The Daily Stoic - Elliot Ackerman on Storytelling and the Cyclical Nature of History

Episode Date: September 17, 2022

Ryan talks to author and journalist Elliot Ackerman about his new book The Fifth Act: America's End in Afghanistan, the origins of storytelling, his experiences evacuating hundreds of refugees in Afghanistan, and more.Elliot Ackerman is a former White House Fellow and Marine, and served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart. Elliot’s books have been nominated for the National Book Award, the Andrew Carnegie Medal in both fiction and non-fiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize among others. His writing often appears in Esquire, The New Yorker, and The New York Times where he is a contributing opinion writer, and his stories have been included in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Travel Writing.📕Pre-order Ryan Holiday's new book "Discipline Is Destiny" and get exclusive pre-order bonuses at https://dailystoic.com/preorder ✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoke. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stokes. Something to help you live up to those four stoic virtues of-juice of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time.

Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward.

Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. I had this weird experience recently where I just reconnected with someone that was in my life when I was very, very young. I don't need to go into how I know them, but now they're very, very old. They're in their 90s. And I haven't seen them in probably 10, 15 years. And even then it was only once very briefly. We just sort of fallen out of touch. As you know, people sort of come in and out of your lives, especially when you're young,

and it's not really your job to keep in track of the relationship, I kind of forgot about this person. And we ended up reconnecting recently. We sent a few letters back and forth, and then I saw them when I was, when I was in the town that they live in. And we had this like wonderful, beautiful, just like heart to heart conversation. It was overwhelming emotionally in so many ways. But as I, as I was leaving, I felt like I was really upset. I was upset and felt guilty that I wasted so much time that I could have been having this relationship with this person. In the other hand, I felt kind of like anxious and worried

and nervous, like how much time do I have left with this person? And it struck me in that moment, a very stoic idea, which is what had happened in the past was regrettable, and no one was really to blame, it was sad, but it just was. And then this thing that I was nervous about in the future, anxious about, or stressed about, it was totally outside of my control. And both of those things, thinking about both of those things, not only were they making me unhappy, but they were rejecting the present moment that I was in. Like I was thinking about this literally as I was with the person instead of fully being there, or instead of just calling up the person and saying that this is how

I felt. And it's just a reminder that we find these stoic lessons, not just in these big, huge moments, but in these little moments. And we try to practice and apply them in all facets of our lives. And we try to get better at them as we go. The only little lesson I would add here, the only little note before I get to today's intro is maybe there's someone like that in your life you haven't thought about or you think about everyone's want to go, I should reach out to them. In my experience in my life, I have never regretted making that reach out. The handful of regrets I do have are when I said I'll do it later and I didn't get a

chance with that person. Let this be a nod or a bump or a nudge to send that letter or phone call or email or message on social media and reconnect with someone you've lost touch with. That's kind of actually how this podcast goes, too, is there's this people I haven't talked to, I've always wanted to talk to, and I shoot them a note and we end up having this conversation. One of those people is Elliot Ackerman, a former White House fellow in Marine. He served five tours of duty in Iraq in Afghanistan, where you received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and a Purple Heart.

I read his book many years ago. I met, I read his novel many years ago, Green on Blue. I found it to be quite moving. I reached out several months ago and had him on the podcast. And then he shot me a note and said, hey, I really enjoy that conversation. We do it again. I've got a new book coming out. And I was very excited to read his new book.

It's sort of a memoir slash exploration of the longest war in American history. It's titled The Fifth Act, America's End in Afghanistan. Elliott and I discuss his courageous decision to join an impromptu effort by a group of journalists and veterans to arrange flights and negotiate with both the Taliban and American forces to secure the safe evacuation of hundreds of people during the end of the war in Afghanistan. And he walks us through the collapse of the effort there. It's noble, but also flawed beginnings, how it could have potentially gone differently. It's desperate in-game.

And of course, the war's echoing legacy. His books have been nominated for a national book award in Andrew Carnegie Medal in both fiction and nonfiction that date and literary peace prize among others is written for S. Quire in the New Yorker in the New York Times, where he's a contributing opinion writer. And his stories are award winning and wonderful.

And I can't recommend his work enough. You can go to ElliottAckerman.com. You can go to Twitter at ElliottAckerman. You can check out his new book, The Fifth Act, America's End in Afghanistan. I also recommend his novel on the Afghanistan War of Green on Blue. Just a wonderful conversation.

I was very excited to have. And I think you're going to enjoy it. Do you ever get locked? When you ever writing, do you ever just like completely loose track of time? Yes, and I'm not always great showing up on time for these things either, so don't worry about it. I have a theory that if we're all fine,

there's a task that I decide like I absolutely need to complete, and it will not be getting completed completed and I'll be watching myself be late but I'm like I must complete the task. Oh really, okay, I'm not that I don't do that. I'm when things are in my calendar, they like loom very large. So I like have to do them, but I do find if I'm writing that will be the only thing that I'll lose track of time with. But I have this theory that if you don't lose track of time doing what you do for a living, you probably picked the wrong job. Like that's a sign that you love what you do that you lose track while doing it. Meanwhile, you know, like when you have like those wage jobs,

like as a kid or whatever, you'd be like, oh, I can't believe I bit like this day's going so slow. And then you look at the clock and it'd be like 40 minutes had elapsed of the eight hour shift. No, I'm on, I'm sort of on holiday right now. And I went to check on my son as in the other room kind of down the hall. And I was very pleased because I went just to see

what he was up to and he was reading one of those, you know, the Nathan Hale series, like the history comic books, this guy sells like, yeah, yeah, yeah, he does really well with these books. So he's reading one on Lafayette that he likes. So, you know, that's when it was room. I was like, hey, buddy, you all right? And he's like, what?

And I'm like, I miss tennis, that I, you know, yeah, I'm like, no, no, no. And he said, okay, sorry, I just really liked Lafayette books. So I was like, you know, very pleased that he was, you know, that immersed in the thing that he, you know, thought he'd missed something. Yeah, that's either like a forest gum thing,

like, is he like me? Or it's like, yes, he got the gene, like he got the gene. He got the gene that you want him to have. Yeah, well, I guess it's just, it's not, it's another way of saying it's nice to get lost in something, you know, that is increasingly difficult to do. Well, or it's very easy to do, right? Like my kid can also get utterly absorbed and lose track of time and not hear me talking

to him when he's playing Minecraft or watching a YouTube video. But I think we rank those as not the same thing as being engaged in writing or reading or playing with Legos or something. Like obviously we rank the absorption of activities differently. There's like the flow state and then there's the checked out vegetative state. Yes. And I guess I would just say in myself, I really crave the capacity to get lost. And I just, you know, I know, like,

you know, the summer's gonna end here soon. And I know that I'm gonna enter the phase of the year where the, you know, the interruptions are constant. The sketch length is relentless. And it just becomes tough to have those like swaths of, you know, a moment where you're doing something and you realize that you're not even sure what time it is. Like is it, like, you know, is it 11 or is it two in the afternoon? I kind of forget. And that's really nice.

I just experienced a bit of that this morning also. Like I was on vacation and then I was in DC with my family where they're doing a bunch of different stuff. So like today was like back to real life. And it only occurred to me that it was Thursday, like you know, I had sort of Monday energy for me. But like the drive to my office took a lot longer than normal. And then I was like, oh, school is in session, right?

It's like my kids don't like you're in Texas, right? Yeah, exactly. And so I just missed that school, because my kids are young and then we do some different kinds of schooling. But I just missed the ritual of everyone starting school. And so my my drive, which I passed like two different schools was back to how it was before it started. Yeah, I was actually, I was just in Texas yesterday. And, and forgot that it starts like two or three weeks earlier there, because I'm

on the Northeast now. And it's like we still have like, through Labor Day, and it feels very summery still for all the kids. Yes. Yes. So I think what's interesting about you, I was thinking about this, is like, this might sound condescending, but you're like a real writer. Like you are really into, I think about the number of books

that you have written in a short amount of time. You didn't just do like, hey, I want to do one book about like my service and I'm, you seem to have like really, this is, this feels like it was what you were meant to do. Well, I like what I like what I do and I like writing books and I think as you know, it's a privilege to be able to write books. So, yeah, I mean, this is what I do. I wake up every day. It's just like what I do. I work on books. I've got like, you know, I've got my projects that I'm, you know, tinkering away on, you know, novels and, you know, other book projects and then articles and things like that.

So yes, this is what I do. But it's weird that isn't what all writers do. People are always like, oh, how do you produce so much? And then I go like, this is a full-time job. I treat it as such. That's how published works come out of the other side of it. I'm sort of like, my thinking is more like when I talk to other writers, there's obviously exceptions. Like, if I was, I'm talking to Robert Green or if I, if I was to meet Robert Caro, I get

why that took seven years or eight years to do the book. It's evident in the work. But I made a lot of writers and I'm like, what do you do all day that you are not producing more than you're producing? Well, I think that's right. And I think a lot of writers, for whatever reason, don't necessarily write all that much. I mean, you know, everyone has a different process. Like, I only know my process and I'm not, and I would not be so arrogant as to say it is in any way superior, but the way I approach writing, just my like the output is sort of the output, and I don't know any other way to approach it. And frankly, I kind of taught myself how to be a

writer, right? How to be a professional writer. I sort I'd teach myself what my days would look like, you know, how I would tackle a project. And so, for instance, my wife is a writer and she just goes about it differently than I do. And she's a beautiful writer and a successful one, but totally different process than my process. I cannot work for myself. I cannot work for myself. She probably cannot work the way that I work. Do you feel like what you learned in the military or that ethos has that informed how you approach

the task of writing at all or were you sort of fully formed? And then that was a transit. You know what I mean? I don't know if it's necessarily what I learned in the military and I will reveal some of my like quirks here, but I approach it like I approach certain, uh, what is that? I approach it sort of like with a, I discipline, like I'm like, all right, today I am working on this project. I am going to begin, you know, or I will continue in on

the project. There will be a thousand words that are written today, whether they're good or bad, they shall be written. You want, I'll sit there and I'll stare in my computer and I will not get up until the task is complete. You say military, the mission is complete, which is the day's work. And when I was in the military,

I think that was sort of how I approached, you know, I don't know, fitness or unit readiness or, you know, it was with that type of kind of discipline that could feel a little monastic at times. But actually, it makes me happy, you know, like I feel satisfied. So I mentioned like my wife, for instance, he was a very different process. She'll be like, I'll know she's working on something, I'm more fiscally speaking, and I'll see how she spends her day and she'll be doing X and she'll be doing Y, then she'll be talking with someone about something

tangently related to her project. And I will be looking about, you know, she's not really working yet, she hasn't gotten going. And then I'll ask her like, how's things going? Are you writing today? And she's like, yeah, I wrote like 6,000 words. And like, you know, 20 pages written in a day. And I'm like, I can never write 20 pages in a day on a project. And what I realized is like, she's different. She is working it out in her mind.

And she will sit there for a very long time doing that. And to me, it looks like she's sort of procrastinating, but she's not. She's figuring the whole thing out. And then once it's figured out, her process of writing is she's just actually transcribing something that she's already kind of come up with. And that's not how I work. Yeah, no, I think Steven Pressfield was just out here and he sort of calls this the war of art. I think approaching it as a thing that you're sort of attacking and breaking down, and it's the sort of day-to-dayness

of it, yeah, that's how I think about it also. And I think there's that quote about, you know, like, amateurs wait around for inspiration. You know, I think there is like this idea of, well, I'll get to it when I get to it, but there does have to, I do think it has to be treated like a discipline. Yes. And I listen, I think it does too. And I think the idea that you're just going to sort of flip around and then suddenly the lightning bolt is going to strike you and you are going to create this unparalleled work

of art. Not like that's not how, at least in my experience, like that's not how it works. Like that's, that's, that's finger painting. Like, you know, the, the, the, the daily ness of writing is you sit there and you, you know, you work and you work and you work and you write it and then you rewrite it and you keep going and you keep going and then, you know, and then just sort of through all of those layers of work, you know, that's when you can maybe hope to get something that is, is, is a great piece of work. That's when you can maybe hope to get something that is a great piece of writing. When it seems like also with your body of work, that's working at large also, which is like, if you're this person who's like, I'm going to produce this single work of staggering genius,

maybe that happens, maybe it doesn't. But if you're like, no, I write books. And But if you're like, no, I write books. And equality is a way to get to quality in an inherently unpredictable world, where you never know what is gonna perfectly line up with the perfect moment. Like, I feel like it's like show up right stuff and your best work will be among that collection of things that you do, as opposed to being very precious about.

I think this is also true with articles also. You never know what the one that's gonna blow up will be. You just gotta follow where it leads and eventually you'll get there. I mean, like art is a conversation. So in any medium, so it's sort of this idea of being an artist, being a writer, is that you make the decision that you are going to participate in the conversation. And so the way you participate in the conversation, yes, you write books, you write novels, they

some resonate more than others. I mean, listen, I can go back into my body of work and tell you different books and how they did and the impact I felt they made. And it's in no way correlated, I think necessarily with the exact quality of the book. I've done, you know, I've had certain books for things that have gone really well for a book. And I'm like, that's great. I've had another book where like, I wish it got a little more X, Y, or Z. And that's not because one book is not so better than the other. It's like, they're coming into a culture

that is either ready or not ready to receive them in a certain way. Well, I love the new one. This is it. I was thinking, I want to get into it, but you call it the fifth act. What strikes me is so interesting I want to get into it, but you call it the fifth act. What strikes me as so interesting about the war in Afghanistan is that it seems to be

a play or a movie that has been unfolding for several hundred years, right? What's so weird about it is it's like America's 5 Act play there, overlaps with the Soviet play there and the British play there. That it seems to be this play that just happens over and over again. Like we might have talked about this last time, but I was the book I just did. I was writing a lot about Queen Elizabeth. And the author makes the point in there that she is maybe one of the only people alive that met one of the British veterans of the last British war there.

She met him as like a young woman. She met like a very old man. And then for her, yeah, for her grandson to fight in the same conflict, it sort of creates this kind of perennialness to that whole conflict. Well, I think that, and I think that's true about war in general, you know, it's this, one of the things that makes it fascinating is it is this enterprise that is human beings we do just perennially through the generations back to ancient times. And you can look at all the different levels we do.

And the only constant in war is us, the humans. The technology changes, everythepolytics change, the human element there is sort of the control mechanism. In the fifth act, I think the title of the book is sort of a gesture to trying to put parameters around a very long war. The title actually came, I was last year, as Kabul was falling, and there was just this bedlam around the evacuation of Afghanistan. A friend of mine who was a very successful sub-stacks, she just reached out to me and was like,

hey, I'm gathering a few people to kind of do short essays on the end of Afghanistan where you contribute. And frankly, at that moment, I didn't feel like writing about it because it was just sort of coming at me so quickly. And I was like, well, what do you want? You know, like what exactly do you want? She's like, well, I'd like, you know,

people don't really understand what's going on because they haven't been following the story. And if you could just give me like 500 words on the lab, what's happened in Afghanistan in the last 20 years? I was like, oh my god, just give me like 500 words on the lab, I'm like, what's happened in Afghanistan in the last 20 years? I was like, oh my god, like I can't 500 words. And then she said, you know, this whole thing is just a tragedy and people want to understand it. And, um, and it was sort of that word tragedy is what kind of made me start. I was like, you know, tragedies and classic dramatic structures, like, you know, Shakespeare and

back to the ancients are typically told in five-act structures. I was like okay you know five acts, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, Taliban. And I sort of did this very short 500 words like each each of them got 100 words. But that allowed me at least for this to just sort of start putting up a construct around what happened over these 20 years. And then I was involved in these like five cases of evacuations that were all very distinct. I wanted to tell that story too. And so that sort of gave me the shape of the book so I could write it.

Yeah, it's one of those things where it's like, if it could be easily summed up in 500 words, the whole mess probably wouldn't have happened, right? Like it, it's, it's the complexity plus the very human desire to reduce the complexity that intersect or erupts in the disaster that it was. Well, right, I mean, like tragedy, reduction of complexity is, I think sort of a synonym for storytelling.

Yeah, like a whole mess will happen and we will try to organize it in our brains. And what we do is we like organize it and then fix it in place as a story. And then that becomes the story of what happened and then we can move on because we have the story. We've taken the complexity, we've reduced it to something digestible, we digest it, and then we move on. But to me, that highlights the importance of telling the right story. Because if you tell the wrong story and you metabolize events with an accurate narrative, particularly around wars, you can really set yourself up to repeat mistakes, to the whole

host of problems. Yeah, Robert Green has this great line. He says, the first law of human nature is that we deny there's such a thing as human nature. And, you know, like, probably war and then also economic cycles, there's that the most dangerous phrase is, it's different this time. Yeah. Now, and it's like the whole reason to study, it's different this time. Yeah.

Now, and it's like the whole reason to study, I mean to study history, you know, is it doesn't repeat, I mean, as Lefman said, doesn't repeat, it rhymes. But war is one of these, I think it's just one, it is like economics though, it's one of these human enterprises where you can go in and you can understand human nature because you

can see all of the repetition pretty clearly. Yeah. Yeah. It's also strange, though, like thinking about it, like if you were to just sort of zoom out, you knew nothing about, you know, the news, event, whatever, you're just like, okay, I need you to like pick on a map where multiple empires are gonna spend trillions of dollars fighting over, you know, various resource.

But, you know, like, if you were to pick on a map, like an alien was to be like, where were the forever wars located, right? Like, you probably wouldn't pick Afghanistan. That's what's so strange about it. But the, you know, the geography, I mean, it's, you know, it's right in Central Asia. It sits on, you know, it's, it's, it sits on key parts of the Silk Road. It's very rich in mineral resources. The, one of the things, and one of the things that's remarkable, we talk about time, like, you know,

when I served in Afghanistan, you would, you know, when we talk about the things, and one of the things that's remarkable, we talk about time, like, you know, when I served in Afghanistan, you would, you know, and we talk about the British. You know, I remember sitting at a firebase in Kuhnar, which is up in Northeastern Afghanistan, reading Winston's Church Hills, the Malachland Field Force, which is like one of his first books, which is all about fighting in, you know, Northwest Frontier province, you know, back when the British Empire held it. And I'm reading this book, and I'm looking, and I can see the valleys that he's talking about, where they had fought. And you would drive around, you know, with Afghans, I mostly worked as an advisor to Afghan

troops. And you'd drive around with these guys, and be like, yeah, right up there, that's the Ambez ambush pass. You know, my father ambushed the Soviets there. My grandfather ambushed, you know, my great-grandfather ambushed the British there. And by the way, we need to be careful at the Taliban don't ambush us there because this is always how they do it. And so it's like, so the geography, like the actual just tactical geography of war is handed

down there like heirlooms, one generation to the next. When the invader comes, this is the past where we always kill them and now you understand sun and the next person will understand it. This goes so far back. I remember being on patrol in Western Africa, it's not by the Iranian border and looking at this ridge line and there was sort of these ruins there, totally uncultivated, nothing up there, but it just is all kind of crumbly wall.

And I asked when the Afghans was like, well, like what is that? Is that what did the British build that? And he was like, no, no, no, no, no, a skander. You know, like that from Alexander the Great. And like, geez, it's like, you know, I'm on patrol where Alexander the Great was on patrol. Like nothing ever changes.

Yes. Yeah. Time is a flat circle. It is very flat. It is very flat. And you know, and we, we, you know, there are parts of each war, I think, that are, you know, a little bit unique. You know, there, you know, for instance, Alexander, you know, Alexander the Great, he built walls that are here thousands of years later, you know, and I talk about this a little bit Alexander the Great, he built walls that are here thousands of years later. And I talk about this a little bit in the book. We built in plywood as Americans. We are sort of these reluctant imperialists, which ironically causes us, I think,

to fight even longer wars because we don't make the type of upfront commitment you need to actually just win the war and leave. So we sort of, it's for us, it's death by 1,000 paper cuts or an act to mix metaphors here. For us, it's death by a thousand paper cuts or not to mix metaphors here. For us, it's death by a thousand plywood buildings built instead of just building like one or two cement built cement structures that shark amendment. So we do make unique mistakes each time, but it's all about, and again, I think in war,

where are you going to fix this war in a broader narrative? Like if I'm writing about Afghanistan, am I writing about more than 2,000 years worth of war back to the time of Alexander? Or am I writing about a 20 year war that America was involved in? How are you going to put a shape around this story? Zeno famously said that well-being is realized by small steps, but it's no small thing. And I think mental health is a journey like that. That's what today's sponsor comes in.

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Yeah, I was reading, as I wrote about Thermopoli in my courage book and that's like, there was a British stand at Thermopoli in the Second World War. It isn't super well known, but you're like these human beings change and the reasons change and the weapons change, but the geography and the choke points and the necessity of going this way. All that remains essentially unchanged. We're just sort of placeholders. Right. And so, you know, if you, I think,

if you are, if you're a person who is interested in storytelling, right? I think you have to be interested in war because, you know, storytelling is the phenomena of human beings when confronted with disorder, trying to take that order, disorder, and put it into a story, into a shape that they can metabolize and make meaning of. When we tell these stories, we're trying to make meaning of events.

What did all this stuff happen, and now I'm going to make meaning of it. And it's something we don't only do in war, like we do it in our, and I think family all the time, like families will tell stories about each other because like they're sort of telling the story of who each of us is in the family. And oftentimes like those stories will sort of have inter family trauma, you know, like little traumas to big traumas woven in them. But the place like I feel like we do that in our human family is really with war. And you look back, the oldest stories that exist

in human history are from the Iliad and before are always about war. And again, it's this, why do we tell stories to create order out of the most chaotic events that occur to us. Well, in the most painful and also, I have to imagine sort of exhilarating and exciting, right? It's sort of the full gambit of the human experience, good and the bad. That's right. I don't know if you've ever noticed this,

but I ski sometimes, I've surfed in the past, and I've noticed if I was ever surfing with my friends, and someone would get an amazing wave, and we all kind of get on the beach, the first thing everyone wants to do is start telling the story about the way, then you went in like this, and then this happened, and everyone starts telling the story because of the excitement of it,

too. And it's the process. Yeah, it is weird, like even zooming out more for more, like I was watching some video of like a street fight, not that long ago, you know, sort of, to be in, to some conflict breaks out in the street. And I sort of zooming out even further and just like, what are they fighting about? And it was just like, this is like two chimps going at it, right?

They're like screaming, they're like, they're just doing whatever the human version of two kangaroo's fighting or two chimps fighting. Do you know what I mean? Like, we'd like to think we're not so animalistic because we've created stories where we've created narrative around it, but this is also just sort of what human war is what a collection of human beings do

at the most sort of primal level. Yes, and it's sort of, you know, the need to dominate one another, you know, the need to have, you to have to assert primacy. Yeah, it is all these sort of very, yes, fundamental human traits. I mean, I think the one thing that's interesting is if you're telling war stories, too, you're often telling, there's lots of ways to tell a war story and to come at it sort of oblycly, like a favorite subject of mine are when you look at the books that are sort of these classic American books that we don't think of as war stories that are in fact war stories. Like what? Like two of my favorites are like the great Gatsby, you know,

I hope we think of that as a war novel, but it's a war novel. The war figures really prominently in that book. The reason J. Gatsby becomes J. Gatsby is because of the First World War. It's a story about social mobility after the war. So that's one that I think doesn't usually get categorized as a war novel. The other one, which is one of my favorites, is the finest war novel about the Second World War, is The Catcher in the Rye. The Catcher in the Rye is not considered a war novel.

It absolutely is a war novel. So it's very much known right for the voice of Hold and Caugh Field. Everyone's a phony. He's walking around, so much of the book, he's walking around Central Park, the kind of go, he wants to go visit the ducks, which is sort of him, you know, reclaiming this innocence that, you know, probably perhaps never was,

but he feels very nostalgic for. And so that sort of voice of Holden Coffield, you know, the phonyness wanting to reclaim that innocence. Like, it's often interpreted as being sort of the voice of a disaffected teen. I mean, no, like that, if you know anything about JD Salendor's bio, like that is the voice of a disaffected veteran. Like JD Salendor, you know, he landed on Omaha Beach. He fought in the hurricane forest. He liberated, he was one of the first Americans to call liberate dock out. And was like, you know, if you read his bio,

you know, deeply, deeply affected by what he saw in World War II. I mean, he wrote about it a little bit in some of his short stories. But if you also look the last line of the catcher in the rye, I think is like the greatest gesture of this too. It's, and I'm paraphrasing here, but it's, don't tell anyone anything because if you do,

you start missing everyone. And that's the last line of the catcher in the rye. Well, you know what's interesting about JD Salinger too. He's so clearly traumatized by war. Like he had that, he has this like beautiful girlfriend that he leaves behind when he go, when he gets, when he enlist. And then she like, she dates, put it she date, Charlie Chaplin, she becomes like this famous socialite. And then, you know, she's like 16 or 17, which is like weird then. And then she comes back. Yeah. And then he, and then Salinger has

all this like the, the Salinger today would get me too because he has these sort of inappropriate relationships with the young women. But it's very clear, he's like, he's frozen in place as that kid, like sexually, mentally, like emotionally. He just, he, he goes into the hurricane forest and doesn't come, his development is totally arrested from the trauma that he undergoes. And the same is true for Gatsby, right? Gatsby meets this young woman on leave before he goes overseas.

And then when he comes back, all he wants to do is pick up where he left off, which of course you can't do. Right. Well, I maintain that there's really all, there really all war stories are derivative of two books, the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Iliad is the story of going to war. The Odyssey is a story of coming back from war.

And so in both, you know, the Catcher and Gatsby, you know, there's stories of two people kind of trying to come back from war. Like Jay Gats two people kind of trying to come back from war. Like Jay Gatsby is sort of trying to come back. He's trying to make his post-war life with Daisy and it doesn't work. And with Ketcher and the Rye, he's trying to get to the duck pond. He's trying to feed the ducks in Central Park.

He's trying to get back to this sense of innocence that he had before the war, that he cannot get to. Cold and Coffield doesn't get there. So I would say those are books that are more derivative of the tradition of the Odyssey. And then there are obviously many books that are odd. And when you write in the tradition of the Odyssey, it isn't always evident that you are writing a book about war because you're writing a book about someone journeying home. And this is the epilogue to the war. Right. And what they're journeying home from, unless the authorial intention is to be very obvious

about that, you might not know as a reader, it might be more opaque. If you're writing a book in the tradition of the Iliad, and I can list many books that we all know that are in that tradition that are obviously novels about war. You know, it's, you know, the subject in your face is much more the immediacy of war. Well, so just hearing you say this, I'm pulling this theory out of nowhere, but I'd be curious what you think about it. If we're zooming, if that's what the individual does, could you argue that that's kind of what America wishes it could do, which is like who we were on September 10th,

who we were on September 11th, who we were on September 12th, and then 20 odd years later, it feels like we have this, we wish we could go back to what, to the, to both the first the innocence, then the purity, then the intent, the good intentions, or sorry, the victim, the sort of victim hoodness and then the intention of how we're gonna resolve this,

we wanna go back to that moment, but we can't, both because of what's happened, what we've done, the money we've spent, the lives we invested in this thing, we wish we could go back, but things will never be the same as a result of what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq. Well, and it affects us strategically, I would argue too. I completely adhere to that theory. So for instance, the so much of the, frankly, the storytelling about how we're

going to end the war in Afghanistan was fixated on this idea. All of the troops are going to come home. The war will end. I mean, you know, President Biden announces in April of 2021 all US troops will return home from Afghanistan by September 11th, 2021. And that kind of begins this debacle. And so, you know, and I posed the question in the book, well, are we conflating the idea

of all the troops coming home with the war ending? Because they're not the same. Like after World War II, the troops stayed in Europe. There's still, we still have tens of thousands of US troops in Europe securing the peace. Korean Peninsula, we have tens of thousands troops there securing the peace. In fact, the only time all of the troops come home when a war ends, every last one, is when

we lose the war in Vietnam, everyone came home. Everyone came home now from Afghanistan. If you look right after the troop pull out in Afghanistan in September, or one also, then that just leads directly into World War II. It leads into World War II, but we actually kept troops in Europe for a time after World War I also, right? And then that just leads directly into World War II. World War II leads into World War II. But we actually kept troops in Europe for a time after World War I. Well, you know, there wasn't an immediately treaty with 12. But you know, Biden says in September of 2021 at the UN, he says, you know, for the first

time in 20 years, America is not a war. And it's like, it's a head scratcher, because you're like, okay, but we still have troops in Iraq, in Syria, in the horn of Africa. So are we at war in those countries, or are we not at war in those countries? Because we were saying we're not at war anymore because the troops came home from Afghanistan. But like, Brian, to your point about trying to return to September 10th. I totally agree. Like what I think of 9-11, and everyone has their story of where they were when it happened, I actually remember most clearly

September 9th, 2001, and I remember exactly what I was doing. I was in college, I ruined my brother back then, and I had told, he and I had an argument, I told them I get the TV tonight because I wanna watch this show on HBO. That was premiering. And it was the premiere of Band of Brothers.

Oh, it's September 9th, 2001. And I just always remembered that because I think that was a pretty good, I mean listen, that's a show that is very much, the greatest generation, Sepiaton, opening credits with the nostalgic music. And like America, I think, is a much more cynical place today.

I don't know how that show would do if it were released in 2022. But back then, that was the zeitgeist, right? It was the greatest generation, where are the liberators? This is what people, these are the stories people wanted to consume. And then boom, 9.11 happens. And we're telling ourselves stories about liberating Europe when September 11th happens. And is it any surprise that we then

go embark on two wars where we're trying to liberate Afghanistan and Iraq? So I think those stories really matter. Well, yeah. And it's like this sort of longing for bipartisanship, for trust and institution. It's like all those things are good and it would be wonderful to go back to them, but you can't go back to them after 20 years of incompetence or deceit or mislead. How can you go back? Even you look at this if you're someone who sort of doesn't like Trump or doesn't like this radicalization. It's like, those people have a reason,

they feel the way that they feel. And it's what's happened over the last 20 years. Like, I can only imagine what it would be like to be a member of the sort of military community. And you just watch yourself sort of be used as this chess piece by all these political institutions, the idea that like people serve so long that their children were serving on the same war, but that sacrifice isn't spread out evenly.

Like, you can't put that back in the back. Like once it happens, it's happened. And you, just like they tried to tell Gatsby, like he says, you can go back in time and he says, no, you can. He says, of course you can, right? Like the fundamental, there's an earnestness and an innocence to Gatsby and then also just a shocking amount of naivete. And that's really what's driving that book.

Well, I think that's a great point. You know, like the, what is this one of the central things of Gatsby? Is it possible to go back? Even today, as we sit there and look at our dysfunction, we're all sort of pining for a time that seemed simpler, more collegial. The institutions we trusted, we got along better as citizens. Can you go back in time and do that? Yeah, can you, like G as citizens. Like, can you go back in time and do that?

Yeah, can you, like Aspie says, can you go back, can you go back and relive the past? Or can you get to the duck pond again and feed the ducks? Is it possible? And I don't know. I don't know if it is, but that's why those books are a great work of art. Well, it's really the,

I probably the only hope is the elapsing of a large amount of time. Like if you've read much about Vietnam, it's obviously a lot of similarities, again, time is a flat circle. How do we, it's the elapsing of time, it's a new generation, it's a re, it's learning some of the lessons, it's probably just an elapsing of time, it's a new generation, it's learning some of the lessons,

it's probably just an elapsing of a large amount of time that then, which creates healing, which also creates the opportunity to start the same play over again. When a circle comes down to two different theories of philosophies of history. One, I would say is a linear philosophy of history, which is that we move along a straight line, and that each generation is breaking completely new and uncharted ground.

I would say that is like that is a more hubris-dick view of history and human nature, which is, you know, what is coming will always be different than what came before and what came before is less and less relevant, who cares. And then there's sort of more of the cyclical philosophy of history, which, you know, I will fully disclose I am more of an adherent to, which is no, like history is cyclical. The world operates in cycles and be humble because you are just somewhere in a cycle.

If you believe that nothing that comes before is relevant to what happens now, and you believe that the people who came before are in some way inferior to the people who live now, you are doomed to make similar mistakes. So, I'm more of an adherent to the sort of cyclical philosophy of history. Yeah, I saw a meme. I think I've mentioned this on my guess before. It's like, those who study history are doomed to have to sit back and watch as other people

repeat history. Like, the knowledge of it doesn't actually, it doesn't actually, unless you're the president, it doesn't really do you that much good, right? Like you study the history and you're just like, buckle up and I see where this is going. Sure, or in the idea, or the similar idea, you know, that hard times create strong men,

strong men create good times, good times, great week men, week men create hard times. You know, that is like a cyclical-clist view of history. And it's like, okay, it's just, where are we on that cycle? Because it seems, it tends to repeat itself. So, and I don't know, you know, and I feel like right now, yes, it's like it's not that you can go back in time and suddenly it's gonna be, you know, 1947 again

and we're gonna have won this great war and trust our country so much. And oh, by the way, it's also worth questioning whether or not that the story we tell ourselves about that time is in fact accurate. I probably isn't. But, you know, but how do you, how do you allow the best parts of that time, you know, to, to inform how we're living right now? I mean, and I think

if you have kids, you experience this in a very intimate way, because you see the way children react to what to us seems very new. Like I see with my own children, you know, I mean, there's been so much, like, there's so many cultural things that have happened in the last 10 years that to me seem like totally new and avant-garde and like, wow, okay, I guess we're doing this. And I talked to my kids about it. And to my kids, this stuff isn't like, you know, the newest, most radical thing. To them, it's basically, it's the status quo,

because they've never known anything else. And if there's one thing every generation knows to do as they come of age, it is to challenge and reject the status quo. So what to me seems sort of radical and new to them is just the status quo, because they've never known anything else. And I already see as my children are kind of starting to enter their teen years, I mean,

my oldest is 14, my youngest is 10. Like, you know, they ask pretty probing questions about, you know, the way our society is set up and things that I would think are cutting edge to them are just sort of humdrum and I think when they're in their 20s, they're going to be tearing a lot of stuff down. Well, yeah, that is the irony of the sort of sort of what I would maybe describe as sort of predominant boomer attitude, which is like, why are kids so angry? Why are they so fragile?

Why are they so radical in their political beliefs? You know, why do they not believe in this or that? And it's like, bro, look at, look at, look at what you have, why do they not believe in this or that? And it's like, bro, look at, look at what you have, if you're 20 years old right now, or like, look at what you have subjected them to. And then you're like, why aren't they running around waving the flag? Like, like, what are you talking about? They, you have betrayed in every way those values that you are then resenting them for not taking seriously or speaking about with reverence. Like what did you expect? Well, it's just it's a more steel.

I mean, people are just kind of, they get a real deal today. I mean, it's as simple as, I mean, it's still, listen, like my folks who I love, I have a great relationship with my folks, but like, I'll talk to them about what life was like for them growing up, you know, or when they were in their 20s. And, you know, my, and the toys, my mother was a beat reporter at the Christian Science Monitor. My father was a PhD candidate.

They lived off of her salary, and, you know, articles he would sometimes write on the side. He lived in a rent controlled three bedroom apartment in Manhattan. I mean, it's like, yeah. Like, it's crazy. I'm like, you know, I'm like, and I sometimes say, I'm like, you know, you can't do that today.

That doesn't look like, really? I'm like, well, I'm like, you know, like, well, and like, you had no debt. Well, you know, college was like, you know, a thousand dollars. Like, I mean, I was, you know, but there is, yes. There is this disconnect that1,000. I mean, there is disconnect. That is not what people are living today. So I talked to my dad. Like my dad, it's like socialism and blah,

and it's like you retired after 25 years as a cop with a 100% lifetime pension. That's socialism, buddy. Like that's socialism, buddy. Like that's not capitalism. Like you are working for a private company that was the state, which you're now, you know, railing against, that you gave yourself a great deal at the expense of future generations, which to me is sort of the interesting part about where we are.

It's, and I think obviously the money we spent in the Middle East, it's like we kind of mortgaged our future and our children's future for some kind of ill-defined goals. That is the sort of the big part of the tragedy, which I think we're just starting to reckon with now. Well, if you listen, if you look, I mean, every, every war that America has fought since the revolution has had to have been fought with like a construct to sustain it. And broadly speaking, the construct consists of two things, right? Blood and treasure.

Who's going to fight it and how are you going to pay for it? So like, yeah, the American Civil War, the construct blood was the first ever draft as the American Civil War in our history and treasure, the first ever income taxes to sustain the American Civil War. World War II and national mobilization, draft, war bond drives, Vietnam is characterized by a very unpopular draft that leads to an anti-war movement. When 9-11 happens, America goes to war again and we now need a construct to sustain our war. So, blood, it's our all-volunteer military. And the treasure is, we put the

whole thing into the national deficit. The last year that America passed a balanced budget was 2001. And so, the result of that is because the all-volunteer military is fighting the war and the cost of it goes into our deficit. It's most Americans, like it's not there, they're not bad people, but they've just been completely anesthetized to the cost of these wars over 20 years. They haven't felt it.

And so, is it any of these surprises that you fight a 20-year war? Like, imagine fighting World War II for 20 years. Like, we couldn't have done it. The war was like too disruptive to American society, same with the Civil War, any of our, any frankly, of the wars that went well for us, they were like these generationally defining events

that affected everyone. But because America is a necessities to these wars, they go on for 20 years and they get really expensive. You know, about a quarter, a quarter to a third of our national deficit, you know, is the bill for the war on terrorism. I think it's seven7 or $8 trillion right now. So yeah, we talk about national priorities

and where we're at and society. And I would argue that we didn't get the bang for our buck. We hoped with the war on terror. And what would America look like if we'd spent that money elsewhere? And I don't say that as an isolationist, because I'm not an isolationist. I actually believe in interventions in certain cases, and I believe in, I'm very,

I think we should be doing what we're doing in Ukraine. But we have to be a little bit smarter about it. And I think as citizens, the next time politicians sort of set up a war and tell everybody, don't worry about this, this is going to be painless. We should be asking some real questions because the pain could be coming much later when we realize we've got a, we got drunk and have a huge bill from some war that just dragged

on for decades. Yeah, I saw an article a couple years ago where it was like we still had people getting pensions from the Spanish-American war, right? Like, you know. And so you think about, yeah. No this. No. Two years ago, two years ago, the last pension was paid, not to the Spanish-American war, the Civil War.

Yeah. The last pension, she was a daughter of the Civil War veteran. Yeah. Father, she had special needs or something, and so she was just always got it. No, it was an interesting expression. That was her entitlement. So, she, Civil War veterans, their children were given pensions. I'm pretty sure she, her father had her when he was in his 90s.

It was like two successive generations of children being had very, very old. And so, and this woman died, she was, I think, from somewhere in South Carolina. And her father actually had fought for both the Union and the Confederacy. And she was getting paid like, I mean, it wasn't my, it was like, you know, $110 a month or something like that. But it was dated all the way from an entitlement from the Civil War. or. Yeah, the tragedy too is not just the money we spent, but as you talk about this in your book with Admiral Steph Reedus, the novel, it's sort of like we reoriented our entire intelligence community, our entire diplomatic community around, you

know, being the zero dark 30 guys, right? The Beards and the sort of Middle Eastern, as you said, building these bases out of plywood and these intelligence networks or whatever. And then meanwhile, you know, it's like we were like James Bond as a thing of the past, but that's actually like exactly what we needed to be figuring out what's happening in Russia and in China. We sort of, we, we, we missed, or we told ourselves it's different this time and we missed that the Cold War was still happening.

Right, and we woke up and, you know, we fought a 20 year war, we fought a 20, we fought a 20 year war on terror, and now we've woken up, and China has the largest navy in the world. And I think that's, you know, so there's been a huge opportunity cost in fighting the war on terror, because over these 20 years, we have seen the emergence of peer level competitors and a authoritarian axis in China, Russia, Iran, in nations that are rising and not willing to accept the sort of Western liberal, status quo world order.

And when I look out and try to project out, you know, what are the next five, 10, 20 years, gonna be about what's going to define those, you know, it's going to be this competition between the post-second world war, world order dominated by Western liberal democracies and, you know, the authoritarian nations of the world. And, you know, you're watching and scary. There's that Nietzsche quote about beware those who fight monsters, you know, that you do not, or, yeah, about staring into the abyss, the abyss tears back, etc. Like, we sort of, we go to the Middle East to fight radical, sort of religious terrorism,

or, and the so-called axis of evil, the result, you know, 20 years later, is a rise of religious fundamentalism and white nationalism in the United States that uses terror as a weapon, and a real Axis of Evil between Russia and China, which makes the sort of North Korea Iran axis of evil look like Ava-Turawa. Yeah, it's like, it's Burnham Wood comes to Dunstanane, right? It's Macbeth, it's tragedy, right? What is tragedy? It's like tragedy is when there is a prophecy

and a person does everything they can in their power to avoid the coming prophecy to be certain that it's not going to happen. And then through their energies, bring the prophecy on themselves. It's tragic. It is tragic. Yes, it's, you know, it's etopol. And it's, you know, and it's, and it's ironic.

It's, you know, it's, you know's irony goes through all tragedy. So I think we are at an interesting moment right now because we are waking up to the fact that everything we've done over these 20 years, as we're seeing these very traumatic events occur in Ukraine and in the Taiwan straits right now, but it is all interrelated to the war on terror. We can't just sort of bifurcate the two and say that they have no correlation to one another because they absolutely do. I mean, do you think that last summer Putin is sort of moving troops around and he's sort of weighing, am I going to pull the trigger in Ukraine or am I not going to pull the

trigger in Ukraine? And why would a not going to pull the trigger in Ukraine or am I not going to pull the trigger in Ukraine? And you know, why would a knife go into Ukraine? Well, maybe it's because NATO would respond, you know, in a really strong manner. And he turns on the television and he watches like the buckle that was last summer at the airport in which like the United States and all of NATO are basically being dictated terms by 50,000 Taliban Mujahideen. And I think he probably felt pretty good watching that in the summer and the fall,

as he's marshaling his resources to go invade Ukraine. But then it's what it, but we live in history happens so fast now. So within six months, we see like, I would argue NATO's darkest hour, which is the fall of Kabul. And then six months later, like one of its greatest moments occurs,

which is like the way the alliance sort of holds together in the early days after the invasion of Ukraine. I mean, you know, and it's sort of, what will happen in Ukraine is TBD. But, because we're talking about history, like these cycles, I feel like are happening more and more quickly. It's very difficult to orient yourself

as to where you're at in the cycle. Well, it's also interesting because you could look at what's happening in Kabul as there's sort of two elements going on. There's a sort of political incompetence, right? The strategic incompetence that leads it about. And then there's the actual execution of it on the ground, which is, you know, to a certain degree, rivals Dunkirk

and the amount of people that get out in a short amount of time. Obviously, shouldn't have happened, obviously, it could have been better, but it's logistically a feat, right? And so there is this interesting element in where sort of militarily, again, not perfect, there seems to be a high amount of very highly earned competence from the trillions of dollars and 20 years of war, and then the sort of diplomatic blunders. I wonder if that's also what you're seeing in Russia and then potentially in China.

Like I remember I was reading a piece like, there's like one general in China that's fought in a war. There's like none left because China hasn't basically fought like since, I don't even know when. I guess there's a couple things after Korea, but not much, right? And so you wonder how these things are. Yeah, how would this actually play out, right?

So you look in America and you see because democracy is so messy, you get this sense that we're really bad, but sort of also have this competence that comes from our system. And then the exact opposite happens with Russia, right? You have the singularity of the vision and the command that goes into Ukraine with complete military incompetence. Yeah, well, I mean, and there's a few things like to sort of unpack there. I think as Americans, we have,

you know, we have real tactical capabilities that we have mastered over years. So like when, you know, a few weeks ago, when we killed Zawahiri, you know, the head of al-Qaeda in Kabul and you know And the administration kind of does a lap, you know taking a bow for that. I'm frankly ice cynically I'm like well like there's never been a question that we're that we're good at killing terrorists like 20 years We've got in good at killing terrorists like that's not the issue the issue is we have never been able to translate that tactical

Competence which is killing terrorists in the Middle East, into a strategy that works for our country. Strategically, we've never figured that out. Whereas if you look at the, I think if you look at the Chinese model, they've had a very effective strategy of dealing with the United States and putting us right now. I would argue in a strategically very difficult position, vis-a-vis Taiwan. Like for instance, one of the great challenges we would have, if China were to move on Taiwan and we would respond, is we would have to basically be sailing across the Pacific and reliant on our allies in the Pacific

to do anything militarily. And actually when you look at Afghanistan and we're talking sort of, we're talking, not terrorism, just geopolitics like, hey, if that were what China ever happened, like wouldn't it be nice to have a series of massive air bases geopolitics like, hey, if that were what China ever happened, wouldn't it be nice to have a series of massive air bases in a country and central Asia that shared borders

with both China and Iran? That's some pretty primo real estate, and we just, we kind of just gave it up. Or a song. So I think you have that as a real issue. I think one of the things because right you brought like Russia is I think in Russia you've seen very different philosophies of war making. I mean the Russians have always had this very centralized Philosophy of how they voyage war like going back to the second world war actually if with you looked at Russian tanks in the second world war They always had two types of tanks.

They would be called a command variant tank and then just a regular tank. And one of the differences was the regular tanks, they had radios, but the radios were one way. So like if you were just like the Joe guy in a tank, no one cared what you saw. You were just getting orders. Whereas the American way of war is like

much more decentralized and much more focuses on these ideas called mission tactics, which is Everyone should be empowered like lower level of leaders should always be empowered to Achieve the mission. You're not told how to do it like you're told how to do it But you're always empowered to flex giving conditions on the ground to to to go achieve the mission Everyone understands the intent of what achieving the mission means. And ironically, that philosophy of warfare, mission tactics, commanders in 10, we lifted that in US military doctrine directly from the Germans in World War II.

It's actually why the Germans were so effective against the Russians for significant parts of the war. So, all of this stuff gets wrapped up, though, and just sort of the geopolitics of today, as we're kind of like binge watching this history, the end of the era of terrorism, and the rise of sort of great power competition, and authoritarianism across the globe. So, you know, may you listen to this? One then to go back to time as a flat circle,

sort of great power conflict goes all the way back to the Peloponnesian War. And it's the same dynamic again. And you know, Thucydides tried to write this, you know, said he set out to write a book that would be relevant for hundreds of years. And you know, he did that in then some. In space, you know, like in 2034, the book, Adam was to read us and I read together,

one of the central things of that book is this idea of the Thucydides trap, which is if you go back to the Peloponnesian War, the Thucydides trap is this idea that if you look in history, anytime you have an established power that is challenged by a rising power, it leads to a major war. So Thucydides established power that is challenged by a rising power, it leads to a major war. So Thucydides, established power, Athens, challenged by rising power, Sparta, Peloponnesian

war. You go sort of into modern times, the one world familiar with is, you know, rising power, Germany challenges established power, great Britain, and you end up with, I would argue, the first and second world war, which are interrelated. I think the irony, though, in what we as Americans, you know, don't think about enough is, so that war, which was, you know, Germany, United States, our sorry, Germany, Britain,

you know, neither Germany nor Britain really win the war. I mean, yes, Britain wins, but like there, you know, the empire is destroyed. The real beneficiary of the second World War is the United States. I mean, it leads to an American century. And why is that? You know, because that's not a war the United States starts, but it's a war like we certainly

finished. And so the question becomes, you know, who finishes the war? So like, you should be very cautious as to a power of starting a war, but you should always be the one who kind of comes in in the last act and finishes it. And the US did that with great skill twice in both the First World War and the Second World War, but it seems right now as a country, we've got a very good at starting wars and really bad at finishing them. And Afghanistan was like exhibit A of how bad we've gone in their finishing wars.

Yeah. And obviously the reason that the rising power doesn't win in the Second World War that the established power remains, you know, remains and ends up winning, is the sort of key variable of allies, which is a lesson the U.S. has learned, but also is prone to forgetting. Obviously, the last handful of years was a great example of what happens when you take allies for granted and then Ukraine reminding us of how powerful a united block is or a group of allies can be. And that does seem to be the variable that both Russia and China seem fundamentally unable to understand is the power of allies.

Right. But it's interesting, but it's also why it's so important to be just conversant in history because there's always like these counter examples. Like a book I read this year that I really enjoyed was Andrew Roberts' biography of Napoleon, Napoleon in life. I would recommend his great. By the way, I read his George III after our last conversation. Oh, so good, right?

Yeah, really good, really good. But he talks about how Napoleon would always sort of crow about the fact that one of his great advantages on the battlefield was he didn't have to fight with allies because dealing with all of the politics of an alliance was so inefficient on the battlefield. And ultimately, what destroys Napoleon is that he has no allies.

So sort of operationally, it's great for him on a battlefield to just have complete and total unity of command, but he can't strategically bring to bear the resources he needs, and the allies ultimately just, you know, he gets drowned by their resources, particularly the Brits. So, but you can see all of these trends right now, the same conversations. Yes, Russia has no allies, but they have this sort of unity of command, unity of action. We have all these resources because of our alliance, but every time there's an election now in Europe, whether it's the ones that occurred this spring in France or what's going on in

Italy, everyone's sort of like sitting there with baited breath is like, is one European country gonna fall to someone who doesn't want to support the war in Ukraine and then it's the whole thing just gonna sort of topple like a house of colors and alliances are fragile. Yes, I think it was Eisenhower after he took sort of supreme command of the Allied Forces said something like, I have a lot less respect

for Napoleon now, because he realized just how incredibly difficult the job of Wellington must have been to pull off that allied victory. You know, and you realize like again, just talking a bits of history that I find fascinating and wars that they echo, like, you know, the Vietnam War. Like when you look at the Vietnam War,

after World War II, like Ho Chi Minh, very aggressively, he wants US support in the Hawaii screw to house. Oh, and he has so much hope. Like the Americans believe in self-determination. And when you look in the 40s and really late 40s in the early 50s, the reason we basically stab Ho Chi Minh in the back, and he become,

I mean, Ho Chi Minh was an Vietnamese nationalist. I mean, he winds up being a communist because they were the ones who would help him. But the reason we stab Ho Chi Minh in the back is because we take the side of the French. And why do we take the side of the French? Because we're terrified that France would go communist. And so we felt that we had to take the side of the French. And again, and so it gets back into these conversations about alliances. And now sometimes maintaining an alliance can lead you into, you know, probably maintaining

our alliance led us into the bloodiest episode of the Cold War for Americans, which was the Vietnam War. So it's, you know, everything is interconnected. And so when we sit here right now and we look at the challenges facing us, you know, whether it's, you know, what's the future of Afghanistan going to be or China or Iran, which just, under the plan was just uncovered that Kill John Bolton, the United States, and all of this stuff is happening. It's so difficult to understand what are the levers we're going to pull and how do they affect all of these others' levers?

So, I mean, I have a lot of sympathy for anyone who is making these decisions. The tough. But last question for you. Obviously, this is the fifth act. This is the end of the story. So might have said, it was always going to go this way. But talking about Ukraine, what's so fascinating is, like, obviously having watched what happened in Ukraine, that's probably what Putin did.

He probably predicted, you know, Zelensky is going gonna get in the helicopter, fly to wherever, and it's gonna happen exactly like it did in Afghanistan. Could the Afghanistan story have gone differently with, you know, the expression one man with courage makes a majority? Was there a moment there for the leadership in Afghanistan to have changed the trajectory

of that story or was this totally on us or could it have never gone another way? I was going to say, I think if you want to play alternate histories in Afghanistan, I think the time when you can play it with, you can sort of play that game with some credibility is in sort of the 2002, very early 2003 timeframe. Because there were a few things going on then. First of all, we had, I mean, we had thoroughly routed the Taliban and the remnants of the Taliban were hiding in Pakistan as the new Afghan government was being formed. And as that new Afghan government was being formed, there was the question at the time,

you know, at the time, should the Taliban, particularly ethnic post-doons who affiliated with the Taliban, have any role in the new Afghan government? And because we're talking about the stories we were telling ourselves, we were telling ourselves a second world war story that was a second world war story that was akin to like denotification. No, the new Afghan government has to be detallified. It was the same thing we did in Iraq, which was a huge mistake with debathification. So the answer is no.

The Taliban, they're done. They will have no part to play in Afghanistan. So they sat in Pakistan and gradually the Pakistani ISI, their intelligence service, reconstitute the Taliban. And by 2005 and 2006, you had an insurgency again in Afghanistan. And it was an insurgency. I would argue, possibly could have been co-opted if we had found ways to bring in members of the Taliban, we're more moderate, into sort of like a minority role in the new Afghan government. And then the other part of that is, and have we not invaded Iraq?

Because we invaded Iraq and we took our eye off the ball. Should I, we stayed focused in, had we stayed focused squarely on Afghanistan, kept our mission there limited, found a way to politically co-op, enough elements of the Taliban, so that a resurgent insurgency, we're gonna have taken route. Yeah, maybe you can make an argument that, Afghanistan could have turned out a little bit differently,

we could have had a relatively stable and friendly government there. And we could have had far fewer US troops and resources committed to the region for a long time. And I think obviously, the other thing to add, you know, Anne had, we got them been lawdened very quickly. That had been a move point as well. But so this was a failure of courage in the last 18 months or so that dooms this to what it is. This is written ages ago.

Well, I think that's where you can see a really, you know, that's where you see the positive outcome. Do I think that if in 2017, and I say that because this is sort of, that's before the negotiations happened with the Taliban that cut out the Afghan government, that if you had an American president who sort of went to the public and said, listen, we have enduring strategic interests in Afghanistan. We now have less than 10,000 US troops in the country.

They are taking a diminimous casualties. Like for it's in 2020, fewer American service members were killed in Afghanistan than in training accents at Camp Pendleton, which is one Marine base. Yes, right. So, and basically said, so we have a strategic interest there.

US forces are very low. Caluities are really de-medimists and we're not engaged in active combat there. And the Afghan military is taking the fight to the Taliban, which they were, I mean, they're an imperfect organization, but they were. And so we'll be staying in Afghanistan at those levels for the indefinite future.

Listen, I think there is a strategic argument to be made for that. That's a similar posture that we have, for instance, in Iraq right now, and that given Afghanistan strategic importance, that would be worth it. And frankly, by the, frankly, the American people, like 2017 and 2018, Rasmussen put a poll

in the field and advanced to the midterm elections and asked Americans how they prioritize Afghanistan as an issue. 44% of Americans, it's not that they didn't think Afghanistan was a key issue. 44% of Americans didn't even know if we were fighting the war there. He just had no idea. It just completely splattered about it. So I think politically, a president could have done that, and you would have had a different outcome in Afghanistan. But once we started negotiating with the Taliban, once we were pulling out,

once the mission became bring troop levels to zero, then I think it didn't matter. There was going to be a complete, a little whole collapse in Afghanistan, and that's what wound up happening. Interesting. It's fascinating. I loved this book. I love all your stuff. And as always, it's wonderful to talk. Thanks right now. I'm a huge fan of the podcast. So it's a privilege and pleasure to be on.

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