Sorry, I'm late.
I had to stop by the Wax Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri, is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again, you've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN, like, say our name, bitch, say it, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
Alright, you guys, introducing Eric Margulies.
EricMargulies.com is his great website.
Spell it like Margolis.
And he wrote War at the Top of the World and American Raj, Liberation or Domination.
And his most recent article is called America's Shameful War.
Which one, Eric?
Welcome back.
Thank you, Scott.
Always good to be back with you.
Good.
Well, yeah, I like having you here.
So, out of all of the shameful wars, you're talking about Afghanistan this time.
It's a particularly shameful war for a number of reasons.
First of all, there's no point for it whatsoever.
Secondly, it's just a brutal exercise in colonialism.
And it pits all the modern military might of the United States against lightly armed Afghan tribesmen who are proud and dirt poor and just who are fighting for their independence.
And just in the last week, we saw a strike on a house killed 16 people, essentially obliterated an entire family.
And then, just like the definition of terrorism, they did the double tap strike where they went and they took out the funeral for all the civilians, too, and killed another, I forget, 16 people or 40 people or something?
That's the way you deal with terrorists.
That's the Dick Cheney philosophy.
It's terrible.
They kill all these people, then they call them terrorists.
We saw this happen in Vietnam, too.
All the deads were gooks and commies.
You kill them first and then identify them afterwards, even though they're harmless civilians.
It's funny.
The outrage from the mass media and from all the national security state talking heads and everything about Trump, not even really ordering a withdrawal yet, but apparently trying hard to negotiate an exit there, and they treat it like it's just on its face.
That's the most shameful thing.
It's not the war, but the idea that the war would ever end at all.
They just can't believe it.
But then, meanwhile, you look at the headlines in their own outlets, these papers and these TV networks, and there's America killing civilians with high explosives.
And this is just the status quo, whatever, shrug, who cares?
And the idea that you would even think to call it off to them is absolutely beyond the pale.
Well, it shows you it's been 18 years of mass psychosis, of mass indoctrination by pro-war propaganda.
There's a growing hatred of Muslims.
All these innocent civilians are Muslims, deserve to die anyway.
And finally, nobody cares.
Most people have forgotten where Afghanistan even was.
And it's just something that we do.
It's collateral damage.
It's not important.
Yeah, it really does seem like that's a big part of it going on so long.
There's a lot of people just, they have no awareness.
Those of us who are old enough at least remember when it was the big exciting news story at the start of the war, that kind of thing.
But a lot of people raised up since then, it's completely a background thing.
It's like, yeah, they know that there's a parliament in Germany that debates stuff, but they don't pay any attention to it any more than this, you know?
That's right.
You know, in the newspaper business, we used to have what was called a South American story, which later became an Afghan story.
And that means it's a subject of which no one is interested, and it's not worth running articles on the subject.
Yeah, man, sad to say.
All right, now, but here's the good news.
Apparently, and this is just speculation to leave reading and this kind of thing, but Eric, it sure does seem like Donald Trump told Zalmay Khalilzad that we're leaving, and the clock is ticking on you figuring out a way to try to save face if you want, but we're going one way or the other.
Bagram Air Base, be damned, and the rest of it.
Is that what it looks like to you?
Well, not that clearly.
Trump, you know, shoots off the top of his head and off-the-cuff remarks and blurts these things out, and that was a case of that.
He's said for a long time about crazy foreign wars, particularly when Obama was leading them, but he says that, but the question is who's in charge in Washington?
He's got this strange man, Bolton, who probably should be under medical care, who's running around contradicting the president, saying, no, no, no, we have to stay.
He's got this Christian extreme rightist, Pompeo, who contravenes what he was saying.
He's got the bureaucracy, and as you just said, Scott, the media, and all these liberals who are saying, oh, no, no, it's a good war, and it must go on.
So it's hard to say, really, who's going to prevail.
Yeah.
Although, you know, I've got to say, though, that compared to previous efforts at talks with the Taliban, the rules here seem to be, you know, I mean, Trump even saying he wants to pull out half the troops, kind of, before they have any sort of agreement.
And then there was another thing in Voice of America yesterday saying, quoting him as saying that he favors a full troop withdrawal as long as we can get the Taliban just to promise the same thing they've been promising almost all along anyway, that they'll keep al-Qaeda out.
And apparently, not even including keep the Bagram air base, which I know you know the Pentagon wants to keep Bagram hell or high water, no matter what.
But apparently Khalilzad has dropped that as a condition in the talks there.
So I'm just trying to imagine the dynamics going on.
I have no idea what they really are.
But Khalilzad, our emissary to Afghanistan, is a tricky character.
He's a well-known neocon.
And he is probably the only Muslim neocon.
And he was the man who caused so much damage and killing in Iraq and kept pushing for the Iraq war and now has changed his stripes.
I don't know.
I don't think so.
I don't trust him.
Oh, yeah, I sure don't either.
I mean, you know, it's interesting about him that he, I'm not exactly sure what was his position at the National Interest Foundation, but he hosted.
And they're the guys that published the National Interest website that has some good stuff on it.
A lot of times the skeptics blog and all that.
But they hosted a Trump speech there back during the campaign still.
And Khalilzad caught a lot of flack from that, from the other neocons attacking him for bestowing legitimacy on Trump.
And I guess the way Trump does to Kim Jong-un by meeting with him or something like that, you know.
So Khalilzad, unlike a lot of these neocons who just made themselves Trump's enemy immediately, Khalilzad sort of left himself a little bit of leeway to get into the government.
And I guess it does make sense, assuming Trump trusts him, that he's the guy that you would, if you could really get him to agree on the policy, that this is what we're doing.
And in this timeframe, that maybe he's the only one who could accomplish it if it's not, if his plan is not to sabotage it.
But it seems like they're making progress.
I mean, the Taliban are saying essentially, man, we always told you all along we'll keep Al-Qaeda out.
So we're glad you're agreeing to our terms now.
The Washington Post is screaming to high heaven that it's surrender.
These, Scott, these neocons and their media have been pushing the line all along that Al-Qaeda is embedded in Afghanistan and that ISIS is there.
And with the Khorasan group, a non-existent anti-American group is there.
So this is part of the story of staying and fighting there.
And I've noticed that as the time goes on, they're reporting more and more attacks against Al-Qaeda instead of against Taliban.
Taliban has almost been replaced by Al-Qaeda, which is not true.
Right.
I've seen that, too, in the recent reports.
And there's never any details.
They just say, oh, yeah, trust us.
But they don't even say, yeah, no, really, the guy was a blue-eyed Egyptian or, you know, or anything like that, you know.
So I'd be very cautious about Qaeda.
He's a very bright man, no doubt about it.
I would have preferred to see somebody more in the middle of the spectrum sent to do that than him.
But apparently the Afghan leaders are willing to talk to him.
So that's a big step forward.
Well, it seems like, too, I mean, I don't want to give the man too much credit or any kind of thing.
But this is one that Trump has really not believed in for a very long time.
And at one point, even in 2012, when Obama stuck with the timeline and told the generals, we're drawing down.
And the generals tried to push back on that and said, no, we need to continue the search longer.
Trump actually tweeted that his nemesis, Obama, was right and the generals needed to obey his orders, which that was a pretty big deal as much as he hated Obama, that he would put principle first or his, at least, his point of view on Afghanistan as more important than always attacking Obama in every circumstance, which was his M.O. at the time, you know.
This is a big problem for the U.S. government for as long as I can remember.
Recall when Truman fired General MacArthur for insubordination, opposing his policies.
So weak president, strong Pentagon, and vice versa.
Right.
Yeah.
And, you know, in the history of it, I mean, they really did take him out to, he dragged his feet on it all through 2017 until they took him out to Camp David, where it's him and all 10 generals in the room or something, out in the woods, where they read of the riot act and said, here are your orders, Mr. President, essentially.
And the way Bob Woodward tells it, Mattis even outright blackmailed and basically said, not just like as political advice that if you leave, then if anything bad happens there, it'll get blamed on you, but I will blame it on you.
And I will say that I warned you and it's all your fault and this and that.
And that was what made him finally agree to sending the extra 5,000.
But it makes sense that of out of all the ones that, I mean, all the wars are stupid, but Afghanistan might be the dumbest one of all.
Right.
Pacifying posh tunes.
Who wants that job?
That's completely crazy.
Even Donald Trump can see that that doesn't make any sense.
And that's not the same thing as fighting international terrorism either.
And spending a trillion dollars in the process.
You know, I'm from New York City where everything's falling apart.
The subways, the bridges, the electrical system, the water system.
They don't have the money to fix anything there, but we have the money to spend $400 to deliver gasoline, a gallon, 400 gallons to the top of the Hindu Kush mountains and to bomb 24 hours and keep fleets of planes and naval vessels off Arabia.
For what?
We don't know.
Sorry, just one second.
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All right, now, so one thing is that in Syria right now, the Islamic State is virtually eliminated.
They certainly don't control any territory anymore.
You're talking maybe a couple thousand guys left and completely surrounded by enemies.
So if America leaves, there's not really much to cry about, even by the hawks' standard.
I mean, they can cry about Iran, but that's different.
But the Islamic State, they're vanquished now.
But Trump leaves Afghanistan, do you or do you not think that there still is going to be hell to pay?
And that the factions that America's propped up in power there in Kabul are not going to be able to maintain it?
And the Taliban, who have spent the last few years being suicide bomber, murderer, lunatic, civilian butchers, they're probably not going to just become Democrats and run for parliament.
If they have that much, obviously, that much weight behind them, they could just march right into Kabul.
So are you predicting the best or the worst or something in between or some kind of compromise?
Or when America leaves, the hawks are going to have a lot of mileage to say that, look at the consequences of leaving, even though, of course, it's their fault for building it this way in the first place.
Well, yes, of course, that'll happen.
And those media will be filled with heart-rending stories about abused women.
But the fact remains that unless troops of some kind, U.S. troops, mercenaries of other country troops, are left in Kabul to protect the stooge government that's there now, they will be run out of town in a week or shorter.
And if they're smart, they'll get the hell out before the Taliban come marching in.
Same happened to Najibullah, the Soviet front man there.
He thought he could control the situation.
He ended up being hanged.
Yeah.
I think it was Gareth Porter said, well, they'll just all move to California.
Yes, why not?
I mean, it is better than seeing them all butchered.
You know what I can't figure out, though?
How come it's only my idea and I don't hear anyone else say that maybe the deal they could cut would be to just let Pashtunistan have strong federalism, let them hold the south and the east, and stop dictating to them out of the capital city and hope that that's enough to keep them out of the capital city.
Scott, I had no idea that you were a closet Pashtun nationalist.
It's not a bad idea.
And it'll probably happen de facto.
It doesn't make sense that everybody's always fighting over the capital city when control the capital city doesn't mean control the nation anyway.
It never has.
So why not just have federalism then?
And it'll still be Afghanistan, but you guys can kind of have self-rule in your area and we'll leave you alone.
There's nothing to fight about now, right?
That was always the traditional way in Afghanistan.
No central government had any control, no matter what it did in Kabul, and the different ethnic areas ran their own business.
I think we'll go back to that again.
Yeah, although maybe after the Taliban is done taking over Kabul.
And you know, there's old Hekmatyar still in there.
He's running for president.
Did you see?
Who did?
I'm sorry.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar from Hizb-e-Islami.
Bring him up.
My old friend Gulbuddin.
Yeah, your old pal.
Why don't you tell us all about him?
He's become a real dog in the manger.
Gulbuddin was the most important and the most productive of the warlords fighting the Soviets.
And his group, Hizb-e-Islami, was strongly supported by CIA and by Pakistan.
He was the Pakistani boy there.
And he's a very smart, wily character.
And his men have committed many atrocities.
He's a very ruthless, brutal guy.
However, in the last couple of years, Gulbuddin has been edging away from his Taliban brothers.
And he was trying to set himself up as an independent ruler.
So he's obviously playing footsie with the government now and with the Americans.
And he hopes that he will end up as the strong man of Afghanistan.
I don't think it'll happen, but it might.
Well, you know, they had previously called him the butcher of Kabul.
I guess he just shelled the country from the time of Najibullah's lynching through 1995.
He just sat on the outskirts launching artillery shells or something.
That's right.
Sort of like we do against the Afghan villagers.
Yeah, his men killed a lot of people with these rocket attacks.
But also there was very strong propaganda against Gulbuddin because he was regarded as too Islamic.
And the people in Freedom House in Washington, that group, they were trying to turn the tables against him.
He had a lot of opposition.
He didn't have total support amongst the Pashtuns.
So he remains one of the players, and a very strong one.
But he could be knocked off at any time, too.
Yeah, that's a good point.
I mean, under the peace deal, at least as reported by the Post, when he came in from the cold, he was allowed to bring 20,000 fighters with him right into Kabul and ensconce them at his new palace or his old one again or whatever it was.
So, yeah, sounds like a force to be reckoned with, indeed.
He told me the U.S. had tried to kill him six times.
When did he tell you that?
When I was with him in Afghanistan.
Yeah, but, I mean, like what year?
Oh, it was probably around 1991, 1992, somewhere around there.
Oh, so this was after they had used him up and they were done with him and then they turned on him and tried to kill him?
Yes.
Because he was one of the favorites, right?
He was, indeed, probably the favorite and the largest recipient of cash and weapons from the CIA and the Pakistani ISI intelligence.
You know, Alfred McCoy has a thing about how his involvement in the opium trade back then is really what got the ball rolling on ending virtually all agriculture in Afghanistan other than opium the way it is now.
And it was while he was working for the CIA during that time.
Hey, by the way, as long as we're at it, tell the story about their other, their second favorite was Massoud, who was a double agent after all, right?
Well, yeah, he was playing a double game for sure.
He was the Tajik leader from northern Afghanistan.
He and his Tajik gang were the biggest opium dealers in Afghanistan.
They really ran the trade for quite a while.
They still run it today.
And Massoud was a flamboyant, charismatic guy who claimed he was doing most of the fighting against the Soviets, but in fact he wasn't.
He made a deal with the Soviets in the Panjshir Valley, his feistum, where he agreed to stop fighting the Soviets in return for Soviet cash and the weapons, munitions.
But he was hailed by the French media.
They loved him because he spoke French.
He'd been to school in France for a while, and the French adored him.
They called him the lion of the Panjshir Valley, and all his stuff was romantic.
He was like another Che Guevara.
But he ended up in bed with the Americans when the U.S. invaded in 2001.
He was enlisted by the Americans to form the spearhead of the American invasion, and they were going to put Massoud in power.
Massoud's ambition was to become the strongman of Afghanistan with Soviet and or American backing.
In the end, it was al-Qaeda, the bin Laden people, who blew him up and took him out of the game.
Yeah, interesting story, that one there.
I guess he would have been their first choice if that hadn't happened before.
Oh, no, it was the other guy who was hanged by the Taliban.
What do you mean?
Haq, Abdul Haq, right?
Your buddy, another one of your buddies.
Oh, yes, my dear old friend, Abdul Haq.
He was indeed hanged, but he was imprudent.
With CIA backing, he snuck into Afghanistan and tried to raise the tribesmen against the Afghans.
He had no support at all, and he was captured by Taliban and unfortunately hanged.
He was a bad man.
I was sad about that.
And then that was when Zalmay Khalilzad picked Hamid Karzai to be the puppet instead.
The rest is history.
Karzai was not a bad man either.
He was the American puppet and stole ruler.
He was a CIA asset.
But he was a decent man, and at least he had some concept for the good of Afghanistan.
And he occasionally even spoke against the American occupation and the bombings committed by American Air Force.
But he was ousted after he became too outspoken about the American occupation and was replaced.
Yeah, well, and they really did grow to hate him and vice versa.
That much is certainly true.
I mean, I think they helped him rig the election in 2004, but then the one in 2009, the Obama guys, you know, they very clearly and they made it plain that they wanted Abdullah or I think Ghani was their first choice and Abdullah, their second choice.
And he stole it.
Karzai just stole it from them better than they were able to steal it from him was all.
I'll tell you, the Soviet-run elections were much fairer and more honest than the elections run by the United States.
I'm embarrassed to say.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, so let's say that Donald Trump really, just for the sake of argument, he's really got a handle on this one.
And he had a heart to heart kind of talk with Khalilzad over a beer or something.
I don't think either of them drink.
And and they decided, no, they're really going to do this.
They're going to make this very limited deal with the Taliban.
Just don't let Zawahiri run around here, man.
And we're cool.
And please work out some kind of agreement with the government in Kabul as as the Americans head out the door.
Do you think what do you think would happen?
Do you think there's any kind of chance for a peaceful resolution between the Kurds?
Inevitably, the puppet government installed by the U.S. will lose their heads.
But nobody really cares about them.
There will be some killings, revenge killings.
The Afghans are notorious for their love of revenge.
And you know, by now, as I saw last time around, as the Najibullah regime was collapsing, every Afghan worth his salt is already making deals under the table with the other side.
To clan loyalties.
So everybody's trying to find a way out to protect themselves.
So I don't think the bloodbath is as we think.
Yeah, that's interesting.
You know, there's this lady, Ashley Jackson, who I've been unable to contact her to get her on the show.
But she wrote this in-depth study all about the Taliban where she went and spent months interviewing them.
And she wrote a shorter kind of news version of it for foreignpolicy.com as well.
But she talks about how, I guess maybe it was after they assassinated their previous leader in, I'm going to guess like 2015.
Sorry, I don't remember.
That the new leadership of the Taliban, they really adopted, that the new leadership of the Taliban really adopted kind of David Petraeus slash Mao Zedong's people's war strategy, so to speak.
And that, you know, so rather than attacking every government institution of the new government, they just co-opted them all.
So you even have the U.S. government and the central government paying the salaries of people who are all truly hired by the Taliban and put in place by the Taliban.
All the civil servants and mayors and whatever in huge areas of the country.
So they're just taking it over and then getting to what you were saying.
They're also making deals with Tajiks and Uzbeks and other tribal leaders outside of the Pashtun ethnicity there.
Kind of, I think like you're saying, in preparation for the day when they inherit the power that, because these other people from their point of view, they're already making deals to save their lives when the change comes themselves.
Everyone there sees the writing on the wall.
They're too sophisticated not to see.
They've been through it a couple of times.
So that will be the case.
You know, the United States is even more powerful than its bombs from B-52s and B-1s or pallets of cash.
Under crisp hundred dollar bills, freshly printed.
And people have been bought everywhere.
That's the Uzbeks and the Tajiks are fighting for money.
The Afghan communists and the intelligence service are being paid off to do that.
Everybody's working for the Yankee dollar.
And as long as the dollars keep going, these people will oppose Taliban.
But one of these days, the dollars may be cut off or cut down.
There will be major defections, unless, of course, the Taliban decides it wants to work for the Yankee dollars and signs on.
Right.
Well, there is sort of a parallel, possibly, right, with the awakening.
How do we make peace with the Sunni insurgency?
Well, in Iraq War II, we turned them against the very worst part of them, the al-Qaeda in Iraq guys.
So here, Taliban, OK, we like you after all, as long as you keep ISIS out.
Which is not a tall order, which is a very short order.
And it's in the Taliban's interest to do anyway.
ISIS-K is just their former Tariki Taliban from Pakistan.
Well, the country, as you said, is no economy aside from growing dope.
And the people have to have money somehow.
So getting money from the Americans is awfully attractive and may become necessary.
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So now here's one thing, Eric, is that in the Trump administration, the original McMaster plan, and it was Lisa Curtis, I think was her name, Linda or Lisa, I can't remember.
Their plan was we've got to emphasize India.
We've got to use India to threaten Pakistan and tell Pakistan you better stay out of Afghanistan or else we're going to ask the Indians to increase their role there.
In fact, we're going to do that anyway when, of course, as you have explained on this show over the decades now, that this is the reason that Pakistan works so hard to keep the Taliban in play in Afghanistan all this time anyway, is because America is inviting the Indians in there.
And so you mention in your article here about America ought to tell the Indians to butt out on our way out the door, but explain why that's so important here.
Scott, that was my shorthand.
I was running out of space in my column.
What I meant by that was that India, for the last five years or more, has been trying to expand its covert influence in Afghanistan.
It opened up, I think, five consulates in different places, which are really centers for Indian espionage.
India's intelligence agency, the research and analysis wing, very powerful, very competent.
It has been stirring up trouble all over.
It has been arming the Tajiks and the Uzbeks.
And the Indians want to do it first to stick their finger in the eye of the Pakistanis who are supporting the Pashtuns.
But also India sees possibly taking over Afghanistan, or at least part of it, as the new hegemony ruler.
The Pakistanis, of course, they are in a dither about that, deeply worried.
And the more India pushes into Afghanistan, the greater tensions rise on the Indian-Pakistani border.
All right, you guys.
Well, that's the great Eric Margulies at ericmargulies.com.
America's shameful war.
Appreciate it.
Cheers, Scott.
All right, y'all.
Thanks.
Find me at libertarianinstitute.org, at scotthorton.org, antiwar.com, and reddit.com slash scotthortonshow.
Oh, yeah, and read my book, Fool's Errand, Timed and the War in Afghanistan, at foolserrand.us.
