You're listening to software, radio, special operations, military news and straight talk with the guys in the community.

Hello again, everyone. Welcome back to software, radio. I'm your host today, Steve Balsruy.

Software, radio on time on target. We always try to bring you the best of what's going on out there in the world.

In today, we have a very special guest with us, Justin Ali, who just finished a book. It's called Eagle Down, the last special forces fighting in the forever war.

It was a absolutely fantastic read. It was a little concerning, a little upsetting. I guess you could say as a former special forces guy. And we're going to get into the reasons for that.

Yes, was the Wall Street Journal's person on the ground. I guess you could say they're bureau chief in Afghanistan for about four years.

Excuse me. So she definitely spent her time there. She was embedded with the Afghan SF guys with the American SF guys. She has a fantastic story to tell. We're going to get into that in her book. But before we do any of that.

I want to welcome her to the podcast. Just thank you for taking the time. I should say this evening, because you're joining us from the beautiful country of South Africa today.

Thank you very much for having me.

It is our pleasure. And I just wanted to ask you real quick.

Well, I know prior to going to Afghanistan, you spent some time in Libya during the, you know, the fall of Qaddafi and the Civil War there.

Was it a big difference from you for you? I should say, I know Libya was your first war that you covered.

Was it a big difference going from, say, Libya to Afghanistan?

It was, for me, it was a huge difference. I mean, not just on the personal level, because one thing is when you've never been in a war before to find yourself in a war for the first time, that causes quite a big sort of personal development.

But the Libyan war went in 2011 when I was there was completely chaotic. You didn't know who controlled what the country was split into and insert where you had Qaddafi forces fighting off.

Very sort of rag tag alliance of different Libyan militias. When Afghanistan, when I got there for the first time, which was in 2012, it was, it felt like a war that had been set, set in for a long time.

You know, everybody knew where they stood. You had every country in the world. It felt like with a stake, with a sort of role on the stage.

And you knew, you know, this road is under this control. The government has this time and has that. And so it felt a lot more organized and it felt a lot safer as well.

Oh, it did. Yeah, because I know, you know, at that time in Libya, and again, I'm bouncing back and forth, but it seemed like, as you said, very chaotic and they probably didn't have any safe, I don't want to say safety nets, but like we're, you know, journalists were probably kind of embedded more with the war in Afghanistan were probably in Libya, you guys were left to defend for yourselves.

Yeah, we were, I mean, we were totally on our own. I mean, in Libya, we just, we didn't have a bureau. Nobody had a bureau journalist, just worked thousands of one of a couple of hotels in town.

There was almost no supervision and very little security in terms of, you know, I was with Reuters at the time they had one security guy in Tripoli for a huge number of reporters, photographers, TV people.

So you were very much left on your own. It was very risky, you know, and it was, and you had a lot of freedom. I mean, you could jump in the cab and go, you know, to Miss Rata, which is another town like two hours away.

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