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Radio War Nerd EP #395 — Afghanistan Blowback, feat. Brendan James & Noah Kulwin (Patreon)

Published:
2023-09-08 13:54:34
Edited:
2023-09-08 17:35:17
Imported:
2023-09
Tags:

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Content

Guests: Brendan James & Noah Kulwin, Blowback

Recorded: September 6, 2023

The new Blowback season on Afghanistan dropped and it's their best yet. We talk to MM. James & Kulwin about the new season, the sordid Angloid imperial history of weaponizing reactionary Islamism, the face of evil that is Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Safari Club/BCCI/CIA halls o'mirrors, & decades of pointless slaughter...

Previous RWN ep with the Blowback Boyz: EP #341 — Unforgetting the Korean War

Referenced RWN EP #77 — Britain's Collusion with Reactionary Islamism (starts at 1:41:39)

Subscribe here to the Blowback podcast and get all 4 seasons: Iraq War, Cuba, Korean War, Afghanistan. Follow Brendan & Noah on Twitter.

Total time: 1:53:25

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here

Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Sound production by Telescope Audio Studios

Check out the Radio War Nerd Merch store here!

*Buy John Dolan's comic memoir "Pleasant Hell" now available in both audio and ebookformat.

Files

Comments

Josh Link

Can’t wait to give this a listen. Their newest season really is their best yet.

Bodie Tack

After the withdrawal I was hoping Blowback would do Afghanistan next, very excited for season 4!

Jaime Christley

I'm about 2 episodes to the end of the main set of episodes - just want to say the 6th ("Ground Zeroes") is one of the best podcast episodes I've ever listened to. Somehow making the 9/11 attacks feel surprising, then vividly evoking that entire morning with kind of a collage of sound bites and stray details, never once turning it into the eleventy-seventh "and then this happened and then this happened" account of the attacks. God, just the weird bit about Rumsfeld.

PostmasterFenian

The first half of this season of blowback along with ya'lls episodes on the soviet-afghan war, NED/CIA, Chechen wars etc made me want to hear a deep dive episode on Brithish and US covert funding of political islam. It makes me feel like that demonspawn is of the Anglospheres creation to both control the middle east and threaten the two century boogeyman of the Russian Empire then USSR. Also I think if I remember correctly Brzezinski also got up to lots of bad stuff in both cambodia and the various red on red wars in the horn of Africa? For an administration that never dropped a bomb or whatever the carter admin got up to a lot of awful shit. Maximalist US foreign policy might be good for arms sales and US capital but it doesn't seem to be good for anything or anyone else.

etienne

every blowback season should have a 9/11 episode

etienne

I was about to say "blowback season about Operation Condor should have an inexplicable 9/11 episode" then I was like huh

Hans Anders

It’s awesome to hear these guys effortlessly tell one story switching between the two of them. And not in a scripted episode, but in an interview!

Karl Childers

it's reassuring to hear mark also learns new things from the show blowback, often i feel like an idiot who is constantly hearing about things for the first time, just kind of nice to be reminded that no one has a truly comprehensive view of history & even those who report on these subjects professionally are just shining a tiny light into the foggy expanse of the past

Jaime Christley

That's one of the things about having an interest in something really expansive - not just history but, say, art, sports, cars, gardening, cooking, etc etc - is you come to the realization that there's so, so much more to learn and you'll never get to all of it in one lifetime. That might sound despairing but it's quite the opposite.

J P 3

Really liked this season of Blowback too. The coverage of the 1970s and 80s was very good. The BCCI part of the story is something that would lend itself to further development as well. Hope there is a follow-up on this. I'm curious though, why didn't the Soviets apply more military threats towards Pakistan as a means of discouraging covert support for the mujahideen? e.g. as I understand it, Pakistan was still developing its nuclear weapons capacity, India and the Soviet Union were close and India probably would have been happy to squeeze Pakistan. It's doubtful as well that the U.S. or any other major military power would have had the will to use conventional force to defend Pakistan in that era.

a clash of purple

Because the Soviet leadership were all old weak cowards. All they cared about was preserving their own power and privilege and dying in their sleep in their own beds, as Ames has said several times. It's the same clique who stood idly by while America massacred communists all over the world and then finally let Yeltsin and Clinton destroy their country. There's a lot the Soviets could have done, or tried to do, to further the communist cause, or at least their own national cause. But doing any of it would require having an entirely different kind of person in charge.

Doug Cartel

There HAS to be a connection between the CIA's use of the OUN to attack the Soviets in 1947 and Operation Cyclone or I'll eat my own entire ass. The OUN assault might have been a prototype for Cyclone, I don't know, but the CIA has a long memory and is always taking notes from everyone around them.

SB

A great conversation between adults that know the subject at hand at a deep level. I only listened to the first episode of the season yet. But their previous work is superb. It is refreshing to hear millennials (I assume they are) with such a great handle of history and challenging widely believed cliches.

SB

It's also interesting that they don't seem to share that condescending view on Soviet leadership. Instead they seem to view them as rational cautious leader making rational decisions. "They believed Amin was working for CIA, they had all the reasons to. They really didn't want to go in, but felt they didn't have a choice. They wanted so sign a deal and get out after a couple of months."

xxx

Great episode, love those guys

JoR

After hearing about soviet leadership decisions throughout the 400+ episodes of the show, I wouldn't label John and Mark's overall view on them "condescending". They let Reagan and the US bully them in the 80s

Mark Ames

Agree, one of the early versions/templates, but the OUN/UPA parachuting ops failed grotesquely. Afghanistan turned out to be far more ideal for such ops.

Ander Pierce

Great episode. Always love to listen to RWN, and Brendan and Noah are always welcome guests

SB

It's subtle, and I sense it quite broadly among 'boomers' in general. The subconscious attitude is that Soviet pos-Khrushev leadership was incompetent, impotent, cowardly, betraying their allies, just wanting to die peacefully in their beds, etc. It's not based on a rational analysis, but rather on the emotional picture in their heads ingrained by the decades of Cold War propaganda. It's even worse when it comes to their views of the Chinees leadership. It's as if you are called those names unless you take Hollywood style reckless actions like Western colonialists have done. There's no appreciation of patient and measured approach to foreign policy. If you don't behave like a cowboy from a western, you are "being bullied" by the US. But then they are similarly surprised to learn that police in those countries don't shoot suspected criminals wantonly on the street either.

JoR

I understand your point. I also understand the point of view of those like Mark and John, who listened to decades of propaganda (from the US) on how the soviets were the most dastardly, cunning, and conniving power in the world, "subverting democracy" and the like. So it's a bit natural to think the opposite, in it's own negative light.

William

Like how mark is constantly doing the jack nicholson nodding gif whenever Brendan makes a point