Rumors of Peace While Embedded With Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan
Angry Planet
Matthew Gault
4.3 • 882 Ratings
🗓️ 3 July 2018
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Afghanistan is America’s longest war and the cynical view is that it’ll never end. Marty Skovlund Jr. doesn’t think that’s true. He just returned from Afghanistan where he embedded with American Special Operations Forces on the ground and though he says the war he saw now looks a lot like the war he himself fought years ago, there’s plenty of reasons to hope.
Skovlund Jr. is a documentarian, writer, and journalist. He’s a frequent guest of the show and wrote about his recent embed in Afghanistan for Coffee or Die Magazine in a piece titled “The Valley of Boys: How a Lone Special Forces Team Is Fighting ISIS in Remote Mountains of Afghanistan”
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Transcript
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| 0:19.6 | So right before I got out with this ODA in the village right next to them, ISIS came down out of the mountains into the village for kind of this, I would call it like a day raid into the village and literally just took a random guy out of the crowd and beheaded him in front of the entire village. |
| 0:29.0 | Said 50 or 60 villagers packing because they were terrified, you don't really see that with the Taliban so much. You're listening to War College, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front |
| 0:49.0 | lines. |
| 0:50.0 | Here are your hosts, Matthew Gault and Jason Field. |
| 1:07.0 | I'm Matthew Gault. |
| 1:09.0 | And I'm Jason Field. |
| 1:11.0 | Afghanistan is America's longest war and it's also one that the media seems to pay the least |
| 1:15.5 | attention to. Not so with Marty Scovland Jr. Scovland is a journalist, a documentarian, |
| 1:20.9 | and a former U.S. Army Ranger. He's also been in and out of Afghanistan both as a soldier and journalist. |
| 1:27.0 | He's just back from a trip where he embedded with an American Special Forces team in a remote region of Afghanistan for coffee or dye magazine. |
| 1:35.6 | Marty, thanks so much for coming back on the show. |
| 1:38.0 | Thanks again for having me. It's always a pleasure to be on this. |
| 1:40.8 | The last time you were here, you delivered what I think is probably one of the most optimistic |
| 1:46.0 | views and visions of America's war in Afghanistan that I think that I've heard recently, and I'm wondering if after your recent trip that if that has changed or has it stayed the same? |
| 1:56.2 | Well, I think you know the last trip that I did it depends on how optimistic it is depends on how you feel about the war I think because one of the things |
| 2:05.8 | that I said was you know we're not leaving Afghanistan ever I don't think or at least |
| 2:11.6 | not any sooner than we're leaving Germany or Korea or any other places that we've kind of got this permanent stake in countries that we went to war with. |
| 2:20.0 | And one of the things that I was wrong about that I think of that, |
... |
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