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James Lileks: Now we welcome to the podcast, H.R. McMaster, Retired Lieutenant General, following 34 years of service. Herbert Raymond McMaster played key roles in the Gulf War, Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. He's been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Consulting Senior Fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, served as the 26th National Security Advisor and is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Before enlisting, he graduated from the US Military Academy in '84, later earned a PhD in American history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where his PhD thesis formed the basis for the book, Dereliction of Duty. More recently, he's published a memoir, Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World. We have him with us today to speak of the forthcoming withdrawal from and what it means for quote, all civilized peoples, as he put it. Before we get into that, thoughts that you laid out in your Wall Street Journal piece on how to mitigate the disastrous consequences of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. What do you think of the decision itself to go and thank you for joining us today.

H.R. McMaster: No, hey James, it's great to be with you. I love your podcast. I just think, I wish all Americans would listen to it and be better informed. I think that could help us be a better country as a result.

Rob Long: Oh, I agree.

H.R. McMaster: I love the discussion on education as well. I mean, I write in Battlegrounds that this is the most important thing we can do, is to help educate the next generation and also continue to educate ourselves, because learning has to be a lifelong endeavor and you guys contribute to that. It's great to be with you. So, I think it's a disaster. It's a disaster, because what it will do is it will lead to the strengthening of jihadist terrorists who already want to commit mass murder as their principle tactic in a war against all civilized peoples.

H.R. McMaster: We know this is not a theoretical case, we know from the most devastating attack in history, 9/11, that when these terrorists gain control of safe havens and support bases and they have the time and the space and the resources to plan and prepare and train for, and then execute mass murder attacks to become orders of magnitude more dangerous. We saw this with ISIS as well. Remember in Iraq when Vice President Biden at the time, called President Obama in December, of 2011, he said, "Thank you for allowing me to end this God damn war." Well, hey, wars don't end when one party disengages. What we saw in 2014 was the rise of Al-Qaeda Interact 2.0, ISIS, which became the most devastating terrorist organization in history, in control of territory the size of Britain and conducting, planning, inspiring attacks across the world.

H.R. McMaster: So, this is the situation we're facing in Afghanistan. What's so sad about it, I think, is that it's self- inflicted. I mean, James, we'd already won the war. We had 8,500 troops there. Now, if you're Ecuador, that might be a stretch, but we're the United States damn it, and those forces were enabling Afghans to bear the brunt of that fight to maintain the freedoms that they've enjoyed since 2001, after the end of

McMaster_Standalone (Completed 08/16/21) Page 1 of 13 Transcript by Rev.com This transcript was exported on Aug 16, 2021 - view latest version here. the regime. But then also to fight on the frontier, a modern day frontier, between civilization and barbarism.

James Lileks: A lot of people would say, if we were still in Germany 20 years after the conclusion of the Second World War and trying to mop up Nazi revanchists hiding out in caves, we might consider leaving and just letting the country go. But this is different. What, however, is the difference between Afghanistan and Iraq, when it comes to being able to fight, hold, seize territory, find the guys and extubate them? I mean, there's a question simply that one is full of nooks and crannies and mountainous redoubts and the other one is fairly flat and you can see the dust plume of the guys moving across? Why were we able to do it in Iraq? We couldn't do it in Afghanistan?

H.R. McMaster: Well, we did do it in Afghanistan. I think that really, what is sad about both wars, or Iraq and Afghanistan is we often debate, "Hey, should we have done it?" Mainly talking about the invasion of Iraq in 2003? I think what we ought to talk about is, who the hell thought it would be easy and why they think it would be easy? Really what occurred, I think, in both wars is that a short-term approach to what was essentially a long-term, complicated problem and a simplistic approach to these problem sets actually lengthened those wars and made them more costly. Paradoxically, sadly, we're learning the wrong lesson from these conflicts that, "Hey, it's just intractable, and we should never have done to begin with. We should disengage as an unmitigated good."

H.R. McMaster: But hey, when you disengage from war, it's not as if you know these jihadist terrorists are looking around, saying, "Oh, hey, the Americans are gone. Let's just stop our jihad." Our narrative is one of ending the endless wars as we call them, but this is an endless jihad and our enemies have a say in the future course of events. That's why it's important to remain engaged with them. I'll tell you, James, we really had the enemy in a difficult situation in Afghanistan. It was obviously still contested, Afghanistan had not become Denmark, but Afghanistan doesn't need to be Denmark, it just needs to be Afghanistan. It was going to be a violent, screwed up place at a certain level, but it would be a place that was not in the control of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and their jihadist terrorist allies.

H.R. McMaster: That was an insurance policy, essentially, an insurance policy that the premium of which was 8,500 troops, casualties that would be at risk, but very small number of casualties, compared to the costs that the Afghans were bearing to really fight the fight against jihadist terrorists and about $22 billion a year. That number was going down. So that was sustainable and it was preventing what we're seeing happening right now, which is a humanitarian catastrophe that was predictable. Obviously, what the jihadist terrorists will characterize as a victory. They're going to say, "Hey, we defeated the world's greatest superpower. Come join our cause." I think we're going to see, as we did with ISIS in Iraq and Syria, a much more potent jihadist terrorist threat, and we're going to have to go back. We're going to have to go back at a much higher place, as we had to do in Iraq as well.

Rob Long: So General, I'm may ask dumb questions, before we get to what's going to happen in the next month or two, which I think we all know what's going to happen in the next month or two, it's happening now,

McMaster_Standalone (Completed 08/16/21) Page 2 of 13 Transcript by Rev.com This transcript was exported on Aug 16, 2021 - view latest version here. there will be an article on the front page of every newspaper, every morning about a new area that has been Talibanized, right? Just now we just got an alert that Afghan provincial capital, Zaranj, just fell to the... I guess the Taliban we're calling. So, who got it wrong? Did, I mean, Biden get it wrong? Did we get it wrong? Did the American people get it wrong? Because the American people kind of think, "let's get out of there" and they feel like we failed, so that we should get out of there.

H.R. McMaster: Right.

Rob Long: Whenever you ask people, they say, "Well, how long were we supposed to be there? What were the standards of success?" We know what the standard of said, World War Two, Hitler dies in a bunker and we get France back basically, right?

H.R. McMaster: Right.

Rob Long: How do we know? I think what you're describing in Afghanistan is a winning that no American knew to define as winning.

H.R. McMaster: Yeah. No, I think you're right about this. So I think to your question of, "Who failed?" I think we all failed. I think our leaders failed across really four administrations now. So we often hear the mantra of, a 20- year war, a two decades war, but it's not a 20-year war, it's a one-year war fought 20 times over, with strategies and policies that were based on really what we would like the war to be and the enemy we would like to fight, on the delusional view of Afghanistan, rather than reality on the ground.

Rob Long: Right.

H.R. McMaster: I think the American people would have sustained the effort. I mean, I think have we talked ourselves into defeat there? I think that to answer your question, "What does winning look like?" Winning looks like a sustainable, political outcome in Afghanistan that addresses the, I mean, the cause of the war to begin with, which is to deny jihadist terrorists safe Haven and support bases that they can use to plan, prepare and execute attacks against us, our allies and our interests abroad. By that standard, Rob, we'd won already. It wasn't pretty, again, Afghanistan wasn't Denmark, but it didn't need to be Denmark. So we set an unrealistic standard and unrealistic expectations.

H.R. McMaster: I mean, the analogy that I sometimes use is the analogy of Korea after the Korean War. So think about South Korea in 1953, I mean, it was totally screwed up. I mean, this is a people who had been ravaged, a country ravaged by decades of war and brutal occupation, no natural resources in the country, an illiterate population, a hostile neighbor, and a corrupt government. It wasn't until the 1970s that South

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Korea began reforms in the economy, which unleashed its potential. It wasn't until the '80s that it became really a democratic representative government. So it takes time, these problems take time.

Rob Long: Part of the reason that Korea, that worked, I mean, I don't mean worked physically, the politically, is that it was part of a larger struggle that America was open and honest about, the Cold War, the fight against communist dictatorships across the globe. If you had stopped an ordinary... I mean, I guess, stopped an ordinary American in the street in the '60s or the '70s and said, "When's this going to end?" They would have said, "Well, I don't know if it's ever going to end." I mean, really, there was only one prominent American in 1980-

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Rob Long: ... who thought that the cold war was going to end, and that was Ronald Reagan. Everybody else thought that was kind of like, "Really? We're going to be doing this forever." And yet, people I've talked to about Afghanistan and Iraq are like, "Well, how long are we supposed to be there?" And you're saying 20 years, that's phase one.

H.R. McMaster: Well, yeah, [crosstalk 00:10:21].

Rob Long: [inaudible 00:10:21] to be more prepared for that.

H.R. McMaster: But not at the level... I think Americans, I think, believed that we're still at the level of commitment that we had between say 2009 and 2013, '14. A hundred thousand troops, that's a lot. 8,500 troops who are enabling others to do the fighting, that is a sustainable commitment for the United States. And I think you're right about this, Americans don't appreciate what is at stake. That's why this podcast is so important because you actually talk substance here, right? You're not performative, you're informative. You talk about what's going on in the world and why it's important to Americans. And across, I would say the last three administrations, only rarely did the president make the case to the American people what was at stake, and then what was the strategy that would deliver a favorable outcome at an acceptable cost?

H.R. McMaster: And you know what? I don't blame the American people. Your question about, who screwed this up? Not the American people. I think our political leadership screwed this up. And how many Americans, Rob, could even name the various Taliban factions, who could even tell you...

Rob Long: Let alone spell them.

H.R. McMaster:

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Who is Hibatullah Akhundzada? They don't know who that is, right? I mean, this is one of the most odious people on earth, and these are people who want to impose with this form of , that that is brutal. These are people who've just recently bombed a girl's school and then set up secondary bombs outside to kill more young girls as they fled from the initial bomb. These are people who conducted an attack on a maternity hospital and gunned down babies and expectant mothers, right?

H.R. McMaster: I mean, these are the enemies of all humanity. And so we don't even talk about our enemy. And you alluded to this in your question, which I think is absolutely right. We are narcissistic in our view of the world. And I wrote about this in Battlegrounds and how we defend. We define the world only in relation to us, and we assume that what we decide to do or to not do is decisive toward achieving a favorable outcome. And the problem with that is, hey, others have authorship over the future, including our enemies and our rivals and our adversaries. And that's why we have to stay engaged. And that's the lesson of 911. And I'll tell you, I think that's the lesson of the pandemic, right? Problems that develop abroad can only be dealt with at an exorbitant cost once they reach our shores. Right? So I'm not saying that we need a huge, massive military commitment across the greater Middle East and south Asia, but we need a sustained and sustainable commitment there.

James Lileks: Right. But unfortunately for the last 20 years... I'm sorry, Rob. We've had a general disengagement from the idea that United States can unilaterally, unipolar power, impose, bring freedom to other places. We've just sort of decided to let them all to their devices. And you're absolutely right about what's going to happen to Afghanistan if the Taliban takes over. But I think a lot of people here in this country say, "Look, we were there for 20 years. We attempted to set up some institutions. And there were so fragile that they crumbled like a stale cookie the minute that we left. That's their culture. That's their place. Leave them to it." That's what they believe.

James Lileks: If the minute the United States leaves, all of a sudden the telephone Springs up, like somebody sprinkled sea monkeys and poured water on them, then that was going to happen eventually, inevitably, anyway. The real problem is , which sits there and encourages them. The real problem that we should be talking about is, et cetera, et cetera. It's as if we have to do something, let's do something to a place that matters. Americans believe that Afghanistan doesn't matter to us anymore. It just doesn't.

H.R. McMaster: Yeah. I mean, but sadly the opposite is the case, right? I mean what happens in Afghanistan, doesn't adhere to Las Vegas rules, right? It doesn't stay in Afghanistan. And we know that from the 911 attacks, and we know that from other jihadist terrorist attacks that have emanated from essentially what is a terrorist ecosystem, as you alluded to, along the Afghan Pakistan border. And so when people say, "We should disengage from Afghanistan. The real problem is Pakistan." Well, hell. I mean, do you think instability in Afghanistan is not going to affect Pakistan? Of course, it will. And that's where the refugees will go initially and will further destabilize an already destabilized Pakistan, a country that is home to, I think, 22 US designated terrorist organizations.

H.R. McMaster:

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These are organizations that are not homogeneous and separate from one another. They overlap. They share expertise and resources and people, right? And so it's going to become a much more dangerous place. Pakistan is a nuclear armed country. And so you can imagine the worst scenario, right? Are these jihadist terrorists getting hold of the most destructive weapons on earth? And so, again, it is really an insurance policy to remain engaged there. And it isn't the United States on its own. I mean, gosh, we had 28 countries there. And when we signed the capitulation agreement, James, in 2019 with the Taliban, which is, I think a nadir, for the United States' reputation.

James Lileks: Great name. I love the United States to sign somebody, a capitulation treaty...

H.R. McMaster: It was horrible.

James Lileks: ... on the hood of some broken down car instead of the deck of a battleship. Anyway, go on.

H.R. McMaster: And at the time, it's worth noting that there were more NATO and coalition troops in Afghanistan than there were American troops. Right? And it just shows how I think that Americans should recognize that this idea that if we disengage, others will do more, actually is counterintuitive. But if the United States just does a little bit and leads, others will do more and share the burden. And that was the case in Afghanistan and that's what made it really a sustainable commitment there. It is self-defeat in Afghanistan. We defeated ourselves. The Taliban are claiming now that they are the victors over the world's only super power. But that's not true because we essentially defeated ourselves.

Rob Long: So I got a couple of questions that I know you've got to run. I don't want to keep you too much. One is, after 911, one of the tenants that people followed was that, hey, we don't need a police action here. We need a military action.

H.R. McMaster: Yeah.

Rob Long: And if there's one thing that everybody can agree on is that the United States military is incredibly, incredibly effective and efficient. I mean, invasion of Afghanistan, invasion of Iraq, and so on. But then it really does become a police action where you're in a neighborhood, a bad neighborhood, and you've opened your precinct and you only have certain amount of resources and you kind of have to keep the lights on and you have to do all sorts of things to keep the peace. But nobody ever thinks, or some people think that you've got to defund the police. Although there were people marching saying, "Defund the police." Is that what we just did in Afghanistan?

H.R. McMaster:

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Yeah. I think, Rob, we're learning the wrong lesson, as you're alluding to. So there's this idea now that we should have just left. Right? We should just taken the George Castanza approach to war and left on a high note. Right? So after you don't see the Taliban, say, "Okay, that's it. We're out."

Rob Long: Right.

H.R. McMaster: But really, war has always required the consolidation of military gains to get the sustainable political outcomes. Now, there are exceptions to that, and those are called, in military terms, a raid. Right? A raid is a military operation of a limited purpose, short duration, and with a planned withdrawal. Right? But in Afghanistan and Iraq, we were trying to change the political outcome there. We did it. Sadly, I mean, in Afghanistan, we did it. It wasn't pretty. We made it much harder on ourselves than we had to, but then we quit. We just quit and left it. And of course, then your enemy has an opportunity to come back.

Rob Long: Right. So let me ask two questions. I mean, because I want to get to what you think we should do now. Right? How do you mitigate the disaster? But before we get to mitigating the disaster, if this is kind of the future, not really wars of conquests, meaning we're taking back territory, we're kicking out the Vichy and restoring France or whatever. Is the US military equipped and trained and prepared for this kind of work? This doesn't seem like traditional...

H.R. McMaster: No, what's sad about it, Rob, it is traditional. We've always had to do it. Right? So even during the Revolutionary War, right, once we defeated British forces, there had to be governance in the wake of the defeat of British forces. If you look at the Civil War, and when we failed in large measure in Reconstruction in the South, it required the army to play a role in establishing alternative governance there. In the frontier wars, I could say, in the Philippines, in the 1890s and into the early 20th century, look at the Panama invasion, Dominican Republic intervention. I mean, we've always had to do it, but what we do in the wake of these conflicts is we say, "Oh, we're never going to do that again." So my friend, Conrad Crane, he's a great historian, he said, "We have never been able to never do it again." And so I think we are condemned to repeat the same mistakes. Our visiting fellow here at Hoover...

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H.R. McMaster: ... Nadia Schadlow, has a great book called War and the Art of Governance. And in this book, and she covers Iraq and Afghanistan in the book as well. She calls it American Denial Syndrome. We deny that we have to do that complicated stuff. Right. We just want to, we just-

Rob Long: Who should do I?

H.R. McMaster: [inaudible 00:20:21] forces of the enemy and then call it a day.

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Rob Long: Who should do it? Who do we hire to do it though. And we got to like, are we are, I mean, I really mean this because I'm completely ignorant. Is that something that they are teaching at West Point or Naval Academy? [crosstalk 00:20:35] ,

H.R. McMaster: I mean they should, darn it. I did in my class when I taught history at West Point. Right. And the army has always had to do it, right, because there is no state department cavalry, right? They're not like... They're not waiting right on the other side of the hill to just ride in. Now that doesn't mean that the military sets the policy, but the military has to be really aware of the range of tasks that are necessary to consolidate gains. And you already alluded to some of these, Rob, the basic ones, right, which are really establish legitimate and capable security forces, right, that can provide the degree of security that allows your life to return to normal. It's support to other really critical government functions, right. We're not doing it, right. We want to help Afghans do it. We want to help to help Iraqis do it, but you have to be active in establishing the conditions that allows governance to return.

Rob Long: So let me ask you about the bad luck. So is it just bad luck or bad timing that 9/11 happens after a decade maybe, a decade and a half of a pretty much consensus among the smart people that one thing we're not doing in America, we're not nation building. And then 9/11 happens and really what we have to do is nation build and that's a phrase you can't say. You can't put those two words together-

H.R. McMaster: No. It's a dirty phrase.

Rob Long: And we've been taught that that's what we got to do. But

James Lileks: Nation building is building cultures that don't exist.

H.R. McMaster: Right. Right. And so I would agree that right, we don't nation build, right. We don't determine kind of the form of governance and the character of these societies and the degree to which, the degree to which they can live together harmoniously. We don't determine that, right. These, the people in the region, they are the authors of their own fate, and they have their own social and cultural and religious backgrounds and historical backgrounds that determine really the present, right and constrain what can be achieved in the future. But, really there's a difference, I think, between this idea that we can export our form of governance and the nature of our society and the consolidation of gains, right, to get to a sustainable outcome, consistent with their culture, consistent with their traditions.

H.R. McMaster: So, people say, "Oh man, Afghanistan, it's never been a country. It's been a graveyard." Of course, that's a historical, right, it has been a country that hung together, not perfectly since the mid 18th century, right. It is a country that has not been sort of centralized in terms of control but has been decentralized.

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And that's okay. Right. Again, it doesn't have to be Denmark. So I think it's important for us to recognize, obviously, as you were alluding to, James, which is very important, the limits of the degree of agency that we have over other people's futures, but it's also important to recognize that we have to exert influence in a positive way to get to the outcome that we want. And especially if it's realistic, we can do it. And we have done it in the past, and I think that there are many examples of successes in this area that we tend to overlook.

Rob Long: Okay. So now that we have a country on the edge. We've made a decision, that decision, we took the decision and we did it. The situation is what it is.

H.R. McMaster: Well, the decision was made for us when the, I think they committed when Al-Qaeda committed the most devastating terrorist attack in history murdering nearly 3000 innocents.

Rob Long: What I'm saying is that we're out, we're out now, right? We've left.

H.R. McMaster: Oh, the decision to leave.

Rob Long: Now we have a front page of The Wall Street Journal and front page, The New York Times, every day is going to be a drum beat of the fall of Afghanistan. Right? What do we do? How do we mitigate what I think we kind of seemed to be a disastrous decision. Right.

H.R. McMaster: Well, I think the only way that we could do it is to support Afghans who were defending themselves in the best way that we can. And that would require more active support for Afghan forces who were fighting, who were fighting to prevent the loss of the freedoms that they've enjoyed since 2001. I'll tell you what has not been covered in the press and I got hammered in for saying this, but like, this is, I think that this is the most under reported war in American history in the information age. And so Americans didn't understand what was at stake, as you alluded to. They didn't even know who the enemy was, but they also didn't understand that the Afghan society was completely transformed from the hell that they had experienced from '96 to 2001 under the Taliban from the hell they experienced from '92 to '96, under the civil war.

H.R. McMaster: And so what we don't recognize, what we didn't recognize, is how much there was to lose. Now, Afghans get that, but war is ultimately a contest of wills, right? And I think what you're seeing is with the rapid fall of these districts in Afghanistan is that the Taliban is convincing Afghans that they're going to win, right? So Afghans are raging, they're laying down their arms. And so that the effect of our complete disengagement was psychological even more than physical. So what I argue for in the journal piece is that, we should provide air support. We should provide the fire power that will help Afghans bolster

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H.R. McMaster: Now, there are some people who say, "well, gosh, that would go back on our agreement with the Taliban." Okay, well, the agreement with the Taliban has been broken by the Taliban, right? Who are engaged in a massive offensive across the country. They're using murderous, terrorist, tactics, assassinating anybody: journalists, judges, and anybody who took a stand for the future of the country.

Rob Long: So your argument generally is if we have to leave the ground, we don't have to leave the sky.

H.R. McMaster: No, that's right. Because Afghans already... See, this is what's killing me. I mean, this is what's so sad is that the Afghans were already bearing the brunt of the fight. 8,500 troops, really? That's nothing. Afghans were taken about 30 casualties a day fighting against the Taliban because we helped bolster their will. We're providing them with certain capabilities. And then when we just pulled the plug and actually, Rob, what made it worse is, if we were going to leave, okay, just leave. But we actually empowered the Taliban and weakened the Afghan government on the way out. We didn't demand a ceasefire. We insisted that the Afghan government release 5,000 of some of the most heinous people on earth on our way out. And then we adopted this narrative of really the Afghan government needs to do more for peace.

H.R. McMaster: And our Secretary of State writes a letter to Ashraf Ghani, the elected president of Afghanistan and says, "You have to do more." Did he write a letter to Hibatullah Akhundzada who is inflicting so much harm and visiting so much horror on the Afghan people? No. So what we are witnessing here is a reversal of the truth, right? We've created a self-delusional view of Afghanistan, Like the Taliban's now connected to Al Qaeda, jihadist, they're completely intertwined. But we're also seeing the reversal of morality in which we have actually sided in many ways with the Taliban, on our way out. It's extraordinary. It is-

James Lileks: But why? Why did that happen?

H.R. McMaster: You know, I think it's a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the conflict, right? Fundamental misunderstanding. And you hear the phrase all the time, the graveyard of empires, right. Who will be the next empire to engage in the folly of engaging Afghanistan. But we were not fighting against the Afghan people. We were fighting with the Afghan people against the Taliban. The Taliban who's regenerative capacity resided in Pakistan, and was sustained by jihadist terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda and sustained by Pakistani intelligence, right, the Inner Services Intelligence, the ISI. And so the misconception of the nature of the war and the nature of our enemy led us to a strategy that cut directly against our interests and led to the embarrassing, the shameful behavior of actually emboldening some of the most horrible people on earth, right, the enemies of all civilized people. I mean, how can you explain this? How do you explain that the president, when he announced our complete withdrawal from

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Afghanistan, pegged the date to September 11th, the anniversary of the most devastating attack, and how can you explain that the president, when he made that announcement, did it in area 60 of Arlington Cemetery were fallen heroes from the Afghan war are laid to rest. And he thought somehow that this would be welcome because, I mean, I think there's this kind of crazy view these days-

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H.R. McMaster: ... that soldiers want to be pitied. Right? I mean, soldiers don't want to be pitied. What soldiers, I think, want is they want to win, and they want leaders who will direct all efforts, not just military, but as we've been talking about, right? I mean, you have to have an integrated military, political, diplomatic, economic effort to achieve a sustainable outcome that is worthy of the risks that soldiers take and the sacrifices they make.

H.R. McMaster: And so I think that this is a situation in which we are doing and acting completely opposite to our interests and opposite to what is ethical behavior in war. Right? I mean, you can't go wrong with St. Thomas Aquinas, right? I mean, he got it right. He got it right on just war theory. And essentially one of the tests of a just war is that you have a just end in mind. Right? And the achievement of that just end is what makes the use of violence for political purposes justified. Right?

Rob Long: Right.

H.R. McMaster: And so that's what we're walking away from in Afghanistan. We are actually engaging in activity that not only cuts against our interests, but I believe it's fundamentally unethical.

Rob Long: Best case scenario, air support mitigates, I guess. Close it. Worst case scenario, what you said earlier is we've got to go back?

H.R. McMaster: Well, yeah, because the problems won't stay there. We know this, right? I mean, the refugees will flow not only to other countries in south Asia, but to Europe as well. And we know that when you have a refugee crisis like this, it is a recruiting boon for jihadist terrorist organizations. The instability of Afghanistan will allow illicit trafficking, especially of narcotics, to continue unfettered completely, and that will raise billions of dollars for terrorist organizations. And I'll tell you, Rob, the biggest benefit to them, more than financial and the safe haven, is psychological. Because they're already saying, I wish more Americans would just read the translated statements of the Taliban, who are saying, "We defeated the world's greatest superpower," right?

Rob Long: Right.

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H.R. McMaster: "Join our cause." You have Al-Qaeda continuing to pledge [inaudible 00:32:20] allegiance, right, to the Taliban. These groups are completely intertwined and they're going to become again, as ISIS did, as we learned just in recent years, right? I mean, what's astonishing about this is we've proven really our inability to learn from even our most proximate experience.

Rob Long: Well, I really hope you're wrong, but it has the ring of truth.

H.R. McMaster: Well, I hope I'm wrong, too, I mean, because I know so many Afghans. A young officer, a great Major, who I met when he was a cadet training to become an officer in the Afghan forces was just killed there, leading special forces, Afghan special forces, against the Taliban. There are Afghans every day making sacrifices to try to hold on to a better future for their children. Right? And I'll tell you. I think a lot of the drive toward disengagement oftentimes is what I would call bigotry masquerading as cultural sensitivity. These days, we tend to view other peoples as fundamentally different from us, but I think we oftentimes, then, overlook our common humanity.

H.R. McMaster: And there are these courageous Afghans who I've gotten to know over the years. I mean, they have worked so hard, dedicated themselves to escape, right, the decades of brutality and war that that society has experienced, and they represent the best of our fellow men and women. And there is a young generation there, I guess, young compared to us maybe, who have come together in really a multi-ethnic movement for reform and building a better future. And to see that go away, I mean, people just don't know.

H.R. McMaster: I mean, Afghanistan is fundamentally transformed in education. It is a place where freedom of speech and freedom of the press is more prevalent than in any other country in the region. Right? It is a society that is tolerant of other religions, generally, which was the case in Afghan history as well. I mean, people think, "Oh-"

Rob Long: In the '70s, yeah, for sure. Yeah.

H.R. McMaster: Up until the era resistance to the Soviet occupation, right, and all the Saudi money and the support for Salafi jihadist ideology and the neo-Deobandism movement in Pakistan. That was an aberration in Afghan history. So when Americans say, "Hey, man, we're not going to change Afghanistan," I agree. Right? We only need Afghanistan to be Afghanistan. And I think that's what it was, and that's what it was on the path to being again until we surrendered to the Taliban, which we had, I think, no good reason to do.

James Lileks:

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Perhaps because some people regard those westernized visions of and Tehran, where people are wearing suits and the women are stylishly attired as some sort of colonial cultural imposition. And that there's something more honest about and true to the culture when people throw off those Western manifestations and do something that's a little bit more Taliban-esque. I know it's strange, it's odd, it's peculiar, but that's what some people think.

H.R. McMaster: No, I think it's a form of Stockholm syndrome, where victims identify with their abusers, too, man. I mean, I think this affinity for the Taliban is ill placed, right? I mean, these are the most heinous people on earth and they are the enemies of all humanity. And those who have suffered the most are those who are most proximate to these groups.

Rob Long: That's the Afghans.

James Lileks: What does Taliban mean? The students, right? They are the ones who want to destroy the pre-existing set of knowledge and replace it with what they have, which is messianic, which is much like the left and the progressives in this country. That's a whole different discussion, and that's a whole different topic to talk about.

H.R. McMaster: It's anti-modernity, anti-modernity.

James Lileks: Anti-modernity. That's where we'll end right there. We could ask you about China or Europe or Iran or any of the rest of it, but that may be another podcast quite soon. Hope it's not too soon, too late. And we thank you for being on, H.R. McMaster.

H.R. McMaster: No. Hey, thanks for what you guys do every day. Great to be with you.

PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [00:36:33]

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