In withdrawing from Afghanistan last year, President Biden said that our involvement in that country had, quote, bogged down, close quote.

As for our involvement in Iraq, former President Trump said during the 2016 campaign, quote,

obviously the war in Iraq was a big fat mistake.

Our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to enormous blunders.

Or were they?

A policymaker who played a central role in both Paul Wolfowitz,

on Uncommon Knowledge Now. Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge. I'm Peter Robinson. Born in Brooklyn, Paul Wolfelowitz grew up in

Ithaca, New York where his father taught statistics at Cornell.

Dr. Wolfowitz earned his undergraduate degree at Cornell,

then a doctorate degree in political science

from the University of Chicago.

Although a student during the 1960s,

Paul Wolfowitz found himself influenced by events of the Second World War,

in particular the loss of his father's family in Poland during the Holocaust and the use of atomic weapons in Japan.

He chose to dedicate himself to international affairs.

Now a fellow at the Hoover Institution, Paul Wolfowitz, has served as Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, as Ambassador to Indonesia, as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, as Dean of the School of Advanced International

Studies at Johns Hopkins, as Deputy Secretary of Defense, and as President of the World Bank.

Paul Wolfowitz is perhaps best known as a policymaker during the wars in Afghanistan

and during the first and second war in Iraq, our subjects today.

9-11.

Let's start there, Paul.

September 11, 2001 terrorists flew jets into the Twin Towers in New York and into the Pentagon in Washington.

...