The Last Platoon

The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg

The Dispatch

News, Politics

4.7 • 6.6K Ratings

🗓️ 4 December 2020

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We have another Remnant first-timer on the show this week, as Jonah is joined by old friend, well-traveled military writer, and Marine veteran Bing West. With a discipline that only a Marine could muster, Bing joins the program to talk about his upcoming novel, The Last Platoon: A Novel of the Afghanistan War, which uses Afghanistan as a backdrop to tell the story of men in combat who “do their duty, even when it becomes clear that there will be no reward.” Jonah also probes Bing’s brain about the overall strategic value of the Afghanistan war, the abiding faith of American soldiers in an era of secularism, how to break up the perverse friendship between the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and most important, how a small, tri-fold shovel is sometimes the most valuable piece of equipment a soldier can have. Show Notes: -Pre-order The Last Platoon -Afghani tribal groups and opium production -Bing’s book embedded with Marines in Fallujah -Bing in WSJ: “How to save Kabul from Saigon’s fate” -Sebastian Junger’s Tribe -How counterinsurgency (or COIN) really works -The Dispatch addresses Pompeo’s thoughts on the Taliban turning on al-Qaeda -The Pepper Dogs Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Oh
0:14.4	Ladies and gentlemen, can I please have your attention?
0:18.0	Thank you
0:27.5	Greetings to your listeners. This is Jonah Goldberg, host of the Remnant podcast brought to you by the dispatch and dispatch media
0:36.8	Go to the dispatch.com to become a paid member of the dispatch community you can get the
0:42.0	Midweek epistle the Wednesday G file you can get all of David French's stuff you can get all of
0:50.7	Scotland's stuff
0:52.7	You can participate more fully in all of our community chats and live events and streaming things and you could become a better more well-rounded person
1:02.0	Which you know we should all strive to be
1:04.7	Okay, so continuing with the tradition of getting first-time guests on during the pandemic
1:09.4	That you can only really do by remote we have one of my favorite people in the world and I mean that pretty literally
1:16.0	I
1:17.0	I got to know him for years doing
1:20.4	National review conferences and events and we would spend a lot of time together and
1:25.0	I have stories about the guy which I probably should not share
1:30.2	All flattering to him to be sure
1:32.6	We have Bing West and Bing. I highly recommend if you want to get a sense of his full credentials
1:42.6	Just check out his Wikipedia page. He's a very impressive guy
1:46.9	As a New Yorker I sometimes let my biases against people with
1:52.2	Massachusetts accents get the better of me
1:55.3	And you forget that he is like wildly educated and
1:58.8	An accomplished person who worked in the Reagan administration who
	...

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