We are three former military intelligence professionals who started a podcast about the failed Afghan War. Ask us anything!

Do you guys think that the American invasion inadvertently created more terrorists than would have been seen otherwise?

Yes. Easily. Especially after we went into Iraq.

One one hand Zach claims American counter-terrorism capabilities are second to none but on the other hand America created more terrorists by invading Iraq. That's counter intuitive - can you expand on that?

Our CT successes in Afghanistan did not create more terrorists in Iraq. Groups like al-Qaida painted the US and other western nations as invaders and occupiers. When we then invaded Iraq, their prophecy came true. Our move into Iraq was the single biggest recruitment tool for Islamic extremists.

Thanks George W Bush?????

This guy gets it.

Thanks.

What does 'counter-terrorism capabilities' encompass and what is the benchmark for excellence?

The ability to find and eliminate terrorists through intelligence collection and mission planning. Excellence would best be described by how successfully we can shape the battle space and deter terrorist threats by removing key leaders.

do you think Iraq today regrets the American intervention?

There have been a couple documentaries to come out since OIF ended. In one of them, the director asks a number of Baghdad residents if the country is better now without Saddam Hussein. The responses went about 50/50. Iran doesn't regret it.

What is the main take away lesson for the future that you want the general voting population to understand about that war?

Stu here. I'd say the biggest takeaway is that if you're going to commit to a war you have to have enough forces on the ground to win it. Despite the effectiveness of drone warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq, we didn't have enough people on the ground to secure rural areas, which allowed the Taliban to rebuild and reemerge in the end.

Isn't this the same logic behind the Obama surge and also to the scale-up of Vietnam? More boots on the ground and bombs in the air didn't help in Vietnam. Did the Obama surge work? (work as in it fulfilled short-term military and long-term political objectives)

The surge was definitely a failure. It was also hampered by politics at home and Obama essentially putting a ticking clock on the war. Additionally, CI doctrine dictates 10:1 troop numbers and we topped out at around 100k against 30-70k Taliban (depending on the time).

The better answer is to not get embroiled in long-term occupations and nation-building.

I don't get how the logic can hold that the surge was a failure but more troops would of solved things. I understand there are different tactical considerations over the decades-long war but from a strategic perspective, it doesn't seem to align.

Are you saying that the biggest takeaway is to have more troops at the beginning of the invasion?

We are saying if you're going to conduct a counterinsurgency, you need to have the requisite numbers. The Obama "surge" was nowhere near enough people. And it still would have taken decades to win with 700,000 troops in theater.

Doesn't seem like committing what you deem would have been sufficient would have been politically possible (under any administration/party in charge). Separating military goals from political realties is partially what got us in trouble in the first place.

Correct.

Never fight a land war in Asia.

Right before never challenging a Sicilian when death is on the line.

How would more troops have possibly been better? How can you justify the loss of afghani civilian life that more troops would have inevitably caused?

More US military forces would inevitably mean more bloodshed. I don't see how this would have possibly been a good thing.

A counterinsurgency requires support from the local populace. That means those fighting the counterinsurgency have to be in the towns and villages. For a spell there were Village Stability Operations that were successful in integrating with the locals and building support for the Government of Afghanistan. The problem was we didn’t have the numbers for the breadth and duration necessary to be fully realized.

I am a veteran and work with several. It's a painful realization that it's over and we all struggle to find meaning for our time over there. What silver linings do you guys use to justify our time over there and the loss of life on both sides?

That's something we struggled with as we covered the evacuation and Taliban takeover. I think ultimately it comes down to accepting that leadership at the highest levels failed to implement clear and achievable guidance to the troops, and the loss is on them. The meaning to it all is going to come down to the individual. We don't get a victory or justification from those in power, but we can take our experiences and focus them into personal growth moving forward.

Are there any meaningful lessons that have stuck or become ingrained in our chain of command as a result of our struggles in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Unfortunately, at the highest levels, most of the leaders that lost both wars have successfully failed upwards and are either still in their positions, or have moved on to board seats of contracting companies. We hope that at least some of those who will move into top-level positions will understand the need for clear guidance, achievable goals, and honesty when addressing Congress moving forward, but we have very little hope for this.

Thanks for the response. That's unfortunate (to say the least). Follow up if you're able to respond:

What effect do private contractors have on the decision-making process? Is it similar to congressional lobbyists?

Private contractors have a very significant effect given that their boards are full of former generals with connections to Congress. There's a huge amount of lobbying and leveraging connections in the contracting world.

Was the biggest failure the refusal of the Bush admin to accept the surrender of the Taliban and work to reintegrate them to the new Afghanistan in early 2002?

Probably. We are working with hindsight and two decades removed from the thirst for revenge over 9/11, but reintegrating them back then likely would have helped us avoid extending the war for so long.

Kyle here. We should never have overthrown a sovereign government. Dropping bombs on al-qaeda is easy, but the Taliban understands their own country better than the West does. We should never have overthrown the government and I do think that was one of the biggest issues.

Probably

This may be a very benign question, but what is you opinion on how the topic has been covered by the media over the years? With regards to the coverage of news/media during and after the war. And not just news but also things like John Oliver's monologue and other reports that are now look back over it.
I find for someone like myself that was relatively young when it started (now 24 uk), things like John's video and also things like your podcast are providing a lot of insight that shows the harsh reality.

I think our biggest issue with news coverage about Afghanistan is how little it was covered after the invasion of Iraq. Part of what helped get us out of Iraq was constant news coverage, and Afghanistan received very little until a couple years ago.

Afghanistan vet 2011/2012. Shit went off the rails like … the moment we stepped into country. It felt like riding in a car that didn’t have any brakes, and I tried to do everything that could to help or fix or… anything, and I just ended up getting shafted repeatedly. I’m okay now, but it took a long few years to get right. What was your favorite part of what recruiters told you you were going to do/what you actually did?

I think it was clear to anyone that stepped foot in the country that there wasn't a plan. It reminded me of the quote in Apocalypse Now when Kurtz asks Willard "Are my methods unsound?" and Willard says, "I don't see any method at all, sir."

I didn't really buy the recruiter thing. I signed up because there weren't too many prospects in 2011. I didn't realize how stupid it would be.

Did you ever have moments where you felt as though there is a specific reason for US involvement in the conflict, but it was either being kept from you or it was not what you were being told? Essentially did you feel like there was a serious lack of transparency?

I don't mean to sound like I'm wearing a tin-foil hat, I'm genuinely curious, It's just that with all of these countless declassified files and leaks over the course of the past 70 years (CIA / NSA immediately come to mind), it's hard to know when to trust what the gov says.

Kyle here. Honestly I don't think there was a plan. It started out as get bin Laden, turned into some Counter-Terrorism stuff, and then went way off the rails as we set up a puppet government because certain interests wanted to keep us there so they could keep making money. If it was a terrorist kill mission, we'd have done an OK job.

Was there anything from the British and Russian occupation of Afghanistan that should have guided how the recent American-led invasion? Were there historic lessons that were ignored, that might have guided current strategy? Finally, had the US Govt. not trained and armed the Mujahidin, would the Taliban and Al Quaeda have had as much influence as they have had over the last 20 years?

I think the biggest lesson from all three invasions is how critically important tribal dynamics in the region are. We unfortunately rushed in without a clear understanding of this, allied ourselves with the wrong people in many cases, and it cost us in the end.

For historic lessons, probably not to build outposts at the base of valleys, where you're essentially surrounded and easy to attack.

I think if we hadn't sponsored the Mujahidin, someone in the Arab peninsula would have. Their real rise to prominence occurred due to our invasion of Iraq.

So, a follow up question on the building of outposts at the bottom of valleys

Why is this done? This seems like a fairly rudimentary principle of basebuilding. Hill forts are literally centuries old, so even before the existence of formalized military theory, it seems people understood "high ground good, look down on enemies".

So what are the advantages of building in the bottom of a valley? Is this a matter of trying to do something easy short term (harder to haul construction materials up to top of a hill), despite it seeming a bad idea?

Some were there from the Soviet days. Others were set up to be temporary as forces moved through the valleys. We had Wesley Morgan on a couple weeks ago. He’s a journalist who spent a lot of time in the Pech and Korengal valleys. His book, The Hardest Place, does a better job explaining this than we could.

Will we ever be rid of the TSA?

Probably not. It's ludicrously rare for the government to shrink in scope.

No. Unfortunately.

In Jim Mattis' book he describes an operation which was planned that could have caught bin laden early but which CENTCOM effectively neutered by forcing the usage of "tribal warriors" who didn't know the region which, in turn, caused the operation to fail and bin laden to escape for many more years.

Is there validity to this? Can you give more specifics to it?

Let me preface this with I have not read his book. My best guess would be that somebody in the chain of command wanted Northern Alliance fighters included on that kill/capture mission, which would have taken place in an area not controlled by the NA. Chances are they were not familiar with the terrain and it costs us time on the ground. But that's just a guess without reading the book.

Do you feel like you "fought for your country" over there?

We have ideals from when we joined that didn’t survive over time. Ultimately we wound up trying to help the Afghans fight for their country.

A couple of questions:

1. I've read that the Afghan War was largely won way back in '01/02 and that Rumsfeld threw it away by refusing to negotiate with the Taliban. True?
2. To what extent did the Iraq War undermine the Afghan War?
3. Again, my reading seems to point to Rumsfeld as the one to shoulder most of the blame for the Afghan War. Would you agree?

1. The Taliban were driven from power very quickly and Rumsfeld did refuse to negotiate. He also wasn't the president. Blame's gotta go up.
2. The Iraq War drew huge amounts of media attention from Afghanistan and it didn't return until we pulled out. Al-Qaeda learned a lot from the Iraq War and brought that knowledge to Afghanistan, including the implementation of IEDs and various training and operational TTPs.
3. Rumsfeld deserves a lot of blame, but we also went through four administrations in Afghanistan. It's not entirely on him.

How do you feel about war of aggression in general and what about the occupation of territories and the killing and suffering of all the civilians involved?

The US military should be deployed to defeat enemies entirely then leave. That's it.

Kyle here. I consider myself a pacifist now. I believe whole-heartedly in self-defense and I think that extends to the ground we live on. Apart from that, I despise violence.

Are you guys actively using recent intelligence products? Are you guys also worried about accidentally releasing/discussing classified information through aggregation?

We left Afghanistan at the end of 2017 so we are pretty current on the events over there. There is a lot of information that has been unclassified over the years that people don't look at, which is some of what we discuss. As for spillage, we aren't concerned. We take the time to make sure what we are discussing isn't classified and everything we talk about can be found out there in the open. People just don't look for it. More than anything we try to provide context.

what are some of the best websites to search for unclassified documents-- for the public?

SIGAR

Do you agree with Biden's withdrawal? I don't think there was any way it could have been done cleaner and remember how rough the Viet Nam pullout was.

We agree with the withdrawal. And it could have been executed better. The Doha agreement was signed in February 2020 during the Trump presidency, which established the withdrawal timeline. Seemingly after the agreement was signed, neither Trump nor Biden worked on the evacuation/withdrawal plan from that point.

How do you think things would have played out if Iran had been invited to join the invading forces back in 2001?

Hard to tell. Afghanistan and Iran share a common language and have cultural overlaps. But Afghanistan is predominately Sunni and Iran is predominately Shia. That would have definitely created tension. The Shia Hazara population in Central Afghanistan would have welcomed Iranian support, and they have in the years since. Ultimately that was never an option. During the early days of the Taliban government of the 1990s, the Clinton Administration silently backed them due to the Taliban's anti-Iranian views.

Was it known it would fail? Was it something people figured out years ago? Also, yes, I am thinking Rambo 3.

Definitely. There was a Washington Post FOIA which referenced materiel from like 2004 documenting that we knew we wouldn't be able to win. We witnessed Congress being lied to consistently about the state of the war for years both during and after our service time. It's something that everyone knew about and the guys at the top lied about.

As for Rambo 3, Buzkashi should be an international sport.

We witnessed Congress being lied to consistently about the state of the war for years both during and after our service time. It's something that everyone knew about and the guys at the top lied about.

In your opinion, what was the reason for the lies? If the generals knew they were wasting time, money, and their soldiers lives fighting a war they would lose, what was the motivation to lie to Congress? Promise of cushy jobs in the private sector?

Reporting failures on your watch is a fast way to kill your career. Nobody wanted to be the one to lose the war, they just wanted to do their time and move on up the ladder, and eventually to boards of private contractors.

Follow up, what is the current status of equipment that was left behind. People have been worried about the “air force” that was left. I assumed it’s all junk by now given the level of maintenance those things require.

Well we've seen video of the Taliban flying helicopters. Given their external support from state actors such as (our "ally") Pakistan and (our "ally") Saudi Arabia, it's possible they have the funding and some training to maintain some of that equipment. But only time will tell.

Yeah, plus the Taliban were going after pilots alongside interpreters when they took the country, so they're likely low on people who can fly or maintain their aircraft.

Wouldn't we be better off dropping food with drones instead of dropping bombs?

Yes.

Do you think our invasion and occupation of Iraq will end similarly? It appears that Sadr is only growing stronger.

I don't think there was a long term solution on who to prop up in Iraq, and it shows. At least in Afghanistan there was Karzai in 2001. Since the ouster of Saddam Hussein, almost every leader of Iraq has been a Shia Muslim. That means closer and stronger ties to Iran. Pretty much the exact opposite of what the US government wanted.

Did they not know that Iraq was a Shia majority country?

Was the WMD a fake plow to invade or simply horrific intelligence.

I don't think they looked that far ahead. We did an episode about Iraq and how it effected Afghanistan. Best we can tell is the US government put too much faith in an Iraqi expat who claimed Saddam Hussein had WMDs. Once Colin Powell was convinced, everyone was on board. As for people like Dick Cheney, we think it was all a money grab for him.

What were the positives that came out of the Afghan War?

I think the biggest positive would be the experience level of our military. We probably have the most experienced military force in the world currently.

However, the cost in lives and money doesn't make up for it in our minds.

Something worth mentioning is the dramatic increase in medical knowledge of how to treat traumatic injuries. Afghanistan and Iraq created a whole new paradigm regarding the use of tourniquets for example, with far less fear of losing limbs. That's even moved over into the civilian sphere.

Our medics definitely got better.

Zach here. We learned that our counterterrorism capabilities are second to none.

What are your thoughts on the overall effectiveness of the ANDSF? We saw commando units who were clearly very committed to the cause and extremely competent, but earlier in the insurgency you had the Vice documentary showing ANP men absolutely stoned whilst on duty. Do you think the competency of the ANDSF improved towards the end of the war? Were there any ways that the ANDSF could have been formed better, perhaps different doctrine or makeup, which could have improved their chances?

Also, do you think there was any chance of the ANDSF successfully holding the country once the US had decided on their withdrawal? Would a longer withdrawal have helped? (I know these are hypotheticals so maybe they're not answerable)

ANDSF effectiveness varied dramatically unit to unit, district to district. Corruption was a big contributing factor, with the ghost soldier problem cutting into numbers as well as officers selling supplies like fuel. Unfortunately Afghanistan is one of the most corrupt countries in the world.

Police units in particular were often undermanned and undersupplied, while the ANA had the issue of being largely Tajik and running into issues with both the Taliban and Pashtun civilians in the south and east.

Once the US left it was pretty much inevitable that the country would fall. With the amount of troops the US had in country over the last few years, ANDSF were fairly battered, which led to the quick Taliban takeover. I think a better planned withdrawal would have helped get more of our people out, but it wouldn't have helped prop up GIRoA any longer.

What levels did you three serve at? Asking this question to better understand your context when you say you worked in intelligence. Are we talking tactical, operational or strategic levels? Did you serve at the regimental level and above or what was your highest level?

For the record, an E-3 can serve in Intel and know absolutely nothing about anything.

It's important to your audience that you describe your P & A, within the military (in a very general, unclass sense) so your audience understands what perspectives you're providing information and context from.

This is Zach. I deployed with XVIII ABN Corps G2 to Iraq as a targeting analyst. The three of us were in Kandahar as analysts in TAAC-S. A lot of operational level intelligence product building and briefing.

Stu here. I had three deployments with 3rd SFG at the tactical and operational level and what Zach said.

I was with TF-11 and I feel good about that mission though there were some huge mistakes and missed opportunities. Roberts Ridge being one of the mistakes. Dick measuring and unwillingness to share among the colors, from my standpoint. Anywho, the mission creep that became nation building with no defined objective was the downfall in my view. Would love to know what you think. Do you have a book or summary online?

The counterterrorism mission was highly successful and all involved should be commended for sticking to the mission. Mission creep and the pivot to Iraq ultimately played the biggest factors in the war's overall failure. And we don't have any books or summaries; just a podcast. But we've thought about it.

Could you say something about the role of European allies and the effects of the failed war on the transatlantic alliance?

In my circles, there's been a lot of buzz about how the Afghanistan withdrawal showed European impotence and should be an argument for an EU army and independent EU capabilities. That's all future politics of course and I don't expect you to speak on that, but it does makes me curious about how you judge the breadth and importance of allied contribution and whether you think the failure of the war has meaningfully damaged these alliances (beyond the general tensions that have been brewing since the end of the Cold War anyways)?

It's clear the US was always going to be taking the lead on entry and withdrawal. But should we consider European nations partly culpable or partly hurt, or perhaps do you think Europeans should just suck it up and see their part in this war as just the tithe we paid for US contributions to NATO and European security? (Which the present crisis of course shows Europe, bluster aside, cannot do without.)

European militaries, like the United States, never committed the troop numbers needed to defeat an insurgency, which is what our original counterterrorism mission became. We don't think the solution is an EU army but rather having better defined goals and sticking to them.

When designating something top security, what considerations are taken? Is it more of "well designate this top security now for safety and review later" or is it rigorous review then designation?

Information is most often classified by two factors: significance to national security and method of collection. We may use a certain type of UAV or phone intercept system that is protected through classification.

Failed?

It was a massive success for the military industrial complex!

You're not wrong there.

If someone wanted to become an intelligence professional, what sort of education and background should one get before they apply?

Kyle here. Go to your local recruiter and ask for anything in the intel field and get ready to embrace the suck and pay your dues. Then you can wind up dealing with high level stuff in an unwinnable war one day.

There are colleges and universities that offer degrees in security and intelligence studies. Separate from that, each branch of the military has a military intelligence field with a number of jobs. We took the latter route.

George Bush committed to a "surge" in Iraq, that Obama opposed. However, he was proven wrong when it appeared to be effective, and so when he was elected, he decided to try the same tactics in Afghanistan, without success.

What's your opinion on his what they did, why it didn't work, and what he should have done differently?

Our surge into Iraq worked by pushing the Islamic State of Iraq into Syria. Our surge in Afghanistan failed for several reasons. Chief among them is a lack of following counterinsurgency doctrine, which requires 10 US personnel for every insurgent. At an estimation of 70,000 Taliban members, we would have needed 700,000 troops, minimum, to have any chance at being successful. Our largest presence was 98,000.

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We're all Army. Zach and Stu were 35F and Kyle was a 35P or 35N, some kind of linguist.

What branch, where were deployed to, what agency/command did you work for while supporting the Afghan war? This is for the three of you as individuals.

Stu here. I was an all-source analyst (35F) with 3rd Group from 2012-2016, then I met the other two when we were supporting TAC South in Kandahar as contractors.

Edit: Had three deployments to Afghanistan while I was in. I was at Bagram twice and Kabul once. I ended up visiting most of the bases in Afghanistan while contracting.

This is Zach. I was an all-source intelligence analyst (35F) from 2008-2015 with XVIII ABN Corps and I Corps, and a civilian contractor from 2016-2017. Kyle is working today but he was a 35P linguist.

I've read several news stories from 2001 that said the Taliban wanted a Peace Deal with the US and part of the deal was handing over Bin Laden to a third party like Qatar to have him face charges in an International Court. All the Taliban had asked for was clemency for Mullah Omar their leader. The US refused both these offers.

Is this dumbest decision of the War? Why or why not? And if not then what is the dumbest decision?

There’s some murkiness to this but the general belief is that the Taliban did offer to surrender if they had the ability to hand over Bin Laden and the US refused then it would definitely go down as the biggest blunder. Anand Gopal talks about this in No Good Men Among The Living.

Do you consider the United States to be an empire, and do you think that American global hegemony has been a net positive or net negative for, specifically, the global south?

If you'd like to answer a second question, what do you think are the long-term impacts of the ideology of the war on terror, however you choose to define it, on the US population's view of America in the world?

Well I think we certainly act like one, even if it isn't intentional. When you say "global south," do you have a more specific area in mind?

Wars against ideologies don't work. Long term impacts include the TSA and soon I'll need a passport to enter government buildings. In short, never let a crisis go to waste.

What would you say was the allocation of time, resources and effort between the different types of intelligence (human, signal, digital, visual, communications, cyber...), and in hindsight do you think the allocation or emphasize should have been different, and why?

Not sure I understand the question, but HUMINT and SIGINT led the way as far as intel efforts to enable operations. That's pretty standard, I don't think I'd do much to change it. The biggest change I'd make would be to adopt Palantir sooner because ArcGIS is terrible.

What was ArcGIS used for? Isn’t that just mapping software. How would Palantir have helped?

ArcGIS was used in combination with other analyst tools like DCGS to build out the intel picture.

Palantir has a much better suite of tools for breaking down networks, mapping, planning operations, and sharing intel. It's pretty much the best program at combining intel and operations.

I took the DCGS-A crashcourse in 2010. From what I remember it was just a hot mess, not very intuitive, and lacked usability for anyone not dedicated to mastering it.

I took one in 2018. It was still terrible.

So..... Y'all are walking, talking, oxymorons?

MiLiTaRy InTeLlIgEnCe

What was your favorite restaurant on the boardwalk? I really liked the gyro spot.

The Kabob House, hands down. We actually had the owners Leo (the founder) and his wife Homa on our podcast last year. They made it back to the states and opened a restaurant called Afghan Kabob in Fayetteville, NC.

Can America "do" war any more? I mean, in an effective way? I've watched nothing but one colossal shame fest after another, starting with Grenada, up to now. I was in the Army infantry in the 80's. I just don't think we have the political will any more to execute. I'm not sure Desert Storm counts because Saddam's army basically retreated all the way home.

Our military's exceedingly capable against conventional forces, but we haven't demonstrated the capability to deal with and defeat an insurgency. Hopefully we'll stay away from long occupations/nation building efforts for a while.

Before I left the Navy, I had to submit a bunch of stuff I'd written (letters of recommendation, my resume, and even a screenplay I wrote for a competition that had nothing to do with my work collecting intelligence). Do you have to contact NSA or other intelligence agencies for approval before you release a podcast?

No. Our podcast is about a war. We happen to be former intelligence professionals. Maybe if we ever wrote a book or talked about collection methods.

It’s my belief that we could have been in Afghanistan for a thousand years and the outcome would have been the same. Agree or no?

Kyle here. I completely agree with you. We had a fundamental misunderstanding of the culture of the country and no real desire to commit to build a country.

How insignificant is the Taliban compared to the Russian army?

In terms of capability? Very. But that's comparing an unconventional force to a conventional one. At the same time, we didn't just spend trillions of dollars over 20 years to fight the Russians.

Can you estimate how much Afghan poppy farmers were reimbursed for crops damaged? This might be beyond your scope, but how much street value heroin would that produce?

I don't know that but the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) put out a lot of reports on poppy cultivation in Afghanistan if that interests you: https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/crop-monitoring/index.html?tag=Afghanistan

Is it considered failed if it’s point was to secure opiates?

Most of those opiates made their way to Europe. So if you’re European and have a financial interest, sure.

Deep dish or thin crust?

This is Zach. I won’t speak for the others, but deep dish is soup in a bread bowl. So I’ll go with thin crust.

I read an interview with some Afghani women in a refugee facility in Denmark, one was a hair dresser (or similar), and she spent her time teaching the other women in the facility how to their hair and make up (I'm going somewhere with this, promise). They were all happy they had escaped the Taliban, of course, but being a refugee in a facility isn't exactly fun. But when I finished reading that interview, I couldn't help feeling a little bit hopeful. This hairdresser woman was in her early twenties, and while she had grown up with war, she had also grown up with access to schools and being able to wear heels and make up and have a job, and her husband obviously thought it was great.

My question to you is, have their been a shift in the Afghani perception of how life should be lived, because of a 20 year break in Taliban's power (access to school, higher degree if personal freedom etc), and if yes, could this have an effect down the line on the Afghani society under Taliban? Or am I an naive idiot, and this is just a case of a young woman from a capital city will often be more liberal than her rural counterparts, and she's the odd one out?

There's a huge difference between rural and urban Afghanistan. The Taliban have thus far been showing a softer face to the world in their treatment of women, but it remains to be seen how long that will last. In the more remote areas we'll likely continue to see women be treated poorly.

How do you feel about the current administration's claims that the capitulation of the Afghan government wasn't 'anticipated so soon' and the general feeling that the US Administration was blindsided by the events that unfolded after the US re-deployed all of its forces?

I spent a few deployments in Afghanistan working with ANA, ANP, and ANASF. My last deployment was 2014. I find it pretty obvious that the withdrawal of Coalition Forces would have resulted in a swift defeat of the Afghan military.

Generals and Colonels tend to change the intelligence, or omit it entirely, to paint a rosier picture. In turn, the decision makers in Washington are fed shit and kept in the dark. Fact is they should have known. Most of them did.

Supplementary questions: How would you describe the US mission outcomes and how do you feel about it?

Counter-terrorism was a success and counter-insurgency was a failure.

Is there anything that could have been done to make the Afghan government more effective or stop the Taliban from taking over?

Which time? Post Soviet-Afghan War, the United States continued to back warlords when helping with infrastructure in a war-ravaged nation would have had more appeal and brought more goodwill. Post-9/11, sticking to the CT mission would have damaged al-QIda’s capabilities and shown the Taliban ours.

Looking forward, any concerns with China's influx into Afghanistan via the Belt and Road initiative? As we have summarily dumped the Afghans, does this new suitor indicate an 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' paradigm, or a benign opportunity for further human intelligence gathering?

In addition, during the Afghan invasion our light touch in Pakistan was controversial in some circles. Is it possible our actions then have opened the door to the increased trade relations between china and Pakistan since 2013?

Not on topic and maybe out of your area of expertise, but never hurts to ask.

China positioned themselves to reap the rewards of Afghanistan’s mineral deposits years ago. They were first awarded contracts in 2009, which are most likely void by now. But with that Belt and Road initiative, there’s a good chance that China will be awarded rights again.

Yes.

We’ve talked about this on a separate podcast and touched about it on an episode. Good questions.

Watching Ken Burns’ Vietnam War documentary and then reading that the Afghan armed forces would find it extremely challenging to afford to maintain some of the key military equipment given to them (eg planes and helicopters), it feels as though some mistakes from Vietnam have been repeated.

Do you agree that Afghan forces were provided with equipment by the US that they would never be able to afford to maintain themselves?

Yes. Specifically regarding aircraft. Equipment was maintained mostly by contractors or flown to Qatar for maintenance. A contract was awarded months before the government fell for a contracting firm, I believe General Dynamics, to provide maintenance support for the Afghan Air Force in theater.

Would you guys recommend a career path in military intelligence?

Stu here. I would. It definitely helped develop my political beliefs and character. Having a clearance can also open doors for other careers down the road. Just know that you don't know which unit you'll get and who your boss(es) will be. Bad leadership can make things really tough to deal with, and with the wars over the possibility of being stuck in base doing stupid Army stuff is pretty high.

Do you think that the Afghan war failed for military or cultural/social reasons? As conflicts grow more complicated around the world and trend farther away from direct military confrontation, do you feel that the US military is properly equipped to wage such a "culture war" against its does? Can you elaborate on some of the strategies that were successful or in development that we might expect to see in the battlefields of tomorrow?

Kyle here. Awesome question. I think the defeat was more of a social/cultural one. There are several reasons for this and we discuss a lot of them particularly in season one. One of the biggest issues was in our initial counter-terrorism push in the early days of the war, we made friends with some not so great people who had layers and layers of inter-personal conflicts we didn't understand or know about. One of the biggest was Jan Mohammad Khan who essentially reported his personal enemies to the US as terrorists and they would face the wrath of night raids and missile strikes because we trusted this maniac. This happened all over the country even though our expertise is mainly Southern Afghanistan.

I think the number one lesson to learn is that the US military is quite adept at dealing out violence and very poor at building a country. The military is for killing and projecting power. We should not be involved in nation building because no one knows the greater cultural picture of where we stick our nose. Hope that's an all right answer.

Is the level of “super top secret information” that ppl think military intelligence officials have access to overblown ?

Most of it is really dry and boring unfortunately. The reason things are classified as Top Secret usually has more to do with how it was collected rather than the contents.

Do you guys think we could have had more success if we'd structured the Afghan state differently? Somehow co-opted local tribes and tribal leaders formally into the state structure? E.g. instead of geographic provinces and districts with parliamentary representation, tribal voting?

Afghanistan is not a homogeneous country, nor does it have a truly national identity. Allegiances are strongest as the tribal and ethnic level. Some sort of republic with a strong emphasis on local and regional governance would have probably been the best approach.

Why was the bagram air base abandoned prior to a massive evacution?

Good question, we've talked about that on our podcast. Looks like the top brass thought it would be easier to pull everyone out through Kabul for some reason. The failure to plan for the worst case scenario is what led to us not getting everyone out in time.

Kyle here. By simply asking that question you have proven you are smarter than high command. We wondered the same thing.

What is the future of Afghanistan ? Will it be a ,,failed state“ ?

We’ll see how much the Taliban learned about governance and diplomacy over the last 2 decades. Giving them aid in the form of money is out of the window for now. That doesn’t mean NGOs couldn’t operate in Afghanistan. They did so under the first Taliban government. Ironically, Ashraf Ghani, the most recent president President of Afghanistan, wrote a book called Fixing Failed States.

Off topic but what do you think about the US's approach/response to Russia's apparent mobilization to invade Ukraine? Do you think it will work?

It’s hard for us to know. Moving a couple thousand US troops closer to Ukraine when Russia has 100,000 on the border is laughable.

Hello Stu, Kyle, and Zach! How is your day/night going?

Kyle here. Got off work, realized Zach created an AMA that popped off, and hopped in here to answer questions and watch the last bit of the Daytona 500. Pretty decent day. Hope you're doing well.

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No. Even the CIA admitted that torture doesn't work.

Who do you think did 9/11? Inside job or Taliban?

al-Qaida

How do you sleep at night knowing you helped massacre thousands of innocent afghans?

Well we were in a unit providing intelligence support to the Afghan National Army trying to keep them alive. But there are plenty of conflicting feelings about the war in its entirety and the part the United States played. It's a topic we have discussed internally several times over. We knew the war was a lost cause but we still tried to help deter a Taliban re-takeover of Afghanistan. Waking up and knowing the war is all but over but still doing everything you can to try to help seems like a waste of energy. And it probably was.

Is it really a failure when Afghanistan was conquered, and it was just the cowardice of Afghanistanis that lead to their current situation, not America?

Yes. And there is a lot more to the situation than the refusal of Afghans to fight. Many of them fought well and bravely for their country. And Afghanistan was not conquered. The Taliban was defeated. There is a difference.