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Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics, life and culture.

My name is Freddie Gray. I'm the deputy editor of The Spectator. I'm joined today by Andrew Bacevich, who is author of After the Apocalypse, America's role in a world transformed.

He's also president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and a contributing editor

to the Spectator World.

And we are going to be talking, of course, about Afghanistan.

Andy, yesterday we published sooner than we were anticipating publishing because the collapse

of the Afghan state has been so quick.

Your excellent piece, which is a sort of autopsy of America's failure in the Middle East and at war generally, I think it's fair to say, in recent decades.

Can I just ask firstly as an American how you're feeling today?

You've written about this subject a lot.

Are you feeling as humiliated as a lot of people seem to be? Humiliated is a good word. And I think emotionally taken aback, and frankly, to a far greater

extent than I would have expected. I have no direct personal investment in the Afghanistan war.

I never served in Afghanistan.

My son, who was a soldier, never served in Afghanistan.

But this thing has hit me like a ton of bricks.

I think like many of us, I feel very badly for the people of Afghanistan.

I feel very badly for the soldiers, and they weren't just American soldiers.

They're British soldiers who served there and have to look back on their service and say,

well, what the hell was that all about?

...