the country and then lost it just gone just like
like like like what was the numbering twelve billion dollars
the largest transfer of cash and Federal Reserve history. It
was some of it was supposed to be spent. It
was spent in a variety of ways, but like we

(34:57):
didn't account for most of it, like we really don't
know where a big some of it was just taken
like palettes just taken from airports and ship Some of
it was spent, you know, on bribes and spent to
like pay for stuff. But like most of the funds,
like a significant majority were lost to corruption and waste.
Thousands of people who did not exist were receiving pay

(35:17):
and it was like the money was just taken and
handed to Iraqi elites or handed to like god knows who,
probably a bunch of fucking foreigners in the country too,
and Americans. There was like there was a single five
million dollar expenditure and security funding the explanation for which
was listed on a memo as tb D, which means
to be determined five million dollars that were paid out

(35:40):
for reasons to be figured out, like figured out we
need a billion dollars for um. This is f And
like when I say, like these wars are grifts, I'm
not even just talking about like the high level Oh
You've got these kind of congressmen talking with Lockheed Martin
executives about like how to deal with a pro creations contracts.

(36:00):
I'm saying, we flew twelve billion dollars in cash and
and no one knows where it went. It just it
just it just gone. It's money, money pits, money and
death pits, money and death pits. Yeah, just shameless incompetent grifts.
And like I know, there's so much that's fucking infuriating.

(36:21):
One of the things that's frustrating is we started talking
about this earlier, like the extent to which Afghanistan was
like the big story in America for a few months
after the invasion, and then we just because it became
clear that like nothing good was going to come out
of US factory in that country be pivoted to Iraq.

(36:42):
You know, well, right, and it was a sort of
acceptance like that's you know, it's the forever where, right,
it's this just the thing, it's the thing that we do.
It quickly turned into like, yeah, we're just there now
and that's just how it is. And again, nobody wanted
to pay attention to it. Nobody wanted to think about
the pleasant thing or to pay attention to the fact

(37:03):
that we're yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's I mean, the
thing that's fucked up about what you just said, Katie
is that, Um, I don't I don't know that this
is going to matter in terms of next year's election
or the next presidential election. Like obviously the Republicans are

(37:26):
trying to make this like a thing to hit Biden with,
and you know plenty to criticize Biden on. But I
don't know that anyone's going to give a ship. I
don't know that there is any degree I don't know
that there is any degree of botching ship in Afghanistan
that could have actually hurt a U. S. President because
we just don't give a shit. Um, voters don't like,

(37:47):
we'll see maybe this has been a big enough funk
up that it will have an impact. But like, um,
I re elected, Bush got re elected, Obama got re
elected after the surge, which was an mitigated disaster in
Afghanistan because we just nobody was really paying attention. But yeah,
I don't think that this. I think that everybody will

(38:12):
forget about this in a month, um and move on
to the next thing or not forget about it. But
they'll they'll bring it, they'll bring it up. It's just
one wonders if. Yeah, well, the truth is is that
this was going to happen. I mean not not the
execution of how this happened didn't have to be this way.
But we knew, they've known, despite what Biden said, We've

(38:38):
always known what was going to happen. When the US, well,
they're gonna they're gonna turn They're gonna use it like
uh and you know, who knows next year what what
that worst year ever will bring or for the Giant
Spiders Cody, Yeah, a couple of worst year evers from now. Um,
but uh, you know they're already they're gonna be using it,

(39:00):
not as like we should get out or we didn't
get out well or this or this, it's the now.
It's going to be the refugee thing right, like to
bring people in that will make us less white. Yeah,
it's um. I'm actually I wanted to bring up real
quick just like yeah, yeah, that's what I wanted to

(39:24):
bring up. Yeah, baby, And then thank you for bring
up the ads. And then once we bring up the ads,
you can bring up whatever other thing you wanted to
bring up. Be right back together everything. So we're back.

(39:48):
Did it happen? We can? We came back. Oh yeah,
we we built. We built back there. We are now
supported by uh Haliburton, um and they're fine, fine cashmere.
Let me let me, let me, let me read this
this new ad for us. Hey, Cody, Katie, have you

(40:10):
guys heard of the island nation of Haiti? You know
what would go really well with an island nation of Haiti?
A bunch of miniature American flags in a twenty year
occupation that funnels tens of billions of dollars into an
oil contractor and its subsidiaries. I wasn't that wasn't what
I was gonna say, but I'll take your word for it.

(40:32):
The official stance of worst year ever is let's get Haiti.
Let's get on in there, just get on get on,
get on in there, use promo code. Where else can
we go? Yeah? What else are we gonna do? Where else?
We're gonna put our stuff you want to bring up. Oh,
it's not even It's just gonna keep happening. There's a

(40:53):
all the things, um, you know, like the the Tucker
Carlton of it, all the right wing sort of reaction
to this and sort of using it for their weird
I mean, the the what you expect. Um, there's there's
a tendency to sometimes on some people, uh, to be
like at least Tucker's anti imperialist. And I just want

(41:17):
people to realize and understand and and keep understanding he's not.
He would be imperious. He doesn't think these places deserve
our help. He thinks they're to quote Tucker Carlson, semi illiterate,
primitive monkeys. That's a direct quote from him. Um, he
doesn't think, Uh, he wants to get out because it's

(41:37):
a waste of American soldiers. Um. If there was another
nation that was worthy, he would be all for invading
that country. Um. And he's just turn it's it's just frustrating.
We don't need to talk about him. We've talked about
him before on the show. We all know, Um, it's

(41:57):
just this uh using vague like I'm I'm anti war.
No he's not. He's anti certain wars yeah. Um, he's
anti wars that don't make him feel good. Yeah. Um.
And then now it's just gonna be like the whole
like a now of even like Charlie Kirks like they
actually they did this, they did this specifically so they

(42:20):
can bring a bunch of refugees in and change our demographic.
Steven Miller is saying that ship too. Yeah, it's like, yeah,
that's why. That's why apparently Trump scrubbed he shared it. Yeah, he.
I want to be clear, I think we're all the
same page about this. I also think we should have
gotten the funk out of Afghanistan. Oh yeah, And I

(42:43):
am not famously Cody. You and I have had some
debates because I'm not actually categorically against like intervention necessarily
because I've been to some places where the people there
were like, yeah, this is why my family is alive. Um,
it's clear that intervention in Afghanistan was you know, there
are things that are worse because a lot of things

(43:03):
that are worse because the Taliban are in charge. But
you also have to take into account we were bombing
shiploads of people. Civilian casualties continue to raise throughout the war,
raised significantly during he was I mean we we were.
So it's not a zero sum game. It's not just
because the Taliban artcleing door to door, murdering female journalists, murdering,
murdering like people who were political leaders, women's rights activists,

(43:24):
like horrible shit is happening. Horrible ship was also happening before,
and I just I think we had to get the
funk out. I'm very supportive of not but also there
are I think the best count I've heard at least
about ninety thousand Afghans who had worked with the US
government who had worked with journalists, who were you know,

(43:46):
women's rights activists, people who needed to be evacuated, and
that should have been the number one priority ONCET And
now that would have been part of this plan, a
part of this tension, a part of this not meeting
the fucking deadline. Sorry, go ahead, Robert, Well there's a thing. Yeah,

(44:06):
they brought this up to like the Biden and Harris
administration have brought this up like both they've brought like
this general idea too in regards to like South American countries,
UM and and like the global South, and like how
we we contribute to these issues that bring people here,
we cause these problems and that like what do you

(44:28):
think is happening in Afghanistan? And then they know there's
information that just leaked out that like they one of
the reasons why they did not start the evacuation earlier
a goot more people out us because they were worried
about being hit with that during the mid terms. UM
with like bringing and ship It's great because there there

(44:53):
there was absolutely away Joe Biden could have taken a principled,
even courageous moral stance saying, hey, this was a mistake
a lot of American elected leaders made. I have my
own part in that. I am not going to continue
that mistake. I am not going to pass this on
to a fitth American president. We are getting out, and
we are going to devote vote enormous resources to making

(45:13):
sure that all of the tens of thousands of people
who worked with us get out safely because we can't
because we fucked up, and they shouldn't pay for that
funk up, and that would have been a principal moral
stance that I think reasonable people would have all been like,
all right, well, that's the best you can do, not
like like the war was a disaster long before you
were president. At least we got these people out whatever. Um,

(45:36):
that's that would have been I think the way to
handle it. Like, you know, I'm not saying we should
have stayed in Afghanistan for another four years. I think
getting out was the right thing to do. But there
was a way to do that ethically, um, and try
to end on a note that was less craven, selfish,
and evil than the rest of the war had been

(45:56):
flat out embarrassing. Yeah, we could have as opposed, we
could have ended a war based primarily upon funneling cash
to defense contractors um and burnishing political reputation selfishly. We
could have ended this incredibly selfish, criminal war with a
gesture of like, the best we can do is rescue
these people, um, And and at least we will end

(46:18):
this on a note of not enriching ourselves at their expense.
And yet, and yet that's not talking about how things
could have worked. People people have pointed this out a lot,
but I think I just will for us as well.
Just how wrong Biden has been at every juncture. It's

(46:42):
amazing over the past twenty years, you know, I mean
getting involved with this in the first place, trying to
like have us not he didn't want to go in
and kill some of the lawden, you know, thete the
assurances that you know, the gut will hold and that
the Taliban won't advance. Uh, this whole process of extricating

(47:05):
ourselves in the decision to not remove um all all
of these people, not just the people that helped us,
but their families. Yeah, it's yeah, it's just craven and
shameful and and it's it's you know, it's craven and
shameful all the way down every single US leader who
has had really and I include all of the military

(47:27):
brass in this too. Um just uh a pyramid of
shit um from fucking documented pyramid of ship and like
no documented by the shitters. And they were pooping they

(47:47):
wrote down who they were pooping on and how this
and also writing it like in the margins, like and
we shouldn't be doing this, like right now, this is
right on these people. Yeah, like just every step of
the way, knowing that it's not working, knowing that it's
a failure, um, but presenting it as though it's not
like we're making progress here, we're doing this, we're staying

(48:09):
the course, all that kind of stuff. But you yeah, no,
I don't know. It's so fucking bad and it's you know,
there's there's no way people will correctly point out the
like for one thing we have not We're not gonna
spend nearly enough time here just talking about the suffering
of regular Afghan people, not just now but through the

(48:31):
entire war. This is such a big subject. The scale
of the funk up is so that there's there's no
covering this in an hour, you know. Um, but it's
it's just, man, it's so fucking bleak. Um. I wish
we didn't do terrible things, uh, incompetently, we could do

(48:53):
good things instead. Yeah, or stay the course, I guess. Yeah. Yeah,
it's incredibly depressing. We've just said that over and over again. Um. Yeah,
I mean well, I mean I think we'll probably continue
to talk about this and talk to people. I would
love to bring one of your contacts in and Robert,

(49:16):
I'm very grateful that we host the show with you
because you have much more expertise in this area than
most people out here commenting on it. I'm not particularly
knowledgeable of that afghanist. I always wanted to get over there,
I never managed, you know, ironically, right now is probably
about the safest time in our lives to be a
foreign journalist in Afghanistan. Um, Like, You've got these people

(49:38):
you know from like seeing and stuff who are over
there like filming, and people are talking about like how dangerous.
It's really not right now because the Taliban number one
is in control and number two don't want to kill
foreign journalists right there, big press thing like those people
are about inclusivity and stuff. This is their chance to, um,

(50:00):
you know, not alarm the world anymore. And I hope
to be legitimized, which they have a chance of doing,
especially with like China and Russia. I would say, but
I don't know. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I'm sure it'll
I mean, there's a lot of resources in Afghanistan to
sell that have been like Erik Prince was trying to
get like a massive rare earth mineral operation going in there,
and like no point was ship stable enough under the

(50:24):
US occupation to do it. But the Taliban probably can
guarantee enough stability to extract ship. I'm sure um, or
at least there's a decent chance UM, which isn't a
good thing. It's just a thing that will probably happen. Um.
It's UM. I don't know. You know, there's a couple
of things that keep running through my head thinking about this.
One of them is my favorite work of foreign journalism

(50:47):
about the war in Afghanistan, which is Sebastian Younger's book
War Um, and he wrote it. During there was a
single US Army platoon that was embedded in the Koranal Valley,
which is the was was the furthest I think north point.
It was the furthest outpoint that the US had any
combat outposts in Afghanistan. And we picked that suppose that

(51:09):
specific outpost because it was like a hundred feet further
than the British ever got. Like that was literally like
why we put those guys there? They were there for
a year. And in the year those thirty guys were
in Afghanistan, that unit of again thirty dudes was involved
in about a quarter of all US firefights in Afghanistan.
Like they a tremendous amount of combat and Younger was
there for about six months of the year they were there,

(51:30):
and he was there with um Tim Headrington, his photojournalist friend,
and they talked to those guys during you know, the
period of combat, and stayed with them for years afterwards.
And Younger wrote this book War that's a very good
meditation on what combat does to people. Um. And there's
a line in there about the javelin missile, which is

(51:51):
a very advanced kind of man portable missile that we
we issue soldiers for blowing ship up, you know, when
they're out in the field. Um. And the line is
I'm paraphrasing here, a jacqueline missile costs eighty thousand dollars.
The fact that it is fired by a man who
doesn't make that in a year at a man who
won't make that in a lifetime, is so ridiculous it

(52:12):
almost makes the war seemed winnable. Um. If you're wondering,
like where the money went, it's ship like that. Um.
It's eighty thousand dollar missiles fired by nineteen year olds
who legally cannot buy a beer in their home country, UM,
who were not born who when this started, well, who
were babies, tiny, tiny little babies, So I've been interviewing

(52:39):
and again I don't have the transcripts yet of an
interviewing this this anarchist activist who's located in Afghanistan. UM
and I don't have all of their answers translated, but
the person because I had to interview them through someone
else who was an Iranian UM anarchist activist, and I
asked them. My question was I'm curious, as an anarchist,

(52:59):
how do they feel out the difficulty of opposing an
authoritarian religious movement when the only counter to that movement
as an imperialist military How did they navigate being stuck
in the middle of that situation? Um and the I
have not gotten their response yet, but my source, who's
an Iranian activist responded, I think the answers of the
Iranian and Afghan people are the same. The situation did

(53:21):
not come about because of the vacuum DU was created
by leaving. The US was always present in Afghanistan. When
the Taliban took provinces, counties, cities and committed all the
atrocities we witnessed, they just did nothing. Even worse, they
filled their pockets in the pockets of the Afghan regime
and private military corporations, plus all the atrocities they committed
in Afghanistan, but nothing was given to the people of Afghanistan.

(53:41):
Even before the Taliban, our comrade wanted to immigrate because
of poverty and the lack of jobs that played Afghanistan.
The counterinsurgency tactics worked really well. Because of the poverty
and division between everyone. People became so subservient that they
didn't have a chance to wake up from their reverie
and stage and uprising. Also, the people were led to
at every stage of this pretense war. Who was supposed
to be safe until the Americans left, But even that

(54:04):
turned out to be a lie. It's not that hard
to hate both liars. Yeah, um, yeah, yeah, good ship
is that one thing I had seemed like, yeah, isn't
directly related to what you were just saying, but I
remembered it. Um also just part of this framing of

(54:26):
how it could happen so fast as well, because they
knew this was happening. A lot of Taliban we're making
deals with different you know, community members or yeah, people
that were preparing, you know, and ready to say like yeah,
well we're just there's no point in continuing to die
here and they you know, they they started in these
um in these the Taliban's kind of started their takeover

(54:49):
in these kind of rural outposts because the the Afghan
army had kind of continued a policy established by the
U S where you had these kind of far flung
forward operating bases UM in order to kind of like
lockdown specific regions to stop the Taliban from moving freely
through them. And we can debate whether or not that
was ever a good strategy, but it's only a maintainable

(55:10):
strategy when you have air support right right for supplying
your forces and for carrying out strikes in order to
fend off attacks. Um. And because the Afghan military's ability
to do that was completely degraded when we pulled the
contractors out, um, these forces had no support and no resupply.
In addition to that, the because of all of the

(55:32):
grift and corruption of the Afghan government, they weren't getting paid.
So part of why all a huge numbers of these
guys just surrendered without a fight is the Taliban said,
and the Taliban was pretty honest about this. Hey, if
you guys just put down your guns and leave, we'll
let you go home. We'll even give you some pocket
money to buy food and stuff, and a lot of
like fucking Afghan soldiers are like, well, okay, Like it's

(55:55):
either that or die without bullets for nothing. You've talked
about this in other contexts to where it's like, yeah,
it's all bad, but and you're going to have people
who are going to quote unquote support people who keep
them alive and give the money. Right, I guess I'll
take the option that probably means I go home to
my family rather than definitely dying for a bunch of

(56:17):
drifters who will absolutely flee the country ahead of me.
Um m hm. To give a brief shout out to
everybody uh in the right wing sphere using the Taliban
to dunk on people with pronouns and Facebook, it's amazing.
It's amazing. If only we had been more like the Taliban,

(56:40):
we could have won. Unbelievable. And it's part of what's
so funny about that is that the only successful use
of the US military to support um A, a foreign
like military force in a counterinsurgency campaign of any of

(57:02):
our lifetimes, happened in Northeast Syria. Um in like a
movement that was profoundly politically radical um and um not
at all like like fucking Jack Possobia calls them woke
all the time, like the fucking you know, it's exaggerated somewhat,

(57:24):
but there was a profoundly progressive movement. And the reason
why in that one and only case, shit worked is because, um,
it wasn't a giant grift. Number one. We found a
group of people who were already successfully fighting and we
were just kind of like, what do you uh, what
do you need like in order to to do this better?

(57:45):
And we provided them with support rather than coming in
and creating our own thing, which is also what like
in Syria you had kind of the c I a
chunk of things which was we're gonna try and create
our own or like we're gonna try to build up
these this like kind of rebelica, hasty to fight aside
and like I just did not really work in the
long run. It kind of I didn't succeeded, The thing

(58:05):
didn't wasn't successful. Interesting. Meanwhile, the d O D was like, well,
these people are already fighting very well against isis what
if we just make it easier for them? Um? And anyway,
I don't know everyone everyone saying anything is dumb. Don't
listen to anybody, that's true. Don't listen to podcast especially
listen to podcasts or people. It's just very, very complicated

(58:29):
and a lot to unpack. Yeah, it's also like there's
keep saying stuff like that where it's like it's actually
more nuanced than that, But that's always it's usually said
to like shut down the thing being said, no, because
the reality is it is incredibly complicated, just Afghan politics,
the history of the region. Why the and people get

(58:51):
a lot of stuff wrong. Like everyone's saying, well, we
armed the Taliban, you know in the first place to
fight the Soviets. Doesn't know what they're talking about, because
that never happened. Uh, And in act, the Taliban came
to power fighting a lot of the people that we
had armed to fight the Soviets because a bunch of
those guys were messy sons of bitches. Like it's a
whole it's a whole thing. But like, we didn't create
the Taliban to fight the Soviets. The Taliban were largely

(59:13):
a reaction to the people that we were arming to
fight the Soviets. Um. Anyways, yeah, we do, we do,
we do love to arm people, um, real American pastime,
and there's a bunch of ship people get wrong. But
like the fact that the history is complicated and the
fact that, like the scale of the funk up is

(59:34):
massive and complicated, doesn't mean that the gist of what
happened and went wrong in Afghanistan is complicated. What went
wrong is the only purpose of the war on the
US end, really when you look at it from like
an operational capacity, there were two things going on. One
of those things was making billions of dollars for a

(59:54):
small number of very corrupt people in the defense industry
and the tech industry. The other thing that was going
on was politicians passing the bucks so that they didn't
have to make any unpopular decisions. Like. That's what went on.
And because of that, this incompetent and corrupt military leadership
in Afghanistan was allowed to continue to metastasize in such

(01:00:18):
a way that like the military never really had much
operation and the government never never had much operational capacity. This,
this supposedly democratic government was never as effective at providing
for basic needs in a lot of regions of the country.
Is the fucking Taliban was um and you had like
all of that results from the fact that this for
the United States, the most powerful actor in the region,

(01:00:41):
was never anything but a grift. Like that's that's the
core of it. That's why it went so fucking wrong,
because there was never any attempt to do anything from
the most influential actors in our government but profit from it. Um.
And so yeah, of course it was a fucking disaster.
And the people who suffered most are not even US soldiers, uh,

(01:01:02):
their Afghan citizens who died. And some don't want to leave.
I think, by my calculations, about eighteen thousand of them
don't want to leave it, would rather be there and
take their chances. God fucking Biden. UM, I am sure
that we will continue talking about this, UM, one would imagine.

(01:01:24):
But you're right, you can't possibly do the whole thing justice.
And there's there's yeah, there's a lot of ship that
did go down. UM. It's it's certainly complicated, but like
the gist of what went wrong is UM, a bunch
of criminals who were incompetent invaded Afghanistan because it would

(01:01:45):
help their polling numbers and make their friends rich, and
it did. It's both complicated and incredibly simple. Yeah, it's
very simple when you look at our role in it, right,
the history of the region, the different like that's very complicated,
but when you look at what we did, pretty simple. Yeah. Yeah.

(01:02:06):
Um alright, guys, well, Robert, thank you again for for
the conversation. Uti go read someone who knows what they're
you know. Yeah. One book I always recommend if you
want like kind of earlier history on Afghanistan, particularly about
like the the British attempt to invade Afghanistan, because there's

(01:02:30):
some fun parallels is The Return of the King for
early Afghan history. I'm still kind of most of my
reading on this has been like just kind of journalism
and and and uh like reports on like the ones
we quoted. Um, but there's there's there's a couple of
books that have come out pretty recently that are kind
of tracing the whole the whole sweep of the War

(01:02:52):
on Terror and like why it was such a disaster. Um.
I'm gonna check out a couple of those and see
if I think any of them are very good. But um,
I don't know, you know, I always recommend. The other
place I recommend is, um, let me see if they've
actually got anything out about this today is Mongol Media,
which is a collective of artists and writers from what

(01:03:14):
they call the periphery, which is what a lot of
you know, a lot of Americans either called the third
world or the Global South. Um. I think periphery is
a much better term, and it's it's kind of the
periphery in relation to how it's seen by people in
you know, in the center of empire. But um, there's
there's some good articles that some of them have written

(01:03:35):
about growing up and like some of these these folks
are fixers and like local journalists and so like they've
had this experience of kind of like working with Westerners
and trying to like Taylor content about their homelands for Westerners. Um.
And there's a book or there's an article on Mongol
Media called Afghanistan a Personal History that was published in

(01:03:56):
twenty um that I recommend reading, um if you kind
of want, you know, uh, an Afghan person's perspective on
some of this right from that very interesting concept. Yeah yeah,
not just for white people. Yeah yeah. And I'm sorry,
like obviously this is going this was a very like
focused on the US and funk ups because this is

(01:04:16):
this is a US politics podcast, So that was obviously
going to be more our bag, but that's not the
most important story here. It's just that we're most equipped
to tell. Yeah, and I also wanted to plug props
Podcastood Politics that also covered what's going on in Afghanistan,
so check it out. Alright, guys, we will be back

(01:04:38):
next week. Um And I wish I had something funny
or good to share and say right now, but I don't.
First Year Ever everything, so dump and start again. I tried, Daniel.

(01:05:07):
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