Erik Prince’s terrible plan for Afghanistan

Angry Planet

Matthew Gault

War, Politics, Conflict, Government, History, News

4.3 • 882 Ratings

🗓️ 18 August 2017

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The United State's war in Afghanistan drags on with no end in sight. Worse, the current administration doesn’t have a clear vision of how it wants to proceed in the country. With all options on the table, private military contractor and entrepreneur Erik Prince - the founder of Blackwater - has gone on a lobbying tour around the U.S. pitching his own plan. Prince’s vision for Afghanistan calls for a viceroy to take over the country, drive out the Taliban and exploit the country’s natural resources. He’s likened it to the Marshall Plan or the Dutch East India company’s exploitation of India. This week on War College, author Robert Young Pelton and retired Green Beret Derek Gannon sit down to walk us through why Prince’s plan is bad for Afghanistan and bad for America. By Matthew Gault Produced by Bethel Habte

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Love this podcast.
0:02.0	Support this show through the A-cast supporter feature.
0:05.0	It's up to you how much you give,
0:07.0	and there's no regular commitment.
0:09.0	Just click the link in the show description to support now.
0:20.0	The views expressed on this podcast are those of the participants, not of Reuters News. Now he, what he's pointing back to is the East India company is somehow a positive example of how to run Afghanistan.
0:29.5	So he's literally proposing a colonial exploitation model to the Afghan president and to the American people
0:36.4	who kick the British out of stories behind the front lines.
0:55.0	Hello, welcome to War College. I'm your host Matthew Galt. Today we're going to talk
1:07.6	about the future of Afghanistan, the role of private military contractors in
1:11.1	modern war, and one PMC mogul in particular Eric Prince.
1:16.1	To help me sort through this topic, I'm joined by two guests this week.
1:19.1	Both have been on the show before.
1:21.0	The first is Retired Green Bereay and Soft rep reporter Derek Gannon. The other is journalist and
1:25.6	documentarian Robert Young Pelton. Robert Derek, thank you both so much for joining us.
1:30.0	Thank you for having me. Absolutely. So America has been at war in Afghanistan for more than 16 years.
1:36.0	Indications are that it's not going well.
1:38.0	There are conflicting reports from the White House about how U.S. President Trump and his administration planned to handle that war.
1:44.8	Today, the show is going to focus on one of those plans in particular.
1:49.0	On May 31st of this year, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed authored by Eric Prince, titled
1:54.9	the MacArthur model for Afghanistan, in which he calls for a Viceroy to take over the country,
2:00.0	literally the consolidation of power into one individual.
	...

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