Making Sense - Sam Harris - #258 — The Fall of Afghanistan

00:00:00.000 welcome to the making sense podcast this is sam harris just a note to say that if you're hearing

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00:00:32.500 therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers so if you enjoy

00:00:36.540 what we're doing here please consider becoming one well we're about a week into the tragedy and

00:00:50.560 fiasco of afghanistan which is in part the topic of today's podcast as you'll hear i'm not entirely

00:00:59.160 sure what i think about our withdrawal that is i'm not sure what i think about whether or not it

00:01:05.820 should have happened i can honestly inhabit both sides of that debate but how we withdrew the lack

00:01:14.940 the lack of preparation the lack of foresight the lack of consultation with our allies like the

00:01:22.480 british our failure to extract the tens of thousands of afghans who helped us right the interpreters and

00:01:30.980 their families whose lives are now in utter jeopardy because of our bungling our failure to ensure the safe

00:01:37.840 passage of our passage of our own citizens all of this is such a shocking betrayal of our obligations

00:01:45.540 and of our own interests that it just beggars belief it's almost impossible to imagine a greater indication

00:01:57.400 of american decline and a greater gift to our enemies to the jihadists globally who must feel

00:02:04.800 absolutely triumphant at this moment and to china and russia who must now know to a moral certainty

00:02:13.480 that they can always call our bluff because we simply are no longer a competent superpower we have

00:02:21.040 been visibly spooked by our own shadow here so if china invades taiwan this year or next or the year

00:02:30.760 after i think it's safe to say that our frantic withdrawal from afghanistan will surely be one of the reasons

00:02:39.140 why they felt they could again i'm not taking a position on the question of whether we should have left

00:02:44.000 afghanistan now or last year or 10 years ago i can see both sides of that debate but the way we left is

00:02:55.440 absolutely astonishing and it will harm us as a nation guaranteed who will trust our assurance of

00:03:03.360 protection now whether it's an ally like taiwan or any faction within a country that we're trying to

00:03:11.960 support in some future humanitarian crisis and if you don't think that matters if you don't think we

00:03:18.860 need our friends to trust us and our enemies to fear us i don't know what planet you think you're

00:03:25.640 living on perhaps you think we can just retreat from geopolitics altogether and simply ignore the rest

00:03:32.480 of the world we should just repair our bridges and get the lead out of our water pipes right of course

00:03:39.920 we should do those things immediately but a world without america as a functioning superpower is a

00:03:48.020 very scary world and not just for americans a world where our nato allies can't trust us to honor our

00:03:55.860 obligations is a world where the risk of major wars has increased not decreased so what has happened in

00:04:04.220 this last week it's like the wheels have completely come off as a country we have to get a handle on

00:04:11.420 this and again i think this has to be recognized and responded to whatever you think about the wisdom

00:04:18.020 of getting out of afghanistan anyway those of you who might want to support our friends in afghanistan

00:04:25.520 who desperately need refugee status i would recommend a donation to the international rescue committee

00:04:32.080 i had david miliband on the podcast previously i think about a year ago who runs it and the waking

00:04:39.480 up foundation will be donating a hundred thousand dollars to the irc this week which of course is

00:04:48.060 made possible by those of you who subscribe either to the making sense podcast or to the waking up app

00:04:54.040 or both so thank you for that and if any of you get inspired to ride along with us in this

00:05:01.760 donation this week to the irc i would certainly welcome it and the website for the international

00:05:08.040 rescue committee is rescue.org and now for today's podcast where we get into many of the details here

00:05:18.060 today i'm speaking with peter bergen peter is the author of several books most recently the rise and fall

00:05:25.840 of osama bin laden which we discuss in the second half of the podcast he is a vice president at new america

00:05:33.520 and a professor at arizona state university and also a national security analyst for cnn

00:05:39.760 peter has testified before congress and held positions at harvard and johns hopkins

00:05:44.800 and has been covering jihadist terrorism and al-qaeda in particular since the 90s

00:05:51.520 so in this podcast we discuss the u.s exit from afghanistan and the resurgence of the taliban

00:05:58.800 and then we get into his new book we cover the neo-isolationist consensus that seems to be forming on the

00:06:08.940 far right and far left politically the legitimacy of our initial involvement in afghanistan

00:06:15.200 whatever you think of the ultimate outcome we discuss our ethical obligations to our afghan allies

00:06:21.580 biden's disastrous messaging the weakness of the afghan army and what happened there the advantages

00:06:29.460 that the taliban had the implications for global jihadism the relationship between the taliban and

00:06:36.280 al-qaeda how osama bin laden came to lead al-qaeda bin laden's religious convictions our failure to

00:06:44.020 capture him at torah borah the distraction of the war in iraq the myth that the cia funded al-qaeda

00:06:51.220 bin laden's relationship with his wives his years of hiding in pakistan his death at the hands of u.s

00:06:59.140 special forces and other topics anyway the conversation is all too timely unfortunately and whether or not

00:07:07.700 afghanistan stays in our new cycle i think the reality of what's happening there is going to have

00:07:14.440 implications for a long time to come and this conversation is certainly a good starting point

00:07:21.800 for thinking about why that's the case and now i bring you peter bergen

00:07:26.980 i am here with peter bergen peter thanks for joining me sam thank you for having me on

00:07:38.860 so you've written a wonderful book which we will get into the rise and fall of osama bin laden

00:07:45.380 it's actually it's a great audiobook too that's how i consumed most of it this week oh that's good

00:07:50.600 to hear yeah yeah you didn't you didn't read it but you i didn't you know actually strangely uh

00:07:55.820 reading these books i don't know if you've done your own books but it's a very exhausting process

00:08:00.560 which is kind of counterintuitive oh yeah yeah no i i it's a total ordeal for me to read books

00:08:06.540 i mean it's it's genuinely harrowing i've actually had to rewrite sentences on the fly because i could

00:08:12.580 literally could not get through them even after 20 takes and i just they were not written to be read

00:08:18.360 by me it was just a an insane cirque du soleil routine that i could not perform so um yes we'll

00:08:24.620 get to the book which is which is all too germane to the current topic that's absorbing everyone's

00:08:30.980 interests now and concern which is the fall of afghanistan to the taliban but um i guess before we

00:08:39.300 jump in uh maybe summarize your background how is it that you come to know about these issues and

00:08:45.440 what have you focused on these many years well you know i was living in manhattan in the in the uh

00:08:51.500 early 90s before i moved to dc and on february in late february 1993 a group of men drove a van into

00:08:59.760 the world trade center parking garage and blew it up intending to bring down both towers and there

00:09:05.740 were these men had one thing in common they'd all supported the afghan war effort against the soviets or

00:09:11.280 actually even fought in afghanistan against the soviets and so i went to my bosses at cnn and

00:09:17.820 said this seems interesting there seems to be some sort of phenomenon here i traveled to afghanistan

00:09:23.580 first time i ever went there it was in the middle of a very brutal civil war much more intense than

00:09:28.640 what we see now uh with peter arnett who was then almost certainly the world's most famous

00:09:35.240 correspondent uh because it was relatively shortly after the end of the gulf war

00:09:40.540 and we and uh another colleague sort of spent many weeks in afghanistan trying to document this and it

00:09:48.100 was a very tricky situation because it was a very nasty civil war and b uh no communications to speak

00:09:55.940 of we took a satellite phone in that was the size of 200 pounds that was the state-of-the-art

00:10:01.860 satellite phone and um today of course you can just use a cell phone so it was it was kind of a hard

00:10:08.440 place to function but after that i heard about bin laden in 1996 um and again went to my bosses at cnn

00:10:17.480 they of course had no idea who he was and i said to them you know perhaps he was responsible

00:10:23.100 for this you know for this phenomenon uh and he really wasn't involved in the in the trade center

00:10:30.040 bombing in 93 except in the most peripheral of ways uh but of course he was responsible for

00:10:36.380 this both organization and movement that would that kind of was an outgrowth of the 93 trade center

00:10:43.160 bombing yeah yeah so um we'll go you know we'll go back into the history a bit and track through your

00:10:50.140 book but what are your thoughts now upon seeing over the last week what has happened in afghanistan

00:10:56.520 well unfortunately it was both predicted and predictable you know not only by myself but by

00:11:02.120 others because you didn't need to be sort of clauswitz to recognize that if we absented ourselves

00:11:08.200 entirely we the united states well then all our nato allies would leave there were by the way 2500

00:11:13.560 american troops but there were 7 000 nato allied troops and 16 000 contractors all of which have left

00:11:22.360 or are in the process of leaving and this caused a complete collapse of morale

00:11:27.700 amongst the afghan military and afghan government and there's a kind of line of argument that the

00:11:32.200 afghan army was weak and then you know certainly there is you know some truth to it you know an

00:11:37.200 incompetently led organization but 66 000 afghan soldiers and afghan policemen died fighting the

00:11:43.760 taliban which is about 30 times larger than the number of american fatalities so you know it's not that

00:11:49.900 there wasn't a will to fight it's just the will to fight evaporated when there was no longer medevac

00:11:54.680 close air support american advisors etc hmm yeah i want to get into the uh the seeming conundrum of

00:12:04.540 of what happened with the afghan army but before we do a little what i'm troubled by in the last few

00:12:11.460 days in just in witnessing the reaction to this there seems to be a consensus forming in

00:12:18.360 domestically in america i mean maybe it's worldwide but there's a kind of neo-isolationist

00:12:25.120 consensus on the far left and the far right and for you know maybe far is in scare quotes i don't

00:12:31.940 know how far in either direction you have to go before you run into this but it seems that both sides

00:12:36.920 of the political spectrum have large cohorts that agree that not only did we have to leave afghanistan

00:12:44.180 but we had no business being there in the first place right and the whole project was illegitimate

00:12:49.740 and you know on the right i think you you tend to hear people denigrating the afghans and thinking

00:12:56.280 that they just you know they're not ready for democracy they want the taliban they're barbarians

00:13:01.180 this was a fool's errand to try to bring them into the 21st century and you know above all at this

00:13:06.820 moment let's keep their damn refugees out of our country right so there's that attitude on the far

00:13:11.420 right on the left people tend to denigrate america and western civilization and so the the very the

00:13:20.660 idea that we could pretend to want to spread our values to the rest of the world when we're the

00:13:25.980 greatest criminals and terrorists in history and i mean it's just it's surreal on the left on the left

00:13:31.980 you have people who list their preferred pronouns in their twitter bios and who would want to see their

00:13:37.200 neighbors and co-workers destroyed for telling off-color jokes but who will simultaneously claim

00:13:42.560 that we shouldn't judge the treatment of women under the taliban right i mean who are we to pretend to

00:13:48.280 care about these women and who are we to even judge this ancient culture for its own you know norms but

00:13:54.580 both sides seem to agree that we we have no business being the world's cop and that nation building never

00:13:59.740 works and you know that and then you have these phrases these catchphrases that do immense work

00:14:05.900 here where you the afghanistan was the graveyard of empires right so which of course this was

00:14:10.740 ill-conceived and you know we were committed to a forever war here and and on both sides people seem

00:14:18.560 to imagine that the reason why we were in there was to enrich ourselves in some way we were stealing

00:14:23.700 natural resources and i'm sure both sides in the end will find some way to put the jews at the back

00:14:29.580 of all of this i mean it's just what we're living in a in a information space that is contaminated by

00:14:34.780 conspiracy theory and a complete loss of trust in the media in institutions in the possibility of

00:14:43.240 benign american power and so i just you know before we get into the details of of the rest i'm just

00:14:51.020 wondering how you see that this consensus that we you know we had to rip the band-aid off

00:14:56.520 and we're better for it we'll just get the hell out this was going to fail precise i mean in some

00:15:02.320 ways biden has almost echoed this like i said it was it was always going to be this bad there was no

00:15:07.400 way to exit there was going to be any better just rip the band-aid off right yeah and of course i have

00:15:13.280 a whole host of reactions to that i mean yet we've heard from the white house in a sense uh through

00:15:19.400 white house reporters that you know the fact that it all collapsed so quickly is evidence of

00:15:24.780 biden's brilliant brilliant decision um which kind of a sort of strange way of defending a not very

00:15:31.380 smart decision but um so you know i mean there there are many things to be said for a start there

00:15:37.720 are 1.3 million active duty americans 2 million when you throw in the reserves and um you know 2,500

00:15:44.680 is not a large i'm not a mathematician but it's a really really small percentage of the force that

00:15:49.780 we have and that was what sufficient to kind of prevent the collapse that that followed and you

00:15:58.040 know i think that this was just completely unnecessary you know there's kind of two arguments

00:16:03.740 sort of that have been heard one is that you know this was a great idea but the execution was

00:16:08.660 terrible well no one's denying the execution was a total fiasco but i'm also i'm unconvinced there

00:16:15.040 was a right policy decision one of the you know there's a great washington dc tendency which we're

00:16:20.080 seeing right now which is when you make a policy fiasco you blame it on the intelligence and you say

00:16:26.840 the intelligence didn't really tell us that this would collapse so quickly or whatever but i think this

00:16:31.720 was very fast moving um and and it was predictable that if we just pull the plug or rip the manage off

00:16:39.420 as you put it you know that there was going to be real problems and uh you know here they are

00:16:45.280 and you know there's kind of back to the future element to this because we're approaching the 20th

00:16:51.000 anniversary of 9-11 the taliban are in control of afghanistan al-qaeda according to the united nations

00:16:58.340 in a report released in june is closely aligned with the taliban uh the taliban al-qaeda is present

00:17:04.620 in 19 of the 34 afghan provinces again according to the u.n and the resistance to the taliban has been

00:17:12.820 led by akhmashah masood's son in the panjir valley which is exactly what was you know two days before 9-11

00:17:21.460 akhmashah masood was assassinated by al-qaeda so you know we'll see how this

00:17:28.020 you know what it means what does it mean for american national security is kind of another

00:17:31.320 question i mean right we're much more well defended than we were in the past than say on 9-11 but there

00:17:38.280 are going to be plenty of people sort of excited about this who either will try to go and get

00:17:43.920 training in afghanistan or simply radicalize at home in front of their computer and do something in

00:17:49.100 the name of the taliban or al-qaeda as we saw during the uh isis caliphate yeah yeah well so just to focus

00:17:57.320 on the legitimacy of this of the initial project for another moment it seems to me one can one really

00:18:05.400 has to make distinctions fairly granular distinctions across every point in this timeline so for instance

00:18:12.420 one could certainly admit that going into afghanistan was perfectly legitimate we went in for

00:18:20.480 the right reasons we had to go in but then also concede that the project failed there for a variety

00:18:27.020 of reasons that we need to understand and that weren't foreordained right or you could further argue

00:18:34.340 that despite how difficult uh our 20 years there were the project itself was still salvageable right

00:18:43.380 that you know the serious combat for our troops had ended somewhere around 2014 and that our continued

00:18:49.260 presence there would have been far preferable to what has now happened i mean we've been in south

00:18:54.820 korea for 70 years or so and you know we've been in western europe longer than that and no one's talking

00:19:01.320 about a forever war with respect to those places so it's clear that we can maintain troops in places

00:19:07.100 for a sane purpose you know whether it's humanitarian or geopolitical or both without feeling that we have

00:19:14.760 become the world's masochists or an evil empire so it's just whatever you think you know wherever you

00:19:21.200 fall in your your optimism or pessimism with respect to the possibilities in afghanistan it's still

00:19:28.740 possible to argue that maintaining our presence there as mediocre as the results seemed is far

00:19:36.540 better than than what has just happened and what is likely to be coming i mean i'm in violent agreement

00:19:42.360 with that you know the enemy of the perfect isn't sort of uh the reasonably okay and what we had before

00:19:48.860 was sort of reasonably okay and this is obviously a catastrophic debacle uh that has sort of taken place and

00:19:56.580 um so you know the the the 2500 troops or the 3500 troops and part of this also was just about

00:20:04.500 i think our messaging and we've been saying since that we're planning to leave afghanistan since

00:20:09.340 december 1st 2009 when president obama went to west point to announce a surge and at the same time

00:20:16.140 a surge of troops and the same time announced their withdrawal date and of course trump you know

00:20:21.400 repeatedly said we're leaving and and biden has completed the withdrawal of course he can change

00:20:25.640 his mind i mean president obama changed his mind in iraq after the rise of isis and sent in you know

00:20:31.840 thousands of troops in the end to train the iraqi counterterrorism service which turned out to be a

00:20:37.220 very effective special forces unit which pretty much destroyed much of al-qaeda in iraq with american

00:20:43.480 air support so you know that this is not over biden can change his mind i mean right now we're in the

00:20:49.040 phase of trying to get americans out and our allies but um yeah it yeah yes i mean even there like even

00:20:57.340 if you disagree with the position i just sketched out which i the truth is i'm not i'm not even sure

00:21:02.420 what my view is here i you know i could easily be persuaded that we should have gotten out more or less

00:21:08.960 now right but what seems patently obvious and and and is has been denied by every one of biden's

00:21:17.620 public utterances i've heard thus far is that we could have and should have massively prepared

00:21:25.960 to extract not only our you know the 10 or 15 000 american citizens who are rumored to still be there

00:21:35.540 but um all of our allies i mean all of the people who put their lives on the line to collaborate with

00:21:42.540 us you know who are translators and people who are now very much at risk of being killed by the

00:21:49.980 taliban i mean we had an ethical obligation we have an ethical obligation to get them out and the

00:21:56.220 idea that we couldn't have done it in a truly orderly way with sufficient force on the ground that

00:22:02.680 just seems insane and and that i don't know how in in his messaging about this i don't know why biden

00:22:09.380 would even be tempted to try to put a brave face on on how this has has unraveled here and claim that

00:22:16.700 there's there was no better way to do this we can't even guarantee the safe passage of our own

00:22:23.920 citizens to the airport well i mean i completely agree with that i don't think there's a single

00:22:28.880 person listening to this who doesn't think that this has been you know extremely poorly handled the

00:22:34.540 the harder question where people do disagree is like was it the right thing to do let's let's do

00:22:39.800 the thought experiment where this was perfectly planned and a year went into the planning and

00:22:44.920 everybody needed to get out got out you know i think you would have still ended up uh with the

00:22:50.420 with the taliban in control and you know some people may be fine with that and some people may

00:22:54.900 may not be i mean i i fall into the category of i spent a fair amount of time in taliban controlled

00:22:59.900 afghanistan uh so and i have a healthy skepticism for their claims of amnesty for people that were

00:23:06.140 fighting them i have a healthy skepticism for their claims about girls being educated or women having

00:23:12.580 jobs i mean there is the crucial modifier in their statements sam is whenever they say something like

00:23:19.740 uh will yeah well of course we'll have education for for women and then they add in the context of

00:23:26.980 sharia law yeah which is a pretty large caveat because their interpretation sharia law differs

00:23:33.700 pretty markedly from most muslims uh and the same thing they've actually said about the independent

00:23:39.220 media yeah we're going to have an independent media but they're going to have to kind of do it in

00:23:43.240 the context of sharia law so you know that these are huge caveats and these are coming from you know

00:23:49.300 the sort of doha taliban or political taliban the people in the field you know they're going to

00:23:55.680 sort of make their own judgments about who they want to kill or you know attack because the taliban

00:24:01.660 itself is not a monolithic entity so you know it's i have a question for you which is you know if you

00:24:09.040 were to score this as sort of an american failure is this hurricane katrina you know for bush is this

00:24:15.360 you know the iraq war decision is this you know it's it's hard for me to think of a of an analog

00:24:22.280 of something that was so poorly handled and so uh unnecessarily screwed up even with the iraq war

00:24:29.640 decision it didn't really become clear until several months in what a fiasco it was and you know all the

00:24:35.180 false pretenses that that it was kind of predicated upon here the disaster is immediately obvious from day

00:24:41.100 one and i i doubt the pictures are going to get better over time yeah yeah i mean there's there's

00:24:46.560 something especially grotesque about this because the images you know and i'm sure we're going to see

00:24:53.820 worse in coming weeks but i mean the the images we have are you know every bit as bad as the fall of

00:25:00.800 saigon and biden is becoming a gaffe machine with respect to this topic i mean the the images have

00:25:09.020 have been supplied you know precisely in the form he said they they would never appear right you know

00:25:15.400 he said we will not see fall of saigon like images and what we have seen is is worse but certainly

00:25:21.080 reminiscent of of of those older images i mean there's just a pervasive sense that you know

00:25:27.280 there are no grown-ups left to help run the world i mean if biden's presidency meant anything as a

00:25:36.480 a real turning of the page from trump's it was in a renewed commitment to competence right and i mean

00:25:45.400 this is so incompetent i mean i don't think we should be under under any illusions that it would be better

00:25:50.720 if trump were in charge i mean if trump were president i'm sure he would have done something just like

00:25:56.760 this i mean he's the one who committed us to getting out in may you know he signed this uh i

00:26:03.220 believe it's referred to as the capitulation agreement with the taliban so he's he started

00:26:07.880 us on this path but you know if he were president you could just imagine what his messaging would be

00:26:13.380 he would say things like i mean he's totally capable of saying things like i love the taliban you

00:26:19.480 know they say oh they only say nice things about me you know he he it could just be a complete

00:26:24.240 repudiation of any sort of moral integrity we once had but effectively that's happening anyway in how

00:26:33.660 little thought we've given to the the well-being of the people who helped us and yeah i mean the the

00:26:41.100 idea that a generation of women and girls is now going to be pitched back into the dark ages

00:26:45.620 is something that no one should be comfortable with and it's certainly an argument it it's all one

00:26:52.420 needs for an argument to have continued our presence there for another generation at whatever

00:26:58.740 sacrifice it seemed you know at this point a truly minimal sacrifice just to ensure that women and

00:27:05.780 girls are not uh pointlessly immiserated for um the rest of their lives under the taliban and you

00:27:12.300 i like the i like the verb immiserated because also that's going to be true for much of the rest of

00:27:18.540 the population i mean i uh immiseration that i witnessed when i was in taliban controlled

00:27:24.960 afghanistan was you know the the country had already gone through the soviet occupation and the civil war

00:27:30.420 the economy was what remained of the economy completely disappeared under the taliban you know i i spoke to

00:27:37.180 doctors who were earning in kabul who were earning six dollars a month and you know the taliban that so

00:27:42.440 what is the taliban project the taliban project is to make society pure and the and then when society

00:27:49.660 is pure everybody will be you know utopia will be achieved unfortunately that doesn't plan for things

00:27:56.680 like you know keeping the electricity on or the water or the taliban is not really interested in sort

00:28:00.980 of conventional governance they are interested in judicial decision making and they're interested in kind

00:28:08.040 of you know kind of how to you know set up an educational system that conforms with their views

00:28:14.020 but as for anything else they don't have you know maybe the new taliban will have more competent people

00:28:19.660 but they certainly didn't when they were in power and it's really not their priority i mean i haven't seen

00:28:25.340 a taliban plan for you know kind of what their economic plan is or like it's almost a good it's almost an

00:28:31.640 oxymoron so you know unfortunately we can expect them to as we've already seen you know

00:28:37.740 attack or try and attack anybody that they consider to be an enemy which is anybody who

00:28:45.380 collaborated with the united states or our nato allies and the number is you know i i it's hard

00:28:53.480 to put a number on how many people worked with different we had 49 countries in there at one

00:28:58.480 point who are going back to the trend of legitimacy actually sam i mean this is probably one of the more

00:29:04.120 legitimate wars in history because not only did the congress vote overwhelmingly with only one

00:29:10.480 descending vote which was barbara lee of california and then nato invoked article five for the first

00:29:16.480 time and only time in its history the collective right to self-defense and rather crucially the united

00:29:21.300 nations passed a resolution a few days after 9 11 saying that the united states could respond by any

00:29:27.100 means necessary which is u.n speak for you know basically you can go to war in a legitimate sense

00:29:33.540 so yeah i can't think of a war certainly the united states has conducted where there was

00:29:38.120 that level of international and unanimity on the legitimacy of the war you know i'm surprised by the

00:29:46.600 figure that you gave earlier of the troop levels of our allies that were still there that opens the

00:29:55.020 question why is it all on us or maybe i'm just i have a myopic view of our own national disgrace

00:30:02.200 here but and i think the uk is people in the uk are expressing the same opinion of themselves but why

00:30:08.540 you know why was our pulling out synonymous with the unraveling of everything that is a very good

00:30:16.080 question but i mean the 7 000 american allied troops the nato troops that were there you know a lot of

00:30:23.820 them were doing advise and assist missions it was non-combat roles you know like in in germany and

00:30:30.240 and and you know the the german you know the german political dispensation wouldn't allow germans to be

00:30:38.220 involved in combat and so they were you know mostly in supporting roles of one kind of or another which is

00:30:44.980 important we're gathering intelligence but you know we provide the the security umbrella under under which

00:30:50.680 all this took place well and that's in terms of you know our satellite imagery and our our drones and

00:30:56.880 you know the levels of intelligence we have and you know the and and the fact that we have special

00:31:03.800 operations and you know forces that can go out on counter-terrorism missions i think you know that

00:31:09.480 when that was pulled out i mean a leading indicator i don't know if you remember this sound but

00:31:13.620 the australians said they were going to close their embassy it feels like it was several weeks ago

00:31:18.000 that they said that i mean they saw the writing on the wall and the australians actually fought rather

00:31:23.040 bravely you know in in afghanistan so it just it just created this sort of crisis of confidence and

00:31:29.320 and war you know i'm war is always about a contest of wills and if you know if if the will starts

00:31:36.020 kind of receding it's it's a very quick you know it's the hemingway line about how did you go

00:31:40.440 bankrupt well first gradually and then suddenly this is what happened well so on on the point of

00:31:45.660 bankruptcy what do we make of the collapse of the afghan government and the afghan police and and

00:31:54.520 armed forces i mean it seems like the writing has been on the wall there for a very long time in

00:32:00.840 terms of our knowing about the corruption of the government actually i i you know i was unaware of

00:32:09.020 how deep this ran but this week i someone surfaced a documentary that was from 2012 perhaps you saw it

00:32:17.240 the the journalist ben anderson for vice uh we with along with eddie moretti produced this documentary

00:32:24.580 titled this is what winning looks like i think came out in 2012 and he was just ben anderson was

00:32:31.660 embedded with u.s forces who were taking a purely supportive role for um afghan forces at that point

00:32:40.420 and just letting them execute all their missions and the the kind of lack of real trust and you know

00:32:49.140 real morale between the americans and the the the afghans was pretty startling and i mean they're just

00:32:58.040 these ghastly episodes where you know they'd they'd find you know an afghan police commander who's you

00:33:06.000 know raping boys uh and they wanted you know the yeah the americans want to do something about this

00:33:11.500 and what they come up against is that this is basically a social norm that you know it's just

00:33:16.400 it's ubiquitous it's like i think one of the afghans said you know good luck finding a police commander

00:33:21.080 who's not raping boys right i mean it's just this is what we do then they were they were raped as boys

00:33:25.360 and now they're entitled to rape boys and so there was just there was such a disjunction between

00:33:29.740 any kind of idealism for what could be built through this partnership and what was actual and the actual

00:33:39.100 truth on the ground and there were so many signs that this would unravel i mean that we're putting

00:33:46.200 people in totally untenable situations when we're going into a village a lot you know along with afghan

00:33:52.540 forces and demanding that people support the government and it was perfectly obvious that

00:34:00.360 the villagers i mean they had to hedge their bets i mean they because they know the taliban could be

00:34:06.340 in there in the next the next week making the the opposite demands and they just they have to

00:34:12.560 more or less agree to be loyal to whoever is standing in front of them holding a gun

00:34:18.520 so i don't know did you ever see that film i didn't but you know i mean i experienced it myself

00:34:25.380 and you know i was in helmand with the marines in 2009 there was a marine lieutenant colonel

00:34:29.960 and he was asked by a farmer you know how long do you plan to be around and uh the marine lieutenant

00:34:34.940 colonel wasn't gonna lie to him he said i can only promise you i'll be here for nine months

00:34:39.200 and the farmer you know clearly what the farmer meant was you know exactly what you've pointed out which

00:34:45.560 is like i i you know people switched surrendered to the taliban not because they suddenly became

00:34:51.280 enthusiasts for the taliban's view of utopia but because they want to keep their heads on their bodies

00:34:56.700 and you know the war in afghanistan began began in 1978 it began even before the soviets invaded

00:35:02.320 so it's been going on for 43 years and afghans want to survive and uh you know they've had

00:35:10.120 multiple switches in 92 the kabul fell the communists were defeated and kabul fell to the

00:35:16.840 sort of the warlords in 96 kabul fell to the taliban in 2001 kabul fell to the americans uh and now it's

00:35:25.220 fallen back to the taliban so i think there's a it's not that afghans are sort of inherently

00:35:30.760 conniving they just uh you know they've had a long experience of needing to survive in a war that's

00:35:38.040 gone on for almost half a century and so what you describe in that documentary is is you know is

00:35:44.420 exactly right which is but going back to the question of corruption and the police and the army

00:35:48.860 you know i've all i went out on patrol with uh afghan police in the sort of 2003 2004 time period and

00:35:56.240 you know they were smoking the best quality grass you can get in the world and that was about all they

00:36:02.760 were doing so you know the police were very poorly paid no real morale the army's slightly better but

00:36:09.420 you know when president biden talks about the three thousand three hundred thousand man army

00:36:13.100 that that figure is probably half that because so many people were deserted so many ghosts ghost

00:36:19.440 soldiers so you know it that was it hasn't really been that wasn't really much of a success

00:36:25.180 the afghan special forces are quite robust and and they were they've been fighting well and the afghan

00:36:33.040 air force has some competence but but clearly the afghan army you know if you haven't been fed or paid

00:36:40.120 for many many months it's not like you're going to have a tremendous loyalty to the central government

00:36:45.220 yeah and there's also just this truly asymmetrical advantage with respect to morale and commitment

00:36:52.460 when you picture the psychology on the taliban side i mean you have one side that is literally

00:36:59.400 fighting for paradise or their conception of paradise and the other is fighting for money praying some

00:37:07.500 pragmatic sense of the game theory of the moment and you know it's just all of that is however you can

00:37:14.700 stitch it together is far more fragile unless they were there are people a sufficient number of people

00:37:22.040 people on the the government and army side who are i mean this i mean this speaks to some

00:37:31.080 possibility that there's there's more sympathy with the af with the with the taliban worldview

00:37:36.720 than we might want to emphasize in this context i mean it's just it's it's i could imagine if most afghans

00:37:43.060 are as horrified by the taliban as i am then the explanation that they haven't been paid

00:37:49.400 doesn't cut it right i mean this is a life and death struggle against a totalitarian theocracy you'd

00:37:55.740 expect the two sides would really fight it out but i have to expect that while they may not be

00:38:02.540 totally sympathetic with the conception of the of sharia that the taliban is going to demand of them

00:38:09.220 it's not as um obscenely divergent from what most people think should be normative uh as it would be in our

00:38:20.240 context i would sort of caveat that pretty heavily in the following sense so you know the taliban is

00:38:25.780 overwhelmingly pashtun movement the pashtuns are uh you know 40 roughly of the population they are most

00:38:32.180 almost entirely from the south and the east and so the norms that they have are the norms of rural

00:38:38.520 pashtuns uh these are not the norms of tajiks hazaras or uzbeks or people who live in the cities

00:38:46.240 you know they're not like right yeah it's it's obviously you know i'm not saying that people in

00:38:51.020 cabal are like you know sort of taking tons of drugs and going to discos and like you know there's

00:38:56.120 there's obviously gender segregation but it's a very of a different you know it's of a much lower order

00:39:01.520 so i i agree with you in the sense that just to ask you like if you i don't know a ton about him

00:39:07.320 but you know someone like akhmad shamasud right who you mentioned earlier i i can't imagine he was a

00:39:14.360 um as liberal a figure as as we would want him to be you know in opposition to al-qaeda and the taliban

00:39:21.280 that that that is true look i mean akhmad shamasud who i met in 93 and was kind of an astonishing

00:39:26.300 human being probably the most impressive person i've ever met he um was an islamist right

00:39:31.500 but he was also an islamist with a kind of orientation to the west i mean he's i think

00:39:35.320 he went to a french lycée in cabal he you know he was perfectly happy dealing with westerners and

00:39:41.780 so it's it is a matter of degree as you point out yeah but and the other thing also just a sort of

00:39:47.560 related point on the taliban and the taliban also pays people and they're sitting on a you know

00:39:51.900 multi-billion dollar poppy opium enterprise and so i think for a lot of the foot soldiers of the taliban

00:39:58.300 you know they may not completely subscribe to taliban ideology and they may not really care

00:40:05.040 about it completely they are getting paid pretty steadily and just like isis was able to pay people

00:40:11.640 there's kind of a distinction between a terrorist group and insurgent group you know obviously they're

00:40:16.400 kind of military differences but terrorist groups tend to be volunteers and and often from the middle

00:40:21.560 upper middle class or middle class an insurgent group usually has people on the payroll you know when

00:40:26.340 you have 30 000 men in the field or 60 000 or 75 000 as in the case now the taliban you know that's a

00:40:33.580 pretty big payroll to meet and and so uh the taliban was paying people uh there are limited jobs for

00:40:40.200 young men in in afghanistan and so i don't you know there is some ideological component to this

00:40:45.580 but there's also for some people this is just a job and it's um it's a job where you're actually

00:40:51.220 getting paid yeah yeah and it's again you're back in the what appears to be what clearly is the

00:40:56.860 stronger horse right it's just it's purely pragmatic at that point as well yeah so how do you view this

00:41:03.280 now let's think about the implications of this for jihadism globally do we think that um a a resurgent

00:41:13.580 taliban you know something like a a their version of a caliphate uh in afghanistan will have a similar

00:41:22.480 galvanizing effect that that the islamic state had worldwide and is this just the pendulum swing back

00:41:30.200 into global jihadism claiming more and more of our of our bandwidth uh geopolitically and journalistically

00:41:37.740 i think the short answer is yes i mean why would it be any different i mean here here the taliban

00:41:43.480 in their own minds defeated first the soviets because a lot of them came out of the anti-soviet

00:41:48.480 jihad and now the americans and that's a pretty big uh deal and um you know they're going to declare

00:41:54.900 not a caliphate but an emirate the distinctions between the two are less important than the similarities

00:42:00.140 right and the commander of the faithful is how the taliban refers to their leader which is a claim that

00:42:06.020 not only do i lead the taliban but i'm in charge of all muslims everywhere which was the same claim

00:42:10.760 that abu baka al-bagdadi made when he declared isis so you know one of the big differences i think is

00:42:16.580 that isis was like pathologically sectarian the taliban certainly have engaged in anti-shia

00:42:23.000 anti-hazara massacres uh it may not be the defining core of their movement which for the ice for isis

00:42:29.860 clearly that was the case but i think you're going to see foreign fighters pouring in from south

00:42:35.740 asia and and parts of europe to join this you know incredible incredibly successful enterprise

00:42:42.200 and you'll see a few americans who may try and travel there you'll certainly see people radicalizing

00:42:47.600 in front of their computers because you know they they believe that this great jihadist victory has

00:42:53.160 happened and they self-identify and we saw that with isis the problem of course in the united states

00:42:58.820 was people kind of self-radicalizing because of the isis geographical caliphate and it was very

00:43:03.480 exciting once that caliphate geographically disappeared uh the number of people who got

00:43:08.760 excited about it was much much smaller because no one wants to join the losing side so right now the

00:43:13.180 taliban are the winning side al-qaeda is you know kind of on the front lines with them and not only

00:43:19.100 al-qaeda but other jihadi groups so you know i i think we've seen this movie before we kind of know

00:43:25.440 how it begins and we also know how it ends it doesn't end usually very well for the groups concerned

00:43:31.080 because ultimately a coalition of nations and other groups kind of it's kind of like napoleon in 1813

00:43:38.820 which is like if you make make a world of enemies it's going to lead to your own defeat and these

00:43:43.980 groups tend to do that um they tend to kind of create a lot of antibodies whether it's in domestically

00:43:49.960 or internationally well so now we're kind of backing into the um contents of your book um we know

00:43:57.360 through your reporting that there's been a very cozy relationship between the taliban and and al-qaeda

00:44:04.520 all the while uh there was really you know while there was some discomfort at various stages of

00:44:10.600 osama bin laden's uh reign where he was you know seeking publicity in ways that that mullah omar and

00:44:17.340 others found inconvenient there was never really a significant breach between them and they've been

00:44:24.260 mutually supportive until the present but i'm wondering what do we know about the fact that

00:44:31.100 there was not only not real collaboration but actually overt hostility between the taliban and

00:44:38.380 isis or the islamic state yeah i mean they've certainly been fighting each other and is that

00:44:45.920 ideological or is it just not wanting to share the power as far as i can tell it's mostly taliban groups

00:44:52.840 sort of slapped on the isis kind of uh patch and you know that makes them bigger and badder and

00:44:59.020 i i don't think it's it's like the narcissism of minor differences which is freud's um brilliant

00:45:04.260 observation about most human activity and you you do think it is or you don't think it is no i think

00:45:09.620 it's i think i don't i don't think there's some big ideological split right certainly isis is more

00:45:14.320 likely to attack shia whether in afghanistan or anywhere else but i think it's more just that

00:45:20.000 certain taliban groups wanted to be the biggest baddest person on the block and slapped on the

00:45:26.340 isis patch and it was more about you know local grievances or local personalities i don't think

00:45:32.180 there was the taliban of course had engaged in negotiations the united states which isis clearly

00:45:37.780 hasn't done but i see it as more you know the narcissism of minor differences rather than some

00:45:43.520 big ideological split right obviously isis and al-qaeda have split in a kind of perhaps a little

00:45:49.460 more ideological manner because al-qaeda has tended to want to to avoid attacking shia except al-qaeda in

00:45:57.620 iraq which of course was the sort of the progenitor of isis right right okay so let's get into the history

00:46:05.040 here and um the fascinating case study of osama bin laden there's there's we actually know a lot

00:46:12.160 about him now as you report just given how many documents were liberated

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - August 23, 2021

#258 — The Fall of Afghanistan

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