The War Through Afghan Eyes

The war on terror, that began on 9/11/2001, still goes on. The war in Afghanistan that began shortly thereafter, that was once dubbed “the good war,” is America's longest war.  Sadly the landscape of that nation today, does not reflect either the lives or treasure that Americans gave to it.

War is always complicated. Once the battle is joined, the game plans often go out the window. Yet when one looks at the mistakes America made in Afghanistan, they were not so much about battle plans or strategy, they were a reflection of a fundamental misreading of history, culture, nuance and the reality of people being different than ourselves.  In an interconnected and globalized world, this is and will continue to be a recipe for repeated disaster.

Anand Gopal spent years covering the war, embedded with both American and Taliban forces.  His reporting culminates in his debut book,  No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes.

My conversation with Anand Goapl:

The real Dark Arts

From Mati Hari, to Nathan Hale, to Herbert Philbrick; each is a chapter in the pantheon of espionage. Each had what George Smiley called "the ability to survive by virtue of an infinite capacity for suspicion."

In the modern day world of espionage, counter-terrorism and post cold war engagement, Henry Crumption stands astride that list. He knew he wanted to be a spy from the age of 10. He knew that sometimes you had to do things in order to find out the reason from them. From what he tells us, he seems to innately understand, from his early missions in Europe and Africa, to his leadership of the CIA war against the Taliban in 2001, that sometimes our actions are question and not answers. But he was always guided to navigate by the true north of his moral compass. His new book The Art of Intelligence: Lessons from a Life in the CIA's Clandestine Service, he sets the stage for a new kind of espionage and in fact a new geopolitical view of intelligence.

My conversation with Ambassador Henry Crumpton:

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