April 15, 2025 • 55 mins
The United States invaded Afghanistan on October 7th, 2001 and remains embroiled in the conflict almost two decades later, making this the longest war in US history. Leaders from both of the dominant political parties continually argued that this was a winnable war, proposing new strategies, more troops, and more surges. Yet documents obtained by The Washington Post show that the long-running internal conversations painted a different -- and vastly more disturbing -- picture. Tune in to learn more about the Afghanistan Papers in tonight's Classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to this evening's classic episode. Guys, do you remember Afghanistan?
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Yeah? Yeah, how could I forget? It was a golden
time in Afghanistan that we all spent together.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
The Breaker of Empires. The US invaded Afghanistan on October seventh,
two thousand and one, and back in twenty twenty, weirdly enough,
on New Year's Day, we started looking into this, into
this excellent work by the Washington Post.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Oh yeah, back in twenty nineteen, Craig Whitlock of The
Washington Post published at War with the Truth and the
world said, uh what.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
That was a really good impression of the world.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Matt, Yeah, what do you say?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
We jump right into this classic episode.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff. They don't go on you to know.
A production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Hello, Welcome back to the show. I'm not wearing a hat.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
You're wearing pants, though.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
I am wearing pants. My name is Matt, my name
is Noah.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
They call me Ben. We are joined, as always with
our super producer Paul Mission Control Deck. In most importantly,
you are you, you are here, and that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know. This is a
wartime episode. As we record today's episode, the United States
of America is still in the middle of the longest
(01:42):
war in the country's history. That means there are literally
people listening to the show today who were not alive
when this war began. Think about that. The United States
invaded Afghanistan on October seventh, two thousand and one, and
we are still there as we speak. Why how much
(02:03):
did our leaders know and when did they know it?
To answer that, oddly enough, even though this country has
been at war in this other country for the better
part of two decades, many people, many voters, aren't one
hundred percent sure what Afghanistan is, where it is, and
(02:24):
why it's such a big deal.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
And it's also now the first time we've been engaged there.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
No, no, no, no, no, this has an interesting name.
First things first, here are the facts. Afghanistan is located
in what is commonly called Eurasia, right the vast stretch
of land between Asia and the continent we call Europe.
(02:49):
It's landlocked, It's bordered by some greatest hits countries. In
the rogues gallery of the United States historically Pakistan, Iran, Tajikistan, Zbekistan,
and China. Its capital is a place called Kabul. Outside
of several cities, the country is extraordinarily rural. We're talking
(03:11):
places that are simply physically hard to access in the
mountains or in the rugged wilderness. The country itself was
not officially formed until seventeen oh nine, but as you
alluded to, Matt, it has a history, a long and
bloody history of being a battleground. In fact, Afghanistan is
(03:33):
sometimes called the Graveyard of Empires due to just the
sheer number of militaries that tried and failed to control it.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
And it's an interesting thing there because and just when
we're talking about it's the battleground, right the place where
the wars are fought or the battles are fought, and
generally controlling the area is kind of the goal. But
a lot of times, and this is what we're going
to kind of outline here, is that it's the the land,
the place where two different warring powers end up where
(04:05):
they just kind of go right. So it's not as
though Afghanistan itself is rising up to you know, fight
A lot of the battles. It's generally it's where proxy
wars happen. It's where it's interesting. We're gonna continue on
with this throughout the show. So let's just keep going
down into the history of Afghanistan.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Okay, let's do a little ancient history, shall we, Yes, okay, So,
experts believe that early humans were living in Afghanistan as
long as fifty thousand years ago because it was rich
soil for farming. There were communities of farmers in Afghanistan
that were some of the very earliest farmers in the
entire world, and for a time the area was known
as Ariyana, or the land of Arians. This is because
(04:47):
multiple waves of people from Central Asia migrated to the region,
and many of these settlers were in fact Arians. They
were speakers of the parent language of Indo European languages.
Arians also, so migrated to Persia and India in those
prehistoric times.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
And then let's jump to the sixth century when the
Persian Empire of the Akimenid dynasty controlled Ariana. And good
luck saying, Achimenid, it's really fun and to look at
and write. In about three hundred and thirty BC, the
little guy you might remember named Alexander the Great, defeated
the last ruler of the Akimenid dynasty there, and he
(05:26):
made his way to the eastern borders of the place
that was called Ariana. Now after this guy, old Great
Alexander himself died in three hundred and twenty three BCE.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
In his early thirties, feeling that he was a failure
by the.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Way, Yeah, no, that Alexander, he sure was great, wasn't he.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
I mean he was, Uh, he's a guy.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Who's a guy.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
He did great things.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
He did some huge stuff. Whether it was great or
terrible is depending on which side of the battles you
were on.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
I said, it had some large scale stuff.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Let's leave it. Okay, that's yes, there we go. So
he died three hundred and twenty three BCE. All these
other kingdoms that were out there, let's name them off here,
the Seleucids, maybe Seleucids Seleucids, the Bactria, and the Indian
Mayuran Empire, they all were fighting to attempt in an
(06:21):
attempt to control this territory that was known at the
time as Ariana.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
So understandably, there were a lot of folks jockeying for
position and a lot of kind of power grab situations.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
In the vacuum. Yes, the history of afghanistun involves a
ton of handoffs and power grabs with a lot of
names that might be unfamiliar to you know, unless you
have specifically studied this history. So strap in, we're just
going to do some highlights. A lot of these empires
are no longer around and the names will sound unfamiliar.
(06:56):
In the seventh century AD, or whichever way you want
to go with that, Arab armies carried this brand new
religion of Islam to Afghanistan, and the western provinces of
Harat and Sastan came under the rule of these Arab forces.
But the people of these provinces revolted. They returned to
(07:21):
their old, pre existing beliefs as soon as these military
forces were not you know, literally using violence to make
them pretend to practice Islam. In the tenth century, Muslim
rulers called Samanids from Bukara and what's now is Pakistan
extended their influence into the Afghan area. And this kind
(07:44):
of when we see extending influence, it means that there
was a soft hegemony, you know, expanding there. People started
to use the currency of those rulers, they started to
speak similar languages they acquire their culture. Sos Samanid established
a dynasty in Gazhni called the Ghaznavids. And again matt
(08:09):
prescient with that pronunciation, we do not speak these languages.
The greatest of the Ghaznavids was a king named Mahmoud
who ruled from nine ninety eight to ten thirty. He
is the one most responsible for establishing the solid foundation
of Islam throughout the area of modern day Afghanistan. He
(08:29):
led a lot of military expeditions into India. Even back
then people started thinking of of Afghanistan to as the
gateway to these kingdoms of India. That state falls in
the middle of the twelfth century to the Gurud Kingdom
which arose in gur that's a west central region of
(08:50):
present day Afghanistan. Those guys get kicked out early in
the thirteenth century by another Central Asian dynasty. And these
folks are all swept away around twelve twenty CE by
Jengas Khan.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Oh, yeah, that Genghis Khan. Guy that's actually called Jengis Khan.
I like to call him Jangi Janki, k j Janki sure.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Reminds me of that tower game Djenga.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
And so we we include some of this ancient history
because it's important to know that. Already it's twelve twenty
Already two of the greatest conquerors in the world have
come through this place, and now a third one appears.
Near the end of the fourteenth century, the Central Asian
military leader timor Lang or the Lame Timur, also known
(09:41):
as tamer Lane in the West, conquered Afghanistan. Then he
immediately moved on to India. And when he moved on,
his children and his descendants couldn't hold the empire together.
They couldn't rule everything. Their grandfather, their patriarch, took over,
but they were able to keep a hold on Afghanistan
(10:03):
roughly for a little while. And now we get to
where it eventually becomes an independent nation, as we said,
you know, in seventeen hundreds, becomes independent. But there's a
story behind that too. There's even more switching off. People
are trying to control this. They're dying left and right.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
And we're going to talk about let's say a strategy.
You're something that's going to ripple across time here that
occurs in the eighteenth century, the king of Persia around
that time, a guy named the Deer Shaw. He was
employing this tribe of Pashtuns, an Abdhali tribe of Pashtuns,
and he was using them in his wars in India.
(10:45):
So he's got a contingency of other fighters. I wouldn't
call them mercenaries, but they're fighters for under another flag,
essentially fighting under his flag. Right. And Ahmad Shaw, this
Abdhali chief who'd gained this high post within the army there,
he established himself after Nadir Shah's assassination, that the guy
(11:06):
we're talking about, the King of Persia, after he was
assassinated in seventeen forty seven. So Ahmad Shaw is, you know,
looking to move up a little bit, and thankfully this
assembly of tribal chiefs proclaim him the new Shaw. And
then the Afghans extend their rule as far east as
Kashmir and Delhi and then north to the Amu Daria
(11:29):
and west into northern Persia. So they really just begin
expanding there under the rule of Ahmad Shah.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Yeah, and he retires from the throne in seventeen seventy two.
He's one of the few people with the distinction of retiring.
He dies in Kandahar. He has a son, Timor Shah,
who assumes control the Afghan Empire survives mostly intact through
the next twenty years.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Now think about that time. Yeah, seventeen seventy two. America
is forming right right in this time period.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Here, increasingly irritated colonists half a world away are dreaming
of revolution and saying, hey, one day there will be
a popular Broadway play about us. And you may be wondering, rightly, so,
when does all this have to do with me? When
does all this obscure Eurasian history have to do with me?
(12:27):
When does my team enter the game? A lot of
people in the West are wondering, Well, there is an
entire era of history involved, heavily involving Afghanistan that concerns
just this. It's called The Great Game. We did an
episode on this earlier, longtime listeners may recall. But let's like,
(12:47):
what's the quick and dirty way.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
The Great Game is world dominance? Really, that's what it is.
It's a bunch of extremely powerful countries and people deciding, Hey,
I want to maybe be the ruler of all this.
Let's see what we can do, but there are all
these other people trying to do the same thing, so
we have to play these mind games and diplomatic games
(13:12):
and resource control games. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
So for most of the nineteenth century, eighteen thirty to
eighteen ninety five to be precise, the British and Russian
Empires were vying for control of Central and South Asia,
including the country of Afghanistan.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
This period was.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Known, as you mentioned Matt, as the Great Game, where
both empires were trying to protect and secure their own
territories they already held and also expanding outward into others.
Britain was a huge player in this game, and that
they were very concerned that Russia might take control over India,
which was the crown jewel of the British Empire, despite
(13:52):
the fact that Russia this wasn't really something that they
had designs on. But you know, Britain that you got
to protect what she got, and they were to be
a little paranoid. Afghanistan became once again, as you mentioned matt,
a very fertile battleground.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Right you can see you can see some excellent fiction
based on this period of time. A work by Ridard
Kipling intensely problematic author, but I would I would say
a talented poet. He wrote a novel called Kim, which
is about a child becoming embroiled in what they later
(14:29):
learn is the Great Game.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Rudyerd.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Kipling, of course would be uh. I would be remiss
not to mention this is the person is the person
most responsible for the phrase white man's burden. So he's
not a good dude. But that was a well written book.
A series of conflicts transpire in real life, not just
in the book, and these are these are breaking out
(14:53):
to wars, but they don't really turn into world wars
at this point. One of these conflicts, the Second Anglo
Afghan War, which was from eighteen thirty eight to forty two,
ended in a treaty that gave Britain control of Afghanistan's
foreign affairs, so it turned into a vassal or a
puppet state until nineteen nineteen, when Amanala Khan declared independence
(15:18):
from British influence. He tried to introduce some social norms,
such as abolishing the practice of product which is the
idea that women should not be allowed to be seen
or interact in public. So he was a more forward
(15:38):
facing leader in some social regards.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
He was trying to do that.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
He was trying to he ended up fleeing the country
in nineteen twenty nine. People did not really people were
not receptive to this change. Next, Zahir Shah becomes king
and for the following four years, Afghanistan is a monarchy.
In nineteen fifty three, a guy named General Mohammad Daoud
(16:05):
became prime minister. He turned to the Soviets, to the USSR,
and he said, help me out with the economy. Helped
me out with military assistances. Also, I want to introduce
some social reforms, including the abolition of pradah. He was
forced to resign in nineteen sixty three. It's a ten
year rule there. But in nineteen seventy three he regained
(16:27):
power in a coup and he said, okay, now we're
a republic, and he said, you know what, I get
the trend of history here, So I'm going to try
to play these world powers against one another. It doesn't
work the way he wanted it to, because just a
few years later, in nineteen seventy eight, he is murdered
(16:48):
or assassinated in a pro Soviet coup. There's a new
governing faction, the new kids on the block in this situation,
and the People's Democratic Party they come to power, but
they have a lot of infighting in their own, jockeying
for position in the hierarchy. And then of course they
are eternally battling the Mujadin groups that are backed by
Uncle Sam. That was at one time seen as controversial.
(17:12):
That is clearly a proven fact. And let's pause for
word from our sponsor, and then we'll get to the
modern history. So the Soviet era, Paul, can we get
(17:32):
some kind of you know, like really authoritarian sounding big
but yeah, that kind of music. There we go. Soviet era.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Yes, So the USSR, it's in Afghanistan in nineteen seventy nine,
and it really is trying to shore up this newly
established regime. Right that we talked about, the People's Democratic
Party that's running things over there, and those guys are
by the way in the capital Kabul, and in short order,
(18:00):
nearly one hundred thousand Soviet soldiers took control of a
lot of the major areas, the cities, the highways, the ways,
things are being transported by all means. And here's the
thing people didn't really take to that there was rebellion.
It came quickly. It was all over the place. The
(18:22):
Soviets were dealing harshly with the Mujahadeen rebels and the people,
you know, the families, the small groups that were supporting them.
They were just taking out entire villages. Again, it like
sounds so familiar with the course of our history, with
the things we've talked about. They're trying to deny any
(18:42):
place where or that would be considered a safe haven
for enemy soldiers to be hanging out and you know, regrouping.
And while this is happening, there are outside foreign supporters
who were propping up all of these diverse groups of
rebels that are fighting back against the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Playing the great game once again.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Exactly that that whole the proxy the proxy battle thing
is in full effect here. And you know, you've got
rebels pouring from Iran, Pakistan, China. The US even has
some people over their training folks and having fighters over there.
And there's this brutal nine year conflict that just goes
(19:21):
on and on and on, and an estimated one million
civilians are killed in this conflict Afghanistan civilians as well
as others, and there are also ninety thousand Mujahideen fighters,
eighteen thousand Afghan troops, and fourteen five hundred Soviet soldiers,
all of them who are killed in this battle, these
(19:43):
battles in this conflict.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
And the US support varied in many different ways over
the course of this conflict. This we do have to
remember this is Cold War era, right. So, so originally
they had some suits and some agents from the company.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
The company right right right, and it starts with a C.
It does, this company, it does.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
And by nineteen eighty six they were becoming more they
were being less subtle, Uncle Sam was. They started supplying
Stinger missiles to the mosh Din, which were a game
changer because these Stinger missiles allowed people on the ground
to shoot down Soviet helicopter gunships. In nineteen eighty eight,
(20:33):
four countries, Afghanistan, the USSR, Pakistan, the US signed peace accords,
and the Soviet Union says, okay, we'll start pulling out troops.
The last of the troops leave the next year in
nineteen eighty nine, and civil war consumes the country, which
should not have surprised anyone.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Let's talk really quickly about some of the landscape there
and the mountains, the mountain ranges, the mountains areas, the
very hilly, sometimes very stark areas where if you know,
as the Mujahadeen, if you're given something like a stinger missile,
when you're just troops on the ground, it's very difficult
to battle against something like these Soviet gunships, the helicopters
(21:16):
that can roll through. They can just travel across these
landscapes to wherever they need to be in They're heavily armed.
But you know, if you're on the ground as just
a single person or even a battalion, small battalion anywhere
from one hundred to ten people, fighting back against a
gunship is very, very difficult. But if you're given a
(21:36):
stinger missile and you can hide out somewhere within you
know that terrain, you can easily have an upper hand there.
And again these are ripples throughout time of things that
we are going to see. We're an explosive in the
hands of somebody that understands the area, that has lived there.
(21:56):
You only need a few people to gain the upper
hand on large military forces.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
It's one of those things where you see it. I mean,
it's even in like SNL sketches from the time, and
going back and watching a lot of Will Ferrell sketches
from those days, and there's the one where he's the
old prospector.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
You know, oh yeah, you've seeing this.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
It's great, but it's well, Chris Catan is playing the
sergen or whatever, and he keeps making the joke that
it's an unconventionable, unconventional war, so he got to use
unconventional methods, which in this sketch is having an old
prospector to lead them through the terrain. But it's true,
that's what they're talking about. That's the thing you heard
thrown around constantly in the news was what an inconventional
war was and required unconventional tactics.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Yeah, and in this case, an old prospector, I forget
the premise with an old prospector who is like a
cousin of somebody who was in command of the military
isn't going to do you much good. You need somebody
who has lived there and knows the history and the terrain. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
And also, for the record, the old Will Ferrell sketches
in general, hold up, oh yes, my god, not saying
that because he's technically a coworker of ours, just saying
it because they do hold.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Up shoes, sentiment, and gravy.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
So who comes out ahead in this next iteration of
the power vacuum that would be a group known as
the Taliban. They seize control of Kabul. By nineteen ninety seven,
they have they have a solid grip on about two
thirds of the country, and they're starting to be recognized
in the international sphere. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, for instance,
(23:25):
both recognize the government. Until that is the US enters
the Great Game as a full on combatant. And it's
different because before proxy wars, right, let's call these people rebels. Yeah, yeah,
And so fast forward, as we said at the top,
(23:47):
in October of two thousand and one, US led bombing
of Afghanistan begins. And this is right after the attacks
on September eleventh, two thousand and one on the US
soil anti Taliban Northern Alliance Forces Intricrable, pretty much right
after and this marks the official beginning of what has
(24:09):
become the longest war in US history. Across the next
eighteen years, multiple presidents, three different administrations from both sides
of the US political divide would continually escalate the conflict.
They would send more troops. They would propose what they
called surgis. They would vow we were making progress in
(24:30):
a war that we knew we could win. Today's question,
what if they were lying? Here's where it gets crazy.
So behind the scenes, yeah, everyone knew, All of the
decision makers knew this was a disaster. And Matt, you
recently had a conversation that touched on some of this.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Is that right? Yes, quite a bit. And I spoke
with the gentleman named Steve Hooper that I very much
want to have on the show. We want to have
on this show. I forget his exact titles within the FBI,
but he was a high level person. I hope he
doesn't mind me saying his name. He has a podcast
(25:14):
on the iHeart network that he talks about some of
this stuff, so I think it should be okay. But
he was just talking to me about how the United
States was keeping was aware, very much aware of one
Osama bin Laden and Taliban forces, you know, after all
of the conflicts and help that we've essentially given to
(25:37):
that area, and we know our intelligence agencies know a
lot of the operators, We know a lot of the
mechanisms that exist out there with some of these forces,
and they also knew just from past bombings like the
nineteen ninety three attack on the World Trade Center where
a writer truck was used and thankfully did not destroy
(26:00):
the entire building then in nineteen ninety three, but it
was certainly a disaster and a terror attack and a
major warning sign basically that oh, we need to be
paying attention to this. And he was just telling me
that after that attack in ninety three, the intelligence apparatuses
were so aware of it. However, we went right back
(26:20):
to the FBI at least went right back to focusing
on drug gangs and drug cartels that existed and were
operating within the US, and they didn't turn their eyes
towards terrorism at that point.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Because there was a lot of siloing of information and gatekeeping, right.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
Yes, Because again, you think about operating outside of the
US where intelligence is gathered, operating inside the US, a
lot of times it separated and this whole thing, it
kind of became a mess, at least according to Stephen
our conversation, after you create the Department of Homeland Security
and as that behemoth of organizations begins trying to keep
(27:03):
tabs on things like that and organize. You know, who's
controlling what, who's looking into what I say, a mess.
But that's not true. Anyone who's out there working in
any of these organizations. You know that's not necessarily true.
But it was certainly the birth pains of something bigger.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Oh that's poetic. I like that. Yeah, it's it is.
It is unfortunately true that many of the same people
publicly touting progress in this quagmire, we're often the very
same people lamenting the doomed situation, at least doomed as
they saw it behind closed doors. We know this is
(27:42):
not a conspiracy theory. We know this is indisputably true.
Thanks to the fantastic journalistic efforts and of the Washington
Post and the recent publication of something called the Afghanistan Papers.
On December ninth of this year, the Washington Post finally
won a legal battle that was three years in the making,
(28:03):
and like the war in Afghanistan, continues today. But what
did they get? What happens, We'll tell you after a
word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
So three year legal battle, Washington Post acquires more than
two thousand pages of quote lessons learned end quote. And
these are interviews that were conducted by the Office of
Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction or cigar Yeah, yeah, no,
give me. I love a good cigar, and it's not pretty.
What's uncovered here. There was no internal consensus on any objective,
(28:44):
any reasons for going to war. The country was spending
billions of dollars with no idea whatsoever, what any kind
of endgame. Looked like they literally had no idea how
to get out of the war. There was no exis strategy.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Well yeah that if you guys recall back. And this
was just to date myself a little bit. This was
occurring right around the time that I was going to
be finishing and graduating from high school. As all of
these conflicts are occurring, as the debates about this stuff
is happening, and I remember for the first time, not
(29:20):
for the first time, but maybe for the first time
looking at the news with a little more understanding of
history after some classes that I was taking and hearing
people discuss this, They would argue on the news like, well,
what what does it actually? What does this conflict actually?
What does victory mean? What does it look like? And
you have even the president coming on and kind of
(29:42):
giving you a vague you know, it's a victory. You
know it's good. We're gonna victory, right right, It's like,
what what does that mean?
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Yeah? The thing is that there was not There were
some metrics for ideas of success, but there was nothing
that people agreed on with concrete steps. There was no
universal definition, and without a universal definition, as Chenua Chaba
would say, things fall apart. The Post got hundreds of
(30:20):
memos that are really they're almost like they're almost like
YouTube er Reddit comments from Donald H. Rumsfeld. They were
called and this has nothing to do with the current
usage of the word today, Yes, but they were called snowflakes.
You know, that's a more of a right wing pejorative
on the internet today, But in this case, they were
(30:43):
called snowflakes because they would just sort of be sprinkled
on all these communications, brief instructions or comments that Rumsfeld
would tell his employees during the course of his time
working on the war. And they are things that are
so so informal, like there's one where it says, I'm
(31:04):
not sure who the enemies are here. We don't know
we're shooting at someone for sure. So all together these
memos and these two thousand plus pages revealed by this
Freedom of Information Act. They function as a genuine secret
(31:25):
history of what we know about the war, and some
people taking a longer view of history would say, well,
this is just another act in the ongoing war that
has been occurring on the land of Afghanistan for much
much longer than eighteen years. But here's what we learned
(31:45):
the reports. The journalist and the analyst at the Washing
Post found four common and disturbing themes running throughout these papers,
and they're pretty brutal to hear, but we look through
them and they are well re searched, and there's not
a ton of editorializing. So every single year covered by
(32:07):
these papers, US officials, at least some of them, purposefully
refused to tell the public the truth about the war.
In some way or another. They would issue these pronouncements,
they would say stuff that they straight up knew wasn't true,
and they would hide unmistakable evidence that for one reason
(32:27):
or another, the war had become unwinnable, which was.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
An odd concept of it being winnable or unwinnable, because
it just didn't seem like there was one or the other.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Right, Chocolate rations have been increased, right, yeah, and now
they're going to be eighty percent less than they were.
So they also in these papers we see that officials
who were interviewed, and again this was all internal documentation,
and so they wanted to tell the truth. They depicted
(32:59):
purposeful explain efforts by the US government to mislead the public.
And then they also it's you could describe it. Maybe
this is a little bit too much editorial voice here,
but you could describe it as a sort of collective
(33:19):
disbelief in the facts, kind of cherry picking the stuff
that would be good, ignoring the stuff that would run
counter to the narrative. So everybody is like, everybody's doing
a thing where they're like, all right, we're going to
all agree that this is fine.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
Everything's great, We're gonna win, and stuff's gonna be good afterwards.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
You know what, You know what that guy who said
the house is on fire, what he meant was it's
warm and cozy in here.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
Just look at this banner. What does it say, mission accomplished,
We're done.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Look at that sweet bomber jacket. I mean, look at
that shrutt and gate that the president has.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
Seriously, and again, it's funny because people who consider themselves
domestic political partisans in the US, like someone who would
definitely hate the right side of American politics would be
would levy valid imbiting criticism of the misleading pr that
(34:29):
the Republican side was doing when they had a presidential administration,
And then people who hated the left side would levy
the same again valid criticism at the Democrat administrations because
they were doing the same thing. All that changed was
the brand names on the facts. It was still a
(34:51):
bucket of poison pills. They just had different labels.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Dude, you're still right though, And I remember seeing that
we're going.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
To have a surge, right, and a surge will thing.
But that's okay. So that's just one deliberate, at the
very least at the most generous, deliberately misleading the public,
who is, by the way, paying billions of dollars for this.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
And here's the thing we kind of mentioned up above.
This is number two. By the way, the officials from
you know, the United States and the Coalition of Forces,
the allies that were going into Afghanistan with us, they
pretty much admitted openly that the mission had really no
discernible strategy, like we don't know. There doesn't seem to
(35:36):
be a strategy. We've got a lot of people there.
There are a lot of troops there and some facilities
that we're building. But yeah, we really don't have great objectives.
We're not sure what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
There's stuff on the level of like, well, have you
guys talked to Todd, because to Todd put it really well,
Like I remember walking out of a meeting and I
was like, this is for sure what we're doing, and
UH just can't I can't recall one hundred percent of
it right now.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
He just seems so confident, you know, he's just he's
such as got such a good haircut. I mean, I
just love the cut of his jacket.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
You can tell he man like he goes to a manicure.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Absolutely, his cuticles are impeccable, and you just you can't
really disbelieve.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
A guy like that.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
So, as far as I was concerned, if Todd's good, we're.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
Good, right, Yeah, you're right. Hopefully hopefully Todd can just
keep us keep that morale up, you know.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
And the interviewers like Todd, who I think, oh that's
a great uh you got disappeared. There are a lot
of he worked. You weren't somewhere in the building. It
may have been the subway, he may have been in general.
I just look you guys, You'll know him when you
see him.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
It's true.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
At first, there was this pretty solid rationale they were
going to we were aiming to destroy al Qaeda. Who
was you know, we're involved in these very US terrorist acts,
not just being accused of involvement in the September eleventh attacks,
but also being active in attacks throughout the nineties that
you had mentioned earlier, Matt.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
With certain leaders with names that you might know or
people that were purportedly a part of them.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Yeah, but Todd would never do that. Once once al
Qaeda been you know, largely muzzled, the officials involved said
they had mission creep. The goals got muddy and unclear,
and they began adopting strategies that might contradict the strategies
(37:36):
of other agencies or institutions, and they started having goals
that were unattainable. And people who were running this war,
folks are dying, billions of dollars going down the drain.
The people in charge were saying, I have problems with
basic questions. Who is the enemy here.
Speaker 3 (37:53):
I am not being.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Hyperbolic when Donald Rumsfeld said that who is the enemy here?
Who amidst these various complicated groups and alliances can we
count on as allies? And also, you know, I know
there's a weird question to drop at four thirty on
a Friday, But how do we know when we've won?
Speaker 3 (38:18):
Yeah, there's no bell that goes off, or specific person
you have to defeat, or a king to overthrow r
you know, there's no goalpost like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
And it turns out that the Third Revelation, years into
the conflict, the United States still had a very poor
understanding of the country overall. Officials from not just the
US but also from the Afghan government told interviewers that
a lot of the policies and initiatives coming from Uncle Sam,
(38:52):
everything from like training Afghan forces to trying to I'm
going to say it again, trying to woosh, trying to
stop the opium trade, all of them felt like they
were designed to fail. Whether that's because of incompetence, because
they were based on flawed assumptions, or whether because there
(39:13):
was some sort of ulterior motive, or whether it was
just a country they did not understand.
Speaker 3 (39:19):
Or you know, I don't want to put my biases
on it, but a country that maybe some of those
people in charge just didn't care about at a certain level.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
There are disturbing accounts or allegations and interviews in some
of these papers where an officials say something like we
were just giving consultants tons of money, and you know,
somebody would fly on a plane and they would read
the Kite Runner or something while they were on the plane,
and they would hop out and think that they understood
(39:52):
everything about this place that has been a battleground for
centuries and centuries and has been trod upon by one
outside empire after another, the fourth one, which clearly is
a bit of a cheap scape. Myself, I've been having
a hard time not mentioning this. Yet the US flushed
billions and billions and billions of dollars down the geopolitical
(40:15):
drain trying to nation build in Afghanistan. Nation building is
a risky endeavor that can pay great dividends if you
get it off the ground.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
It was once called colonialism.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
That's building a different kind of nation, I know, but
that's I mean, yeah, so they wanted to, I don't know,
they were just so out of out of touch with
what was happening. So they's this, there's this great comparison.
Or similarly, in the accounts of the early days here,
(40:54):
it was an economic boom for the military industrial complex
obviously for the associated energy and defense industries. It was
a boom contractors, of course.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
And we can just say like that was immediately affected
by the September eleventh attacks and the public acceptance essentially
that yeah, we should probably protect ourselves more and spend
a lot more money than we were.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
Sure, so we'll pay for it. You handle the details. Yeah,
I want to feel good when I see the news
and feel like I've done my part. So since so
here's the simile. One of the sources says money is
like water, and Afghanistan was like a desert, and when
(41:38):
you pour too much water too quickly, the land cannot
absorb it. Yeah, and it becomes a wash with this money.
And that that struck me because it not only does
it feel true, but it has the unfortunate quality of
(41:59):
being true. Since two thousand and two, the US has
allocated more than eighty three billion dollars in security assistance
to Afghanistan that dwarfs the defense budget the entire defense
budget of other developing nations. In twenty eleven alone, at
the peak of the war, this country got eleven billion
(42:22):
dollars in security aid from Washington. That's three billion more
than what Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons and a way
bigger army, spent on its entire military that year. That's nuts.
They spent eight billion, and the US gave Afghanistan eleven billion. Now,
I do want to say it may sound like we're
(42:42):
being unfair here, we have to remember that the military operators,
people working for the US government, and the contractors involved,
they're not in these rooms, they're not in these board rooms,
in these war rooms and so on. They're being sent
(43:03):
to a place to risk their lives, and they are
trying to save people on the grounds, you know what
I mean. They're trying to help civilians, they're trying to
prevent these deaths.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
Yes, But the other side of that coin is that
the almost the feeling of a goalless occupation like that
caused a lot of situations where, you know, a few
a small amount of those contractors and military personnel felt
as though or at least acted as though there was
(43:39):
no rule of law. There were no rules. That's really
good things could happen there, and I think it's because
that top down guidance just didn't exist.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
Well, we talked too about how you know, maybe this
is hyperbolic, and I've heard people kind of poopoo this idea,
but comparing Afghanistan to Vietnam in the sense that it
was very difficult terrain, it was an enemy that they
didn't fully understand, and it seemed to have empowered a
lot of military personnel to commit some.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
Atrocities, right, we also have to consider I think that
is I don't think that's not based comparison. We also
have to consider that a lot of the horror stories
we hear came from the crimes of private contractors, so
people were working in private industry that have been subcontracted
out by the US government or NATO, or they come
(44:28):
from people who were supposed to be the authorities in
like from Afghanistan. Yes, so you know there are stories
which are true of military service members being brigged in danger,
being dishonorably discharged because they refuse to tolerate the sexual
(44:52):
abuse of children which they saw firsthand. Not in not
in some like, not in some sketchy part of town necessarily,
but like in the police chiefs compound in the police station,
or having to make nice with warlords and crack a
(45:12):
deal with them because of their influence over a you know,
a region of the area. Adjusted for inflation and for
just as they say talking Turkey, for perspective, eleven billion
US dollars is more than the US spent in the
entirety of Western Europe with the Marshall Plan after World
(45:34):
War Two. Think about that, the entirety. But after almost
two decades of help from Washington, or attempts at help
from Washington, the Afghan army and the police force are
still not probably not going to be capable of fending
off all these insurgents. It's not just the Taliban, It's
(45:54):
is the Islamic State and others without outside assistance, without
backup from the US military.
Speaker 3 (46:01):
I just want to jump in there really fast before
we keep going. Just to we mentioned the Marshall Plan,
which was uh the the program we mentioned it was
after World War two as well, but that was the
program of aid right that we that we gave to
most of or a lot of Europe just to rebuild
after the battles were fought in that region.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, and thank you. So back to
the money, which I promise I'll stop, I'll stop harping
on at some point.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
It's just like it's crazy.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Yeah, what could eleven billion dollars do you know what
I mean?
Speaker 3 (46:35):
Superpowers could be rocked there, it could be brought into life. Right.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
There was so much money flowing that bribery, fraud, and corruption,
they became superpowered as tendencies and trends. One advisor who
was working for the US said that when he was
working this particular air base, any Afghan people, meaning native
(47:03):
Afghan people who were working there regularly reeked of jet
fuel because they were just smuggling so much of it
out to sell on the black market. And then we
have another point about corruption within the police force. And
this this comes from an INTERVIEWEE who was comfortable being
named yes.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
And one interview Thomas Johnson, who was a Navy official
serving as a counter insurgency advisor in Kandahar Province, said
that the Afghans viewed the police as predatory bandits. He
called them quote the most hated institution in all of Afghanistan.
And then another interviewee, an unnamed Norwegian official told interviewers
(47:45):
that he estimated thirty percent of Afghan police recruits deserted
with their government issued weapons so they could quote set
up their own private checkpoints aka highway robbery.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
Right, literally.
Speaker 3 (48:00):
Just extorting people that were traveling through what they were doing.
Speaker 1 (48:04):
Right, right, And the other statements these officials make don't
sound pretty. But of course we you know, we have
to point out again that part of this is a
maybe a function of these shifting goalposts, right, But to
not know who your enemies are and not know who
(48:24):
the difference between your enemies and your allies is, that's tough,
especially in a situation like this. There were other revelations.
It turns out that several senior US officials believe there
was a realistic opportunity to cut a piece deal with
the Taliban back in two thousand and two or two
thousand and three. Again, we're not saying it's definite, we're
(48:45):
saying that's what they felt was in the cards. Also,
when this stuff came out, you know who else was surprised?
Congress And with Congress, it's tough, like how many is it? Performative?
Speaker 3 (48:58):
Right? I have to be upset at the for my constituents,
so they know that I was definitely upset at this.
Speaker 1 (49:04):
Right, And there's bipartisan there's bipartisan anger at this. At
least if we look at Senators Richard Blumenthal and Josh Howley,
they're both on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and they've
already called for hearings based on these reports. Even former
Afghan President Hamen Karzai gave an interview to the AP
(49:24):
Associated Press recently and he said the Afghanistan papers proved
the US was at fault for his country's corruption. However,
Praig Whitlock, one of the journalists who brought the story
to light from the Post, said the US was at fault,
but the Afghan government did not prosecute many people for
corruption or fraud, that's for sure.
Speaker 3 (49:47):
Geez.
Speaker 1 (49:50):
And this is where this is where this leaves us.
I know it's a high level look, but there's so
many other things to report.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Well, there'll be new revelations surely, right, I mean there's
a lot of documents here.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
I'm glad you brought that up, because, yeah, as we
record today the Washington Post, we said it was an
ongoing war for them, right, they're still in court fighting
for more documents, and they're pressing Cigar to identify everyone
they interviewed for the Afghanist on papers, which they haven't yet. Currently,
the Trump administration is holding direct peace talks with the Taliban.
(50:24):
A lot of the experts that The Post spoke with
said that they believe the only way to end this
war is to cut a deal that militarily, it is
impossible to entirely defeat the Taliban unless it's something like
sewing the Earth with salt aka nukes, which no one wants.
Speaker 3 (50:42):
Scorched to earth policy, right, Yeah, please don't do that.
Anyone who's listening who has one of those things?
Speaker 1 (50:49):
Yeah, and and this has given these out of civilians now, yeah, costco, baby,
it's the only things you have to buy three to
get the deal, got it?
Speaker 3 (50:58):
Yeah? Don't you remember in twenty twenty three that whole
declaration happened and we all got nukes. That it was
the Mutually Assured Destruction Agreement of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2 (51:09):
I'd rather have a giant psychic squid.
Speaker 3 (51:11):
Those are coming too. Have you heard the news, the
good news? Yeah, there's this guy, he's working on a
giant the intergalactic squid. Thing. I don't know. I don't
know the details. I have no comment. Well are you
the guy I know?
Speaker 1 (51:27):
Look, let's go to a different abb yours. This is
another thing about this story that is still continuing, and
this I don't know, This is just my I want
to be too conspiratorial. I do want to note it
is a fact currently Afghanistan still dominates global opium markets.
Last year, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crimes,
(51:51):
so twenty eighteen, right, eighty two percent of the world's
opium supply was produced in Afghanistan. Some of the biggest
problems in the US, they're drug related, come from opium. Yeah,
they're not growing a ton of it here, are they. No,
Like you know, the different the different pharmaceutical companies that
(52:16):
are probably gonna avoid too many serious consequences of creating
the opium crisis.
Speaker 3 (52:24):
Nobody's saying conspiracy here, people, We're just we're just going, hey,
look at this. I'm just saying we talked about this
in a previous episode. Just how much security was devoted
to what looks like from the reporting and the images
that were sent back over the course of years up
until very recently, that we are protecting the poppy fields,
(52:48):
I guess from allowing anyone to.
Speaker 1 (52:51):
Use them, right and well, it's also tough because you
can see interviews with farmers in the area who say,
you know, I'm a subsistence farmer. Yeah, Like there were
different plans to institute new crops for cash, but obiam
makes the most money to sell and the markup is huge.
(53:12):
The worst part is those farmers are not making what
you know, nobody's going to be buying a mansion doing that.
Speaker 2 (53:19):
Well, it's the same way with cocaine in Colombia and stuff, right,
I mean, largely the cartels put the burden of cultivating
it and growing it on these families who look at
it as you know, some sort of subsistence living, but
they're not sharing in the profits of the criminal enterprise.
Speaker 1 (53:36):
Again, elephants war and grass. Right, when elephants make war,
the grass suffers. It's there's a lot of stuff that
we missed and we've got to emphasize. Just on the
ending note, we have to emphasize the human element, you
know what I mean. People who are soldiers are not bad.
People who are civilians in a country that is being
(54:00):
subjected to a conflict are not bad. Either this is
these are all human beings who are trying to survive.
And the horrific thing is that a lot of decisions
upon which lives hinged are made by people who will
never physically travel to the places where they see their
consequences of their decisions made real. And that's our classic
(54:26):
episode for this evening. We can't wait to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 3 (54:29):
That's right, let us know what you think.
Speaker 2 (54:30):
You can reach to the andlic Conspiracy Stuff where we
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Speaker 3 (54:38):
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Speaker 4 (54:56):
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Speaker 3 (55:27):
Stuff they Don't Want you to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to this evening's classic episode. Guys, do you remember Afghanistan?
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Yeah? Yeah, how could I forget? It was a golden
time in Afghanistan that we all spent together.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
The Breaker of Empires. The US invaded Afghanistan on October seventh,
two thousand and one, and back in twenty twenty, weirdly enough,
on New Year's Day, we started looking into this, into
this excellent work by the Washington Post.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Oh yeah, back in twenty nineteen, Craig Whitlock of The
Washington Post published at War with the Truth and the
world said, uh what.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
That was a really good impression of the world.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Matt, Yeah, what do you say?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
We jump right into this classic episode.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff. They don't go on you to know.
A production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Hello, Welcome back to the show. I'm not wearing a hat.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
You're wearing pants, though.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
I am wearing pants. My name is Matt, my name
is Noah.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
They call me Ben. We are joined, as always with
our super producer Paul Mission Control Deck. In most importantly,
you are you, you are here, and that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know. This is a
wartime episode. As we record today's episode, the United States
of America is still in the middle of the longest
(01:42):
war in the country's history. That means there are literally
people listening to the show today who were not alive
when this war began. Think about that. The United States
invaded Afghanistan on October seventh, two thousand and one, and
we are still there as we speak. Why how much
(02:03):
did our leaders know and when did they know it?
To answer that, oddly enough, even though this country has
been at war in this other country for the better
part of two decades, many people, many voters, aren't one
hundred percent sure what Afghanistan is, where it is, and
(02:24):
why it's such a big deal.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
And it's also now the first time we've been engaged there.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
No, no, no, no, no, this has an interesting name.
First things first, here are the facts. Afghanistan is located
in what is commonly called Eurasia, right the vast stretch
of land between Asia and the continent we call Europe.
(02:49):
It's landlocked, It's bordered by some greatest hits countries. In
the rogues gallery of the United States historically Pakistan, Iran, Tajikistan, Zbekistan,
and China. Its capital is a place called Kabul. Outside
of several cities, the country is extraordinarily rural. We're talking
(03:11):
places that are simply physically hard to access in the
mountains or in the rugged wilderness. The country itself was
not officially formed until seventeen oh nine, but as you
alluded to, Matt, it has a history, a long and
bloody history of being a battleground. In fact, Afghanistan is
(03:33):
sometimes called the Graveyard of Empires due to just the
sheer number of militaries that tried and failed to control it.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
And it's an interesting thing there because and just when
we're talking about it's the battleground, right the place where
the wars are fought or the battles are fought, and
generally controlling the area is kind of the goal. But
a lot of times, and this is what we're going
to kind of outline here, is that it's the the land,
the place where two different warring powers end up where
(04:05):
they just kind of go right. So it's not as
though Afghanistan itself is rising up to you know, fight
A lot of the battles. It's generally it's where proxy
wars happen. It's where it's interesting. We're gonna continue on
with this throughout the show. So let's just keep going
down into the history of Afghanistan.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Okay, let's do a little ancient history, shall we, Yes, okay, So,
experts believe that early humans were living in Afghanistan as
long as fifty thousand years ago because it was rich
soil for farming. There were communities of farmers in Afghanistan
that were some of the very earliest farmers in the
entire world, and for a time the area was known
as Ariyana, or the land of Arians. This is because
(04:47):
multiple waves of people from Central Asia migrated to the region,
and many of these settlers were in fact Arians. They
were speakers of the parent language of Indo European languages.
Arians also, so migrated to Persia and India in those
prehistoric times.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
And then let's jump to the sixth century when the
Persian Empire of the Akimenid dynasty controlled Ariana. And good
luck saying, Achimenid, it's really fun and to look at
and write. In about three hundred and thirty BC, the
little guy you might remember named Alexander the Great, defeated
the last ruler of the Akimenid dynasty there, and he
(05:26):
made his way to the eastern borders of the place
that was called Ariana. Now after this guy, old Great
Alexander himself died in three hundred and twenty three BCE.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
In his early thirties, feeling that he was a failure
by the.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Way, Yeah, no, that Alexander, he sure was great, wasn't he.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
I mean he was, Uh, he's a guy.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Who's a guy.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
He did great things.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
He did some huge stuff. Whether it was great or
terrible is depending on which side of the battles you
were on.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
I said, it had some large scale stuff.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Let's leave it. Okay, that's yes, there we go. So
he died three hundred and twenty three BCE. All these
other kingdoms that were out there, let's name them off here,
the Seleucids, maybe Seleucids Seleucids, the Bactria, and the Indian
Mayuran Empire, they all were fighting to attempt in an
(06:21):
attempt to control this territory that was known at the
time as Ariana.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
So understandably, there were a lot of folks jockeying for
position and a lot of kind of power grab situations.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
In the vacuum. Yes, the history of afghanistun involves a
ton of handoffs and power grabs with a lot of
names that might be unfamiliar to you know, unless you
have specifically studied this history. So strap in, we're just
going to do some highlights. A lot of these empires
are no longer around and the names will sound unfamiliar.
(06:56):
In the seventh century AD, or whichever way you want
to go with that, Arab armies carried this brand new
religion of Islam to Afghanistan, and the western provinces of
Harat and Sastan came under the rule of these Arab forces.
But the people of these provinces revolted. They returned to
(07:21):
their old, pre existing beliefs as soon as these military
forces were not you know, literally using violence to make
them pretend to practice Islam. In the tenth century, Muslim
rulers called Samanids from Bukara and what's now is Pakistan
extended their influence into the Afghan area. And this kind
(07:44):
of when we see extending influence, it means that there
was a soft hegemony, you know, expanding there. People started
to use the currency of those rulers, they started to
speak similar languages they acquire their culture. Sos Samanid established
a dynasty in Gazhni called the Ghaznavids. And again matt
(08:09):
prescient with that pronunciation, we do not speak these languages.
The greatest of the Ghaznavids was a king named Mahmoud
who ruled from nine ninety eight to ten thirty. He
is the one most responsible for establishing the solid foundation
of Islam throughout the area of modern day Afghanistan. He
(08:29):
led a lot of military expeditions into India. Even back
then people started thinking of of Afghanistan to as the
gateway to these kingdoms of India. That state falls in
the middle of the twelfth century to the Gurud Kingdom
which arose in gur that's a west central region of
(08:50):
present day Afghanistan. Those guys get kicked out early in
the thirteenth century by another Central Asian dynasty. And these
folks are all swept away around twelve twenty CE by
Jengas Khan.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Oh, yeah, that Genghis Khan. Guy that's actually called Jengis Khan.
I like to call him Jangi Janki, k j Janki sure.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Reminds me of that tower game Djenga.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
And so we we include some of this ancient history
because it's important to know that. Already it's twelve twenty
Already two of the greatest conquerors in the world have
come through this place, and now a third one appears.
Near the end of the fourteenth century, the Central Asian
military leader timor Lang or the Lame Timur, also known
(09:41):
as tamer Lane in the West, conquered Afghanistan. Then he
immediately moved on to India. And when he moved on,
his children and his descendants couldn't hold the empire together.
They couldn't rule everything. Their grandfather, their patriarch, took over,
but they were able to keep a hold on Afghanistan
(10:03):
roughly for a little while. And now we get to
where it eventually becomes an independent nation, as we said,
you know, in seventeen hundreds, becomes independent. But there's a
story behind that too. There's even more switching off. People
are trying to control this. They're dying left and right.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
And we're going to talk about let's say a strategy.
You're something that's going to ripple across time here that
occurs in the eighteenth century, the king of Persia around
that time, a guy named the Deer Shaw. He was
employing this tribe of Pashtuns, an Abdhali tribe of Pashtuns,
and he was using them in his wars in India.
(10:45):
So he's got a contingency of other fighters. I wouldn't
call them mercenaries, but they're fighters for under another flag,
essentially fighting under his flag. Right. And Ahmad Shaw, this
Abdhali chief who'd gained this high post within the army there,
he established himself after Nadir Shah's assassination, that the guy
(11:06):
we're talking about, the King of Persia, after he was
assassinated in seventeen forty seven. So Ahmad Shaw is, you know,
looking to move up a little bit, and thankfully this
assembly of tribal chiefs proclaim him the new Shaw. And
then the Afghans extend their rule as far east as
Kashmir and Delhi and then north to the Amu Daria
(11:29):
and west into northern Persia. So they really just begin
expanding there under the rule of Ahmad Shah.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Yeah, and he retires from the throne in seventeen seventy two.
He's one of the few people with the distinction of retiring.
He dies in Kandahar. He has a son, Timor Shah,
who assumes control the Afghan Empire survives mostly intact through
the next twenty years.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Now think about that time. Yeah, seventeen seventy two. America
is forming right right in this time period.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Here, increasingly irritated colonists half a world away are dreaming
of revolution and saying, hey, one day there will be
a popular Broadway play about us. And you may be wondering, rightly, so,
when does all this have to do with me? When
does all this obscure Eurasian history have to do with me?
(12:27):
When does my team enter the game? A lot of
people in the West are wondering, Well, there is an
entire era of history involved, heavily involving Afghanistan that concerns
just this. It's called The Great Game. We did an
episode on this earlier, longtime listeners may recall. But let's like,
(12:47):
what's the quick and dirty way.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
The Great Game is world dominance? Really, that's what it is.
It's a bunch of extremely powerful countries and people deciding, Hey,
I want to maybe be the ruler of all this.
Let's see what we can do, but there are all
these other people trying to do the same thing, so
we have to play these mind games and diplomatic games
(13:12):
and resource control games. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
So for most of the nineteenth century, eighteen thirty to
eighteen ninety five to be precise, the British and Russian
Empires were vying for control of Central and South Asia,
including the country of Afghanistan.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
This period was.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Known, as you mentioned Matt, as the Great Game, where
both empires were trying to protect and secure their own
territories they already held and also expanding outward into others.
Britain was a huge player in this game, and that
they were very concerned that Russia might take control over India,
which was the crown jewel of the British Empire, despite
(13:52):
the fact that Russia this wasn't really something that they
had designs on. But you know, Britain that you got
to protect what she got, and they were to be
a little paranoid. Afghanistan became once again, as you mentioned matt,
a very fertile battleground.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Right you can see you can see some excellent fiction
based on this period of time. A work by Ridard
Kipling intensely problematic author, but I would I would say
a talented poet. He wrote a novel called Kim, which
is about a child becoming embroiled in what they later
(14:29):
learn is the Great Game.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Rudyerd.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Kipling, of course would be uh. I would be remiss
not to mention this is the person is the person
most responsible for the phrase white man's burden. So he's
not a good dude. But that was a well written book.
A series of conflicts transpire in real life, not just
in the book, and these are these are breaking out
(14:53):
to wars, but they don't really turn into world wars
at this point. One of these conflicts, the Second Anglo
Afghan War, which was from eighteen thirty eight to forty two,
ended in a treaty that gave Britain control of Afghanistan's
foreign affairs, so it turned into a vassal or a
puppet state until nineteen nineteen, when Amanala Khan declared independence
(15:18):
from British influence. He tried to introduce some social norms,
such as abolishing the practice of product which is the
idea that women should not be allowed to be seen
or interact in public. So he was a more forward
(15:38):
facing leader in some social regards.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
He was trying to do that.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
He was trying to he ended up fleeing the country
in nineteen twenty nine. People did not really people were
not receptive to this change. Next, Zahir Shah becomes king
and for the following four years, Afghanistan is a monarchy.
In nineteen fifty three, a guy named General Mohammad Daoud
(16:05):
became prime minister. He turned to the Soviets, to the USSR,
and he said, help me out with the economy. Helped
me out with military assistances. Also, I want to introduce
some social reforms, including the abolition of pradah. He was
forced to resign in nineteen sixty three. It's a ten
year rule there. But in nineteen seventy three he regained
(16:27):
power in a coup and he said, okay, now we're
a republic, and he said, you know what, I get
the trend of history here, So I'm going to try
to play these world powers against one another. It doesn't
work the way he wanted it to, because just a
few years later, in nineteen seventy eight, he is murdered
(16:48):
or assassinated in a pro Soviet coup. There's a new
governing faction, the new kids on the block in this situation,
and the People's Democratic Party they come to power, but
they have a lot of infighting in their own, jockeying
for position in the hierarchy. And then of course they
are eternally battling the Mujadin groups that are backed by
Uncle Sam. That was at one time seen as controversial.
(17:12):
That is clearly a proven fact. And let's pause for
word from our sponsor, and then we'll get to the
modern history. So the Soviet era, Paul, can we get
(17:32):
some kind of you know, like really authoritarian sounding big
but yeah, that kind of music. There we go. Soviet era.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Yes, So the USSR, it's in Afghanistan in nineteen seventy nine,
and it really is trying to shore up this newly
established regime. Right that we talked about, the People's Democratic
Party that's running things over there, and those guys are
by the way in the capital Kabul, and in short order,
(18:00):
nearly one hundred thousand Soviet soldiers took control of a
lot of the major areas, the cities, the highways, the ways,
things are being transported by all means. And here's the
thing people didn't really take to that there was rebellion.
It came quickly. It was all over the place. The
(18:22):
Soviets were dealing harshly with the Mujahadeen rebels and the people,
you know, the families, the small groups that were supporting them.
They were just taking out entire villages. Again, it like
sounds so familiar with the course of our history, with
the things we've talked about. They're trying to deny any
(18:42):
place where or that would be considered a safe haven
for enemy soldiers to be hanging out and you know, regrouping.
And while this is happening, there are outside foreign supporters
who were propping up all of these diverse groups of
rebels that are fighting back against the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Playing the great game once again.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Exactly that that whole the proxy the proxy battle thing
is in full effect here. And you know, you've got
rebels pouring from Iran, Pakistan, China. The US even has
some people over their training folks and having fighters over there.
And there's this brutal nine year conflict that just goes
(19:21):
on and on and on, and an estimated one million
civilians are killed in this conflict Afghanistan civilians as well
as others, and there are also ninety thousand Mujahideen fighters,
eighteen thousand Afghan troops, and fourteen five hundred Soviet soldiers,
all of them who are killed in this battle, these
(19:43):
battles in this conflict.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
And the US support varied in many different ways over
the course of this conflict. This we do have to
remember this is Cold War era, right. So, so originally
they had some suits and some agents from the company.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
The company right right right, and it starts with a C.
It does, this company, it does.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
And by nineteen eighty six they were becoming more they
were being less subtle, Uncle Sam was. They started supplying
Stinger missiles to the mosh Din, which were a game
changer because these Stinger missiles allowed people on the ground
to shoot down Soviet helicopter gunships. In nineteen eighty eight,
(20:33):
four countries, Afghanistan, the USSR, Pakistan, the US signed peace accords,
and the Soviet Union says, okay, we'll start pulling out troops.
The last of the troops leave the next year in
nineteen eighty nine, and civil war consumes the country, which
should not have surprised anyone.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Let's talk really quickly about some of the landscape there
and the mountains, the mountain ranges, the mountains areas, the
very hilly, sometimes very stark areas where if you know,
as the Mujahadeen, if you're given something like a stinger missile,
when you're just troops on the ground, it's very difficult
to battle against something like these Soviet gunships, the helicopters
(21:16):
that can roll through. They can just travel across these
landscapes to wherever they need to be in They're heavily armed.
But you know, if you're on the ground as just
a single person or even a battalion, small battalion anywhere
from one hundred to ten people, fighting back against a
gunship is very, very difficult. But if you're given a
(21:36):
stinger missile and you can hide out somewhere within you
know that terrain, you can easily have an upper hand there.
And again these are ripples throughout time of things that
we are going to see. We're an explosive in the
hands of somebody that understands the area, that has lived there.
(21:56):
You only need a few people to gain the upper
hand on large military forces.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
It's one of those things where you see it. I mean,
it's even in like SNL sketches from the time, and
going back and watching a lot of Will Ferrell sketches
from those days, and there's the one where he's the
old prospector.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
You know, oh yeah, you've seeing this.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
It's great, but it's well, Chris Catan is playing the
sergen or whatever, and he keeps making the joke that
it's an unconventionable, unconventional war, so he got to use
unconventional methods, which in this sketch is having an old
prospector to lead them through the terrain. But it's true,
that's what they're talking about. That's the thing you heard
thrown around constantly in the news was what an inconventional
war was and required unconventional tactics.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Yeah, and in this case, an old prospector, I forget
the premise with an old prospector who is like a
cousin of somebody who was in command of the military
isn't going to do you much good. You need somebody
who has lived there and knows the history and the terrain. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
And also, for the record, the old Will Ferrell sketches
in general, hold up, oh yes, my god, not saying
that because he's technically a coworker of ours, just saying
it because they do hold.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Up shoes, sentiment, and gravy.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
So who comes out ahead in this next iteration of
the power vacuum that would be a group known as
the Taliban. They seize control of Kabul. By nineteen ninety seven,
they have they have a solid grip on about two
thirds of the country, and they're starting to be recognized
in the international sphere. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, for instance,
(23:25):
both recognize the government. Until that is the US enters
the Great Game as a full on combatant. And it's
different because before proxy wars, right, let's call these people rebels. Yeah, yeah,
And so fast forward, as we said at the top,
(23:47):
in October of two thousand and one, US led bombing
of Afghanistan begins. And this is right after the attacks
on September eleventh, two thousand and one on the US
soil anti Taliban Northern Alliance Forces Intricrable, pretty much right
after and this marks the official beginning of what has
(24:09):
become the longest war in US history. Across the next
eighteen years, multiple presidents, three different administrations from both sides
of the US political divide would continually escalate the conflict.
They would send more troops. They would propose what they
called surgis. They would vow we were making progress in
(24:30):
a war that we knew we could win. Today's question,
what if they were lying? Here's where it gets crazy.
So behind the scenes, yeah, everyone knew, All of the
decision makers knew this was a disaster. And Matt, you
recently had a conversation that touched on some of this.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Is that right? Yes, quite a bit. And I spoke
with the gentleman named Steve Hooper that I very much
want to have on the show. We want to have
on this show. I forget his exact titles within the FBI,
but he was a high level person. I hope he
doesn't mind me saying his name. He has a podcast
(25:14):
on the iHeart network that he talks about some of
this stuff, so I think it should be okay. But
he was just talking to me about how the United
States was keeping was aware, very much aware of one
Osama bin Laden and Taliban forces, you know, after all
of the conflicts and help that we've essentially given to
(25:37):
that area, and we know our intelligence agencies know a
lot of the operators, We know a lot of the
mechanisms that exist out there with some of these forces,
and they also knew just from past bombings like the
nineteen ninety three attack on the World Trade Center where
a writer truck was used and thankfully did not destroy
(26:00):
the entire building then in nineteen ninety three, but it
was certainly a disaster and a terror attack and a
major warning sign basically that oh, we need to be
paying attention to this. And he was just telling me
that after that attack in ninety three, the intelligence apparatuses
were so aware of it. However, we went right back
(26:20):
to the FBI at least went right back to focusing
on drug gangs and drug cartels that existed and were
operating within the US, and they didn't turn their eyes
towards terrorism at that point.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Because there was a lot of siloing of information and gatekeeping, right.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
Yes, Because again, you think about operating outside of the
US where intelligence is gathered, operating inside the US, a
lot of times it separated and this whole thing, it
kind of became a mess, at least according to Stephen
our conversation, after you create the Department of Homeland Security
and as that behemoth of organizations begins trying to keep
(27:03):
tabs on things like that and organize. You know, who's
controlling what, who's looking into what I say, a mess.
But that's not true. Anyone who's out there working in
any of these organizations. You know that's not necessarily true.
But it was certainly the birth pains of something bigger.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Oh that's poetic. I like that. Yeah, it's it is.
It is unfortunately true that many of the same people
publicly touting progress in this quagmire, we're often the very
same people lamenting the doomed situation, at least doomed as
they saw it behind closed doors. We know this is
(27:42):
not a conspiracy theory. We know this is indisputably true.
Thanks to the fantastic journalistic efforts and of the Washington
Post and the recent publication of something called the Afghanistan Papers.
On December ninth of this year, the Washington Post finally
won a legal battle that was three years in the making,
(28:03):
and like the war in Afghanistan, continues today. But what
did they get? What happens, We'll tell you after a
word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
So three year legal battle, Washington Post acquires more than
two thousand pages of quote lessons learned end quote. And
these are interviews that were conducted by the Office of
Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction or cigar Yeah, yeah, no,
give me. I love a good cigar, and it's not pretty.
What's uncovered here. There was no internal consensus on any objective,
(28:44):
any reasons for going to war. The country was spending
billions of dollars with no idea whatsoever, what any kind
of endgame. Looked like they literally had no idea how
to get out of the war. There was no exis strategy.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Well yeah that if you guys recall back. And this
was just to date myself a little bit. This was
occurring right around the time that I was going to
be finishing and graduating from high school. As all of
these conflicts are occurring, as the debates about this stuff
is happening, and I remember for the first time, not
(29:20):
for the first time, but maybe for the first time
looking at the news with a little more understanding of
history after some classes that I was taking and hearing
people discuss this, They would argue on the news like, well,
what what does it actually? What does this conflict actually?
What does victory mean? What does it look like? And
you have even the president coming on and kind of
(29:42):
giving you a vague you know, it's a victory. You
know it's good. We're gonna victory, right right, It's like,
what what does that mean?
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Yeah? The thing is that there was not There were
some metrics for ideas of success, but there was nothing
that people agreed on with concrete steps. There was no
universal definition, and without a universal definition, as Chenua Chaba
would say, things fall apart. The Post got hundreds of
(30:20):
memos that are really they're almost like they're almost like
YouTube er Reddit comments from Donald H. Rumsfeld. They were
called and this has nothing to do with the current
usage of the word today, Yes, but they were called snowflakes.
You know, that's a more of a right wing pejorative
on the internet today, But in this case, they were
(30:43):
called snowflakes because they would just sort of be sprinkled
on all these communications, brief instructions or comments that Rumsfeld
would tell his employees during the course of his time
working on the war. And they are things that are
so so informal, like there's one where it says, I'm
(31:04):
not sure who the enemies are here. We don't know
we're shooting at someone for sure. So all together these
memos and these two thousand plus pages revealed by this
Freedom of Information Act. They function as a genuine secret
(31:25):
history of what we know about the war, and some
people taking a longer view of history would say, well,
this is just another act in the ongoing war that
has been occurring on the land of Afghanistan for much
much longer than eighteen years. But here's what we learned
(31:45):
the reports. The journalist and the analyst at the Washing
Post found four common and disturbing themes running throughout these papers,
and they're pretty brutal to hear, but we look through
them and they are well re searched, and there's not
a ton of editorializing. So every single year covered by
(32:07):
these papers, US officials, at least some of them, purposefully
refused to tell the public the truth about the war.
In some way or another. They would issue these pronouncements,
they would say stuff that they straight up knew wasn't true,
and they would hide unmistakable evidence that for one reason
(32:27):
or another, the war had become unwinnable, which was.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
An odd concept of it being winnable or unwinnable, because
it just didn't seem like there was one or the other.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Right, Chocolate rations have been increased, right, yeah, and now
they're going to be eighty percent less than they were.
So they also in these papers we see that officials
who were interviewed, and again this was all internal documentation,
and so they wanted to tell the truth. They depicted
(32:59):
purposeful explain efforts by the US government to mislead the public.
And then they also it's you could describe it. Maybe
this is a little bit too much editorial voice here,
but you could describe it as a sort of collective
(33:19):
disbelief in the facts, kind of cherry picking the stuff
that would be good, ignoring the stuff that would run
counter to the narrative. So everybody is like, everybody's doing
a thing where they're like, all right, we're going to
all agree that this is fine.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
Everything's great, We're gonna win, and stuff's gonna be good afterwards.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
You know what, You know what that guy who said
the house is on fire, what he meant was it's
warm and cozy in here.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
Just look at this banner. What does it say, mission accomplished,
We're done.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Look at that sweet bomber jacket. I mean, look at
that shrutt and gate that the president has.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
Seriously, and again, it's funny because people who consider themselves
domestic political partisans in the US, like someone who would
definitely hate the right side of American politics would be
would levy valid imbiting criticism of the misleading pr that
(34:29):
the Republican side was doing when they had a presidential administration,
And then people who hated the left side would levy
the same again valid criticism at the Democrat administrations because
they were doing the same thing. All that changed was
the brand names on the facts. It was still a
(34:51):
bucket of poison pills. They just had different labels.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Dude, you're still right though, And I remember seeing that
we're going.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
To have a surge, right, and a surge will thing.
But that's okay. So that's just one deliberate, at the
very least at the most generous, deliberately misleading the public,
who is, by the way, paying billions of dollars for this.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
And here's the thing we kind of mentioned up above.
This is number two. By the way, the officials from
you know, the United States and the Coalition of Forces,
the allies that were going into Afghanistan with us, they
pretty much admitted openly that the mission had really no
discernible strategy, like we don't know. There doesn't seem to
(35:36):
be a strategy. We've got a lot of people there.
There are a lot of troops there and some facilities
that we're building. But yeah, we really don't have great objectives.
We're not sure what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
There's stuff on the level of like, well, have you
guys talked to Todd, because to Todd put it really well,
Like I remember walking out of a meeting and I
was like, this is for sure what we're doing, and
UH just can't I can't recall one hundred percent of
it right now.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
He just seems so confident, you know, he's just he's
such as got such a good haircut. I mean, I
just love the cut of his jacket.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
You can tell he man like he goes to a manicure.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Absolutely, his cuticles are impeccable, and you just you can't
really disbelieve.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
A guy like that.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
So, as far as I was concerned, if Todd's good, we're.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
Good, right, Yeah, you're right. Hopefully hopefully Todd can just
keep us keep that morale up, you know.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
And the interviewers like Todd, who I think, oh that's
a great uh you got disappeared. There are a lot
of he worked. You weren't somewhere in the building. It
may have been the subway, he may have been in general.
I just look you guys, You'll know him when you
see him.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
It's true.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
At first, there was this pretty solid rationale they were
going to we were aiming to destroy al Qaeda. Who
was you know, we're involved in these very US terrorist acts,
not just being accused of involvement in the September eleventh attacks,
but also being active in attacks throughout the nineties that
you had mentioned earlier, Matt.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
With certain leaders with names that you might know or
people that were purportedly a part of them.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Yeah, but Todd would never do that. Once once al
Qaeda been you know, largely muzzled, the officials involved said
they had mission creep. The goals got muddy and unclear,
and they began adopting strategies that might contradict the strategies
(37:36):
of other agencies or institutions, and they started having goals
that were unattainable. And people who were running this war,
folks are dying, billions of dollars going down the drain.
The people in charge were saying, I have problems with
basic questions. Who is the enemy here.
Speaker 3 (37:53):
I am not being.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Hyperbolic when Donald Rumsfeld said that who is the enemy here?
Who amidst these various complicated groups and alliances can we
count on as allies? And also, you know, I know
there's a weird question to drop at four thirty on
a Friday, But how do we know when we've won?
Speaker 3 (38:18):
Yeah, there's no bell that goes off, or specific person
you have to defeat, or a king to overthrow r
you know, there's no goalpost like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
And it turns out that the Third Revelation, years into
the conflict, the United States still had a very poor
understanding of the country overall. Officials from not just the
US but also from the Afghan government told interviewers that
a lot of the policies and initiatives coming from Uncle Sam,
(38:52):
everything from like training Afghan forces to trying to I'm
going to say it again, trying to woosh, trying to
stop the opium trade, all of them felt like they
were designed to fail. Whether that's because of incompetence, because
they were based on flawed assumptions, or whether because there
(39:13):
was some sort of ulterior motive, or whether it was
just a country they did not understand.
Speaker 3 (39:19):
Or you know, I don't want to put my biases
on it, but a country that maybe some of those
people in charge just didn't care about at a certain level.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
There are disturbing accounts or allegations and interviews in some
of these papers where an officials say something like we
were just giving consultants tons of money, and you know,
somebody would fly on a plane and they would read
the Kite Runner or something while they were on the plane,
and they would hop out and think that they understood
(39:52):
everything about this place that has been a battleground for
centuries and centuries and has been trod upon by one
outside empire after another, the fourth one, which clearly is
a bit of a cheap scape. Myself, I've been having
a hard time not mentioning this. Yet the US flushed
billions and billions and billions of dollars down the geopolitical
(40:15):
drain trying to nation build in Afghanistan. Nation building is
a risky endeavor that can pay great dividends if you
get it off the ground.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
It was once called colonialism.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
That's building a different kind of nation, I know, but
that's I mean, yeah, so they wanted to, I don't know,
they were just so out of out of touch with
what was happening. So they's this, there's this great comparison.
Or similarly, in the accounts of the early days here,
(40:54):
it was an economic boom for the military industrial complex
obviously for the associated energy and defense industries. It was
a boom contractors, of course.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
And we can just say like that was immediately affected
by the September eleventh attacks and the public acceptance essentially
that yeah, we should probably protect ourselves more and spend
a lot more money than we were.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
Sure, so we'll pay for it. You handle the details. Yeah,
I want to feel good when I see the news
and feel like I've done my part. So since so
here's the simile. One of the sources says money is
like water, and Afghanistan was like a desert, and when
(41:38):
you pour too much water too quickly, the land cannot
absorb it. Yeah, and it becomes a wash with this money.
And that that struck me because it not only does
it feel true, but it has the unfortunate quality of
(41:59):
being true. Since two thousand and two, the US has
allocated more than eighty three billion dollars in security assistance
to Afghanistan that dwarfs the defense budget the entire defense
budget of other developing nations. In twenty eleven alone, at
the peak of the war, this country got eleven billion
(42:22):
dollars in security aid from Washington. That's three billion more
than what Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons and a way
bigger army, spent on its entire military that year. That's nuts.
They spent eight billion, and the US gave Afghanistan eleven billion. Now,
I do want to say it may sound like we're
(42:42):
being unfair here, we have to remember that the military operators,
people working for the US government, and the contractors involved,
they're not in these rooms, they're not in these board rooms,
in these war rooms and so on. They're being sent
(43:03):
to a place to risk their lives, and they are
trying to save people on the grounds, you know what
I mean. They're trying to help civilians, they're trying to
prevent these deaths.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
Yes, But the other side of that coin is that
the almost the feeling of a goalless occupation like that
caused a lot of situations where, you know, a few
a small amount of those contractors and military personnel felt
as though or at least acted as though there was
(43:39):
no rule of law. There were no rules. That's really
good things could happen there, and I think it's because
that top down guidance just didn't exist.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
Well, we talked too about how you know, maybe this
is hyperbolic, and I've heard people kind of poopoo this idea,
but comparing Afghanistan to Vietnam in the sense that it
was very difficult terrain, it was an enemy that they
didn't fully understand, and it seemed to have empowered a
lot of military personnel to commit some.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
Atrocities, right, we also have to consider I think that
is I don't think that's not based comparison. We also
have to consider that a lot of the horror stories
we hear came from the crimes of private contractors, so
people were working in private industry that have been subcontracted
out by the US government or NATO, or they come
(44:28):
from people who were supposed to be the authorities in
like from Afghanistan. Yes, so you know there are stories
which are true of military service members being brigged in danger,
being dishonorably discharged because they refuse to tolerate the sexual
(44:52):
abuse of children which they saw firsthand. Not in not
in some like, not in some sketchy part of town necessarily,
but like in the police chiefs compound in the police station,
or having to make nice with warlords and crack a
(45:12):
deal with them because of their influence over a you know,
a region of the area. Adjusted for inflation and for
just as they say talking Turkey, for perspective, eleven billion
US dollars is more than the US spent in the
entirety of Western Europe with the Marshall Plan after World
(45:34):
War Two. Think about that, the entirety. But after almost
two decades of help from Washington, or attempts at help
from Washington, the Afghan army and the police force are
still not probably not going to be capable of fending
off all these insurgents. It's not just the Taliban, It's
(45:54):
is the Islamic State and others without outside assistance, without
backup from the US military.
Speaker 3 (46:01):
I just want to jump in there really fast before
we keep going. Just to we mentioned the Marshall Plan,
which was uh the the program we mentioned it was
after World War two as well, but that was the
program of aid right that we that we gave to
most of or a lot of Europe just to rebuild
after the battles were fought in that region.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, and thank you. So back to
the money, which I promise I'll stop, I'll stop harping
on at some point.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
It's just like it's crazy.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Yeah, what could eleven billion dollars do you know what
I mean?
Speaker 3 (46:35):
Superpowers could be rocked there, it could be brought into life. Right.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
There was so much money flowing that bribery, fraud, and corruption,
they became superpowered as tendencies and trends. One advisor who
was working for the US said that when he was
working this particular air base, any Afghan people, meaning native
(47:03):
Afghan people who were working there regularly reeked of jet
fuel because they were just smuggling so much of it
out to sell on the black market. And then we
have another point about corruption within the police force. And
this this comes from an INTERVIEWEE who was comfortable being
named yes.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
And one interview Thomas Johnson, who was a Navy official
serving as a counter insurgency advisor in Kandahar Province, said
that the Afghans viewed the police as predatory bandits. He
called them quote the most hated institution in all of Afghanistan.
And then another interviewee, an unnamed Norwegian official told interviewers
(47:45):
that he estimated thirty percent of Afghan police recruits deserted
with their government issued weapons so they could quote set
up their own private checkpoints aka highway robbery.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
Right, literally.
Speaker 3 (48:00):
Just extorting people that were traveling through what they were doing.
Speaker 1 (48:04):
Right, right, And the other statements these officials make don't
sound pretty. But of course we you know, we have
to point out again that part of this is a
maybe a function of these shifting goalposts, right, But to
not know who your enemies are and not know who
(48:24):
the difference between your enemies and your allies is, that's tough,
especially in a situation like this. There were other revelations.
It turns out that several senior US officials believe there
was a realistic opportunity to cut a piece deal with
the Taliban back in two thousand and two or two
thousand and three. Again, we're not saying it's definite, we're
(48:45):
saying that's what they felt was in the cards. Also,
when this stuff came out, you know who else was surprised?
Congress And with Congress, it's tough, like how many is it? Performative?
Speaker 3 (48:58):
Right? I have to be upset at the for my constituents,
so they know that I was definitely upset at this.
Speaker 1 (49:04):
Right, And there's bipartisan there's bipartisan anger at this. At
least if we look at Senators Richard Blumenthal and Josh Howley,
they're both on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and they've
already called for hearings based on these reports. Even former
Afghan President Hamen Karzai gave an interview to the AP
(49:24):
Associated Press recently and he said the Afghanistan papers proved
the US was at fault for his country's corruption. However,
Praig Whitlock, one of the journalists who brought the story
to light from the Post, said the US was at fault,
but the Afghan government did not prosecute many people for
corruption or fraud, that's for sure.
Speaker 3 (49:47):
Geez.
Speaker 1 (49:50):
And this is where this is where this leaves us.
I know it's a high level look, but there's so
many other things to report.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Well, there'll be new revelations surely, right, I mean there's
a lot of documents here.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
I'm glad you brought that up, because, yeah, as we
record today the Washington Post, we said it was an
ongoing war for them, right, they're still in court fighting
for more documents, and they're pressing Cigar to identify everyone
they interviewed for the Afghanist on papers, which they haven't yet. Currently,
the Trump administration is holding direct peace talks with the Taliban.
(50:24):
A lot of the experts that The Post spoke with
said that they believe the only way to end this
war is to cut a deal that militarily, it is
impossible to entirely defeat the Taliban unless it's something like
sewing the Earth with salt aka nukes, which no one wants.
Speaker 3 (50:42):
Scorched to earth policy, right, Yeah, please don't do that.
Anyone who's listening who has one of those things?
Speaker 1 (50:49):
Yeah, and and this has given these out of civilians now, yeah, costco, baby,
it's the only things you have to buy three to
get the deal, got it?
Speaker 3 (50:58):
Yeah? Don't you remember in twenty twenty three that whole
declaration happened and we all got nukes. That it was
the Mutually Assured Destruction Agreement of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2 (51:09):
I'd rather have a giant psychic squid.
Speaker 3 (51:11):
Those are coming too. Have you heard the news, the
good news? Yeah, there's this guy, he's working on a
giant the intergalactic squid. Thing. I don't know. I don't
know the details. I have no comment. Well are you
the guy I know?
Speaker 1 (51:27):
Look, let's go to a different abb yours. This is
another thing about this story that is still continuing, and
this I don't know, This is just my I want
to be too conspiratorial. I do want to note it
is a fact currently Afghanistan still dominates global opium markets.
Last year, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crimes,
(51:51):
so twenty eighteen, right, eighty two percent of the world's
opium supply was produced in Afghanistan. Some of the biggest
problems in the US, they're drug related, come from opium. Yeah,
they're not growing a ton of it here, are they. No,
Like you know, the different the different pharmaceutical companies that
(52:16):
are probably gonna avoid too many serious consequences of creating
the opium crisis.
Speaker 3 (52:24):
Nobody's saying conspiracy here, people, We're just we're just going, hey,
look at this. I'm just saying we talked about this
in a previous episode. Just how much security was devoted
to what looks like from the reporting and the images
that were sent back over the course of years up
until very recently, that we are protecting the poppy fields,
(52:48):
I guess from allowing anyone to.
Speaker 1 (52:51):
Use them, right and well, it's also tough because you
can see interviews with farmers in the area who say,
you know, I'm a subsistence farmer. Yeah, Like there were
different plans to institute new crops for cash, but obiam
makes the most money to sell and the markup is huge.
(53:12):
The worst part is those farmers are not making what
you know, nobody's going to be buying a mansion doing that.
Speaker 2 (53:19):
Well, it's the same way with cocaine in Colombia and stuff, right,
I mean, largely the cartels put the burden of cultivating
it and growing it on these families who look at
it as you know, some sort of subsistence living, but
they're not sharing in the profits of the criminal enterprise.
Speaker 1 (53:36):
Again, elephants war and grass. Right, when elephants make war,
the grass suffers. It's there's a lot of stuff that
we missed and we've got to emphasize. Just on the
ending note, we have to emphasize the human element, you
know what I mean. People who are soldiers are not bad.
People who are civilians in a country that is being
(54:00):
subjected to a conflict are not bad. Either this is
these are all human beings who are trying to survive.
And the horrific thing is that a lot of decisions
upon which lives hinged are made by people who will
never physically travel to the places where they see their
consequences of their decisions made real. And that's our classic
(54:26):
episode for this evening. We can't wait to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 3 (54:29):
That's right, let us know what you think.
Speaker 2 (54:30):
You can reach to the andlic Conspiracy Stuff where we
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or Conspiracy Stuff Show.
Speaker 3 (54:38):
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Speaker 4 (54:56):
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correspondence we receive. Be aware, yet not afraid. Sometimes the
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Speaker 3 (55:27):
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