America's War in Afghanistan's Pech Valley
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 10 March 2021
⏱️ 46 minutes
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Summary
Wesley Morgan is a former military affairs reporter at Politico and the author of the new book, "The Hardest Place: The American Military Adrift in Afghanistan's Pech Valley." Bryce Klehm sat down with Wesley to talk about the evolution of the war in Afghanistan, from the United States's early hunt for Osama bin Laden, to the increased use of drone strikes during the Obama and Trump administrations. They also discussed the current state of the war in Afghanistan, including the fight against the Islamic State's Afghanistan affiliate.
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Transcript
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| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:32.6 | And on paper, these units look the same. |
| 0:36.6 | You know, each one is organized the same. |
| 0:39.0 | And they're even, they're run by people who on paper look the same. |
| 0:42.0 | A series of impatriate, lieutenant colonels who have gone to the same schools have been |
| 0:46.1 | in the same units, had a lot of the same previous experiences. |
| 0:49.4 | But they're different people. |
| 0:50.8 | And the personalities of commanders, especially in kind of remote places where the commander |
| 0:55.7 | is really left to make a lot of decisions themselves, compared to say Baghdad where there's a ton |
| 1:01.8 | of battalions running around. |
| 1:03.1 | A single battalion commander in the Pesh Valley can have a much more outsized effect on just |
| 1:08.5 | everything that's happening around him. |
| 1:10.4 | So you'll find that, you know, one battalion commander may get along really well with |
| 1:13.9 | Afghans, we'd be really interested in dealing with that may sort of be much more engaged |
| 1:19.1 | in the nuances of local politics. |
| 1:21.2 | And then the next battalion commander, who's a guy with the same resume, comes in and is |
| 1:25.7 | much more black and white thinker, much more invested in just trying to, you know, everybody |
| 1:30.0 | is, everybody who's sitting on the fence needs to get off the fence and either, you know, |
... |
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