Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably caught wind of a not- so-trivial event that made headlines in global news recently. After nearly two decades, the United States military has decided to fully withdraw from the occupation of Afghanistan. Despite the US military's extended stay, it has failed in its stated goal of fostering peace and stability in the area and was unable to prevent the inevitable take over by religious fundamentalist, hyper- patriarchal, reactionary forces known as the Taliban. As a result, nearly 6 million Afghans have been forcibly displaced from their homes, 3 million within Afghanistan, and 2.6 million are fleeing capture by militants by seeking refuge in other countries. There are still many unknowns surrounding the withdrawal and our guest today wrote an article for CrimethInc called Afghanistan: The Taliban Victory in a Global Context; An Anti-Imperial Perspective from a Veteran of the US Occupation (https://crimethinc.com/2021/08/16/afghanistan-the-taliban-victory-in-a- global-context-a-perspective-from-a-veteran-of-the-us-occupation) that largely focused on three major questions: How did the occupation impact the people of Afghanistan? Why were the Taliban able to regain so much territory so quickly? What does the US withdrawal and its consequences tell us about the future and how we might prepare for it? In this episode, we explore these questions and more with someone whose opinions derive from the firsthand experience of, as they called it, “serving the American empire as a foot soldier” for ten whole years.
