Love this podcast support this show through the a cast supporter feature

It's up to you how much you give and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. People live in a world with their own making.

Frankly, that seems to be the problem.

Welcome to Angry Planet.

Hello.

Hello and

and Hello and welcome'm Matthew Gault.

Conquerors and nations have been trying to rebuild Afghanistan in their own image for thousands of years. The U.S. is just the latest to fail.

The Soviet Union also failed, with a little push from the United States, but they learned their lesson in only 10 years,

from 1979 to 1989.

Mark Galyati joins us today to talk about the lessons the U.S. probably should have learned from the U.S.

He's a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and has literally written the book.

No, three books on this very subject.

We'll put links in the show notes.

Thank you so much for joining us.

It's always a pleasure.

Before we get to the parallels, I think it would probably be helpful to nail the basics.

What were the circumstances of the Soviet invasion?

Well, I mean, obviously, totally unlike this, it was essentially an invasion based on a combination of fear and stupidity.

What had happened was, look, for a a long time the Soviets had had no real

problem with Afghanistan, first of all under a king because they didn't really care about

Afghanistan that much. It was on their borders but you know they just wanted someone they could

...