Welcome to our special Friday dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah.

Isger joined by Steve Hayes. This podcast is brought to you by the dispatch.

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So you never miss an episode. We'll hear a little later from our sponsor today, the Bradley foundation.

We're joined again today by Tom Jocelyn, senior fellow at the foundation for defensive democracies

and a host of his own podcast, a generation, Jehan.

You can subscribe to his newsletter, vital interests at the dispatch.com.

Let's dive right in. Tom, we're so excited to have you back to talk about this.

Last week, we spoke with Jake Tapper about his book and his movie, which told the story of

US forces in Afghanistan in 2009 at cop heating. And I guess I want to pick up fast forwarding to where we are now in Afghanistan.

And we're seeing the stories about the bounty on US soldiers there.

What is happening on the ground in Afghanistan with our forces who are still there?

Well, the US military has closed about five bases in Afghanistan in the name of this agreement with the Taliban that was signed on February 29th.

I don't think, I think the agreement really is a cover for what's going on.

The US is withdrawing and sort of they want to just this pretext for justifying the withdrawal.

Basically saying that the Taliban is now our de facto counterterrorism partner and Steve and I will probably get into that again.

But bottom line is the US is getting out. Five bases have been closed.

We're drawing forces. The mini sort of deployment that President Trump authorized in 2017 has been rolled back.

The toll number of American soldiers is now less than 9,000 in Afghanistan.

And all indications are that the plan is to go to zero.

Steve, this is a pet passion of yours of how the US government is handling its withdrawal and its continued presence in Afghanistan.

So I want to make sure that you have plenty of time on this pod.

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