Scott Anderson on Withdrawals, Then and Now
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 19 July 2021
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
U.S. troops are pulling out of Afghanistan, the withdrawal is almost done and U.S. forces turned over the Bagram Airfield to Afghan forces the other day. Scott Anderson knows something about withdrawals. He served at U.S. Embassy Baghdad shortly after the United States withdrew from Iraq. He joined Benjamin Wittes on Lawfare Live to talk about the Afghan withdrawal, his memories of the Iraq withdrawal and why these things sometimes go better and sometimes go worse. What has the Biden administration learned from the Iraq withdrawal experience? What is it doing right this time, and what is it doing wrong?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.2 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:34.0 | At the time, a lot of the facilities and services were still being provided by military contractors |
| 0:40.0 | in part because they were thrown at happen very quickly. |
| 0:42.7 | So there's an effort to transition from KBR and other military contractors who were doing |
| 0:47.2 | food, delivery supplies, things like that and transition to more civilian providers. |
| 0:52.5 | But it was an improvisation in a lot of ways because you're operating in this environment |
| 0:57.8 | that no one at the time had really clearly operated and let alone at such a condensed time frame. |
| 1:02.6 | And so there's a lot of problem solving and working with Iraqis, with private sector, with |
| 1:08.7 | other parts of the US government to figure out, well, how do you stand up a major embassy, |
| 1:13.8 | a major US presence in an area where particularly supply lines, other things like that had really |
| 1:17.4 | been run by the military for many years at that point. |
| 1:20.3 | I'm Benjamin Wittes and this is the LawFair podcast July 19, 2021. |
| 1:28.6 | US troops are pulling out of Afghanistan. |
| 1:32.5 | The withdrawal is almost done. |
| 1:35.8 | US forces turned over the Bagram airfield to Afghan forces the other day. |
| 1:43.1 | Scott Anderson knows something about withdrawals. |
| 1:47.5 | He served at US Embassy Baghdad shortly after the United States withdrew from Iraq. |
| 1:54.6 | He joined me in a conversation with a live LawFair audience about the Afghan withdrawal, |
... |
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