Michael: For twenty years, we were told the war in Afghanistan was a fight against terrorism. But what if the real reason America lost wasn't about fighting terrorists, but about fighting an idea—an idea of what it means to be Afghan? Kevin: That's a heavy thought. It reframes the entire conflict from a simple good-vs-evil narrative to something much more complex and, frankly, unwinnable. It suggests the whole premise was wrong from the start. Michael: Exactly. And that's the central, haunting question at the heart of The American War in Afghanistan: A History by Carter Malkasian. Kevin: I've heard this book is considered the definitive account. It's been praised by critics as magisterial and balanced, and it seems to be essential reading for anyone in policy or the military. Michael: It really is. And Malkasian is uniquely positioned to write it. He's not just a historian with a doctorate from Oxford; he was a State Department political officer living in Helmand province for two years and later became a senior advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dunford. He saw this war from the village level and from inside the Pentagon. Kevin: Wow, so he had both the ground-level view and the 30,000-foot view. That's incredibly rare. Where does someone even begin to untangle a twenty-year war? Michael: He starts with a powerful, grim image that sets the stage for everything. He takes us to the Afghan countryside.

Michael: Malkasian opens by describing the graveyards that dot the Afghan landscape. They've been expanding for forty years, since the Soviet invasion. And in these graveyards, you see the whole story. There are green flags for martyrs who died fighting for the government, and white flags for the Taliban fighters. Sometimes, they're in the same cemetery, just feet apart. Kevin: Oh man, that's a chilling image. It’s not two separate worlds at war; it's one place, one people, tearing itself apart. Michael: Precisely. He recounts a speech by former President Hamid Karzai in 2019, where Karzai just laments this reality. He says, look at these graves—Taliban and soldier, Afghan against Afghan, killing each other for someone else's war. And all around them are the unmarked graves of civilians caught in the middle. It’s a powerful symbol of the futility. Kevin: It paints a picture of a civil war where the only winner is death. But how did America, the world's sole superpower, get pulled so deep into someone else's civil war? Michael: That’s the first major failure Malkasian identifies. The US walked in after 9/11 with a very clear, very narrow goal: dismantle al-Qaeda and punish the Taliban for harboring them. It was seen as a just war, and public opinion polls at the time showed massive support. The mission was about counter-terrorism. Kevin: Right, get the bad guys. That seems straightforward enough. Michael: But Afghanistan is never straightforward. The US failed to appreciate that they weren't just entering a country; they were stepping into a history. A long, bloody history of resisting foreign invaders. Afghans have a saying: "War is in the countryside." It’s a constant feature of life. They have repelled the British Empire three times. They broke the Soviet Union. This resistance is baked into their national identity. Kevin: Okay, but the British and Soviets didn't have 21st-century technology. They didn't have drones and special forces and satellite intelligence. Surely the US studied that history and thought, 'We can do better'? Why did they fall into the same trap? Michael: Because they saw the problem as tactical, not cultural. They thought superior firepower could solve a problem that was fundamentally about identity. Malkasian quotes an 18th-century Afghan king, Ahmed Shah Durrani, who wrote to his son: "To foreigners, never give any rights and way. If you give a little... it is as if you have opened a way with your own hand for the destruction of the people." That sentiment is centuries old and it’s still alive. Kevin: So this isn't just a political or military resistance. It's a deep, cultural imperative to push out anyone who isn't Afghan. Michael: It's that, and it's also deeply tied to Islam. Malkasian points out that in Afghanistan, you can't separate politics from religion. They are completely intertwined. The concept of jihad isn't just a slogan for extremists; it's a deeply resonant call to defend the faith and the homeland from non-Muslim invaders. The US saw themselves as liberators, but to many rural Afghans, they were infidels. Kevin: You mentioned Pashtunwali earlier in our prep. What exactly is that? How does a tribal code play into a modern war? Michael: Pashtunwali is the traditional code of the Pashtun people, the largest ethnic group. It's a complex system of honor, but it boils down to a few key things: hospitality, revenge, and honor. When US forces conducted night raids on homes, it wasn't just a military operation; it was a profound violation of the home, a dishonoring of the family. That demands revenge. When the US-backed government was seen as corrupt, it was seen as dishonorable. The Taliban, for all their faults, understood this code. The Americans, for the most part, did not. Kevin: So every tactical decision had these massive, unseen cultural consequences. A night raid wasn't just about capturing a suspect; it was creating a dozen new enemies who were now honor-bound to fight you. Michael: Exactly. And the US made these mistakes from the very beginning. In 2002, after the Taliban were routed, there was a chance for reconciliation. Some Taliban leaders reached out to the Karzai government, looking for a way back into society. But the Bush administration, particularly Donald Rumsfeld, shut it down. The policy was, 'all Taliban are bad.' They were excluded from the new political process. Kevin: Wow. So instead of bringing them into the fold and ending the fight, we basically told them their only option was to keep fighting. Michael: We made them permanent enemies. We failed to understand the history, we failed to understand the culture, and we rejected a chance for peace. That was the original sin of the war. And it’s what gave the Taliban the opening they needed to come back.

Michael: And that failure to understand the cultural code is exactly what gave the Taliban their ultimate advantage. It brings us to this incredible moment Malkasian recounts, which for me, is the key to the whole book. Kevin: Okay, I'm ready. Michael: It's 2014. The author is at a closed-door meeting at the State Department. A group of experts are debating why the Taliban are still fighting after more than a decade. People are throwing out the usual reasons: they're paid by Pakistan, it's about drug money, they're just fighting for jobs. Then the new US ambassador to Afghanistan, Michael McKinley, who had just been appointed, cuts in. Kevin: And what does he say? Michael: He says, "Maybe I have read too much Hannah Arendt but I do not think this is about money or jobs. The Taliban are fighting for something larger." Kevin: Chills. That one sentence just cuts through all the noise. They're not mercenaries. They're believers. Michael: They are believers. And what they believe in, Malkasian argues, is a specific vision of Afghan identity. They are fighting for Islam, for Pashtun values, and against foreign occupation. They successfully framed the conflict not as a civil war, but as a righteous struggle for national liberation. Kevin: So it's like the US was offering a better-paying job, a more efficient government, maybe a new school. But the Taliban were offering a crusade, a purpose. And in a place like Afghanistan, purpose beats a paycheck every time. Michael: That's a perfect way to put it. The American project was transactional. The Taliban's was existential. The US and the government in Kabul were talking about GDP growth and girls' education—all important things. But the Taliban were talking about God, honor, and the soul of the nation. That's a much more powerful story. Kevin: But hold on. This is the part that's always been hard to grasp. How could people support the Taliban? We all saw the stories about their brutal oppression of women, their public executions, banning music and kites. How does that square with being the 'defenders of identity'? Michael: This is where Malkasian's nuance is so important. He doesn't shy away from the Taliban's brutality. But he explains that for many Afghans, especially in the conservative, rural south, the alternative was worse in a different way. The US-backed government in Kabul was seen as fundamentally illegitimate. It was riddled with corruption. Warlords and officials used their power to enrich themselves and settle scores. Justice was for sale. To many Afghans, that corruption was a deeper poison than the Taliban's harsh rules. Kevin: So the choice wasn't between a 'good' modern government and a 'bad' medieval one. It was between a corrupt, foreign-propped government and a brutal, but authentically Afghan, one. That's a terrible choice. Michael: A terrible choice. The Taliban's justice system, based on their interpretation of Sharia law, was swift and decisive. If you had a land dispute, you could go to a Taliban judge and get a ruling in a day. It might be a harsh ruling, but it was a ruling. In the government system, your case could be tied up for years, and the winner would be whoever paid the biggest bribe. For many, the Taliban's system, while severe, felt more just and more Islamic. Kevin: That makes a disturbing amount of sense. They were offering order, even if it was a brutal order, in the face of chaotic corruption. Michael: And they were offering an identity free from foreign taint. Every US drone strike that killed civilians, every night raid, every condescending interaction with a foreign soldier reinforced the Taliban's narrative: "We are the true Afghans. They are the puppets of the invaders." The longer the US stayed, the more powerful the Taliban's argument became. Kevin: It's a vicious cycle. The US presence, which was meant to defeat the Taliban, was actually the source of their strength. It was the fuel for their ideological fire. Michael: Precisely. The US was caught in a strategic trap of its own making. They were fighting an insurgency that fed on their very presence. They could win every battle, but they were losing the war for hearts and minds because they never understood what was truly in those hearts and minds. They were fighting an enemy whose greatest weapon wasn't an IED, but an idea.

Kevin: It's just staggering when you lay it all out like that. The whole 20-year project seems doomed from the start. Michael: Exactly. And that's the tragedy Malkasian lays bare. The US failed not for a lack of military power or money, but for a lack of cultural and historical understanding. We spent trillions of dollars and lost thousands of American lives, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of Afghan lives, trying to solve a political and ideological problem with military tools. Kevin: It's like trying to perform surgery with a sledgehammer. You might crush the disease, but you'll kill the patient. Michael: That's a great analogy. We were trying to build a centralized, Western-style nation-state in a land where identity has for centuries been defined by tribe, by village, by religion, and most of all, by resistance to outsiders. We were offering a blueprint that most of the country had no interest in reading. Kevin: It makes you wonder... was there ever a path to a better outcome? Malkasian talks about missed opportunities. You mentioned the failure to negotiate with the Taliban back in 2002. Could that have really changed things? Michael: He suggests it was the critical turning point. The decision to brand the entire Taliban movement as an irredeemable terrorist entity and exclude them from the Bonn conference and the new government was a catastrophic error. It alienated a huge segment of the Pashtun population and guaranteed a prolonged insurgency. It turned a potential political negotiation into a fight to the death. Kevin: And as history shows, that's a fight foreigners rarely, if ever, win in Afghanistan. Michael: The Graveyard of Empires earned its name for a reason. Malkasian's book is a painful but necessary autopsy of why America became the latest to be buried there. He concludes that the Taliban's connection to Afghan identity was the single most important factor in the war's outcome. Kevin: This book is just packed with these sobering insights. For anyone listening who wants to understand not just what happened, but why it happened, this sounds like essential reading. It's not an easy read, I imagine, but a necessary one. We'd love to hear your thoughts. What was the biggest misconception you had about the war in Afghanistan? Let us know. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.