Back to Bagram? Trump’s Push to Return to Afghanistan

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The Trump administration is exploring a controversial move: reopening Bagram Air Base and reestablishing ties with the Taliban, all under the banner of countering China and boosting U.S. influence. But critics warn it looks like reinvasion, demanding tens of thousands of troops and billions more in wasted dollars. From Taliban resistance to the ghosts of past failures, this piece questions whether America is doomed to repeat the same costly mistakes in Afghanistan—trading debt, lives, and credibility for a strategy that’s never worked.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it we'll have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Really back in Afghanistan? Is this really what we want
to do? Yeah? The Taliban right now, Taliban is in
talks with the Trump administration about restoring diplomatic ties, economic trade,
and perhaps even security cooperation. Again, this is at the

(00:43):
same time. You know, I was yesterday Marco Rubio was
shaking hands with the new head of Syria, which used
to be he 's well, once a member of al Qaida,
you pretty much always a member of al Qaeda. Guy
was on tape cutting people's head cut people's heads off. Yeah,
he would like the most wanted list, and yes, we're

(01:04):
buddies now. Anyway, Trump has repeatedly brought up the idea
of putting troops back at Bagram Air Base. He has
been pushing this to his national security team for months.
This is according to CNN, we're trying to get back,

(01:25):
get it back because they need things from us. Trump
told reporters bad things are going to happen if the
US military doesn't get Bogram that he posted on social media.
The Taliban they're not too happy about the idea. Here's
their quote. Even if the United States recognize the Taliban

(01:46):
and pledged to rebuild all of Afghanistan, we would never
give up a single inch of our country for their
military presence. That's from their foreign minister. Okay, they're saying
it would look like a reinvasion of the country, not
to mention the fact the military thinks that this would

(02:08):
take tens of thousands of troops to defend and keep
the air base going. Trump said I liked not because
of Afghanistan. I liked it because of China. This is
back in July of twenty twenty four, Mike Walls, who
served as his National Security advisor from January to May

(02:31):
twenty twenty five. During the withdrawal from Afghanistan represented Walls
had publicly argued that giving up Bogram this mistake because
we will no longer have a US airfield and a
country that borders China, which could have been useful to
get the weaker resistance against Beijing or threatened China with
a second front during a future Pacific war. Again, I'm

(02:56):
sure the neo Khans and the Hawks love this. I
for one, I hate it. I mentioned it was on
one of my Light and Darkness episodes. Here the conversation
I had with my Afghani uber driver took me back
and forth and ran problems with my luggage and here's

(03:19):
someone that left during the Soviet invasion but still has
family there. And we discussed this, and he discussed just
how bad and how awful the Taliban is, and he
had almost kind of wished that, you know, we were
able to kind of finish the deal, and I'm basically saying,
you know, I think we did a lot. It was again,

(03:42):
it was perfectly polite conversation, great conversation I had him,
and you know, basically said, you know that the people
at some point in time were going to have to
get it done on their own. You can't force that.
It's like putting a square peg in a round hole.
It just doesn't work unless we wanted to completely take

(04:04):
over the country and be as brutal as brutal could be.
You know, you think about the brutality that involves with
taking something over with any sort of success. I use
I'm gonna use the decimate. If we use the word decimating, decimated,
you know what that means, right, You know that came
from Yeah, Romans would come roll into an area and

(04:31):
line people up. You want to talk about decimating or
if something go wrong, one out of every ten people
you just kill just to set an example. You got
to you gotta, really, you got to bring the fear
of God, especially to an area that, again it doesn't
have the same history and the same values that you do.

(04:52):
Is that something that we want to do. Is that
something that's worked out for the United States? No. Trump
seems to be pitching as a strategic move, another strategic
move that quite frankly, all due respect, we can't afford.
The sooner we can get out of these areas, in

(05:14):
my opinion, the better off we are going to be.
Team America. World Police has been a disaster, been a
disaster for this country. It's think about the money we

(05:35):
have wasted, the money we have blown on all of
our bases here there, all of our foreign adventures, all
of our wars post World War two, thirty seven trillion
dollars in debt. There's a documentary coming out, actually it's

(05:57):
today on the Paramount Network and the name of it
eludes me. Okay, you can probably you know, put it
in your search and you figure out what it is.
And it's in regards to all of the corruption, the waste,
in regards to Afghanistan, what took place. I can't wait
to watch it. What makes you think that's gonna change.

(06:21):
It's not gonna happen again. What because Trump's president right now?
Come on, watch dog on Wall Street dot com