Why The West Failed In Iraq and Afghanistan | Steve Coll talks to Aaron Bastani
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- Опубліковано 28 кві 2024
- The wars waged by The West in Afghanistan and Iraq were pivotal moments in the modern history of foreign policy. In the rearview mirror, both of these campaigns look like terrible failures both strategically and politically. The Taliban are back in power in Afghanistan, and living standards are worse in Iraq than they were before Saddam Hussein's years in power.
In his new book, 'The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the Middle East, 1979-2003', veteran journalist Steve Coll looks at British and American foreign policy through the lens of one man - the aforementioned Saddam Hussein.
He sat down with Aaron to talk Afghanistan, Iraq and why it's a mistake to avoid talking to your enemies.
00:00 Intro
01:40 Early Days in Afghanistan
08:23 Pakistan’s Role in Afghanistan
12:18 The Iranian's Role
19:14 Why Did Saddam Want Nukes?
21:02 War in Kuwait
29:16 Saddam & Chemical Weapons
40:29 Donald Rumsfeld
44:38 How To Talk To Your Enemy
51:53 Do Sanctions Work?
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Weapons dealers don't make money from people sitting around talking, or from peace.
Not just the dealers but the producers, buyers (states), and the whole Military Industrial Congressional Complex. The reason you won’t see “congressional” used anymore is because Dwight Eisenhower’s aides told him to drop that word due to political implications. Yes his administration coined the MIC terminology
Which year do you think this was not the case for the human animals?
Exactly because Capitalism that propagated free trade for Capitalists with theft of the assets to trade everything even if harming everything.
I mean israel is using white phosphorus in Palestine and Lebanon right now and the US is fully supporting israel so it's not like the US ever learns from their mistakes
No they don't think it's a mistake, just as they don't think you as a human
Al Houthis use child soldiers and it never stopped the WEST from giving them a ceasefire agreement. Now they attack our international shopping. Give an inch, they take a mile. Guess they don’t have to pay social services if they are busy fighting America. So We fight them there so we don’t fight at home and they get to oppress their people and have you praise them. But sure the people starting wars are the victims. Says every enemy of peace since the beginning of time.
To quote Moshe Dayan: ‘If you want to make peace, don’t talk to your friends. Talk to your enemies’.
He wasn't listened to because the European Jews brought up to think they are "special" that has always been false because nobody is special because every life is special.
Not famous for his peaceful ways
@@ledaswan5990Yep, "Better Sharm el-Sheikh without peace than peace without Sharm el-Sheikh"
If you want peace don't steal other people's land and try to eliminate it's indigenous inhabitants
Steve Coll has explained resistance to US foreign policy in one sentence. "We don't want you here".
...until we're in trouble.
Sanni, the historical record confirms the US invariably manufacturers most of the trouble visited throughout the world. Cheers from Australia.
@@sanniepstein4835 only in the west
@@sanniepstein4835nooo. Not even then. The US just fucks everything up even more.
@@quanghuyvo6112 Or there is a significant human crisis that nobody has the capability or want to mobilize troops.
Absolutely riveting interview. Loved it.
This was an excellent conversation.
The third amigo, unmentioned in the disastrous illegal attack against Iraq, was Australia's John Howard. Crime without punishment.
For sure. Australia and Canada are comfortably and quite easily overlooked in nearly every crime they participate in
@@veronikalynn5084
Most Canadian citizens are never aware of their governments explicit participation in these contrived global military conflicts 😂
We are sleepwalking up here 🤷♂️
Another important and refreshing interview. Thank you
Great interview. As an European I never heard of this reporter / writer but will definitively look up his books.
Fantastic job !
OMG!!!! Thank you Aaron Bastani for featuring my favourite writer on all things Geopolitics!
Steve's fascinating book Ghost Wars compelled me to dive into the rabbit hole of murky double speak statecraft, insidious trade craft and all-out web of deceit and lies in the swampland of geo politics.....
This is a great interview.
If we started talking to people different than us what then would politicians do to divert public attention away from their failures if they couldn't point at 'the other' and place blame for societies woes? Think also of the wretched, outrage-peddling press. How would they make their millions if they had no one to make you angry at?
That is what the left does with politics, turning it into a culture war. They don't just see the opposition as having the wrong policies, they see themselves as morally superior people. That is their whole schtick. This puritanical brand of policies makes communication all but impossible. Probably it would be easier for many of them to talk with Hamas than talk with "tory scum".
This 👍
🌎 = 🙈
This is why I support this media channel.
Thnks a lot for this interview. Steve Coll knows his stuff. Hes a great writer and a great speaker and interview guest. I urge everyone to read his (fabulous) books
Happy to have been introduced to this writer. Will look up more of his work. Great interview!
I love this Downstream series that Aaron is doing and the fascinating guests that he is interviewing.
What is new? You go everywhere, make a complete mess, and then leave!!!
Why we get foreign policy very wrong:
Profit and domination.
Anything we do can be distilled down to those things, and even then, domination feeds into profit. Sanctions are about punishing the people under governments that don't accept our dominance; we know they don't work, and we know that the only effect they'd have on us is to make us double down and get angry, yet we refuse to humanize other people enough to believe that they'd react any different. If there wasn't profit to be had we would invent profitable situations, including war, in order to do interventionism. Right wing thinking DOES NOT allow for peaceful cooperation between people; it REQUIRES domination via hierarchies of all sorts. And republics are right wing systems of government, even if some republics are "less bad" than others.
Great conversation, but I didn't really hear the "why" so much as the "what."
Please bring him on again. ❤😊
Great interview as always Aaron
4 min 12 sec. I’m Algerian and I have a very clear idea why they were “Afraid of the Algerians” during the 90’s we had the so called the black decade where atrocities were committed against government representatives even teachers or simple clerics
Some villages were attacked by terrorists and there were no distinction in the killings even babies old people there were absolutely no mercy for anyone. One of the deadliest crime took place in the village of Ben Talha. Here is one explanation. They were well trained to commit atrocities in Afghanistan
We MUST love each other
"I want to see mankind live together" Bob Marley
One love
Great interview, clarified so much for me.
An outstanding interview ..
US diplomatic core is third rate. How does an economically and militarily powerful nation let this happen? Hubris, pure hubris.
corps
When you have a bigger gun ... diplomacy is not needed ... but times have changed and the British & US are struggling with the notion of not having a vantage point anymore ...
There are jokes about America's lackluster diplomacy that are over a hundred years old. They've always tended to lean on their other strengths and neglected diplomacy.
Your question answer itself. That behemot didnt grew like that by shaking hands, being democratic, freedom, peaceful or whatever lie they say they are
@@SKKaelth The current military ties with Japan, South Korea, military exports with several countries, economic ties with Europe aren't democratic?
Brilliant and insightful as always 😊
Read the Picot-Sykes Agreement of 1916 to get even better understanding as to why 'permanent wars' have been imposed on certain regions, then, once understanding how ancient cultures and their lands have been subjected to 'colonial-styled divisions' the proverbial picture is greatly enhanced and little is left to 'wonder ....'
Thanks for the tip will definitely check it out.
And the Balfour declaration
Steve Coll was a honest, reliable and professional reporter in his news coverage. I remember him back when there was Real journalism.
Thank you for having Mr. Coll on your program.
I think this was during "embedding reporters" with US militarily was heavily criticized.
Thank you for sharing.
Excellent interview so many parallels to today
Great interview Aaron
he needs to be back soon, loved it. btw a great pod on Iraq war is "Blowback pod" S1.
Is Afghanistan the “Middle East"? Isn’t Afghanistan Asia? All of these terms are British, French and European mistakes anyway.
lots of the middle east is in Asia...
@@thomasmarsh6834, I think the user above was talking about the fact that Afghanistan is closer to central Asia or South Asia geographically speaking and doesn't quite belong to the "Middle East ".
Afghanistan is not Arabic, Persian, or Turkish.
@@macrosense its perisan
The book “The Achilles Trap” is at audible and worth spending time on😉
Great coverage, thank you
Enlightening interview thanks
Very insightful.
This interview was so engaging.
Fascinating interview
This interview reminds me of Pulp Fiction when it comes to time line
Excellent. I learned a lot.
A solid breakdown of the subject matter.
this was great tyvm, im gonna go check out that podcast by david dimbelby you mentioned
Great scoop
35:16 Hypocrites always, doing the same now in Gaza.
There doesn’t seem to be any diplomacy anymore ie (crudely) getting other countries to do what you want them to do. Genocide has been committed in Gaza but nobody seems to be interested or capable of dissuading Netanyahu or using any leverage on him. Business as usual.
Can I just commend Aaron on his pronunciation of Afghanistan 😆👏👏👏
A war against Iraq? was not that a blatant invasion Aaron?
Literally no contradiction between those terms.
novara, another very interesting interview.
That may well just be a book worth having.
Why isn't Blair in The Hague
Because he is British, White and Christian, that all = Immunity
He's too slimy and slithery...🙄😬
@@ahoang9069
Don't forget rich and powerful- the three you mention mean very little if the individual is poor.
British soldiers have been (rightfully) tried for warcrimes whilst Blair walks free of court.
Topic is very interesting; however, the thematic framing is kind of all over the place having no historical grounding, no contextual background that takes into account the West's strategy of containment toward the former USSR and how that bled into subsequent Global War on Terrorism with regards to outmoded Cold War policies and aging Cold Warriors and their influence on war planning and Anglo-American foreign policy; the continuation of NATO after the collapse of communism and its subsequent expansion eastward along the borders of Russia; not to mention the emergence of a faction of the Republican Party called the Neoconservatives and the path to Iraq. No mention of the British role in World War One in developing relations with the House of Saud through Captain William Shakespear and how the British fomented the development of radical Islam, the Wahhabi strain.
I’m confident Novara viewers are aware of the context.
@@MisoAntro and avid Dune readers.
😮
@@MisoAntro Thanks. I feel better already 😎
NATO's existence today isn't against communism, it's just against foreign invasions of European countries.
It would be interesting to see a profile of oil exports from the Middle East imported to the west.
Steve's microphone was off at 59:50 . Hm ?
Mr Bastani; there is a piece of information missing in this conversation, which I read in "The New Plan" written by the American scholar Daniel Yergin. In that book, Yergin says (and I am paraphrasing here) that after the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam, George H Bush initially thought maybe he could live with that and the fact was that Saddam had said he would sell Kuwait's oil to everyone. Then he received a phone call from the British PM Margaret Tatcher. She told him that Saddam has by now 20% of the proven oil reserves of the world in his possession and if he next takes over the Saudi oil wells too (and nothing seems to be able to stop him if he does that), then he would have another 25% of those reserves (which is in Saudi Arabia). He would then have a total of 45% of world's oil in his possession. That means the world will have to deal with him alone for almost half of the world oil reserves. That is when the US President changed his mind and formed a coalition of a number of countries to kick Saddam out of Kuwait. That is the reference and you can check it in the relevant chapter.
We should have skipped the first Iraq/Kuwait war, and then ended our involvement in the Middle East. We would not have been a target of al Qaeda, and the 9/11 attacks would not have happened. The war in Afghanistan and the second Iraq war would not have happened.
Thats not how M.I.C works
I am reading Ghost Wars. Very detailed and covers the history well
This is good more interviews like this less with Peter hitchens please
Peter Hitchens is the caricature of "John Bull" come to life.😂
I always thought a woman was in charge but that her name was Mary. To picture back this time, is difficult. Hope this guys book is worth it. Its a very good interview. Illuminating sorta
Quite remarkable that these 2 gentleman are talking like we never used chemical weapon during Vietnam war. 😅
💯 👍🏼
Hm, what do you have in mind ? White phosphorus ?
Curious how much the Kurds would get covered in this convo. Given their reach across Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey not to mention the large leftist Kurdish groups
6:20 "What was the role the CIA played in creating the Taliban" watch the ending of Rocky 3
Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are a success and has helped Israel. Listen to Kenneth O'Keefe on US policy in the ME and you'll know why.
Link?
One sentence is missing audio on 59:52. Like it had been censored.
At the end Aarons says "Steve, we could have done another 90 minutes...", which implies the interview we have here is cut down to 65 minutes. Your mark is probably just one of those cuts.
@@terribleatgames-rippedoff It was silenced audio, not a cut. Technical glitch?
@@fburton8 Relistening to that part, the silence is indeed awkwardly long. If this truly was a "censorship", why leave it with the silence rather than cutting it out altogether? This is why I believe this point is a cut transition where the silence is added to create a pause that otherwise wouldn't be there as part of shortening the interview.
Assume the censorship was mutual, might have said something libelous and agreed to cut it.
We was this close to having a McDonald's chain set up in Afghanistan and Iraq if it wasn't for those meddling Islamist
War is a racket, Smedley Butler
Does not know what happened for 10y in Algeria?
An interesting insight from a western perspective.
52:00 Half a million children and elderly people was inflated but not that much - around 50%. The number is between 200K to 250K. The 500,000 came out of a premiliminary UN assesment.
Hey! I read ghost wars it was really good and depressing
True
Afghan girl education... Afghan woman.. Ayayayayayyyayay. Good videos thus far but you should have stopped him right there but maybe I'm interpreting it incorrectly but I want to pull my hair out when I hear anything about Afghan women or girls when they talk about war or policy when our American policy kill the 1,000 fold afghan girls just going to weddings smh
I'm about 14 minutes in maybe and maybe that trip to Houston, Texas with halliburton and Enron and their trip to Mount Rushmore in 2000 ever gets brought up. But maybe I should make a video about that and not force this video to be that lol
Oh my God, I'm going to lose my mind. I cannot believe he did not bring up the fact that when Saddam was on trial and was even questioned by his interrogators that he left about wanting nuclear weapons as a deterrent against Iran and his psychotic paranoia of an Islamic Shia rebellion and revolution since Iraq was like 65% Shia. Furthermore, it is also the reason why the osirak reactor was successfully attacked by Israel in the early '80s because it was in Western Baghdad where all the factories which one of them was coincidentally a joint venture between a German firm and American firm to make pesticides to be used in weapons against the Iran. But it's the fact that Western Baghdad did not have much in ways of air defense. Radars since he was much more preoccupied with Eastern back that because guess what was to the east of Baghdad.... I'll let everybody guess or I'll just be nice and answer the question... Iran
Just totally wrong what he said about April , and there is no benefit hindsight or hind ass, we America got the outcome we were gunning for no pun intended. The outcome was exactly what we wanted and the benefits of it remain to this day. Either. The person being interviewed is obtuse or is very dishonest. And I think the interviewer by saying those that support or defensive arm, there is no defending or supporting Saddam here. It's not a polar or binary decision. It's a matter of fact. And it is not like coincidence that every duck lined up every star lined up for all intended results to be beneficial to America except for bin laden. But then when you look at it, bin laden made a good case scenario to even further American regional not only involvement but interference because you always need a boogie man to stay somewhere and anywhere
Militarily industrial complex system and pentagon
Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy (Ferrel and Newman) argues not even the principal actors know where and how sanctions will play out, but that they are the vanguard of the future of international relations.
30:47 the US financed both countries and both countries used chemical weapons against each other
Did Iran use Chemical Weapons during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war?
Are you sure? 🤔
Perhaps you could provide at least two or three solid sources for your claim. 🙄
What about the fact that Kuwait was stealing Iraqi oil?This guy downplays that fact. There is small wonder that America's policies are F U.
Once you make it to a leadership position in the United States you do not have to be responsible for anything.
they didn't fail. they got exactly what they were after.
Why nobody talks about saftey
Clever and devious, to begin with a blanket labelling of the “bad guys” as some forever nebulous, eternally ambiguous extremist movement, disregarding any national umbrella in favor of keeping everyone “over there” under that one instead.
And then immediately after that, despite a feigned and practiced reluctance, reversing to eagerly call out Egypt and Algeria as incubators of the most “zealous” and terroristic. Algeria, the shame of France (along with Haiti). Egypt, the shame of London
Blowback podcast!!!
Ash is on BBC 2 Daily Politics, like live now.
But how come people are saying in the comments, that this is a great interview here, when it hasn't happened yet? Or did they have a private preview, or attended the live interview some time ago. i.e. is it a recording, that some privileged few get to watch before it goes public?
No surprise.
🤠💜
An ENLIGHTENED being was slaughtered for saying the following in 2009 UNGA: The principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of States is enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations. No country, therefore, has the right to interfere in the affairs of any Government, be it democratic or dictatorial, socialist or capitalist, reactionary or progressive. This is the responsibility of each society; it is an internal matter for the people of the country concerned."
Wow, it’s almost as if the ruling class doesn’t actually even *want* to genuinely solve the problems they pretend to stumble into. Interesting observation! Keep up the great work. Cya in the future wasteland of dystopian misery we’ll all be enjoying when you’ve caught up
He should have mentioned Iran Contra or you should have asked him how about Iran Contra
Why thie interviwe rghit Now ?
The humans are not a good idea anywhere, he shouldn't limit himself.
There have been clashes between Afghanistan & Pakistan on their border this week & IS bombed a bank (as well as claiming the Moscow attack).
The West was not only failed in Iraq & Afghanistan but experience been fooled by Iran. So think twice about
damaging the Persian ' father' of civilization. So much the west inherited their values for the successful past Colonisation, Natural Resources & Trade Monopoly!!!! Hope the western young generation observed their roots to construct a good apex in the human space exploration & cultures.
Interesting Punjab comments.
The USA used large amounts of chemical weapons in the Vietnam War, for example napalm
Napalm is an incendiary substance first and foremost. It may be toxic on contact with skin, but its properties are nowhere near those required from a chemical weapon.
I think Saddam's downfall was in not having an appreciation for the US foreign policy snakes.
A reverend in Iraq once requested talks with the Islamic State. IS agreed they could talk with him but said they would have to chop his head off afterwards. It's good to talk. But not always, apparently.
Honest forewarning.
That meant they weren't going to talk, period. You can still stay in contact with them via phone
Because we didn't stand a chance to accomplish anything.
Butt what is possible before general scientific death
Islam always will win
There's policy activate for not free
Ummmmm, why????