Shay Khatiri on Biden's Afghanistan Exit
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Welcome to Broken Potholes. I'm your host, Chuck Warren, with my co-host, Sam Stone. We have a very educational and exciting show for you today. Our first guest is...

John, we're going to call him John. He served two tours in Afghanistan. He is an Army veteran. And our purpose for John today is to explain what really was going on as he served over there, what he saw, what his experiences were like. And being a veteran that went over there and spent two tours, what's his feeling about what's happened in Afghanistan? And John, welcome to Broken Potholes.

Good morning. It's great talking to you guys. I really appreciate it. Yeah, so kind of what it's like. So my first tour over there was earlier in the war before the surge.

The war in Iraq was going hot and heavy. They had the surge going over there. Afghanistan was just sitting in the background. And politicians weren't talking about it. Everybody kind of was pretending it wasn't really going on. But the Army and the Marine Corps and the Air Force were really, and the Navy also, were really ramping up their advisor missions.

So bringing over small numbers of senior NCOs and captains, majors, lieutenant colonels, a little bit of experience, bringing them over to train the Afghan army, kind of doing war on the cheap, right? Like America does all over the place.

And then we have for probably since Vietnam, before Vietnam. So myself and a couple hundred others were in my combat advisor course at Fort Riley, Kansas. That's where it was held at the time. It was kind of a big push. It's kind of a fast track course.

not as physical, not as mentally tough, special forces version, right? That's total layman's trunk. But they're teaching you just fast and furious things

culture staff communication they brought over afghan army and had him training with us just so we could get used to him trying to teach us a little bit of pashto and a little bit of dari so that we can communicate um and then threw us into the fire when we got over there so when we get over there they broke us up into teams we were usually two maybe three americans and

and a company of Afghans. And sometimes we would, if you had the opportunity, it was awesome. They'd pull you out of line and you'd go back with your troops and some of them would go on vacation. You know, they'd go back to Kabul and visit their family, get married, whatever they were doing.

And we would just practice combat drills and weapons ranges, you know, things like that, trying to get them up to speed. And then we'd roll them into combat. And we'd go out on these little outposts. They were usually like an old farm, usually surrounded by mud walls, maybe some HESCO barriers.

And we lived in the mud huts, and we'd be there with 100 or so, maybe 200, depending on your patrol base, with these Afghan soldiers. And they were friends. You were with them every day. They all wanted to learn English. We all wanted to learn Dari and Pashto. And we'd take them out on patrol and try not to get them killed, and we'd engage the enemy. We fought a lot, a lot. So this was pre-surge when...

We were really kind of losing. The opium money was coming back into the Taliban. They were starting to get a lot of weapons. And they were bringing over all the fighters from Pakistan. That's a dirty secret nobody likes to talk about. Right. Yeah, the Afghan Taliban, they got pretty much killed right off.

You know, the first few years of Afghanistan, almost all the Taliban from Afghanistan are gone. Really, the Taliban that we were fighting then, they were probably 90%, 80%, 90% Pakistani. And we were still giving foreign aid to the U.S., just giving foreign aid to the Pakistan government at the time. So you kind of felt a little bit,

square about that. I can imagine. I know that it was released in the news and stuff like that and we'd hear about it but not

Not a lot of people were really connecting with that. Or if they were, it wasn't really being made public or being told in public eye. John, this is Sam real quick. So is that still the case as far as you know, that most of the Taliban that we see rolling into Kabul and into Afghanistan right now are actually Pakistan Taliban, not Afghani?

So I'm still in touch with a couple of my prior interpreters. Great guys. They live in the U.S. They've become American citizens. They absolutely deserve more than a lot of born Americans. They deserve to be Americans. They fought alongside of us. I lost...

Two interpreters were killed. A bunch of other ones were wounded. They fought and loved us and totally loyal. I'd have them in my house any day. So I'm putting that straight out because I, last week I, you know, you hear the, the, I don't even know how to describe it. The,

Neanderthal type person saying, oh, we should just nuke Afghanistan and get out. Or, uh, what are we doing there? Uh, uh, from all sides of political aisle. But realistically, those are great people. Yeah. Not all of them, of course, but there's just some awesome people there that I really can say I love. Um, they're, they're brothers to us. They, they fought literally right alongside the Americans and died right alongside the Americans. Um,

Good people. So anyhow, I'm in touch with these guys and they they're in touch with their family and friends back home. And they are hardcore believing that Pakistan is still the driver. Wow. You know, Chuck, you and I have talked about this a little bit, but I saw some of those statements, especially in recent days from some people on our side of the aisle talking about just leaving these people behind. And I'm sorry, folks, that's just it's Chuck. You're right. It's disgusting. It's gross.

It is inhuman. I don't even comprehend how you can have that thought. These folks who have risked and sacrificed their lives, their families to help support us and to help for a vision of a better Afghanistan. And now we're going to run away and leave them behind. It's beyond comprehension to me. Yeah. John, two things.

What did you and your fellow American soldiers believe the reason was we are in Afghanistan? And two, what did these brave men and women who fought alongside you from Afghanistan, what they think, what did they want the end result to be? So it's just like in the United States.

They knew that there was corruption in their government. We know there's corruption in our government. You're an imbecile if you don't think that there's corruption in our government. They wanted the same things we do. They wanted to be left alone and just live their lives.

They weren't able to. We weren't able to because of 9-11, right? Whatever the cause, effect, whatever. We were injected into this war on terror. And a lot of the soldiers were like myself. We had families at home. And let's end this so that our kids don't have to go into it. And now...

Most of those guys, their kids are in the military following along with their parents and

They were still fighting this war on terror, right? So that's a sad note. But we wanted to end it. We wanted to make Afghanistan a good... Remember in the 50s, 60s, early 70s, before the communist takeover in Afghanistan, that was a major vacation spot for all of Europe and wealthy Americans, right? So northern Afghanistan, you'd have the rich oil baron from Texas would go over there and

hunt sheep and hang out in the Hindu Kush and chase around up in the Alpine and then you have the stoner hippies would go down to Southern Afghanistan and smoke opium and do their chai boy thing and

And that's what people did. And I think that also contributed to the rise of the Taliban because you had this decadence, especially in southern Afghanistan, because pedophilia is really what we would call pedophilia here is kind of socially acceptable there, right? And so you'd have these Europeans and Americans who show up to be stoned out or gored

molesting little boys and that was what you know that probably aided in the rise of the religious extremism i wouldn't doubt it it's it's yeah no question that would have probably convinced a lot of folks to to want to fight back and you know what you talk about with the children of the people that you served with now joining the military and serving going forward i

I was reading something, talking with some of our European allies who say, look, this withdrawal from Afghanistan is going to be the biggest recruiting tool that religious extremism has ever had in this front. And we're going to see a massive explosion of terrorism, obviously probably mostly in Europe, but it will affect us here very likely. So we just signed them up for another generation of this, didn't we?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And remember, in those southern regions, you know, there were...

The children being raised by the Taliban, right, whether they're from Pakistan or Afghanistan, those people are still living in Afghanistan, right? And they have families. And they're raising their kids in zealot manners. And there was one mission that I wasn't on. Some of my friends were on it, one of the neighboring teams. And there was two men.

Well, there was probably 30 Taliban fighters. The two of them, one of them had a diska, and the other one was firing RPGs from a compound. And the Americans and NATO were kind of up on a hill, quick.

firing down into the Taliban as they were advancing kind of towards the base of the cliff. And there was a woman in a burqa running RPG rockets and machine gun ammo back and forth to these two men. And they called the NATO forces, one of the JTACs from one of the NATO countries, called...

artillery on him and just devastated him with artillery fire. And I remember the conversation afterwards. We were having it a couple days later. And, you know, they kind of felt bad that this woman was killed. But she was definitely an enemy combatant. Absolutely an enemy combatant. And

John, I'm going to have to cut you off here. We have to go to a quick break, but we're going to continue when we come back. John, I want to thank you very much for being on Broken Potholes today. Make sure you tune in 960 a.m. The Patriot, 3 p.m. on Saturdays. Broken Potholes coming back. It's the new year and time for the new you. You've thought about running for political office, but don't know where to start. Before you start any planning, you need to secure your name online with a yourname.vote web domain.

This means your constituents will know they are learning about the real you when they surf the web. Secure your domain from GoDaddy.com today.

Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. On the line with us today, very special guest, John. We are not giving his last name for security reasons. He has served multiple tours in Afghanistan, the Middle East, worked as an advisor with the military and Afghan forces, got some pretty unbelievable stories. And as we went to break, we were talking about

a situation where you had a woman who was serving as an ammo runner for some Taliban fighters and was killed in a barrage. John, I'll let you pick up where you took off.

Well, that's the bulk of the story. In that particular battle, there were a couple dozen Taliban that were killed by U.S. Afghan and NATO forces. But there was the conflict of, hey, there was this woman killed in the middle of a fight. But she was definitely an enemy combatant. On another mission, there was a particular...

There was a house near one of our patrol bases where there was always, anytime the NATO or Afghan forces left, this kid about the same age as my son at the time would stand up on the roof with his little ICOM radio and say,

talk on his radio and within minutes you'd be getting shot at. He was obviously a scout for the Taliban. No doubt about it. Well, on this rooftop you probably had six or eight little kids running around on top of the rooftop.

And you could see one of the fathers sitting down behind the little mud wall on the rim of the road. He sees children sticking up and he's talking to his boy, telling him what to say. Those children of the Taliban will even then definitely be raised to be Taliban. Right. Just like we raise our kids to, if you're,

You're a political bent. Most people try to raise their children the same way they were raised. Most of them did. So there's that. And so you have the conflict in the soldiers' minds of who the enemy combatants are, the constant rules of engagement changes. The NATO forces had different rules of engagement than the Americans. The Americans had different rules of engagement than the Afghans. It was pretty tough.

three tests emotionally to figure out where you were and when you got in a fight, my first thought was always, am I doing the right thing or am I going to go to jail for the rest of my life?

And then once the fight would get going, then your head would clear and you'd be in the fight. And I've talked to a lot of other soldiers, and they have basic soldiers, Marines. They basically have the same thoughts. So it's definitely not the World War II charging the beaches of Normandy where all the Germans are in uniforms. It was probably very similar to the Viet Cong, except in a desert instead of a jungle.

One of the things that occurred to me – I mean obviously that's a horrific situation when you're being called to make those type of decisions in the middle of a combat situation. One of the things I think most people in America, including myself maybe, didn't understand fully –

was the progress that had been made in southern Afghanistan and Kabul, which the security situation there had remarkably improved. It seems like some of the efforts were being embraced by the local population. Is that accurate to say? How successful were we at this point before we withdrew? Well, Kabul...

It has its territory before the pullout. Let's say before pullout. Cagoule was pretty tame, right? Really, really stable. You would have...

I would, it was pretty stable every once in a while. There'd be, you know, uh, it's probably safer in Chicago any day of the week. Right. Let's just be blunt. Um, yeah, I was going to say we have incidents here all the time. Right. Yeah. Uh, but once you get out into the rural areas, uh, it would be a little, little more. Um, I know that, um, I spent most of my time in Southern Afghanistan, although,

Although I went through Kabul and Bagram, everybody does. You see it, you know, a few days or a week. Definitely different. But even in, say, Kandahar, you still want to be aware of your surroundings. But I know that my interpreter would throw on civilian garb and go into town and get nice food from a good restaurant and bring it back to us. And we'd eat it, right? So...

It's just being part of the culture. I know that I looked at a map the other day, just like probably everyone else did, of how much of Afghanistan is gone. And I saw Lashkar Gahar just fell. It was one of the last places to fall outside of Kabul and Jalalabad. And Lashkar Gahar is right there in Helmand Province.

Right. Which is arguably the worst place in Afghanistan. But there's still a little bit of area. And I don't know if we still have troops holding out in Sangin or if it's Goresh in Helmand province. But it looks like there's still some some little enclaves of Afghani army fighting it out, which is awesome.

Maybe it's Camp Bastion down there, the old British base outside of the garage. The map wasn't clear enough. But there's still... All the Afghan army are not a bunch of drop your gun and run people. There were some incredible fighters there. And there was...

The son of Massoud, the Lion of Panjshir, right, who was killed on September 10, 2001, the day before 9-11. He was the leader of the Northern Alliance. He was murdered. His son is now in the Panjshir Valley, and it's rumored that he has, you know, thousands of soldiers. And they're holding out. And I hope that they absolutely get after it.

I know that there's little insurrections going on around the country. I'm hearing this from my former interpreters, that there's little pockets of fighting around. You know, it's easier to go hard. Just think back to high school football or basketball or whatever. If everybody expected you to lose a game, it's easier to really go hard.

If you're the number one guy, you're Muhammad Ali, it's probably hard for Muhammad Ali to keep pushing himself because he was already on top. All of these challengers, this is their one shot. They're going for it.

They have nothing to lose. And I think that might be where these little pockets of freedom are. And I just hope that it works. They deserve freedom.

That country, it's got its problems, but it is a beautiful, beautiful country. It should be the home of the Winter Olympics. I mean, it's incredible. Kabul sits at 6,000 feet. I think there's like a dozen mountains at 14,000 feet surrounding it in the valley. That's the size of Mount Shasta or Mount Rainier.

A dozen of these mountains just around the valley. It's gorgeous. Absolutely beautiful. In the northern part of the country, there's Tajiks, the Hazaras, a lot of the other tribes. They don't have the same mindset as the Taliban. Even a lot of these pastoral villages are not. Almost all of the Taliban are pastoral.

not even close to all pastoral talisman. John, we have to go to break again, but when we come back, I want to keep you on if we can and talk a little bit about what their chances are for success without the U.S. and without our allies there. Broken Potholes, fantastic episode so far. Make sure you tune back in. We're coming right back.

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Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your hosts Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. On the line with us, John, who has – we're not giving his last name for security reasons, but he's served multiple tours in Afghanistan and as a U.S. advisor with Afghan forces. Had a couple of last questions with him and joining us in the studio for the rest of this segment, Shea Kateri. We'll introduce him in just a moment. But, John, right before we went to break, I was asking the question –

What do you think the chances are that these various resistant forces, the son of Massoud and his people, some of the other tribal groups can beat back the Taliban or at least secure their areas without U.S. and allied forces present to help them?

Well, I think long term, it's going to be really tough for them to do that without any outside support. Remember, it's an agrarian society. They can feed themselves. They can get their water. But ammo and weaponry, that's something that's going to take work. And remember, most of these...

uh forces that are aligned with what america was um they're not very few of them are the opium growers and stuff like that so they don't have a lot of cash coming in um you know they're miners and farmers and things like that um builders and so they're going to need some outside help um

It's going to be tough long term. There will be pockets of resistance. And I'm telling you that there is no love between a lot of these family, tribal organizations and the Taliban. Absolutely not. Some of the best soldiers, Afghan soldiers that I had, their entire families, and I had some interpreters also, their entire families were murdered before.

before 9-11 by the Taliban. The whole villages were wiped out, and they had a bloodlust for Taliban. They were, if the guns were firing, they were marching to the guns. They were in the fight. So there's definitely some of that still in Afghanistan, no doubt about it. Okay. Chuck, you had a question for us here also. Yeah. As we've got three minutes left, Sean,

What are your feelings? Do you feel your sacrifice was worth it, watching what's happened this past week? Do your colleagues and your friends over there feel the sacrifice was worth it? What's going through your mind? Well, I got a call yesterday from one of my former sergeant's major, who is a great soldier, just a soldier's

MCO and he was checking in on me and it was good to hear from him and he's doing the same his thoughts are the same as mine and everybody else's this sucks it hurts I feel bad for one of my good friends who was my partner for most of the deployment was killed there his family's still around I've met his family

I look at my interpreters and, you know, they still have family over there that will be murdered, no doubt about it. It breaks my heart.

And I think a lot of soldiers, they're probably still like that. Now, there's probably some that aren't curated and it kicks in some PTSD and whatever else. And I'm not downplaying that because it's a real thing for some, if not all. But it's gut-wrenching. It's sad. We feel betrayed. We feel like we've betrayed other people because we wrote verbal checks that will never be cashed or likely won't.

It's not a good thing. Wow. Well, just a couple of minutes here before we go to break. But, Chuck, you know, listening to all of this and, you know, as you know, you and I have had different positions. I've advocated for us to get out of Afghanistan and out of the Middle East for a long time. And you said, look, we need to stay and deal with this problem where it is.

But I think everyone can agree that the way this has been handled, the way the pullout has happened, this is a disaster. I mean, there's really no making excuses for the Biden administration and the folks that have made the decisions on this because it is a catastrophe from every level.

Right. John, John, we have one minute. I want to ask you one question. You can tell our audience. We talked about this earlier. There are some on the right specifically who are saying we don't need to bring any of these folks into our country. What would you tell them?

Face to face. I tell I tell them they're absolutely wrong. Now, I don't want I personally don't want to see what's happened in Europe, happened in America, where hundreds of thousands of unvetted refugees come in and raise havoc and destroy countries. I don't want to see that. But those people that I served alongside, they have earned the right to be invited into our country and have our arms put around them.

They're great people, hardworking people. They love their families. They're not going to be doing terrorism acts. They are going to be more like our Cuban refugees than anything else. Just hardworking, dedicated Americans. They put their lives on the line for us. It is unconscionable that we would leave them behind to that fate. Absolutely unconscionable. John, I want to thank you so much for being on with us. Broken Potholes will be coming right back in just a moment. Tune in.

The 2020 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2021. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to-do list needs to be securing your name on the web with a yourname.vote web domain from godaddy.com. Get yours now. Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your host Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. U.S. government has run into a pretty big pothole in Afghanistan. It's

I joke, but it is not that for the people that are being left behind and for the Afghan army, for the folks that we worked with there. You just heard one very good perspective from John, who's served numerous tours there and worked as an advisor with the Afghan forces. Now you're going to get a little bit of a different one. I'm Che Kateri. He's a writer for The Bulwark. And I definitely tell folks, follow him on Twitter, CheKateri.

I love this intro. He says he's Persian when he eats Spanish, when he watches soccer and American when he goes to war. So welcome to the show. Shake, Terry. Thank you. And thanks to Chuck. Let's talk about this. You wrote a fantastic article called Why the Afghan Army Fell to the Taliban When the U.S. Withdrawal was Announced. Logistical Support Evaporated. Tell our audience who will not understand this.

How do we train these Afghan soldiers and why they fell so fast?

So let me just begin with American Revolution, that we had an army and it was George Washington's unit. That was the entire army. We had one unit. And organically throughout history, our army develops into different units that have different tasks. And we go into Afghanistan and try to build an Afghan army with the model after the army we have, Afghanistan.

with a lot of units, with different tasks and purposes, which is fine. I mean, the Afghans didn't have 250 years to develop their army organically like we did, but also you couldn't have that complex of an army within 10, 20 years organically.

They needed more time. There was that, that we modeled that army after our own. And one of the things that we did was in 2014, we decided to wash our hands off of combat in Afghanistan. People talk about the Afghanistan war as though body bags kept coming back home from Afghanistan, but our...

The amount of blood and treasure that we spend in Afghanistan, obviously all of it sad, but it was quite minimal. The Afghans were doing the fighting and the dying. In average year, more Afghans were dying than the entire number of Americans dead in 20 years in Afghanistan.

We made a deal with the Afghans that we will provide air support and logistical support and they will do the fighting. And that was the deal. Our machinery is quite complicated. Our command and communication system that we created and enforced for the Afghans is quite complicated.

And our logistical support is quite complicated. And we decided to do that for the Afghans because it was cost-saving.

And we didn't train the Afghans to do it themselves, mostly because if we brought a lot of them to train, then we would have to make up for... If we pull them out of combat to train them, then we would have to send our own people into combat to make up for that deficit. So we didn't do that. And overnight...

We announced that we're pulling out. In fact, President Ghani of Afghanistan found out that we were pulling out half an hour before President Biden gave that speech in April. And they had no time to prepare for this. They had no time to teach themselves how to use our machinery, how to do command and communications, how to do logistical support.

And as soon as President Biden gives that speech, we had at the time 2,500 American service members, uniformed service members in Afghanistan. And we had 17,000 military contractors there who were doing the logistical support. Immediately, within minutes, their task changes from support to exits.

And at that point, war is not just fighting. War is also logistics. And we pulled the logistics rock from under the Afghan military. And at that point, fighting for the Afghans is no more courageous. It's reckless. It's stupid to keep fighting because you'll die. It's a death sentence. And I forget who said it, but I think it comes from World War II where someone said –

Bad generals talk tactics, good generals talk strategy, but great generals talk logistics. And no army can fight without a full logistical support train from fuel to ammo, all these things that aren't being made in Afghanistan. Exactly. I mean, there's so much to that. I mean, for example, and this is not the same over there, but for example, I was reading a couple of weeks ago that it takes 17,000 meals a day to feed an aircraft carrier.

Now, we're not talking about food here, but there is a lot to putting a fighting force in the field and to make it efficient. And when you pull that out, there's no way that their likelihood of success is going to be good.

So, Sam, what you mentioned, that's basically the Army's motto at this point. As soon as I see somebody say that, I'll say, if he or she is a member of the Armed Forces, I'll say, you're Army. And they will say, yes, I am, because that's how Army thinks.

And because it's true, a lot of what Army does is logistics. We always talk about how our men and women in the armed forces are risking their lives.

And they're doing great work, but less than 1% of them have seen combat because most of them are doing these stuff behind the scenes. Infantrymen are a small portion of army size. And it's really important to do this stuff. And it's very complicated, especially when you tell the Afghans that we're going to do it the way we do.

Which is probably the most, I mean, Washington is a giant bureaucracy. The most costly, complex systems imaginable. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And we're telling them to do something. Even we, after 250 years of doing this, are not really capable of doing it well. And we're suddenly asking Afghans. One of the two worst things that I've, most disgusting things that I've seen come out from both right and left is,

are, and President Biden and his advisor Jake Sullivan have been saying this. One is calling the courageous men and women in the Afghan military cowardice, which is disgusting. And number two is I saw that President Biden was saying that, well, it was up to Afghans. They really couldn't put a set aside their differences. And I'm like,

Like, are you kidding me? Have you seen our own differences? Can we do democracy nowadays? Not well. Exactly. Not well. After 250 years, we cannot do it well. We really celebrated a huge bipartisan package in infrastructure after how many years of trying? And we're asking Afghans after 20 years of doing it that, yeah, you should really make this work? You know, Shay, one of the things, and Chuck, you and I have talked about this a ton, is

The failure, and I'm sorry, we've had some very good guests from some very good news outlets on this program, but the failure of the U.S. media to really investigate, to bring information, instead it's become so much of a spin factory on either side. Right.

I don't think I or a lot of Americans understood the progress we had made in Afghanistan, what was really happening there, what our commitment in terms of troops was. Shay, you point out it was down to 2,500 troops and the Afghans were the ones taking all the casualties in the field. Looking at some of the pictures of Kabul that have come out with a very modernized landscape that has come along since we've been there.

How much of the ignorance of the American public and the right up to and including the Biden administration comes from not having good reporting?

I would say none, because there has been reporting, quite a lot of it. The problem is that it's not eyeballs capturing. People are generally, Americans are not interested in foreign policy until something happens. Then that's the only thing they care about. There has been reporting.

And but again, it's not the task of the average citizen to keep track of what's happening in Afghanistan. It is my job because that's what they do for a living, not the average American. Americans are incredibly differential to the commander in chief, especially a commander in chief within his first years of in office and differential to his judgment.

And the last time we had a president who went before the American people, said what we're doing in Afghanistan, why we're doing it, and how we're doing it was...

2002, 2003, when George W. Bush did it. And no American president has taken the time to explain to the American people what they are doing. Because there's one voice that every American listens to. Like him or hate him, you will listen to what the president is saying about the war. Very true. And no president has done that. It's a great point, Chuck.

So I, Fred Kagan, a mentor and a friend of mine, had a very good article on New York Times on Monday, I believe, about this. And he said,

Fred and I both agree that we should have stayed, we would have helped. And I can get into why we should have done that if you want to. But Fred's argument is that even if you wanted to withdraw, this was the worst timing for withdrawal because the fighting season was beginning. We had allowed, the Taliban was reinforcing itself.

And they have the cultivating season that they do poppy stuff, poppy seeds, growing opium, and then come back for fighting season. And this is exactly as the fighting season is starting, we're withdrawing. So we didn't give the Afghan government anything.

room to breathe, we withdrew without giving them time to prepare as the fighting system began. So it was like the joke in foreign policy circles in DC is that Biden wanted to get really badly and he got really badly, got out really badly. Shay, who's the biggest winner of our adversaries in this? China, Russia or Iran?

I would say, honestly, this is one of those things that everybody loses because Iran has in its southeastern provinces people who are connected with the Taliban. That region is dominantly Sunni and they're separatists. And there has been a lot of separatist terrorist activities there.

China shares a Xinjiang region, which is where the atrocities with Uyghurs is happening.

Uighur Muslims were not radicalized, as China claimed, but they are radicalizing the Muslims now. And they share a border with Afghanistan. And you have the Russians who have their own radicalization problem in Chechnya. Russia was one of the largest suppliers of foreign fighters for the Islamic State from Chechnya.

So they all are really, really, really worried about rise of Islamic extremism in their countries. And so are we. Terrorism, Islamic terrorism is one of the last few areas that we have left that everybody can agree on that it's a general problem for everybody. And so I would say everybody loses here.

It's amazing how badly this has gone on so many fronts. And I think people here don't understand when you were talking about the fighting season, that's actually a fairly short period of time each year in Afghanistan. How long is that? It's a few months. It also depends on the climate, the weather. It's a few months.

But the fighting season is also defined by the agricultural season, which is like half a year, six months, give or take. So it's basically half a year. But they could have bought six months by timing this differently. Oh, easily. Oh, easily. Yeah.

I mean, President Biden says that, well, we had to withdraw because President Trump made a deal to withdraw. I'm like, you're already overstaying it. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That's, you know, to say that he has to follow that deal when he's not followed any other decision or deal Trump has made. He's not following the same deal even. It's ridiculous. Broken potholes will be...

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Welcome back to Broken Potholes. Thank you for tuning in on our podcast. Catch us every week on Spotify, Substack, just about Apple Podcasts, just about everywhere you can find a podcast, you can find Broken Potholes. This segment, we're keeping our guest, Shea Kateri, on. I want to talk a little bit about your background, Shea. We've been talking Afghanistan, but you have a pretty interesting story, too.

So, tell us a little bit about where you're from, how you came to be here. So, I was born and raised in Iran, in north, near Turkmenistan border. I always like to joke that I was born and raised by communist parents in an Islamist country. Inevitably, I became a capitalist neocon. And...

I remember when actually I'm here today because of 9-11. 9-11 happens. It was not the world shaking, the earthquake in my identity because it was not as big a deal for a kid in Iran. I didn't understand the gravity of it like somebody, a kid in the United States would understand. What was really...

What was the earthquake for me was President Bush's response. He comes and says, "We're not seeking revenge. People in that region are just as much victims of those monsters as we are. They need freedom." I remember then I started trying to figure out what is this thing that they want to give us democracy? That's great.

and I started having arguments I was 11, 10, 12 during in those years and I started having arguments with my dad who was very prominent used to be before he went to prison for it used to be very prominent Marxist-Leninist intellectual and I started arguing with him dad you said you like democracy the guy wants to give us democracy it's great and um

Yeah, so that's where I started deviating from the family line of politics.

And I have a democratic socialist second cousin in Italy, and he's the most right wing after me in our extended family. Oh, wow. That's funny. That's funny. And yeah, I'm definitely the black sheep. And I know the feeling. I know that feeling. You and Sam get T-shirts made. So yeah, go ahead. Start your club and get T-shirts made.

So yeah, I went to college studying engineering in Iran, biomedical engineering in Tehran. And my junior year, a green movement happens, mass protest, 4 million people on the street in one day.

and becomes violent. I was involved, and over that, I was not letting go. The process had died after over a year. I was not letting go. Excuse me, I was a sophomore at the time, but a year later, I was a junior. I still would not let go. And I get expelled from college, to which I said, great, I'm leaving. I went to Budapest. I lived there for a couple of years. Immediately, I realized that I...

the old Reagan line. You can't go to Italy, you cannot be Italian, you can't go to Japan, you cannot be Japanese, you can't go to France, you cannot be French, but you can always become American. I realized that the only place I could have a home, I'd never been to the United States, was United States, just based on what I had read and seen.

I know that conservatives are not supposed to like the entertainment media because they're too left-wing, but it's amazing. It's amazing soft power. I'm watching those movies and I'm like, oh, look at these people. They don't look alike at all, but they're all Americans. That's only possible in that country. So I thought, hey, I could have an accent and look different and still be American. So I moved here and go to ASU, to Arizona State.

and that's where I met a lot of my friends and I become get involved with Republican politics and from there and I was too deep you're trapped we sucked you in you're not getting away the old godfather line trying to get out they keep bringing me back

Shay, I think it was, well, I think it was two or four years ago. It was 2018. It was three years ago. Yeah, it was 2017. Jeff Flake was still running for re-election. Yeah.

You very kindly helped me get into a fundraiser that the only way possible for me to get into that fundraiser was your help because in addition to the fact that I did not have the money to donate, I legally am not allowed to because I'm not a citizen. And I get into that fundraiser as a volunteer. I admire Jeff Flake. I really like him. But I was there for George Bush.

And it was the only time I met him ever since I've communicated with him a couple of times. But that's the only time I met him. And I remember he gave a very short speech. It was a small, friendly crowd. And he said, anybody has a question? And I said that I don't have a question. I wanted to say something.

I really admire you. I heard your message, your call for freedom, and it touched me. And it's why I became American. And I wanted to be an American because that's the only country worth being part of, a country that aligns its interests with the interests of everybody around the world.

That's an, you know, Chuck, I got to stop us here because that's an important lesson right now with everything that's going on. Shay, your experience talking about you can't be Italian if you're not Italian and so forth. All this talk about America being the most racist country or this or that or the other. If you've traveled and experienced other parts of the world, that is just ridiculous. Yeah.

That we remain the most welcome and open society on the planet. Yeah. People who say that just lie and never been out of the country. I mean, it's a ridiculous statement. Shay, what is it like meeting George Bush, though? I mean, obviously he was somebody that sparked your interest. How was it meeting the man personally? There's times we meet people that we want to meet. And a lot of times it's a letdown.

I had a friend that she's actually a Democrat, but she was a big George Bush fan. And when she got in a photo and she donated, she goes, I've just always wanted to give you a big hug. And he just dipped her and gave her a big kiss on the cheek. I mean, he just had this personality that I think he likes people.

So I don't think a lot of people in office like people. I think he generally likes people. So a couple of things. I I've met several politicians, including two Republican nominees, McCain, Romney, as well as other candidates. I work for Jeb Bush. And the only one who struck me as presidential, like electrifying was George W. Bush.

You could see a president in him. A big part of the reason I think some of those others didn't make it. Yeah, it is. There is something. There is something. I mean, I love McCain, Romney, and Jeb. I'm close with Jeb to some extent. I wish he would have become president. But no, Dobby was just different. And I also...

give him this big compliment, this softball, that, hey, you did great. And the normal politician's answer would be, well, during my administration, I believe in you. He turns it back to me and says, you see, this is why we need immigrants. We should have more immigrants. They love America. And I'm just like, man, you're so modest. That's great. So...

I was part of the line that was guarding him against the mob of very wealthy donors who wanted to get to him. And as he's passing, he grabs me and says, "Hey, listen, we will see freedom in Iran, okay?" And I'm just like, "Hey, can I have a hug?" And he just grabs me and holds me really tight, and I'm like, "Okay, he's fine with a hug."

But no, it was great. It was definitely even better than I ever imagined. You know, it's an important point because I think he is the last president we've had who you would say, and as much as I'm going to get in trouble with some people who love Donald Trump, but he was the last president I think we've had who really had that kind of heart.

that kind of openness for people, no matter what their background or where they came from. No. Yeah. His superpower was really empathy. When he said that family values don't stop as we grand it or the low expectation of... the self-pigotry of low expectations and those stuff, that was part of the reason that he did so well because...

I remember when he had that amazing statement after the killing of George Floyd and every Democrat was like, wow, George Bush really enlightened. Dude did a lot to went out of his way to empower minority communities. Where were you?

I have always said that I thought he – I frankly did not think he was a great president in his first term. But I thought he was truly a great president in his second term. He really grew into the role by that time. I've heard –

I'm not going to put you on the spot for that. No, no, no. I was going to say I've heard several different versions of this story that Mitch McConnell goes to him in 2006 and says, like, Mr. President, you need to withdraw from Iraq or we will lose the midterms. And he's thrown out of the Oval Office by the president because he says –

Who cares? I want to win a war. You care about the mentors? That's not a president we've had ever since. That's a president we could use right now. That is a great story. That is a great story. Thank you so much, Shea Kateri, and all of our folks listening in today, tuning in on the podcast. Be sure to tune in next week. We're going to have some more great guests for you coming up.

Really appreciate all of you listeners out there. Share, like, share this with your friends. Do all that stuff so we can have more great guests on this program and keep it going. Broken Potholes, coming back next week. I stand there to turn my head, darkness goes.

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