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[MUSIC]
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This is on Daunted Life, man's podcast.
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I'm your host Kyle Thompson, let's get into it.
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All right guys, today we're going to do another episode in the botching Afghanistan series.
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And this is with a new guide to you.
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This is Eric Maddox.
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So if you don't know who that is, he is an author, speaker, consultant, and he's a sales
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and negotiation expert and trainer.
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But also, this guy was a member of a Delta IV special ops team into CRIT that was part
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of kind of the JSOC team or, you know, the joint special operations command team that
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was responsible for tracking down some of the high target most wanted people in Iraq,
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including Saddam Hussein.
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And so we'll get way more into that in a future episode.
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But he did three tours of duty in Afghanistan, and he's an expert interrogator.
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And so he had a lot of really good insights on this particular subject matter.
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Because, you know, with some of the guests, you know, I let them go wherever they want
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to go.
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So if they want to go political fine, if they don't want to go political and be more empathetic
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towards Golsar families, I don't care.
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I just want to hear their points of view, but we were able to do quite a bit of follow
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up on some integral questions.
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We even got into what the Trump administration's withdrawal strategy was and why would it work
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so much better than this non strategy by the Biden administration.
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But guys, without further ado, let's get into it.
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All right, Eric Maddox.
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Thanks so much for coming on the show.
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I know that we've got a proper podcast scheduled with you later on down the line.
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So you guys can get excited for that.
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But as I've done with every other person in this series so far is I just like to back
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away from the microphone and give you some time and some space to just express your overall
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feelings as to kind of what is going on on the ground in Afghanistan right now.
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And then we'll flow from there.
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So if you would go ahead and give us your thoughts initially, thank you, Kyle.
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I think it's very important to let everyone know we had family members be in Afghanistan.
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If you lost somebody in Afghanistan, served in Afghanistan, I've received countless phone
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calls from American citizens patriots calling saying, Eric, this is devastating.
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Looked what happened.
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And I will absolutely tell you, I'm a citizen now I've done three tours in Afghanistan.
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I was in Afghanistan, 04 parts of 2009, 10, 11, and 12.
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This with execution of this withdrawal, it was a disaster from the idea that we thought
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that we could execute it that way.
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But I also want us to look at what our service members, what this military is executing right
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now.
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Absolutely difficult mission, it's a dangerous mission and look how we're executing that.
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And I also want to say that we showed up in 2001.
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We wiped out the al Qaeda elements there Taliban ran and they hid.
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We had this chore of trying to build an Afghan government and military and they lacked leadership.
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We trained and they were capable of pulling the trigger.
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They had the resources, but they lacked any sort of leadership.
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How do I view this?
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As I say, I spent time over there with some of the most courageous service members.
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I could ever imagine and we fought this very, very difficult mission.
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And there's nothing that can occur in August of 2021 that's ever going to take away from
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the experiences and the pride that I felt with those teams I was with.
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There's nothing.
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And for those of you who lost someone in Afghanistan, I need you know, I hope I can
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be a representative of every single person they fought with who made it back home, who
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gets to live out the rest of their lives, who gets to have a family and protection in
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this country.
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I hope you understand that what they did in their moment in time, they had a mission
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and they accomplished their mission.
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These are warriors and they had to put down the enemy.
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We had to go seek and destroy Al Qaeda, who oh, by the way, was hiding in Pakistan.
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And the most difficult part of the mission was that we were forced every day to operate
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with the Afghan military, Afghan A&A, Afghan National Army.
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And every single day we always wondered when's the next one going to turn and take me out
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that level of stress and tension that then go and get the, you know, declared enemy of
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the Taliban knowing we can't trust any of these guys.
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And it's not that there weren't good ones.
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The problem is at the top, at the leadership, it was corruption.
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It was stealing.
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And I want to say, I really felt like the most difficult part of this mission was going
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to be the withdrawal.
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And for years, I always wondered, how are we going to do this?
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The A&A will collapse immediately.
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And I will say, I don't have a political dog in this fight, but I did know President
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Trump's withdrawal plan.
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And I was amazed.
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I said, that's going to work.
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If we execute this extraordinarily difficult plan correctly, I think we can get out of
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here.
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Obviously, we had a change in administration.
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That plan was not executed.
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There were changes in that plan.
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And we see the results.
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There's nothing about this result from strategy that we can look at and go, well, it's a
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good plan.
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It's just gee whiz.
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The Taliban was too strong.
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No, when this plan got diverted, it turned into a disaster.
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But you think I'm going to take this difficult disaster of a strategy and look at the people
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there and go, they didn't do their job.
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They had the hardest job.
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I am so proud of these young men and women's service members who volunteered for our military
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who were doing such an incredibly difficult mission and watching them execute that and
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going.
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I'm a citizen.
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I'm an older gentleman now.
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I'm raising a family.
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I feel the safety because of our military.
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I need you all to know this was a failed strategy.
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We couldn't find anybody that would support the mission on the other side.
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The Karzai government, Ashraf Ghani, they're just on, they have no integrity.
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They just may never did and we never will.
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But our mission was fought so well.
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I'm sitting here, along with every other veteran from Afghanistan.
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And I want you to know, I think about your child, I think about your brother, what they
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gave and what they're giving right now and you want to call that defeat?
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I'm not going to.
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I am not losing confidence in our military.
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I couldn't be more proud of them given a mission to build cowards.
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We know how to build and train dedicated loyal men and women.
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We don't know how to build cowards and I don't think we ever should.
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I want you to know, my family, we pray for your lost family member, your lost friend.
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And we will always pray for them.
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And it's not just praying for what they did.
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It's praying and gratefulness for what they gave.
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Thank you.
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I appreciate that as a great word to kick this off on.
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And you know, it's kind of hard to go from something like that, which is such a strong
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word, something a little bit more technical.
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But you did mention that you were privy to Trump's withdrawal plan.
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Now, I know that there are elements of that withdrawal plan that are incredibly sensitive
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from a, you know, from a national security standpoint, all these different things.
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But can you at least give us a basic overview, a flyover of what that plan was?
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Because we know what Joe Biden did that.
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That wasn't a plan.
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It was just, hey, I have ice cream over here and I got to go watch Matlock.
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So he just got distracted.
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But what was the plan?
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If Trump had been reelected, right, if he had somehow got more than 81 million votes,
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which is apparently how many votes Joe Biden got, what would that have looked like for
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us?
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Sure.
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So if you want to think of the art of the deal, right, Donald Trump's his kind of his ability
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and you'd say what you want about him, he knows how to negotiate.
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It was the carrot was after the withdrawal, right?
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We were going to leave and we were going to say, you know what, you guys go ahead and
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conduct these negotiations with the current Afghan Afghanistan government and see what
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you guys come up with.
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Everybody knew, everybody knew the Taliban will take over once all Americans are gone.
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This government will collapse, we knew that every, you can even see from some of the officials
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that work for Donald Trump, you know, we're going to leave it up to him.
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We said, we're going to let the Afghanistan people decide they were all going to be ruled
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by the Taliban, but Donald Trump knew we are not going to leave.
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As a matter of fact, we're going to give you steps.
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And if these steps are not taken precisely, I'm going to hammer you and we knew he would.
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And they even got out of line a little things and we would go in and do quick strikes.
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We demonstrated our ability, right, on Soleimani and just knew and plus, but the thing is,
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it wasn't necessarily the threat.
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People think it was Donald Trump and that strategy's threat.
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No, it was the carrot that we were saying, we're going to let you decide, but we will
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be so far gone before you're going to come in and make that decision, right?
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But the problem is, once the Taliban testing this strategy said, wait, we can get out
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of line and nothing occurs, wait a second, we can start rolling now.
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And the closer they got and they realized, there is no resistance.
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What a great win for the Taliban just across the world, right?
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The vision that they take over Afghanistan, the government, the airport while the United
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States is still there.
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See, that was the difference.
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I don't want to be perfectly clear.
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Everyone knows this and we knew this by 2012.
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The moment we leave, we have no government.
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The ANA are cowards and we've been running this thing and that will never change.
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So that's something we can look at and say, wait a second, why did we stay even this long?
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Because we didn't have a withdrawal plan.
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Donald Trump's withdrawal plan was very clear and the Taliban was following it until we
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backed off, didn't have that threat and they said, well, now that matter, let's just go
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get the carrot.
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Okay.
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That makes sense.
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I appreciate you sharing that with us.
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I also want to key in on something that you said from the top as well about kind of what
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we were sent there to do versus where we ended up.
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So obviously I know with what you do for business and everything like that, you're familiar
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with Covey and you know, begin with the end in mind.
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And so we begin with victory in mind.
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And so if you're someone like me, I don't care about the ride.
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I don't care about how good of a game it was or how much fun we had.
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I care about the scoreboard.
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And you know, that's just kind of my pessimistic attitude towards things like this.
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And so you have a lot of people that so I just want to kind of drill you down a little
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bit more on this.
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You have a lot of people that were over there that sacrificed and they're looking at the
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scoreboard and it shows an L. It doesn't show all the home runs that came came about before
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they got to that point.
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They just see the result.
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So specifically, because I love the word you get from the beginning, but specifically
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to the people that are like, Hey, we we lost ultimately the same thing with Vietnam.
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People look back and like, Hey, we kicked a lot of tail in Vietnam.
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But ultimately we ran out there with our tail type between our legs.
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I'm obviously, you know, we're painting with a broad brush here.
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But what would you say about people that are only looking at the result?
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I can appreciate that and say, Hey, we won.
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We lost.
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Here's the thing.
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We went over there.
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Yes.
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Take out al Qaeda out of Afghanistan and then go get rid of al Qaeda as they're hiding
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harboring in Pakistan, something we also look at.
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If we don't want to look at, we're going to look at this, we're going to take this
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as an L. We're better look at the Pakistan administration and their lack of support and
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their manipulation of this entire process.
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We also wanted to take out the Taliban.
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Here was the problem that Taliban, it's not a terrorist organization.
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It is the culture of the posh tunes in Afghanistan.
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Now, if we really want to say what the L, what's the execution?
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What was the result?
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How do we get this L?
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It came down to this.
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People need government and the people of Afghanistan, they really need judicial government.
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It's a big thing in their culture.
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They need judges to just handle disputes.
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We built a government, Hamid Karzai.
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They had government officials, they had judges, they had representatives that were representative
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of the entire country, you know, that for the bulk of this war, those representatives
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never set foot from the time they were appointed elected into their districts because it was
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controlled by the Taliban in those regions that were posh tune, right?
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Uzbeki areas, a lot of Tajiki areas and Hazara areas, no, those representatives definitely
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could set foot there.
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But where the Taliban existed in their citizens and their people, those representatives never
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set foot there.
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So the Taliban had what we call a shadow government.
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I knew this war was done in terms of our ability to hand over to the Afghan government.
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In 2009, you know, we did interrogations after interrogations.
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And I realized, oh my goodness, these people, not the Taliban warriors, but the citizens,
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the posh tunes in these regions, were allowed exclusively on the shadow government.
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Now, we say we knew this, but we did not know the extent to which the Afghanistan government
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was corrupt and incapable.
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So at that point, it was very clear to intelligence officers, analysts and interrogators.
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This is done because there is no representation of the posh tunes.
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As a result, there is no opportunity for victory.
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It doesn't matter what our military strength is, how successful you can take out all the
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Taliban leaders and we took most of them out.
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This is their culture.
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When their children get of age, they're back in.
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So if you're, I mean, the idea of how you win this is a withdrawal.
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There is no other option.
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And we were clear on that.
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There is no government official who really knew the situation in Afghanistan and said,
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we're going to leave and the Afghanistan government is going to stick around because their military
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can handle this.
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Nobody felt that way.
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Well, let me ask you this as well, because obviously, if you look at this as a, the last
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week or two type of a thing, that's a very shortsighted view of history.
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But if you look at this over time and you say, going back to Alexander the Great, they tried
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to do warfare in this area and did it unsuccessfully for the most part, the British, the Russians,
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the United States and our allies.
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Again, we're looking at this, this time period that we were successful, like in just about
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every metric that you could be successful.
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But there was the reality of this is a very, it's not an agrarian culture, but it's a very,
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I'm trying not to be offensive.
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It's an old school culture, like seventh, eighth century type culture that's not built
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around democracy.
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That's not built around personal freedoms.
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And it's all kind of has its tendrils in fundamentalist Islam, not radical Islam, because
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there's technically no such thing.
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It's fundamentalist Islam.
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If you actually read the Quran and read the ninth Surah, so is it possible to even have
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peace in this area?
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Again, you're talking to a pessimist for the most part, but is it possible to have
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a time period where the United States and the surrounding areas there in the Middle
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East don't have to worry about what's going on in Afghanistan?
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No, it's too mountainous.
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Yeah.
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They're too dispersed.
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Their translation of Sharia law is the way they want to run their government.
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Their people, it is not going to happen.
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Now they're going to have the government.
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We will see how they're going to handle, right?
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I'm going to give a little kind of thing I don't think these people know.
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The Taliban, Al Qaeda, they don't like each other.
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Listen to me, the Taliban and Al Qaeda do not like each other.
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They do not have a ton of respect for each other.
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The Taliban brought in Al Qaeda prior to in the late 90s and up to 2001 because they couldn't
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get any money.
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They don't know how to run a country and they were not recognized.
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I've had a bunch of money, had access to a bunch of money, but they said, "Hey, go
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hang out in these little areas and don't do anything stupid."
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Well, Al Qaeda is a global terrorist organization.
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They conducted tax on 9/11 and the Taliban said, "You did what?
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You idiots?
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Get out of here."
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Of course, we came, the Taliban said, "Oh my gosh, you guys hear planes?
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Get out of here."
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What did Al Qaeda do?
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They popped across the border to Pakistan.
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Where is the Taliban, Shura, and Queda?
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I mean, they're running their headquarters administration in Pakistan.
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And so I do not think that we're ever going to look at the Taliban governor and go, "Wow,
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they're really doing a good job.
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It's going to be despicable."
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I think it's up for debate to the degree to which they're going to harbor global international
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terrorist, Middle Eastern terrorists in the future, because they do not like each other.
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Okay.
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I would obviously think that if they've done it before and they've done it for so long,
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why would they just all of a sudden stop?
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Because it's like the enemy of my enemy is my friend and it's something like that.
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It's kind of that mindset.
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But this is something I ask Mike Ritalin, a retired Navy SEAL, everyone's worried about
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another 9/11, like if you're paying attention, something similar to that, not just a pin
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prick strike or a lone wolf-type thing, but like a real coordinated attack on the homeland.
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And I asked him if that were to happen, will the United States galvanize around each other
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and around the American flag as they did in 2001?
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He said absolutely 100%.
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I'm a little bit less convinced of that because the world we live in now is unrecognizable
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to the world we lived in in 2021.
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The level of depraved thinking, the cultural decay that I feel like we've seen.
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And so I guess from your perspective, I guess a two-part question.
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If another 9/11 does happen, do you feel like the American public will galvanize around
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the government?
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I guess depending on who's in the White House and say, let's do whatever we need to do?
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And then are we going to have to go back to Afghanistan like we did in 2001, 2002?
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Are we going to have to really go back, not just, hey, we're going to send back some
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more troops.
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So we don't look stupid on the news.
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We're going to send back a few more troops to see if we can pull our people out.
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Like, what do you think is going to happen there?
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I'm very concerned for exactly the reasons Mike said, I'm sorry that you said versus
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Mike's response.
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I think Mike's right, the American people who really have patriotism, they will galvanize.
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We're going to take this.
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We have the capabilities.
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There's our military so many times better than any other country's military.
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It's crazy.
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Right?
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I don't know that our current administration, our elected officials, the people that they
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represent, I don't know that that is something that they're going to support.
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It's very concerning.
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And I also want to say my concern for who in the future where I think we might have some
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real terrorism, I think it's going to come from these refugee camps.
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I'm really more concerned about the refugee camps and sort of that building up of tension
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with the young males and the young adult males.
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That's where I'm really concerned.
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Again, anything can happen in Taiwan, nobody's going to look at them and go, "Oh, wow.
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We can trust them.
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That will never happen."
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Right?
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But if it does happen, I am very concerned what the response is going to be by our government.
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Eric, let me hop in here because you brought up something that I haven't really been able
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to talk to people about because I'm still kind of formulating my own opinions because
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very few people are pointing this out.
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The horrible videos at the airport and Kabul of the people desperately trying to get on
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the planes, running on the tarmac, there's something that most of those men are, I just
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gave it away.
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People have in common, is there military age males?
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I didn't see a lot of women on the tarmac.
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I didn't see a lot of children, and certainly they were there, but it was a lot of military
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age males.
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When you saw inside that big United States plane, all the people that were sitting there
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being taken out of there, they were all military aged males, didn't see a lot of children,
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didn't see a lot of women, and we're bringing a lot of these people back to the United States,
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we're transferring them to other places, and I'm a little bit concerned about the vetting
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process because what if you didn't grab your passport, what if there's there's no papers
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to substantiate who you are, and we're just supposed to accept you into different communities
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here in the United States?
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All the while, there are tens of thousands of American citizens that are already American
22:36
citizens that are on the ground there, and you know, the Biden administration's like,
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well, I guess I don't know what we're going to do.
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We don't know how many of you there are.
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We have no way to guarantee your safety to the airport.
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So speak to that a little bit because that's unbelievably controversial, especially if you
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have a Christian worldview to be like, hey, the sojourner or the refugee, we shouldn't
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focus on them, we should focus on our people first, but what should our mindset be about
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these people?
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Because I am concerned that there are, that's part of the plan.
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The Taliban's like, yeah, we're going to get some of our guys on the plane, and now they're
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going to be in the US and they can do whatever they want.
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So I'm going to start with that last comment, where you get some guys on the plane, then
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get to US, they can do whatever they want.
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That's not my concern, right?
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Maybe they do, those Taliban guys aren't interested in getting to the US right now.
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They just want, do not look at them as clever enough to get into the US, set up shop yet.
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My biggest concern is, you know, a lot of people who aren't turned into a kind of radical
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terrorist, they start off with good intentions.
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I just wanted to get out.
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I needed freedom.
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Then they get to an area with the refuge you can't, a lot of people with similar backgrounds,
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right?
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They can't assimilate into whatever society, whether it's Europe, United States, they
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get disgruntled and they create this gang.
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And the gang is around radical Islam.
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And from there, it breeds my concern.
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There's not one Z2Z coming in, that's going to be our promise, that thousands have come
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in.
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Maybe they do have good intentions when they can't make it work.
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They're children, they're young adult males, get of age.
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It is very concerning.
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Does that make sense, Kyle?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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That's, I guess the whole time whenever I'm talking to people like you or people that
24:29
have experience in this area is I'm going to make up my own mind.
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I'm going to take in all the information that I'm going to take in and make up my own mind.
24:36
But I want to know how to think about this because as I've mentioned several times in
24:39
the series already, there's so many things to be mad about.
24:43
It's hard to point your anger at one thing.
24:44
There's so many things to be sad about.
24:46
It's hard to point your sadness or depression at one thing.
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So what should our mindset be as Americans?
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What should our posture be towards these refugees, towards the American government, towards everyone
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that's kind of at least tangentially involved in this situation?
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Okay, here's my mindset.
25:02
All right.
25:03
I appreciate your, I appreciate everyone who's mad, who's angry, I'm not saying you shouldn't
25:07
be.
25:08
Let's just stop my mindset.
25:09
All right.
25:10
I look at what we accomplished, I look at what we fail that.
25:13
My mindset is without emotion and anger, I need us to critically analyze our mistakes
25:21
so that we're going to get better in the future.
25:23
We just have to, we've got to say, where was the analysis wrong?
25:28
Where was the execution of the plan wrong?
25:30
Listen, if we put our emotions and anger into this, it prevents us from making clear, better
25:35
decisions moving forward, right?
25:38
Mistakes happen.
25:39
We're not allowed to screw up.
25:41
Now here is the deal.
25:43
If those screw ups were out of stupidity, right?
25:48
If they were out of political gain, if we find out that the Biden administration didn't
25:54
execute Donald Trump's withdrawal plan, because they just didn't want to show that the withdrawal
26:00
plan was fantastic, now we can learn from that without emotion, but then we make quick
26:06
changes to that we go, you should not be trusted in these positions.
26:11
But that's not in a place of anger.
26:14
We've got to make decisions that are best for this country.
26:17
We can be hurt.
26:18
We can be sad.
26:19
You put that away, you analyze the situation, the mistakes, the good, the bad, and then you
26:22
move forward.
26:23
How does that make sense?
26:25
Absolutely.
26:26
And as we kind of bring it to a close here, I appreciate you giving us so much time on
26:29
the subject.
26:31
One thing about Americans is we're at, we're people to action, right?
26:34
So you mentioned Patriots earlier.
26:35
You want to be able to do stuff so immediately people were like, who can we give money to
26:39
to help get these refugees out?
26:41
Like I've talked to people, you know, behind the scenes that are kind of working to get
26:44
people out.
26:45
It's like, what can we do to pour gasoline on the fire that you've created?
26:47
I've also talked to people about like, is this a blue tie red tie thing?
26:51
Like if the red tie was still in the White House, right?
26:53
The red tie attached to the orange man, orange man bad.
26:56
But like if that was happening, would we be dealing with this?
26:58
Is it going to take another red tie in office to ensure that we don't see something like
27:02
this?
27:03
As we close here, we'll make this a final question.
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What is the actionable thing that us as a general civvy in American life can do to help
27:12
with this situation?
27:13
Is it voting?
27:14
Is it money?
27:15
What is it?
27:17
We were people of action.
27:24
We want to make a quick action.
27:27
We're going to look at, you're talking about Afghanistan, I don't think we can understand
27:33
the patience of this Taliban organization.
27:38
They'll run in high.
27:40
We have all the options they have all the time, right?
27:44
It's a great point, right?
27:46
They have a different mindset.
27:49
We've got to say, no, this is how we are, no, we've got to say, this is how we learn
27:54
to adapt to fight against their mindset.
27:58
Because if we don't, we are going to struggle with this achievement.
28:02
We can give money.
28:04
You know what?
28:05
I just think we need to realize that L because we lost in the last 15 minutes and because
28:15
we were never going to be able to build a government that was going to be able to say
28:17
because we cannot convert cowards to warriors, if we want to do something, we have got to
28:24
recognize the efforts of the military over a 20-year period because Kyle, you want to
28:30
talk about safety and security of our country, do you know this?
28:34
This is all voluntary.
28:36
We get the best men and women, go to West Point, go to Annapolis, look at what it takes
28:41
for these young men and women to get in there.
28:44
We're getting the best to serve this military.
28:47
We better be appreciative of it.
28:50
We better let them know you don't get paid, you don't get the recognition.
28:55
And when you come back, there's a really good chance you're all screwed up, right?
28:59
Because the stress on their brains, on their lives, we have got to recognize that so that
29:06
we don't lose this volunteer military.
29:09
Other than that, we need to start thinking and realizing the people we're after, how do
29:16
they think?
29:17
It doesn't matter how we think, it matters how they think and we're America.
29:22
We adapt to our enemy.
29:24
Absolutely.
29:25
Well, Eric, thank you for spending so much time on all these different subjects.
29:28
I know we went into a lot of areas and I know my audience is probably desperate to hear more
29:31
and I can let you know that you will hear more down the road.
29:34
We're going to be happy to have you back on here.
29:35
But thanks for coming on here today.
29:37
Thank you, Kyle.