“Afghanistan has a lot to teach us”

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[00:00:00] Beth: When we, as citizens, cannot do very much about what's happening in Afghanistan and are already living a lot of personal stress. You know, I have to ask myself, like, why is it worth spending time here? And with our people talking about Afghanistan, we spent 20 years there. The American public has reached a real consensus on its desire to not be there militarily anymore.

And for me, the answer is that Afghanistan has a lot to teach us about how we view the rest of the world.

[00:00:41] Sarah: This is Sarah

Beth: And Beth.

Sarah: You're listening to Pantsuit Politics.

[00:00:45] Beth: The home of grace-filled political conversations.

[00:01:08] Sarah: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Pantsuit Politics. We were so happy to be here with you today. We're going to talk about what we're hearing from all of you, both good and bad as the Delta variant continues to dominate across the country. For our main segment, we're going to talk about the fall of Afghanistan and share some of our recent conversation with Amy McGrath, who did a tour in Afghanistan and recently wrote about her experience and much more in her memoir Honor Bound.

And as always, we're going to close out the show with what's on our mind outside of politics. Now, fun fact, we've actually been closing out the show in a fun, new way the past few weeks, but realize we forgot to tell most of you, the outtakes were such a hit during our infrastructure series that we decided to keep them.

So if you listen through all the way to the end of Pantsuit Politics, you're going to start hearing some fun, weird, often involving our children or dogs, outtakes. So check it out.

[00:01:59] Beth: Probably, unfortunately, apt segue into talking about COVID-19, and the Delta variant is mentioning that we still have a live show scheduled in Waco, Texas in late September.

Now we had really hoped that we'd all be vaccinated. We get together. It'd be a lot of fun. We wouldn't have to even think about Delta as we gathered for the first and only time as a community in 2021. Alas, there's a lot of concern around this. We are in constant conversation among ourselves about what the responsible next step is.

We know that many of you have bought tickets that made travel arrangements at booked hotels and flights. We really badly want to be in community with you as long as it's safe to do so. And so as a first step, we have decided to implement a mask requirement for the show. So if you come together with us, you will be asked to wear a mask for the entirety of the experience.

And we really appreciate your cooperation with this, and we'll keep you updated. If anything changes.

[00:03:07] Sarah: Thank you so much to all of you who shared your own stories of the great resignation after Friday's show. Hearing your stories about career changes or life's changes, moving, hearing how this sort of cultural conversation is impacting individuals is always so incredibly helpful and we love hearing from you about how something we talk about on the show is playing out in your real lives.

So keep those messages coming all the time.

[00:03:38] Beth: And those messages have also been very encouraging. As we've heard from you about people who have been against getting a vaccine and have come around. We have had several of our members on Patreon share stories about a coworker who was anti-vax and then recently got vaccinated, and parents who are now getting their first shot after physicians ask them lovingly to get vaccinated.

And Sarah, you have your own personal success stories in this category.

[00:04:06] Sarah: Yes. My dad got his first vaccine shot last night. I'm like tearing up a little bit. It was, you know, look, it was a heartbreaking turn of events. He had a really close friend die, a friend he was texting with from the hospital pass away really quickly.

And we started talking about it and we started talking about how Delta was different. And he said, I think I'm going to go get the vaccine. And so he went and got it yesterday. I spent a long time on the phone with my brother. I think I'm shifting slowly and convincing to get the vaccine. And I think what's most encouraging, not just about my dad, but the people we've heard that are getting vaccinated from our patrons is like, these are not hesitant people.

These are not people that were waiting to see. These were people who were passionately anti vaccine. And, you know, the heartbreaking side of the story is that so many of them witness people in their own lives die in really tragic, awful ways. And it, you know, brought the reality of Delta in particular home in ways that were just unignorable.

Right. And that all of a sudden something they felt so passionately, you know, the, the information changed. I love the tweet that went around. That was like, I'm so proud of the people who are changing their minds. Cause that's a hard thing to do. And I think part of it is that Delta is so differently. Like I said, I think it's even linguistically that we've started calling it.

Delta just gives that confirmation bias enough room to exit the space and let people go in a new direction. I wish it did not take the tragic deaths of so many Americans to really, to move that group. But. For better for worse. That is the reality. And I'm still going to celebrate those vaccinations, especially my own father's.

[00:05:54] Beth: I think it's also good to recognize that a lot of people who are in the hesitant category have moved firmly into the pro-vaccine category. Now, if you look at the political numbers, the mood of the country is really in a different place than it was several months ago. I was reading a newsletter from Tim Miller this morning of the bulwark.

And he said, you know, 70% of Americans have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine at this point, 56% of all Americans support vaccine mandates by employers. That's a 24 point margin over the 32% who opposed them. That's really, really big Kaiser asked whether the federal government should recommend employers requiring vaccines and over half of all Democrats and Republicans agreed with doing that.

So we've got a real consensus across the aisle at this point on the fact that vaccines are good, they are important. We need them. It's not enough in terms of the numbers to help us public health wise say, we're, we're nearing the end of this, but having the political will to approach it differently is a very big deal.

[00:07:03] Sarah: Absolutely. And I'm so thrilled to see those shifts. Now, listen, the other thing we are hearing from all of you is that it's not just a positive story out there in your communities and that these mask mandates and that the employer mandates are being met with some very passionate resistance, even violent resistance as we saw in Los Angeles county.

And I think this is really, really difficult, you know, yesterday my mom said, well, did you watch the video from Franklin, Tennessee and the board of education meeting? And that was after I saw someone else mentioned the bad behavior at the Franklin Tennessee board of education meeting on Facebook. And I said, you know what, no, I'm not going to watch it because I don't really think we're built to witness the bad behavior coming from communities across the country.

And what I mean by that is like, in the same way with the Olympics, I don't think one person is supposed to shoulder the pressure or a global audience. There's a part of me. That's like, I don't think we're built to watch people act ugly from Maine to Mississippi, to Montana, to California, right? Like I just, it's not good for us.

I think the best thing we can do is stay focused on the bad behavior in our own backyards. And what, if anything we can do to support our own local school boards and our own local commissions or county governments. Because I just think it is depressing and anxiety inducing, and especially where it's in a community where you have little to no say or control, and that's not to be like an ostrich and bury your head in the ground.

I just think we have to think like, why am I watching this? Why do I need to see people act terribly to the board of education in Franklin, Tennessee? Like, what information am I going to take from that? What can I do about it? I just think that, that, you know, watching all that you, because it, it amplifies the voices that are already loud enough.

You know, it always bugs me when that loud 20% describes themselves as the silent majority, because they're not a majority and they're not silent. So, you know, I just think it amplifies the voices that are already loud enough when we watch it and we give it our attention and we give it our anxiety and we give it our energy and fear.

And so I'm just, I'm not going to watch any more of that. I'm going to focus on, I got a school board meeting in my own community that I'm going to pay attention to and do what I can to support the school board. And I'm not going to watch, you know, I told my mom, I didn't watch girls gone wild. I'm not going to watch these board of education meetings across the United States or the mask mandate protest or the employer mandate protest.

I'm just, I'm not gonna do it.

[00:09:58] Beth: I think that what you see, and I haven't watched that particular school board meeting, but I have watched the school board meetings in my community. And I think what you see is very predictable. I don't think you're going to learn new information. I think we all have a pretty robust understanding post January 6th of what a very small, but very, very loud minority of Americans want for this country.

And I think that should be taken in and grappled with, to the extent that it's motivating. So like you said, motivating to engage more in your place where you have a voice and can be effective. And I think motivating in the really small ways of just sending a note to the principal or the CEO of your company who made a difficult call about mask or vaccine requirements or your local restaurant, the way they're handling COVID-19 or.

You know, your local yoga studio, like wherever you see someone trying really hard to navigate tough decisions, giving them a little bit of encouragement. I think that's a really effective way to do your part encountering that very small, but very loud minority. And it just helps you remember that like that group existed long before they could Facebook livestream.

Yup. And so we don't have to give them the oxygen of attention that they're looking for.

[00:11:20] Sarah: That's it? I just want to, you know, not to use a metaphor, that's probably not exactly great in the middle of a respiratory virus, but I do, I do want to deprive that of oxygen and I think we can do it in lots of ways in our own communities without like going to the board meeting.

You know, I'm so proud of my mom recently. She just keeps talking about how she's learned to say, well, "I don't agree with that" or "not everybody feels that way." Just that's it. She doesn't engage in like intense policy discussion, but she's, you know, she's like me, she's got a diverse group of friends, lots of people out there.

And she's just learned to say, well, not everybody feels that way. I don't feel that way. I don't agree with you and just move on. It. Doesn't have to, you know, if you're an Enneagram nine or a peacemaker or you hate confrontation, doesn't always have to be confrontation. It can just be that small amount of disruption, that small amount of social pressure that says do not think that everyone agrees with you because that's what fuels that fire is when they feel like they're righteous because they're on the side of the majority.

And I just think that when we can do. And what we can do, however, small to disrupt that narrative in our own heads and not only in our own heads and for those people, but for everybody listening and paying attention, be it in a Facebook thread or at a dinner party to say, "Oh good, Cause I didn't feel that way either, but I didn't want to say anything.

And now I know somebody else doesn't feel my way either." As opposed to just bemoaning the state of the world, talking about how awful people are. Look, we all know that before the pandemic people could be jerks. People could be violent jerks. And we know after the pandemic that people are stretched even more thin thinly and that they are stressed.

I was talking to my dad and he was, he was telling me this, this awful story of something that happened to one of my, my cousin friends. And I said, well, why did he do it? And he said, because people are crazy right now. And I was like, you know, I think we all know that deep down that there is just this undercurrent of stress and frustration and anger.

And it's like, we don't. Again, we don't need to watch more videos to prove that to ourselves. We already know that's true. To me, that leads to not only anxiety and fear, but like cynicism and resignation, and that's definitely not going to help. So as much as I can, I'm trying to do in my personal life, what we're trying to do here on the show, let's focus on the positive.

Let's focus on opportunities for optimism while still acknowledging our grief and doing what we can without feeding that need to just burrow into our anxiety and to the frustration and disempowerment from watching our, our fellow citizens behave badly.

[00:14:00] Beth: I love that from your mom, because so many people in my life who are most deeply ingrained in sort of the oh, and Fox Breitbart bubble are really shocked to hear that someone disagrees with them. Like they genuinely are shocked that someone who lives near them, whose kids go to school with him, whatever disagrees. So that, that little act I think is really effective.

What I think is challenging, and I've been really curious about your thoughts on this, Sarah is that I think for people who are like very, very far from other humans who actually feel this way, you know, cause we live in areas that expose us to more people who are anti-vax than a lot of people who are listening right now. And I think for people who aren't kind of engaged daily in, how do I talk to them? How do I bring them along? How do I keep my relationships in tact with them? There is so much desire for some accountability, for some accountability, for people not doing their part to help with this crisis for accountability for all of the death, for all of the economic suffering, for the psychological suffering, accountability for the way people are acting out in these anti-mask anti-vax places.

And I totally get that and have no good answers for them. And like the only thing that I know. I've had a few conversations with people in my life about someone and different people that we know who are like out living their best lives as though Delta doesn't exist as though COVID never has. And occasionally I'll hear something like, you know, I'm almost going to be mad if they don't get it at this point because they deserve it because the way they've acted about this, and I am totally sympathetic to that perspective.

And I can even feel it in myself sometimes. And I also just try to stop and say, Beth, that's another disease that is infecting you. Like don't allow yourself to be taken over this way. That's so bad for you, but I don't know the line between wishing for some accountability in a totally justifiable way and going to that really bitter space.

[00:16:08] Sarah: Well, I'm an Enneagram one. So I'm highly motivated by justice. I want people to suffer the consequences when they act ugly. Let me state that as clearly as I can and look, some people are these employer mandates people are going to lose their job. Period. We've had several teachers walk off the job because they don't want to wear a mask in our school systems locally.

So they're going to have consequences. You know, that's what I had to teach myself as a parent, the best accountability comes from natural consequences. And also a lot of time, people are terrible humans and they suffer no natural consequences. That is the reality. And we should all know that because we lived through four years of the Trump presidency and we understand this man's biography very well.

But at the end of the day, I think I also have learned or try to accept that the consequences come, even if they're not what I want them to be. And what I mean by that is I want something concrete, but often if the concrete consequences never come, the spiritual, the moral, the ethical, the psychological consequences are their own prison.

Over the weekend, I was reading a Vanity Fair article Aaron Moon recommended about Doris Duke and how they've reopened this investigation because she basically mowed this man who worked for her, who wanted to leave down and killed him. And there was actually a paper boy, 13 year old paper, but he witnessed it.

And I thought I got in the space where I thought, and then she got to live in her eighties, having murdered somebody and living in these mansions across the world and Hawaii and hobnobbing with all these people. And then I remembered that I know enough about Doris Duke's biography to know I wouldn't have switched places for all the world.

She was a miserable person and clearly made everyone around her miserable too. And that's its own consequence. Right? And I think anyone acting this way, just boiling over with rage and frustration. Doesn't need the natural consequences as I define them because the accountability will come through the psychic prison that they have created for themselves.

And like, for me, I had to decide, do I want to join them in that prison and become hardened and angry that they aren't getting what I think they deserve. And I didn't, and I still don't and I have to accept that, like some of it, I will never see some of it will seem like they're never sort of getting what they deserve, but I just, you know, the, the impact on my own life was that I can stay soft and not harden. And just trust that, you know, if the natural consequences don't come, those psychic ones will. Consequences seems like an apt and incredibly brutal transition into our conversation about the fall of Afghanistan.

For any of you who weren't consumed by the news coverage over the weekend, the United States withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban's resurgence took place on a much more accelerated timeline than many people anticipated. The Taliban took province after province, after province, and then came to Kabul.

The president of Afghanistan, left the country. The government negotiated a handover of power to the Taliban. And so now they are in power in Afghanistan. There were brutal images of citizens of Kabul, desperately trying to flee desperately trying to get to the airport where the United States military and embassy employees were either exiting or directing the exit.

I mean, to the point where people were literally holding on to the airplanes as they took off losing their grip and falling to their death, just brutal, brutal imagery coming out of the country this weekend.

[00:20:32] Beth: I think it's hard to know what to talk about on the show right now, because there's so much going on in the world.

You know, as we are recording today, we have people listening who are very, very worried about loved ones in Haiti, following a terrible earthquake. And in a time that was already completely unstable for Haiti. We have people in the United States dealing with water issues and, uh, smoke-filled air and, uh, burying people they love because of the Delta variant.

there's so much going on all over the world that it would be impossible to list everything. And so when we, as citizens cannot do very much about what's happening in Afghanistan and are already living a lot of personal stress. You know, I have to ask myself, like, why is it worth spending time here and with our people talking about Afghanistan? We spent 20 years there. The American public has reached a real consensus on its desire to not be there militarily anymore. And for me, the answer is that Afghanistan has a lot to teach us about how we view the rest of the world. And it has a lot to teach us about our system of government and its failures, because to me at every step along the path from 9/11 forward, We can just clearly see the absence of clarity.

You know, we can see the absence of a coherent strategy about what we're trying to accomplish, what our limitations are and trying to accomplish that and what we're willing to sacrifice in service of what I think one of the best takes that I've read of this entire situation is that the American military with our NATO allies, which hung together remarkably over such a long period of time.

The American military accomplished everything realistically could have been expected to accomplish. And it accomplished more than everything it could have realistically been expected to accomplish some of the data on what has happened over the past 20 years in Afghanistan is remarkable.

Infant mortality is down. Education is up. Life expectancy is up. Electricity consumption is up like all these markers of standards of living increasing have improved. And then as you sit back as a citizen and think if an American president stood in front of us and said, we are going to have some military presence in another country for 20 years, And here's what the cost of that will be.

And here's what the death toll will look like. And these kinds of things are going to happen. The standard of living for people there is going to dramatically improve women and girls are going to get to go to school and have careers. You know, people aren't going to just be summarily executed in the streets.

So many things would we have as a public have said, sounds good. We're in for that. And I don't know the answer to that, and I don't know what the answer should be. And I think that makes it worth talking about just as citizens.

[00:23:41] Sarah: I think there are several layers of this conversation, which is why it is incredibly complicated to have, I think, you know, the 50,000 foot view is what has the west been trying to do in Afghanistan?

I got so frustrated that people kept saying, well, this was a 20 year experiment. No, this is a 200 year experiment. The first Anglo Afghan war was in 1839. 1839, the British were in Afghanistan. The Russians were in Afghanistan and now us. And so I think for me, what, you know, the, the, the big, big macro question is what are Western democracies is trying to do in Afghanistan and around the world?

And I think that conversation is stuck in World War II, and that's not the world we live in anymore. You know, I was looking up statistics about the difference between World War II and now, and it's not just like there were fewer countries, there were also a fourth of the amount of people. The world's population was about 2 billion in 1930.

Now it's almost eight. You know, I think that we're stuck in this vision of, we went in, we prevented atrocities or we at least stopped atrocities. And then we did produce democracies. I mean, Japan went from a monarchy to a democracy. And we're stuck there even though the world is radically different.

And I feel like so many of the conversations around Afghanistan and whether we should stay, whether we should go back, what were we doing there? Definitely when we went there in the first place, we're under that rubric and I just wish we could abandon it because if we're talking about atrocities, the list is long.

I'd love to see an end to the suffering of the people of Guatemala, Venezuela, the weaker people in China, the people of Haiti. And so it just feels like, why do we keep talking as if we're going to go in World War II style and help people? I just, I'm so frustrated by that framework when it is so clearly not relevant anymore.

[00:26:13] Beth: I think that's right.

And I think it's incredibly hard to get people's attention turned to that, especially because we don't have a very robust understanding of history, the average person, what they could tell you about World War II even is quite limited. And I think they could probably tell you more about World War II than they could tell you about everywhere we fought since then, you know, we haven't wanted to have a real conversation about Vietnam broadly speaking.

We haven't really dissected even successful operations like Desert Storm to say, what was this for? And what did it cost? And was that cost worth it? And to whom for whom is it worth doing? You know, I have been heartbroken along with, I think many of you watching the images coming out of Afghanistan. And I have real questions about the way that we have withdrawn and the planning and, and more than anything, what the White House has told the American people about this process.

I'm, I'm pretty upset because I think that very little of what's happened over the past two weeks is surprising to anyone who's paid any attention to Afghanistan. I read a report from an inspector general to Congress for the first quarter of this year, the pretty well predicted what we've seen unfold.

And so the idea that this was going to be pretty smooth and okay, I think, uh, reflects less candor with the American people and more the White House's hope that they would continue doing what they've done really well to this point, which is say, we're going to take actions that are broadly politically popular in the country.

Broadly, the American people want out of Afghanistan, we're going to get out of Afghanistan. And on the other side of that, people will be happy that we did so, and they probably won't know or care too much about what happened in the process of getting us out. And I think that's the calculus and that makes me upset.

It also makes me upset though, that it's being reported with such a personal lens on this White House. When everything that's happened over the past two weeks in part was squeezed. Like the options this White House has, were really compressed by the deal the Trump administration made with the Taliban.

And remember the Trump administration dealt with the Taliban, not with the Afghan government that we spent, $88 billion to train forces to protect. Right. We spent 20 years in all this money trying to train forces to protect a government that the American government last year cut out of negotiations about the future of that country.

Like that, to me, erases all pretense of, well, this is shocking. I can't believe how this has gone down. You can't cause a year ago the administration said it's not even worth chatting with the president of Afghanistan. As we make decisions about the future. The Taliban is the, is the strength in this country.

[00:29:06] Sarah: I think that's right. I think the big macro view of what are Western democracies, cause it's not just the United States. That's been in Afghanistan for 20 years. The next logical level is like our government, our government's role Congress, the president, the past administrations, you know, I am so frustrated.

I keep trying to remind myself throughout this entire sort of situation, that anger is a secondary emotion because I feel a great deal of anger. I'm so frustrated that we're focusing on the last, you know, two weeks of decision-making or six months of decision making, you know, look, I'd like to have a conversation with president Biden.

I'd like to have it about the decisions he made as a Senator 20 years ago to go there in the first place. To me that is the, if we all want to talk about the shame and embarrassment of the fall in Afghanistan, then I want to go back to 2001. I've talked about this on the show before I was in a political science class, it was our senior seminar and we spent so much time talking about this exact thing happening in Afghanistan, based on everything that happened in the United States to that point.

But guess what? That war was extraordinarily popular, very popular. And we allowed our representatives to not only support that action, but to continue to fund it, to continue to leave those war authorizations in place for two decades. And so we don't get to hold our political leadership to account without taking a hard look in the mirror ourselves.

And that to me is what's so frustrating to even call back to Vietnam or to even call back to, you know, previous engagements and not have a conversation about how we keep doing the same thing and expecting it to be quick and easy and be based on a volunteer military is so frustrating to me. Look again, I have a long list of populations across the globe that are suffering, that I would like to see and end to it, but we're not going to get to that with a volunteer military.

We didn't in World War II. We didn't even in Vietnam. There was a draft. And I just think like we don't want to have, we want to feel good about our presence in the world with no sacrifices or sacrifices on the base of the military community that are hidden from us. And that's what makes me so angry.

And as we have this conversation, be it about the Biden administration, the Obama administration, the Trump administration Congress over the last 20 years, you know, what's so important to us is to include the voices of veterans. We recently sat down with a friend of the show, Amy McGrath. We've had her on previously to talk about her runs for the house of representatives and the Senate in our home state of Kentucky.

But why we thought it was so important to include her voice here today is because she is also a decorated Marine veteran and she served tours of duty in both Afghanistan and Iraq. And when we sat down with her, we asked her how she felt about the drawdown of troops in Afghanistan.

[00:32:13] Amy McGrath: It's not black and white.

The people there, you know, they're not your, your enemy and they're not your friend. They're survivors and they will be with you if it helps them survive and they will be against you if it helps them and their family to survive, it's not personal. And they don't care so much about a Jefferson and democracy, they want to survive.

And so you have the, it's just very sort of primitive in that way. and so while I personally feel like I want the Afghan women to have to be able to read, I want them to get educated. I want them to have equal rights, you know, a rights law. I want a democracy to happen and for the people there to have freedom.

At the same time, I just, it's such a different culture than our culture. I really realized that, you know, we all want to say the Taliban, this and the Taliban's bad, but a lot of times when you go there, you talk to people and it's, the Taliban is just ingrained in the culture. It's like, I always tried to tell my Marines. I was like, it's like Yankees fans.

I'm trying to make a headline here. I'm just trying to say that everybody in America knows somebody who likes the Yankees or around here it's the Reds. Everybody, either likes the Reds or know somebody that likes the Reds. You know, or that somebody wears a red hat, you know.

Around there. It's like everybody either likes the Taliban or know's somebody. So, you know, they're in your family. Okay. And you can't ever really get away from it. And it's, it's just the heart of the culture. And so I don't know if we can really change that.

And so when my, as I wrote about in my book, when I, my friend, who I had worked with for many months, right next to every day, as close as we are, every single day, died, he was shot down.

I couldn't tell you why he died. I wanted to. I sat there thinking. You know, well, he died for that. So he died for that. So I just didn't know. And that's when I realized, what are we doing? What are we doing here? Cause at the time we were supposed to build up the Afghan national police and the national army, but they weren't really building them up.

And then we were providing security for Helmand province at the same time, knowing that as soon as we left it would just go back to the way it was. We all knew this and there. And then my, my friend died, and I'm like why? And so it's such a, I have mixed feelings about it. I cannot fault the president current president for doing it.

I think it needs to be done in a responsible manner. I feel very strongly about protecting the translators who put their lives on the line, not just for months, but for years and their family's lives. They will really be the first ones to have their heads lobbed off. And we have a responsibility not only to them, but to future for future conflicts in a strategic way to make sure that we protect the people we said we would protect.

When we first went into Helmand province in 2009 and 10, there were a lot of people that were saying, why are we here? You know, Helmand province is in the, in the south west corner of Afghanistan. And it was like, we had, we had sort of secured the Kabul area in the Northeast corner. And all of a sudden we jumped down to the Southwest and people were like, why are we here?

So it was sort of disjointed, even 10 years ago as to what we were doing, and why, and, you know, I, my, my friend, Natalia, who I talked about in the book, worked at camp bastion. She was a medical administrator for the hospital there, and she saw much, much more women than I was. And, just being with her and seeing the sort of despair, when I would go to visit her, I was in more of the operations and she was seeing the operations and I just, you know, I came away with that tour thinking I never want to go back. I'm not sure why we're there.

[00:36:50] Beth: I think it was helpful to hear this from Amy about the Taliban. And it's helpful to remember, and this is something that I think going back to your point about the initial decision to go into Afghanistan, how popular that was.

Of course it was popular. This is kind of like two to the question I asked you about accountability around COVID-19 the American public wanted accountability understandably for 9/11 and wanting to make sure it wasn't going to happen again. And I think one of the initial mistakes had to be that we did not fully grasp the relationship between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, and we didn't fully grasp that the Taliban, you know, in the early nineties, were kind of welcomed by the people of Afghanistan, because they brought some stability and order to a place that had seen decades of conflict and corruption and overreach by anyone leading it. And so Amy's perspective where she explains that this is all about survival instead of friends and enemies, and that the Taliban is so woven into Afghan culture now. I think is important. It also helped me to read accounts of the relationship between the Taliban and Al Qaeda, although it has had some serious stress points growing over the last 20 years. And that even as Taliban leaders were meeting with US officials last year, promising that they would not give safe Harbor to terrorists Al-Qaeda was in the background, like coaching them on how to handle those negotiations.

There has just been, I think, a great deal of hubris by civilian leaders in making decisions about Afghanistan that misunderstand the culture there. And, and not, I don't want to say that in a way that furthers that sense of, "those people over there have been fighting since the beginning of time. And we'll fight until the end of time."

I think that's gross. It's something that I grew up hearing about Western Asia. I think it creates some terrible instincts and a lot of unnecessary hatred and bigotry in our country. So I don't mean to say it in that sense. What I mean to say is we think we're helping a lot when we actually don't know how to help.

And to me, that's like the civilian perspective that I want to bring into these discussions. What, what does help actually look like? And are we, when we ask our military to make tremendous sacrifice, to help being realistic and honest, what would actually be helpful?

[00:39:33] Sarah: Well, we want it both ways though. We're not just going to help.

We're going to help and support our own interests or else. No political leader would try to sell it to the American public. We're we're trying to dance this, this dance where we're doing the right thing, but it's also the right thing for us. And I'd really like us to stop. That's why I'm so mad. I want us to stop.

We owe it to the members, our community in the military families who are sacrificing so much, be honest with all of us. Tell us why we're there because I don't really think the American government or political leaders ever do anything just to help. And that's not to say, like they're cynic, cynical, awful people because often helping is in our interest, it stabilizes parts of the world.

It protects us from, you know, groups or leaders that we don't want to take advantage of a terrible situation and gain power. But again, it's a big complicated globe and there's a part of me that thinks do we all just need to acknowledge that this story we have about America going in and helping and stabilizing and spreading democracy is just no longer a relevant goal.

It's too big. It's too complicated. And we've all seen us turn around in the face of massive atrocities. And I don't just mean in communities. I mean the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and we'd done. What about that? Exactly. Again, the genocide of the weaker people. I just because it's, and it's not because we're bad it's because what we can do is limited and maybe that's the hard truth. We don't want to accept. There are lots of veterans, many of whom I really respect David French wrote a piece basically saying we have a duty to protect under this, this framework set up. And I thought, this seems so dated to me, this duty to protect because what we've been there before, where have we not been?

Where have we not inserted ourselves and changed the course of history? Can someone tell me a nation where that is not true at this point in 2021? And so what exactly does that mean now? Does it mean we go everywhere? I'm not trying to be isolationist. I just want us to have an honest conversation because people's lives are affected there and here military families make sacrifices and they do help.

For 20 years, they did improve many of the lives in Afghanistan, but they're not in charge. They're not strategizing, they're not making these calls. They're not leading the American people through an honest and transparent conversation about what we ask our volunteer military to do. And it's just frustrating.

It makes me so mad because there is so much suffering and there is so much death and there is so much waste. The Afghan government was filled with corruption. A lot of the money we poured over there went to them. It didn't do anything except for line their pockets. How exactly is a military presence supposed to get at issues like corruption, help me understand, help me understand how that's supposed to help anything.

[00:43:03] Beth: I have such contradictory thoughts and feelings about all of this.

Because on the one hand, I agree with you that we can't just protect everywhere. We. We can't, it would be foolish to try and we don't even know what that means in a coherent way. And yet I struggle when someone like Assad in Syria uses chemical weapons against his people. And I think about what if that were happening here?

What I want. Would I want our NATO allies to have a conversation. That's like, well, we can't save the whole world. You know what I mean? They're gonna have to fend for themselves over in Kentucky. It's just not, not on our, that's not part of our watch. We got enough to do, to protect our people here. No I wouldn't.

And so I struggled with what is our obligation, especially to people. Uh, and this gets to Amy's point too, about, especially to people who've helped us there. I think about this all the time with the Kurds, you know, we are in a bad pattern right now as, as the United States of America, not the fault of any person, any individual who served in our military of deciding we're going to leave somewhere and really leaving a mess behind us and, and a dangerous brutal situation for people who have gone out of their way in tremendous acts of courage and at great personal cost cost to help us. And I think that's wrong and I don't know what to do about that. And to your point, about an honest, transparent conversation, I totally agree. And at the same time, it seems to me, one of the big mistakes that has been made here in Afghanistan is being too vocal about exactly when we'd be leaving on exactly what timetable we would be drawing troops down, because you see like, in a lot of the reporting that we took, whatever little bit of morale existed among Afghan security forces.

And there wasn't much to begin with because to your point, the Afghan government has not cared about them. It has not sent them enough food. It's not given them enough rest. They've had people on the payroll who don't, it actually exists. We don't have 300,000 Afghan security forces is nothing like that.

You take that terrible situation. And then America starts saying like, yeah, we're going to be out of there by 9/11 of this year, 20 years is enough. The morale went down the tank and they thought if the United States isn't willing to invest this anymore, why should I invest in this anymore? Is it worth dying for this government that the United States is written off?

And I totally understand that. And so I say all of that, just to say, I have tremendous grace for people who are making these decisions and I have tremendous personal conflict over what the guiding principles ought to be and what process they ought to go through.

[00:45:40] Sarah: Yeah. I mean, I think it's, it's difficult.

Listen, you and I had this debate before we ever started Pantsuit Politics on my blog, what six years ago about Syria. And I said, I think we were on opposite sides. I think I was the one saying if it was me, I would want someone to come to our defense and I still feel that way. But guess what we didn't do about the chemical defense in Syria, nothing guess who's still in power, seven years later, Assad.

So like, I just feel like, I think we've made the choice and we just need to own it. I feel like the American people and other Western democracies have made the choice. We talk a lot about World War II, but we're not going to do that again. We're not going to call up the draft and, and, and call hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens into danger, no matter what we've seen really terrible situations in Syria, in Venezuela.

In with the Wiggers and China, I mean, again in Haiti, where do you want me to go? Like we seen it and we've decided, so why do we not just own that? Why do we keep wringing our hands and being frustrated when we're not calling for that politically, I don't like any of the choices that Congress or any of the administrations have made about these places, but they've really not been called to account.

I mean, I, I say that and I can see that in many ways we have, we said, we don't want that anymore. We don't want that. And so in some ways there's been political account. Right? Donald Trump gained a lot of political power through calling for an end to our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan make no mistake about it.

So in some ways, I mean, we have created political pressure, but it's always about draw it down, spend less money, get out of there. It's never about going, except for if it's to defend us or to, to make that accountability. It's never about spreading Western democracy or helping people.

[00:47:39] Beth: I think we don't own it because we only sort of have accountability because there aren't any clear processes around decision-making.

If this Congress had to take an up or down vote on drawing down troops from Afghanistan, I don't know how that vote would have ended. And I don't know whether that process would have harmed our troops and harmed people operating in Afghanistan, doing humanitarian work, doing all of the work that people in Afghanistan have been doing diplomatically and otherwise, or if it would have helped them.

I could see where there are members of Congress who serve in this conflict. Right. And who probably have valuable things to add to the administration's thought process that maybe haven't had a chance to do so, but Congress doesn't take an up or down, vote on anything related to military action at this point, including the decision to go to war.

And that's another thing we wanted to talk to Amy about while we had her in this setting to discuss her book. We asked her about this effort underway in the Senate to revoke the war authorizations that went into effect at the beginning of this conflict. And here's what she said.

[00:48:44] Amy McGrath: Then we had two war authorizations since 9/11.

The first one was the one right after 9/11, which authorized the United States to go after Al-Qaeda and any associated forces around the world. That's kind of your, your global war on terror, Afghanistan. And then the Iraq one came about a month prior to the Iraq war in 2003. And that basically said you can go after Saddam Hussein, for weapons of mass destruction.

So here we are, and we still have that out there because it's the modern day declaration of war discipline. We haven't declared war since World War II. So that is the declaration of war. And we haven't done anything about it, but basically we've given the president a blank check the last 20 years, and Congress has punted its responsibility.

It has not looked at these authorizations. It has not either reauthorized. Or stopped the wars it's basically just said to the president, you know, you're a free for all.

And my feeling about it is one, of course, it's against our constitution, article one, section eight. And I think the founders had it right. That they believed that Congress should be the responsible body to determine whether we should use the use force or not around the world.

And then the president as the executive and as the commander in chief can then determine by large, how do we do that? How do we execute this? I feel like with Congress not doing its job, it's basically it disconnects the American people even more from the wars that we're fighting because when Congress does its job and it actually debates things, it gets on the news and they have to, they have to own up to their votes, to you! Okay. And when Congress punts that to the president, they can just, they don't ever have to own up to it. They don't ever have to say I voted up or down. They don't ever have to say that they voted to extend the Afghanistan conflict.

And here we are, 20 years later, they don't ever have to say, Hey, I went, you know, up or down on Iraq. And I just think that's a problem. If you can't make those types of votes, you should not be in Congress. And that was one of the things that was important to me. One thing that I always wanted to see Congress do, I would absolutely forced my fellow members of Congress to vote up or down on these things because it forces us to talk about force of the American public.

And if we're not willing to talk about it, we shouldn't have men and women out there dying in places like Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan. So that's my thought on that.

[00:51:34] Sarah: And I think her conclusion is what's struck me. And I think that's what I keep thinking about because we don't know how a vote in Congress would go.

To draw down troops in Afghanistan, but I know exactly how a vote in Congress would go to drop a draft. I know exactly how that vote would go. And so I'm just, I'm frustrated that we keep asking it of the same people in our volunteer military. You know, we had somebody reach out on Instagram and say, check on your veteran friends, especially who those who served in Afghanistan, they are not okay.

We had Katye Riselli. Who's been on the show before, reach out and say, you know, stop saying, this is our Vietnam, our generation's Vietnam. That's so hurtful and harmful to the people who made sacrifices for this. Again. So often hidden from the general public and shouldered, totally and completely by veterans and the military community.

And I'm just. I'm brokenhearted for them and I'm done. I'm just done asking them to do the same thing over and over and over again, and then hiding the consequences or ignoring the consequences. Or I just I'm so brokenhearted for these people, for the people who served in Afghanistan for the people who are over there right now, because Congress won't do its job because the administrations don't want to spend the political capital, to be honest with the American people.

And because the American people won't be honest with themselves. I'm just, I'm so, so angry on their behalf.

[00:53:05] Beth: I think what's really difficult about all of this is recognizing that it's not just military families who have suffered because of the conflict in Afghanistan. It's all of us in some way, because we were all connected and affected by what happens there.

And what's happening in Afghanistan today is not only a terrible humanitarian tragedy on an individual level and a population-wide level in Afghanistan because of the re-emergence of the Taliban. And because of what we can only guess will be a return to the pre 9/11 status quo in Afghanistan, but it will also have ripple effects throughout the world.

That to the emboldened Taliban, the Taliban that has had a propaganda field day, because the United States leaving will likely recruit more members could make a run at Pakistan. Pakistan that has been the, the home and resting place for the Taliban could see them come in and cause conflict there, Pakistan, a nuclear state that has conflict with India.

You know, the ramifications of this, just like the ramifications of having been there for 20 years will be felt around the world for generations to come. And that would have been true no matter what President Biden and his administration decided to do here at the same time, I think they've done it badly and it's important to say that.

Just because I generally think President Biden has done a good job and has been a good president. And just because I think that he had impossible choices with respect to Afghanistan, it is important to me to say the way that this exit has been conducted has been tremendously flawed. And I'm so sad about that. And so sorry, and I understand your anger, Sarah. And I think I have a lot of just fear about what comes next around the world and for people who've served in Afghanistan, because the discussions that we're having most of my anger is directed at members of Congress who are making political plays on this and members of the media who see a great opportunity to prove to the public just how objective they are about the Biden administration.

Like it's just going to hurt so many people in a situation where so many people are already hurting.

[00:55:25] Sarah: I agree. You know, I have so much frustration. With how this went with how it's been covered and my heartbreaks, not only for Americans and how they're affected, but the people of Afghanistan, the women and children of Afghanistan are going to suffer the most horrendous consequences because of the decisions that they were not invited to participate in.

And I think where I've come down on one of the best sort of takes I've read over the last few days was someone said at this point, the best thing you can do is call your member of Congress and lobby for as many refugees as we need to let in, who helped us, who served us and who maybe didn't, who maybe were just fighting for the vision.

They, we presented to the people of Afghanistan as available to them. Women's education, girls, education, women's participation in politics, freedom of speech. Maybe that's not available within the geography of Afghanistan. Then the next best thing we can offer them is a place here. And I think that's where I'm coming.

When I say I want to abandon this version of our participation in the world that came from World War II. I don't want to abandon our participation in the world, but it just feels like us going there never helps. So let's let people come here because we don't, we've decided we don't want to do that either.

And I'm done with that. When I say I don't want to be isolationist. I mean, let's welcome the suffering of the world. Let's welcome this long list of people that can't find life, Liberty, or the pursuit of happiness in their own land. And I don't think that means forever. Often. I think empowering people to come here to make money to fund efforts in their own homes makes a difference.

They often return they can fund political activities. They can. I think they can disrupt from the safety of our shores and if that's the best option available to us in the 21st century, then I want to talk about that too. I want to let people come here.

[00:57:37] Beth: Well, and that's another place where I think the mood of the American public doesn't match the moment.

And I think that it's a really difficult call. When you talk about the authorization for the use of military force, when you talk about up or down votes in Congress to actually ensure that we're really making this decisions with political accountability, sometimes the mood of the American public is going to get that wrong.

And I don't know how much we're supposed to be guided in these massive world changing decisions by what's politically popular by versus by what people who study these issues and understand them well think is wise because if you said to the American public today, or to Congress, should we invite 50 to 80,000 Afghans to come into our country?

Even if every single one of those families did something to help us in Afghanistan. I think the country would say no. And I think the country would say no pretty loudly. And that is a big problem because we cannot continue to create refugees in situations like this. And it's not just us. Right? A lot of factors create refugees, but we can't continue as Americans to say, they're going to have to go somewhere else.

They're going to have to go to Qatar and UAE and Turkey and Kazakhstan. Like we can't take all of those people here when the truth is like, by the numbers, we absolutely can. We absolutely can. we just don't want to do that. And I think that's got to be another factor in our decision-making process. And you know, when you think about you keep going back to World War II, Sarah and as you've been saying that I've been thinking about like, what are other truly global objectives like World War II?

What would the equivalent of that today be? The only thing that I can think of is the world coming together to try to address the reality of climate change. We have a totally different mentality about that because there's not an enemy, right? We are, we are both the enemy and the, the opportunity to be heroic in that struggle.

And that framework makes it really different than what we've been dealing with till now. But that is another area that the refugee theme is going to predominate for the next 20, 30 years, because people are going to be refugees because of conflicts that we are not going to get involved in. And they're going to be refugees because of natural disasters and other parts of the world becoming uninhabitable.

And so maybe if we're going to have a coherent, transparent public conversation in the United States, that's a good starting place. How do we feel about people coming to live here? When for whatever reason where they have traditionally made their home is not safe for them anymore.

[01:00:26] Sarah: It's back to what we were talking about before.

The other scenario is we just hardened. We don't want to go anywhere. We don't want to spend money. We don't want to make any sacrifices overseas and we don't want anybody to come here. So we're, we're held prisoner by the fact that these influx of refugees are attempting to come here because of climate change because of authoritarianism because of oppression.

And so we're just, we're just hardening. We don't want to go out. We don't want to come in. And so we're in our own prison of our own damn making. And I just think that we need real leadership. I think you're right. I'd like to hear more honesty about from the Biden administration, even from before this moment to say like, here's our two bad options that the political reality is.

Which do you want to take America? I'd like to present a third option that there's not a lot of political capital for, but I'd like to exhibit real leadership and lead us in a new direction and say like, look around you the way we've been doing things isn't working for us or for anyone else. And so we need to have a hard conversation about what we think the future should look like.

For outside politics today, we wanted to share another piece of our conversation with Amy McGrath. Beth, you asked that the best question you asked Amy, how does it feel to have written a memoir when you have a lot of life in front of you? And we thought we'd share her answer.

[01:01:56] Amy McGrath: It feels good because I'm reading it to my kids.

Not the youngest one because she doesn't do that. But my two older ones, including my seven-year-old, they are, they're really into it. Yeah. And, and so it's fun because I know there's, there's a, there's a future. I don't know what that's going to be, but I feel like we've put the chapter on that and that's okay.

You know, and I've also found that the more, and I think everybody should write a memoir, that's going to be published or not because your kids like your, your family. I would love to. I wish my dad would have been one because I would have loved to have read about his childhood and, and the things that shaped him. I think it's, it's a great thing to do. And the other thing is the older you get, the more disconnected you get from those memories. I had to call up guys in my squadron. Hey, do you remember that deployment? Did we go here? And if you do that, you know, I couldn't remember some of the ins and outs. And, and so as I got older, I wanted to make sure that I wrote it down.

[01:03:06] Beth: Yeah, I loved Amy's book and I loved all of the reflection in it and the way that it was such a stocktake of what she's done in life so far, some of what she's done. Right. Cause she's, you can't possibly capture everything in a life in one book, but it's, it's a beautiful book and a really interesting read and it struck me the whole time, like Amy's young and the and the night is young for Amy.

Like there's so much more that I think she will do in her life. And so I, I, it caused me to think a lot about how we document where we are at different moments in time and what we know when we do that documentation in some ways, the best time capsule that I have, like for my kids is this podcast. And I think about how much we've shifted and changed and thought differently throughout the life of making the podcast.

And I really appreciate the podcast because we get that opportunity to shift and change and explain it and just continue on in the learning process. A book feels so final and I loved her answer on like, I feel like I've written that part of the story. And now I live into the next part of the story, but it just made me think a lot about the ways that we tell our own stories.

And when we do that and how what comes after affects the way we look back at those earlier moments.

[01:04:24] Sarah: Well, I was really struck because her answer was exactly what Brandi Carlisle says at the end of her memoir, which we listened to while we were on vacation, she says, everybody should do this. Everybody should write down their own story.

And I think we speak a lot on this podcast about integration and flourishing. And I think putting together that narrative of your own life is such a powerful exercise in integrating and flourishing. You know, I spend a lot of time documenting my family's lives. I've always been a journaler and a scrapbooker.

I take lots of photos. Part of it is because I don't have a great memory. I think it's because I, uh, for better, for worse really live in the present moment. I don't spend a lot of time obsessing about future plans. And I don't spend almost any time thinking about the past or like sort of regretting what happened.

The downside of that is like, so often my friends will say like, remember this happened? And I'm like, no, it’s even got to the point, my husband I've been married so long often he'll say, remember this, and I'll say. I don't remember it at all. Luckily I have lots of pictures and lots of journals and lots of albums to sort of refresh those memories and capture those like really beautiful moments because time goes so fast.

And, you know, I also think putting together those, you know, memory, keeping telling that story, especially writing a memoir, I think it encourages you to see your own- growth. And it encourages you to see how stories maybe you're still telling yourself are no longer relevant. You know, I think that's what happens with milestone birthdays.

I hear so many women say, are you going to love your forties that's when I stopped caring, what other people thought about me. And sometimes I thought, I think, well, it wasn't that I needed to abandon what other people thought of me. I needed to abandon what I thought about myself. You know, I had so many years when I was a mother of young kids and I was side hustling.

And about a year and a half ago, I had to look around and realize like, that was no longer my reality. It was such an impactful time on my life. I was holding that narrative really tightly, but that was not reflected of the reality of my parenting. And certainly not reflective of the reality of our work here at Pantsuit Politics.

It has not been a side hustle for a very long time, but I was still sort of, I had this narrative in my head that like I needed to spend moments working on like real stuff or I dunno, like I needed to be working on something else all the time, just because I'd always been working on four or five things at a time.

And I didn't have a lot of experience recently with like, just working on one thing and, you know, just, just looking at those stories and realizing like, especially your story and realizing like, oh, it's not, that's not the reality of my life anymore. And this is what I gained from it. And this is how I'm stronger because of it.

And now I'm in this new phase and I think, you know, hearing Amy, especially because her challenges are so defined, right? It's like get into the college, pass the flight test, become a Marine and like watching all these different challenges that she succeeded at and then having to electorial challenges that she did not succeed at and like integrating all that into her story of herself.

I just think that's an incredibly powerful exercise. I think they're probably both right. Her and Brandi Carlile. I mean, who would disagree with Amy McGrath and Brandi Carlile? Like we should all write our stories.

[01:07:32] Beth: I was really struck by the accounts of her failures in the book, especially like the, the personal kind of embarrassing stories that she needn't have told, right.

She could have easily written this account of her life without talking about the time that she drank, uh, against the rules with her soccer team in the Marines and got in trouble for it. She could have easily omitted that. And I was thinking, I bet it felt really good to let this go. Like writing this down in your memoir must have that sense of like writing it on a piece of paper and burning it and throwing it in the ocean or whatever.

Like, I feel like there's that release of shame from it. Okay. This is a thing that happened and I fully acknowledge that it happened and that it is not, uh, in any way, a detraction from all of the good that has happened in my life. I don't know. I just thought there were some really powerful examples in the writing of a memoir in this particular book of letting some things go and having some moments of like forgiveness with yourself.

[01:08:37] Sarah: It seems like having moments of forgiveness is relevant for not only this conversation, but honestly, every conversation we've had on this episode today, we are so thankful, always that you join us and participate in this emotional processing of what's going on in our communities and in our country and around the world.

Thank you for joining us for another episode of Pantsuit Politics, we will be back in your ears on Friday and until then, keep it nuanced, y'all.

[01:09:12] Beth: Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

Alise Napp is our managing director.

[01:09:18] Sarah: Megan Hart is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.

[01:09:23] Beth: Our show is listener supported. Special thanks to our executive producers.

[01:09:27] Executive Producers (Read their own names): Martha Bronitsky, Linda Daniel, Ali Edwards, Janice Elliot, Sarah Greenup, Julie Haller, Helen Handley, Tiffany Hassler, Barry Kaufman, Molly Kohrs.

The Kriebs, Laurie LaDow, Lilly McClure, David McWilliams, Jared Minson, Emily Neesley, Danny Ozment, The Pentons, Tawni Peterson, Tracy Puthoff, Sarah Ralph, Jeremy Sequoia, Karin True, Amy Whited, Emily Holladay, Katie Steigers.

[01:09:59] Beth: Melinda Johnston, Joshua Allen, Morgan McHugh, Nichole Berklas, Paula Bremer, and Tim Miller.

[01:10:05] Sarah: To support Pantsuit Politics, and receive lots of bonus features, visit patreon.com/pantsuit politics.

[01:10:11] Beth: You can also connect with us on our website, PantsuitPoliticsShow.com,

[01:10:21] Sarah: (Doorbell rings) Right in time for the doorbell.

For outside politics. Oh, sorry.

[01:10:24] Beth: No, go ahead. I was just gonna say, uh, I checked my email while you were telling them that. I have four emails titled “A message on mask requirements” from the superintendent.

Sarah: Oh sh*t.

Beth: Bless everyone's hearts. Good grief. Okay.

Alise NappAugust 17, 20212 Comments