Lara Logan Talks to Armstrong & Getty

our guests. And what a pleasure it is to have another conversation with Laura Logan, a legendary foreign correspondent, Chief Foreign Affairs correspondent for CBS News, longtime correspondent for CBS is sixty minutes and uh and and not only a great reporter, but a thinker and observer of human beings around the globe. Laura Logan, here's a couple of things have happened just in the last couple of days in Afghanistan.

Suicide attacks, a midwife training center, a refugee assistants office, a cricket match, a convoy of seek and Hindu leaders, a customs building, an elementary school, a ceasefire celebration, and a crowded prayer service at a Shiite mosque, in addition to an attack on a military base that Creek killed three foreign soldiers and injured in American all those just in the last a couple of days. That's not what we were hoping for when we went into Afghanistan seventeen

years ago. Yeah, so where are we, Well, we're at the point of surrender basically, if you um, that's what you know. The Afghan um people that I know and have known for a very long time, Afghan lawyers, Afghan Americans, Afghans on the ground there they right now, the US is engaged in peace talks with the Taliban. We have given up on precondition from the very beginning, from nine eleven.

The preconditions were that the Taliban had to embrace the Afghan constitution, they had to denounce violence, and they had to renounce any um affiliation or affinity to Al Qaeda or their ideology. So we've given up on all of that. We've thrown that out the window. We also said that they had to talk to the Afghan government because the only way they could sell peace to their people was

for this to be a legitimate Afghan process. We've abandoned that and uh and we've now sat down three times with the Taliban emissaries that their opposite and cutter and um, and we are basically negotiating the terms of what many afghan see as a surrender. Well and correct me if I'm wrong. It's it's probably going to smell a little bit like the peace agreement in Vietnam, in which we shout peace with honor, peace with honor, and run for the door. And then what ensues is anything but peace

or honor. Well, yes, I mean in some in some respects. You know those Vietnam analogies. Um, they're very popular and they and they resonate, right. Um. The reason that I don't really like them too much, Um, just based on what I have seen and learned on the ground in Afghanistan, what what what will happen here? Is unlikely that the US is to do an absolutely complete withdrawal. I mean

nobody can say, right. All of us are guessing because we're trying to predict what's going to happen in the future. But if you look at the sign designs are that the US is probably going to maintain a price and um in Afghanistan at Bagram Air Base and in the south so near the capital Carble, that would be Bagram and then the south would be Kanadahar. Why because Pakistan has nuclear weapons, it's just across the border, and it has the highest concentration of terrorist groups on any patch

of ground in the world. So the U s is is UM is very aware of the consequences of pulling out completely, not just because of the experience of Vietnam. But Vietnam didn't follow the US home, right, I mean the last time the US pulled out of Afghanistan and disengaged after the defeating helping the Afghanistan the Soviets, it did follow the U s home. It followed the US

all the way to nine eleven and beyond. So um, there is a very real example right now in the presents, not just the historical example of that cost on top of the fact that that war is not over. In fact, it's spread to many different battle fields across the world, whether it's y m And or Syria, you know, or Iraq or other races. And you will say, oh, well,

those are different wars. Well, they're not rarely different in terms of the ideology and what the groups are fighting for and the U and the potential consequences for the US. So in Afghanistan. What most people expect is that the US will not withdraw completely, They'll maintain some kind of presence. And on top of that, if you look at the mineral resulces of Afghanistan, the US UM geology report that came out recently estimated that worth at around a trillion dollars.

And what the US saw in Iraq was the moment that we walked out of Iraq before the US even with through from Iraq. Who is there negotiating for the oil? The Chinese, and so they beat the US to it. So you sacrifice all that blood and treasure in Iraq, and you let other countries around China everybody else read the benefits um And so is the US willing to do that again in Afghanistan? The Russians, the Iranians, the Chinese,

they're already engaged Afghanistan, sitting on massive mineral resources. And Trump has recently President Trump has been inquiring and asking questions about Afghana sentimental resources, So that is definitely on his radar. So you have a president who hates nation building and state building, who doesn't believe in it, who doesn't UM, who has not made his displeasure with the situation in Afghanistan unknown. You know, he's on the record through the campaign and since he took off as a

saying we need results. And he's also expressed interest in the mineral resources. So how did those those things play into where we are now in Afghana? Send him where things are going? Wow? That is all very interesting. You know. It makes me think of our involvement in all these different countries and uh, and I'm not sure we ever

end up with any different results. I mean, we got as engaged as you can get in Iraq, we stayed out of Egypt, we got kind of engaged in Libya, I mean, and and now with the Afghanistan, it just uh does it make any difference? So Okay, I'm gonna be really cynical here. Did we stay out of Egypt? You know? Did we stay out at any of these What you were talking about is the levels of engagement and the type of engagement, right, It wasn't Clinteston and

COVID diplomatic? Was it very So you're saying we got very engaged in Iraq. Yes, we got very engaged in Iraq for all you know, Um, you could argue many people would argue that we got engaged for the wrong reasons, right, I mean, I remember I was one of those journalists scratching my head when they were talking about, you know, Saddam Hussein, because the only Al Qaeda presence in Iraq at that time was up in the north, in the

Kurdish region, and it was called Ansar Altuna. And of course, you know, after the fall of Saddam you had al Qaeda strengthened itself enormously and then the birth of its UM ultra violence, frontline combat army, UM. You know, come to the four in the form of isis but UM. But there the reality is is it your form of engagement, that UM that dictates your lack of success or is it the fact that UM the U S hasn't really demonstrated the willingness to win decisively in any of these conflicts.

You know, in Syria, there were some options in the beginning. You could argue that none of them were great. But a few years in, once you've lost hundreds of thousands of Syrians had been murdered and tortured, UM and wounded and suffered, and Russia had consolidated its hold, Iranic consolidated

its hold and asside. With their assistance and the failure of the Obama administration to keep its red line, had had managed to make sure that you have no good options left right, So engagement with dise engagement are not your only two options. We in political terms, that's what we sell to the American people. We get engaged or we don't get engaged. Right, that's what works. You live, Yeah, perfect example. Oh no, we weren't gonna get engaged in Nebya.

We're gonna use nature. We're gonna bump from the guys. We've got rid of Aa Duffy. And that was the signature of farm policy success of the last administration. Well, where is Libya today? It's a failed state. It's a failed state that's acting as a staging ground and a base and um and basically a munitions and weapons factory for every terrorist group in the world, including Al Qaider

and ISIS. So, but nobody wants to talk about that, right, Well, it's funny I do politically, I actually do, as long as our tour of horror has brought us to Libya. I just read Tom Friedman in The New York Times said the other day that toppling Kadafi without building a new order may go down as the single dumbest action the NATO Alliance ever took. Do you agree? But yes, I mean, well, you know, um, I would say there's

a panteon of dumb decisions that NATO has made. But I don't like putting things on NATO like that, you know, we love to do that as as journalists and men, cats and politicians. NATO is made up of countries, and those countries are made up of leaders, and those leaders made those decisions, and we as journalists allow them to get away with it, right, I mean, and we as people and voters allowed them to get away with it.

These things are not anonymous, and we love to sit in retrospect and look back on administrations and say, oh, look how they failed. But when they're actually in the process of making those decisions and carrying out those policies, we don't like to hold them accountable because then we have to be accountable to right, and we have to deal with the consequences. The only exception to that that I've observed, you know, very in very neutral capacity. I don't say this as a pro or four in a

very neutral capacity. The only president that I've seen as a sitting president who's getting absolutely pummeled for every decision he makes. Is the one who is currently in the White House, And I don't even want to say his name because god, you know, then you unleash a fire. Soone coming off to you, right, But I'm not I don't there, you know. For me as a journalist, my job is and as someone who's been in Afghanistan and been on the ground in these places from the very

beginning of these conflicts. No, that's what I care about looking at those things. I I'm not like, I'm not a political animal. In fact, it's probably be the death of me because I'm a very not political animal. And I and the politics is a is just a suicidal game, right, I mean, it's it's death bipolitics. You get caught up

in all of that. If you just you step away from things and look at them in terms of the principles and in terms of the reality, and you take the hysteria out of it, the political hysteria out of it. That's what I try to do when I try to understand and we try to lump all these conflicts together when it's too to us, and then we tried to separate them. When it suits us, you say, oh, you know, kid is not an existential threat to the US. We don't care what they're doing in Timbuktu and Molly. That's

not going to affect us ever. Well, except maybe it would have. Maybe it would look different if you look at what's the reality the way I'll Tider looks at it, and what al Qaida will admit to you is that this is all part of their army. That these are all different battalions and units. The thing is our battalions and units. They're all part of, you know, the same army. And they were the same uniforms, and they they you know, they take the same they make the same um contract

with the US government. There's they just they redefined what it is to have an army. They redefined what it is to fight a conventional war, never mind the terrorist war. They've taken all those pieces and they put them together and they use them in different ways. And and we, for some inexplicable reason, seems that it's our duty to help them do that because we helped their propaganda by separating them. We helped their propaganda by saying it's all

our faulks. Because we screwed up everywhere, right, and now it's all our faults. We we seem how bent on helping them win, which is just a mystery to me. I'm sorry, who's saying it's all our fault? Well, you know, if you if you read um, if you read on the media, and you listened to our politicians day from because that we created Isis because we invaded Iraq. Really is that how it worked. We made it easy for

Isis to take roots. But those are all if you Ryan Crocker home it was ambassador to Iraq said it best when he said, these are all the same guys that I was I was dealing with when I was ambassador and they were kaida In I rock very exactly the same people. Even't create them, you know what I mean, we didn't give birth to them. They're fighting for the same thing that they were fighting for when they had a different name. So they rebranded. Why Because conventional armies

hold territory. Clandestine intelligence organizations they spread, They work on ideology and intelligence. That's what they specialized in Al Qaeda. After Night and eleven went to underground. Yeah, you know that's why they They they had a network of organizations all across the work Unsal al Sharia Libya, Unsu al Sharia Tunisia. Why did these organizations exist, who funded them, who built them, what to whose allegiance? Who were they

tied to? And by the way, the Obomber administration, after saying that the attack in Benghazi was carried out by unsal Sharia Olivia, which was a nondescription, you know, unimportant local organization with the Obomber Treasury Department, then sanctioned them as an al Qaida organization, which you know, any journalists with half a brain would have known. Who knew at

the time that this was al Qaida Olivia. But what al Qaida knew was if you put your Alchaidia name on every organization that is part of you, You're gonna face sanctions. It's going to be impossible to operate. You're gonna have the resources of the U S and all of its allies mobilized against you. Right, I mean smart clandestine In certain terrorist organizations, they don't put a big

target on their heads. Not calling yourself like al Qaida and like closing down for a day and reopening is terrorism. HUT is good enough to do a good enough distraction. That's astounding. Of course. In fact, you know many organizations that done it. Look if you go back to the African National Congress ANC in South Africa when they were banned by the South African government, what did they do?

They created the UDF, the United Democratic Front, and so the u d F could then they could campaign in public, they could hold rallies, they could have political offices. Who were they They would basically d, A and C. I mean, that's that's what terrorists and insurgent organizations do. It's the only smart way to survive. And also don't forget to proliferate,

because that allows you to function and proliferate everywhere. What al Qaeda did with nine eleven was they put their stamp as the ideological leaders of the global Islamic hid. Nobody has been able to challenge them, right, nobody can knock them off their pedestals. And the moment that nine eleven happened, they knew that the US was all its power and might be becoming accidents. That's exactly what the

US it with its allies. So if you're going to live to fight another day, if you're Asamam London and you're compare yourself to Mohammed when he fled from was forced out of Mecca two and forced out of Mecca and Medina and went into the hydra. He spent thirty years fighting to get back. Right, that's nothing, That's absolutely nothing to these people, because they think in generational terms and messianic terms. They go back to the Koran. They're talking,

you know, they're talking hundreds of years. So what does it matter if you go underground for ten people always say in you as, oh, well, look we've had no no major attack in you as. That shows our policies are working. Does it does it tell your policies are working? Or does it show that some of your policies have had some effects? But actually it also might demonstrate that

your enemy has shifted its tactics. You know, I was just gonna ask whether, in your view, violent fundamentalist Islam under whatever banner, is on the rise, on the decline, or but you seem to be implying that the game is so long that you know, I'm not sure it's a worthwhile question. I'm not so see, I'm not implying anything. I'm saying very clearly, if you listen to what al Qaeda tells you and what the ideology states, it is a long game. If you look at what they're doing

recruiting children, what is the cubs of the caliphates? And the isis why did Hitler build the Hitler youth? Because he was planning on you know, the next two years? No, because he was planning on the next generation, right, I mean, that's that's not an implication. They say that their actions demonstrate that they've proved that they've got the cups of the caliphate when they started and when these youth, the

youth that they were recruiting. You talked about us being in Afghanistan for more than seventeen years, right, we'll think about it. That ten year old is how old? Now? Yeah, that's incredible. When you started doing the math on those things, you get near thirty year olds that were there from the beginning. I mean it's just, Um, that's the thing is, I'm not a prophet, right, I can't tell you what they plan and what they think or what anyone is

going to do, you know. I Mean that's what my worst thing ever as the journalist is being asked on the morning ut. You know, so, what's gonna happen. It's like, okay, what let wait, let me let me see I've run an expert what I am as a students of these people and what they they want to do, because what they have demonstrated is is that they carry they mean what they say, and they follow their words. They've shown that over and over and over again. I can give

you a hundred different examples. So I tried to understand when are they being genuine, when are they being deceptive? When are they being strategic? When are they being tactical? And I tried to build a base of knowledge on that. And you do the same thing with the U S of course, you know, it's always um, it's different depending on who's in power in the US. And and we like to hit the reset button, you know, a new administration comes in and they think, oh, they're going to

change everything. Pakistan's a perfect example. Every new Newish general, every new US ambassador, every new US administration goes into Pakistan and things, they're going to reinvent the Pakistani story and none of them have succeed. Well that that makes me playing the same game. So I'm trying to take some overarching philosophy out of what you're saying, so is is Western Western civilization just not Are we not taking this threat seriously enough? Or maybe we're just not built

for long games? Were built for short games? Well we do. I mean it is, you know, it's it's well acknowledged and understood that in Western civilization, and particularly in the US, we or instant gratification people, right, I mean, look at all the technology that's being created. All of it is built around instant gratification. And and we think in terms of election cycles, we don't. I remember sitting with Jack Ma.

You know Jack Ma, the Chinese billionaire entrepreneur, genius, change the world, bring the Internet to China, um superstar, so you know who created Ali barber and you know brought uh like ups. There was no delivery service like that in China. He bore all of these things to China, right, and he's continuing to change China and change the world as a result. So Jack Man, I sat in this tea shop in China. They had two thousand year old

tea on the menu. Got to be a little I didn't even know t could survive for two thousand years. But yeah, no kidding, But I see where you're going there. The Yeah, the rest of the world thinks and a lot longer terms, and we do. Our entire focus in the United States is an election coming up, you know, in a month or so, and then we'll focus on the next six months. We don't think about two thousand year old tea. We think in terms of election cycles.

And with technology, we think in terms of right now. I mean, our kids don't even wait for the next episode to come next week. They they binge watched right. Yeah. We had a boss who once said that there were a civilization that paces back and forth and patiently in front of a microwave, which I thought was a pretty

good way to put it. Yes, yes, And you know Jack Mark said to me in that conversation and the tea shop, he said, you know, we we look at the world in terms of thousands of years, in terms of centuries and civilizations. Our philosophy goes back a very long way. It's fascinating to us to look at you

and and see how you think. I mean. And he defined the relationship how the US relationship with China had changed in his lifetime by looking at his grandfather's relationship and then his father's and then his you know, here he is doing business with the US. He's going to the US and bringing seeing the Internet and bringing that to China. What was his father, what was his grandfather?

You know, I mean one of them was a was at war, a pow and was at war right, And from one generation to the next, that relationship and that image of the US change. So it's it's not a unique US thing to be instant gratification. There's a lot of of the New World is like that. But if you look at the philosophy of al Qader and you read the ideology bin Laden and Abdullah Zam the Palestinian philosopher that he wrote the ideology with, they talked in

in messianic terms. They talked in generations and years. I'll give you a I'll give you one of the most visceral examples that I ever experienced. I was in northern Iraq when after the fall of Mosl, when Isis were in control of the city, and it was such a terrifying place to be because James Foley had been beheaded in an orange jump. Student Steven salt Loc and all the others that followed right and um and I said,

we're used. They used propaganda so effectively to strike terror in all of our how and so we're in the small little villages of of northern Iraq that surround Mosel. You could see Mosel, which was just a few miles away, and you could see the front lines of ISIS. And I was the Kurdish forces who were showing us where, you know, I the fighters would come and penetrate the lines at night and where they were they were fighting, like in the trenches right in front of their positions

and all of that. And and I went to Christian villages and I wanted to be able to say in my story how old these villages were. When when did the first Christians walk on this ground? So, you know, you asked people in the village, everybody gives you a different answer. You look it up online, Everyone's got a different answer. So I became so frustrated trying to find the truth. And so I said, Okay, said to the villages, take me to the oldest building in this village. So

this is northern Iraq, which was ancient Mesopotamia. What do you think the oldest building was in the village. I can't can't even imagine. And I know it's mentioned multiple times in the Old Testament. So three thousand years So was it a church? Was it a church? You would think maybe a mosque? And you think no, Well, because you know, you go to Israel is a long argument over who was there first? Right, one of the Palestinian church trees? Who was there first? Who does it all

belong to? Okay, so you go there. It's not the moss, it's not the church. It's the synagogue, the oldest building. And who takes me there the most of mistake me there? Right, it's not Jewish people taking me. There's not Christian people taking me there. This is the local Muslims who have lived their all their lives and actually never lived anywhere else. So then you start to look, well wait a minute, okay, so then what is the oldest church and they go

to the oldest church, and what is the oldest mosque? Well, the first mosque was built. The first Muslims never set foot on that territory of northern Iraq until more than six hundred years after the first after Assyrians converted to Christianity as they became the first nation to convert to Christianity as a nation. So for six hundred years there weren't any Muslims in Iraq in nother I rock on that piece of grounds. So think about how they are

looking at the history. If it takes six hundred years, that's you know, that doesn't mean anything to them. They're willing to fight for six hundred years. You know. I find myself wondering whether we're just talking about the life cycle of of peoples and cultures and empires, the move from the young, hungry and desperate young historically speaking to the successful and established, to the affluent and self indulgent, and then it goes away, and there could be nothing

more natural. You can postponent with an incredibly mighty military, I suppose, But um, I just I can't see us having having sacrificed notions or at least seen a transition of notions from history to immediacy, from duty to to pleasure, et cetera. I don't see us as a people thinking about our great great great grandchildren in a significant way.

And I don't know why we don't, because you know, as a mother, I look at my children and I get sometimes really, I get really you know, anxious and worried. And I used to you know, I spent so much time on the battlefields and talking to soldiers and especially you know, officers or commanders or like group leaders or whatever. They would always talk about. I mean, yes, so my

children don't have to be here. And I used to think that that was the hokeyest you know, most um made up kind of talking point you could get, right. I was like alf a kind in a bucket, seriously, you know, and other guys telling me that. And now I'm a mom and I'm looking at my kids, and I'm looking at where we are in these wars, and I'm thinking, holy rightly, I mean, on, my children really gonna have to tri this? Is that really where we are right right? You know? And and to uh the

question of future um. And we've touched on Libya a little bit and um and in the Muslim world and transitions and that sort of thing. I think the refugee crisis in Europe is the beginning of what could have could be one of the great historical twists that will happen this millennium. I mean, I don't understand how Europe remains Europe for more than I don't know, another half century or so. Culturally speaking, well, you know, that is

a very interesting question. And when you look at the indicators, look at Switzerland, Switzerland spanned minarets, the minarets of mosques from their landscape, right, because that doesn't fit the image, the traditional image of what it means to be Swiss. What what defined Switzerland? And many years ago, when I was living in London, I remember that curry replaced fish and chips as the national dish in England and there

was an out cry. I mean, you know, it really had a real reaction amongst the British people because curry became the national dish because more British people were choosing to eat curry on a daily basis than fish and chips, right, I mean, that became the most popular meals to have. And but what it did was demonstrate to British people

how over time their culture was changing. The difference is that when Indian people were emigrating to the UK um they were you know, typically there's a high degree of assimilation. People hold on to their cultures and their traditions and and that kind of thing. But there was never any question about becoming British and redefining what it means to be British was part of that but at the end of the day it was still not seen as an assault on British culture. Fast forward to Belgium and the

last few elections in Brussels, the capital. There have been several districts of Belgium, including the Just Trick where the paris Um terrorist attackers came from, where there have only been Islamic candidates in local elections, and these candidates have all campaigned on a basis of replacing Belgian law with Sharia law, but also separating public and private basis right, so that in public men and women could not be in the same spaces, separating the education systems so boys

and girls don't go to school together. Well, now you're talking about a very dramatic change to traditional Belgian Flemish culture. And even you know, going to Germany today, all over Germany, even when you land in the airport, there are prayer rooms, you know, for and the and the picture the little side depicts and it's an Islamic prayer sign the ones that I saw um and you wouldn't have seen that in Germany, I don't know twenty years ago. I'm not

exactly sure. So there's those do represent a significant cultural ship and Um, I mean that's why a number of European countries have started to restrict put restrictions on immigration, because they're looking at these questions. The US doesn't face those questions yet, right, you know. And you've led us beautifully into a conversation we've had many times on the

radio show, and and that is how do you respond? Well, you you listed a number of changes, some of which are are merely interesting, some of which are incredibly troubling. How do you respond to people who would accuse a Belgian of racism or xenophobia for resisting that sort of change? How do you how do you defend people's right to defend their country and their culture. Well, in the modern

media narrative, you don't. If you do, you're a racist, and um it's hate speech, and you're xenophobic, and um, you're you know. I mean that's the realit. You just look at today, there's one acceptable narrative for everything, and if you go outside of that, you'll get attacked and you're denigrated. And I'm not saying that that's my narrative. It really doesn't matter if I dare to even say to you what I just said to you now I'm going to be attacked, right, and I'm going to be

accused of having that. I was as I was asked recently, you know what to what do you attribute this rise and populism and nationalism? And I said, I'm not really sure. And I said, in modern political terms, I guess you could call it a rise. I said, but when you look at the world, to me, it's one of the oldest. As long as human beings have been on the earth,

they have gravitated towards their own kind. Now that doesn't mean that you get to discriminate or you know, or or um or torture or murder or or you know, do anything bad to other people just because they're different. Vikings typically stuck to other vikings, right, I mean, you look at the tribes in Africa. Typically the tribes in Africa, they didn't you don't have Tutus and Zulus historically crossing

the lines unless they were strategic marriages. What how did your what was Europe really by the collection of tribes? And um, you know, Catholics they like to marry other Catholics. So I'm not spending that as a as a principle. All I'm doing is pointing out that it's a very human quality and what you're what you see when people feel that they're disappearing, that their culture is disappearing, or that they're becoming a minority in their own land. They

expressed that in different ways. And what the point we've reached today is where you're not allowed to have a conversation about that, or a legitimate conversation or an honest conversation, because you're instantly denigrated for doing so. Like some of those people may choose make may may make very destructive, very bad choices that you or I might not agree with at all. But what what you're asking is, how

do you have that conversation? To me, the absolute heart and essence of freedom and liberty is having that conversation and having the ability to say to someone I agree with you, I don't agree with you. Oh I see, I hadn't thought about it that way. Well, from your point of view, I understand, but I still don't agree with you, right, Or maybe I do, or maybe I maybe I agree a little bit more than I did before.

But at the end of the day, you know, I'm still gonna take a different position or whatever it happens to be. You know, it's not up to us to decide the outcome of the conversation and advance as so, since we're on this subject um a lot of these predominantly almost entirely Muslim countries. Getting back to Afghanistan, that laundry list of violence that I mentioned that it has happened just in the last three or four days, how

much of that has to do with Islam? Like I I it's it's interesting if my neighborhood becomes less Christian and more Muslim or more Jewish or whatever. But as long as nobody's hurting me, it doesn't really make any difference to me. But how much of the violence in the killing, in the zero sum game is tied into Islam as you see it traveling around these countries, Well, that's a complex question and ruins careers. So you just weighed right in. I mean, I don't you know, as

you might have noticed, I don't really worry. I mean I should worry about earning my career. But I just, um, I just them to direct into um straightforward and too honest to you know, to be political. It's just not in my DNA. I mean what I what I would say, what I've seen on the ground in many different Islamic

countries is that it's ties. The religion is part of culture in many places, and so you know you have Afghanistan is a very different Islamic country to Malaysia, right, I mean, um, there are some things that are similar and there are a lot of things that are very different. If you people used to ask me the same question about Africa, you know, why are Africans so violent? Are they really more violent um than people here? Or do they?

They just live at the edge of survival. And when you live in that place, um, your choices are much more stock and you may be resolved more easily to violent. I hate it when people say to me, oh, they don't they don't value life the way we do. And I also hate it when people say everyone's the same all of the world, we don't want the same things, because I don't think. I don't think either of those

I have not experienced either of those things to hold true. Um. I find people who value life the same way as me and every place on earth, and the same way as Americans. That don't mean me as a guy, that just be the way the way we do in the US and I found people who don't, and I can I can show you people who definitely do not want the same things as you and I right, because I don't want my child. I don't dream of my child growing up to be a suicide bomber and think that

that's going to bring glory to my family. And that is a a real thing. There are people who feel that way. What I will say, though, is that people have experienced, oh wait, all over the earth, that religion and God are very powerful recruiting tools. And they're very

powerful tools. So the first thing that you should know, though, is that Islamic terrorists and jahadists and converts, and that who I have met over the years, many of them, they've all corrected me when I've said Islam is a religion. They all tell me that Islam is a civilization. It's not a religion, and that part of our problem is that we look at it as a religion. And so that's a very interesting shift in your in your perspective

when you approach these things. You know, and what a civilization does is it prescribes rules for every part of your life. So it's it's an instrument of enormous control. And I guess the way I best answer the question to people is I say, show me an Islamic country where you believe your children will have a better way of life than the one they do share, right right, It's it's a point well made. I'm so annoyed by the naivete. And and well, we'll stick with the naivete

for the moment. But of of a lot of people in the American political scene who think that Islam is the same as Presbyterianism um and and not only that, but they have what I've characterized as xenophilia. They have this desperate need to seem enlightened by embracing that which

is foreign. And while I'm certainly in no xenophobe, I think you'd have to be so misguided by your ideology to be half blind to not recognize that there are places, there are cultures, there are beliefs that are toxic, that yield poorer results in terms of humanity, and and to embrace them automatically because they're not white American Christian. Yeah. Well, you know, I would say I'm a very I'm a very open and tallerant person. You know, I grew up

I didn't eat meet I was against the fur trade. Well, you know, I didn't eat meat until there was nothing else to eat, right until I was in a village where that's all there was to eat, and I was really hungry. And then I learned, you know, to to eat whatever was available. I didn't believe in the fur in wearing furst. I protested that when I was a kid, until I was in Siberia with the chukche and I had been cold for six weeks and an old chookche

man put a fur coat on me. And it was the first time the wind stopped and I had I could feel my limbs right or I was standing in an abandoned fox farm and a little chook che lady was coming to feed the dying boxes every day. Put a little fox hat on my head, and and then I so and then I was asked, you know, by sidebarians, by the chook she there where all these people that shut down the fur industry, Like this little lady, this little chukche, she's coming there every day. She's feeding these

animals which are in cages dyeing. Okay, and where where all the people who are congratulating themselves in New York? And you know Paris and London and l A because they've shut down the fur trade on their great victory. So what what I have been lucky enough to do and what I have sought out just to try? Why do you have to be there in person? Why do I go to all these horrible places? Why do I stay?

I stay five years in Bagdad, right, I didn't go home, and when I left there, I would go to Afghanistan or to Darfur. Why is it so important to have reporters who spend time in these places and don't just fly in and out. Because with time, when you live and walk in the shoes of those people, you learn things and understand things. I mean, I loved living in Iraq.

It's not what I would want for my children, but there were so many things I love about the people and the place and the and the history and the things that I learned. And what I learned is not to abandon every principle I ever had. You know, what I learned was which principles really added and how what not being judgmental rarely means? Right? What listening to someone

rarely means. I had to do that in South Africa, where I couldn't stand anything to do with the extreme white right, and I grew up in a very liberal home and I and I fought for the end of

a party and I believed in it. But I still had to go into those areas as a journalists and say, Okay, what's your perspective, what's your opinion, and put that out because every if you say that, you believe in in in being tolerant and being open and trying to understand so you can find common ground, or you can find compromise, or you can find a way to live together. That's what I grew up believing you had to do. So I say that because I want you know, it's really

important for me for that people understand. Is if if people choose to live that way, you know, in wherever it happens to be, that's fine for like for me, I don't have any issues with that. But I'm very clear on why life I want for my daughter and want life I want as a woman. And I don't want to be fighting for the right to have a driver's license and drive a car and be celebrating that

as a victory. Okay, that's not a victory. I mean it is a victory, of course, But for me personally with the freedoms that I have known and enjoyed in my life and what I want for my children and my grandchildren. That's not a victory, right, And so what I I, what I just don't understand is how we got to this point where, you know, you know, how we get there? We get there by saying, oh, this isn't a war about religion, Well, what nonsense is that?

Then you're ignoring of what these people themselves are saying. You're right in one sense though, it's actually a war about power, where the people waging this war, who want absolute power, who want to annihilate everybody who's not like them, have very successfully and artfully used religion to give their struggle and their fights feels authority, the moral authority of God, and that takes men into battle, It recruits people, It gets be able to give up their lives as doctors.

It gives us their comfortable lives and comfortable countries. That's what it does. That's how powerful it is. So when we stand up and say, oh, this isn't a word about religion, it's got nothing to do with it. And you know, anyone who criticizes or brings religion into it is some kind of racist, xenophobic, you know, nasty person. Well, all you're doing is save them if you might, as you're bending over saying, how else can I help you win? What else would you like me to do? In the

time we have left? If you don't mind, let's talk a little bit about a little more about your job and how you do it and how you see it, and if you don't mind, starting with one of my favorite books that have had the great pleasure of being able to discuss with my kids, who are now mostly grown up, the things they carried by Tim O'Brien. I assume you're are you familiar with that at all? It's

it's a story, it's a collection the stories about Vietnam. Well, the theme of the book is he served in Vietnam and writes these incredibly harrowing, beautiful, moving stories about Vietnam. But one of the themes of the book is that he's not writing factually. He it is fictionalized because there's

no way to convey the fact without fictionalizing it. You can't in your armchair understand what it was like unless I fictionalize it, which is, you know, it's an interesting notion and I wonder if you ever, as a war correspondent, witness things that are practically indescribable, and if you ever feel like the way I'm about to describe them can't convey the reality. Well, you know, my mother always is to say that life is stranger than fiction, right, and

I think it's true. I'll tell you a funny story to illustrate this point. A friend of mine was one of the very senior commanders in southern afghanist and under the Search led by M. Crystal, and he sent me an email the one day from the battlefield which I actually had to like stop in my tracks. I was in Washington, d C. And when I read this, I thought,

oh my word. He said he was working with the local police in Kandahar and they got called to a checkpoint where they believed there was a a vehicle born I d so a suicide car bomb, and the Afghan police and then they had surrounded it, and the Afghans wanted to deal with it because they wanted to demonstrate

to the Americans that they could handle this situation. So they got a line of Afghan policemen to stand up next to each other and they all opened fire with their a K four seven on the suspected car bomb. So needless to say, that's not how an American unit would approach it. But um, they all managed to miss the vehicle, no bullets hit it, and one bullet hit

the ground ricochet. There was a tree above the car bumb It hits the Taliban trigger man who was in the tree, who then fell to the ground, and when he hit the ground, he activated the detonator that was in his hand, and the car bomb exploded, and all the Afghans split the checkpoint because they told the Americans that exploding mullas were falling out of the sky. Does that illustrate your point? Uh? On the x x X, you know, evening news, we bring you the sale of

exploding mullas. You know you just can't do that, you know, I mean, but I would say, Look, I'm a person who my feet are very firmly planted on the ground. I'm not a dreamer. I'm not the great, you know, I'm not the Elon Musk, but looking into the future and changing the world, I'm I'm a person that gives everything to the moment and to the people around me, and to the things that I'm doing. I know what's real and what's not. And that's my greatest guide as

a journalist. I don't know everything, and of course I make mistakes, and sometimes famously so. But um but what I do know is when you build up knowledge and experience over time, your you strengthen your bullshit meta, right, And and that's why beat reporting is so, so so important. And I just I want to tell you one other thing about Vietnam because I had a very very close friend of mine was a man called Tom o'camo. And in the intelligence world, that name means more than most

in the history of US military intelligence. And this is a person who's, you know, whose career went back many many years. In fact, he's the regarded as the father of the modern military intelligence infrastructure that we still use today. And Tom is now buried in Arlington Cemetery. But one of the last lunch that he and I had together at the Army and Navy Club, he told me a

story about going to Vietnam as a young soldier. He was in college and he left and he went to go fight, and he said two things that shocked me. I asked him, why to the green berets Okay, American Green Berets Special Forces to go to their headquarters in Fort Brand, North Carolina. In front of their headquarters is a huge statue of Bronze Bruce and Bronze Bruce is an SF soldier in Vietnam with his hand out holding

the hand of a young Montagnard child. And Montagnards were a local tribe, if you like, in Vietnam, that were in Cabotia that we're working with the Americans, and in fact became a very potent local force in the Vietnam War. And I said, I don't understand why, why would the Green Berets take a symbol like that to represent all of them, Because to us, that's a symbol of abject failure. No greater failure in US military history. Right, is the

Vietnam War a gain? I don't get it. And he said, you know, the war on the ground had changed so significantly by the time they made the US made the political decision to pull out and withdraw. He said, we had just turned the time between the relationship with the Montagnards. It took that length of time to build up a formidable fighting force that was local and could work on both sides of the border, and it had just really

started to pay dividends. Plus they had a program of turning prisoners inside the prisons, and that program had had enough time now to really bear fruits. He said. But the politics is rarely in line with the military reality on the ground, right, And so he said, just at the moment that the US political reality was, you know, meant that we were pulling out, was when we fighting on the ground, felt that we had turned, we were turning that either of the war. Now, that may or

may not be true. It's one man's perspective, and he was. He was a soldier on the ground at the time, and you know, and father the systems that you see in place today, So a formidable individual. The second thing he said was when I came home to the US after being gone for all those years, I didn't recognize

the country I came home to. Suddenly people in the corridors at my college were smoking marijuana, was drugs and tex everywhere, And he said, I didn't even know this place, you know, And we might laugh and say, oh, well, you know, those are all good positive changes, right, Drugs and tex and you know, free love and woodstock and hippies and all approaches me in Vietnam. But what it meant to me was, how can I know so little about this period that's been written about so much? And

how many perspectives have we rarely explored? Or do we just read the same perspective over and over again in many different forms? Wow? Wow, Yeah, that is so thought provoking. Boy, I have no doubt that your feet are planted firmly on the ground. I don't see how anybody could have had the career you've had, lived the life you've lived and not be pretty firmly or in touch with human nature and what human beings are capable of. I think

the opposite would be the bigger problem. How do you how do you keep your head out of the oven? How do you? How do you succumbed to discourage? Yeah? Exactly? You never do you never ever? Ever? Do you know why? Because for every nasty, horrible person I've ever met, I have had that moment you know, um, where I'm a very I'm a very warm person and um and I have great respect for the people and the places where I go. And respect is one of those things that

you cannot fake. You might get away with it for a moment here in there. But it doesn't matter whether people speak in a language, or they dressed in rags, or they dressed in you know, a dishdasha, or in Muslim robes or in you know, in whatever, in American blue jeans. People know when you're real, They know when you truly respect him, They know when you're being honest. And and I have never promised more than I can give.

So for me, I believe. I just believe um in the in the good that people can be when we're at our best. I believe in that, and I've seen it, and I've seen it sometimes, you know, just in in the person that you know that just lost their family,

all their whole family in the bombing that day. You know, I've seen it in in like being in a hospital with kids with minded to send burns all over their bodies, and seeing the nurse that doesn't leave their side, that you never hear about, his name, you never know about it doesn't even matter. And she's one of many. I meet those people all the time, and I believe in them.

Final question, what would you like to do next? Professionally speaking? Well, place Alixtra back now, I just say that because Edison, people with jobs. I don't even know if it's worth it anymore. Like, seriously, all this, all this, you know, all the attacks and the way we we get um silence. Really you know what what I would like? Gosh, but I would really like most of all. It's not so much what I want to do next. I I wonder how many Jamas today truly have a free voice? What

are the things we can't talk about? Interesting we are not allowed to say? What are the subjects we're not allowed to explore? There shouldn't be any Why are there any? What I would like next, not just for me, but for all of for you, for for every I would like real journalism not to die. I would like the true meaning of freedom to come back to the streets

of the US. I would like we're already pretty militant on the idea of defending the free exchange of ideas, and you have re energized us, and we thank you for that. But look at where we are. This is the age of information warfare. Okay, so now companies are deciding what's free speech and what's not. They're redefining the First Amendment. Who gets to define the First Amendment? Isn't it wasn't the whole point of the individual freedom, but as long as they don't infinge on the rights of others,

And who are the people making these decisions? And I'll give you just a stupid example. We're having a long conversation about Facebook and Russia. Really really, we're not talking about all of the other countries doing the same thing. We're not to talking about data mining, Like why does any apps in the background, Why they're refreshing in the background, what are they doing? They're they're minding your data. Who's paying for that? You're paying for it, You are paying

for it. Why are you paying for all of these companies and political organizations and so called civil liberties organizations and all of them. They're all minding your data all the time, and you're paying for it, and nobody's paying you. And yet we have a one sided conversation about one company and one country. It just said, we're dumb. Our primary problem, Laura, is that we're we're dumb. We're dumb. People were not serious. It's not true. We're overwhelming. True,

I don't believe it. And we are we're asleep at the wheel. There you go, how yeah, yeah, we're we're as a society and we're we're self indulgent and we're amusing ourselves to death. And that's a different giant topic. But I've never heard a conversation with you or any any piece you did that I didn't think was fantastic. And to appreciate the opportunity we got to talk to you for quite a while today. Yeah, it's it's great. Love you guys. I love that you want to talk

about these things. But the only thing I would say is don't fall for that thing that we're dumb. You know. I used to get that all the time at work. People say, oh, well, our audience won't understand. Really, you know what, people really they understand more than uh than we think they understand. When you say this tourist organization has battalions all over the world, and if we don't do something about it, we're gonna pay for it down the line. That's very simple. Or they say, oh no, no,

don't worry not din't none. I'm connected all these little groups they're meaningless and we don't have to worry about them. Okay, but then we don't have to worry about them, you know. You know, there's there's a simple way to put any thing that we need, any arguments, and anything that we really need to pay attention to. It's what we're not doing is we're not holding ourselves accountable, and we're not holding our lead is accountable for the lack of freedom

that we have today. We're not doing any about that. We've given up our privacy and we've surrendered it, and and what else have we given up? Those are the questions we need to ask. All right, we're not dumb as much as we're seduced. Yeah, yeah, Well, next time we talk, if you're ever so generous with your time again, we could spend an hour on turkey. I would love to talk turkey with you, no pun intended. Hum oh man, that's talking about pivotal places. Uh, Laura Logan. It's always great.

Thank you so much anytime. Thank you. And that's the end of the official thing. And so thanks a Milian. It's great to talk and thanks for persevering. We know, technically speaking, it wasn't you know, effortless. Thanks a lot. Oh, you have no idea. I'm at like the side of the road in a tiny little town in it's pitched out. We had like a six hour drive ahead of My children are bleeding out their eyeballs. Oh my god, great, Scott, Yeah, well hang up right now, Yeah, okay, all right, we'll

talk again. Thanks. I'm gonna start an equivalent of a McDonald's on steroids. And I'm just happy it was no one's birthday. Every speaker in the place, Oh my god, that's awesome. That's great. All right, we'll talk to you in Thanks, thank you. Keep it roll, Keep it rolling, Michael. I want to continue the conversation from there. Um, So you know what she was just talking about there, about her The one thing that she could do is bring

back press freedom. I'll tell you during that conversation I felt in the room the things I can say and can't say. Absolutely. There is one period in there, something about you know, Islam being the cause of this. Whatever I thought is it's gonna get us in trouble. I was just gonna about her and us, And she's absolutely right. If we're in a place where we can't have a conversation about what role does Islam play in this without

being scared, we are freaking doomed. Yeah. And and not to get off, you know, to completely on the free speech thing and the free exchange of ideas thing. But you must absolutely have the right to be wrong if there's going to be free exchange of ideas, and you must permit somebody to be wrong without, for instance, smashing them in the head um as as a number of people are are want to do these days. And you have to have to have to be able to confront

things that make you very uncomfortable. It's like, you know, the First Amendment exists to protect objectionable speech, unpopular speech. The only ideas that need protection are the ones that make people mad. I came across this quote the other day and make I'm sorry, that make you feel uncomfortable, that trigger you, Those are precisely the ideas that need to be protected. I came across this quote the other

day from John milton um and it uh from years ago. Anyway, air of opinion may be tolerated where reason is free to combat it. Yeah, well said and more pithy than me. And that's what we need. We need to to be able to have these guys at least say them out loud and and bounce around. You think this is any

think this is that, you think Islam is this? But what do you think people think this is ruining society, having these people going to we ought to be able to have that conversation and then be wrong about it if reason is there to compete against. But if you're not allowed to even have the conversation, to even start down that road, we're freaking doomed. Yeah, I'm pretty sure

it was. Thomas Oo said beautifully and succinctly, and I'm going to slaughter it now that it is borderline mental illness to deny that there are some cultures on earth that are better and some worse at yielding happy, healthy human beings. To deny that reality is bizarre. I mean,

it's indefensible. And yet there are a lot of people who speak very very loudly on the modern American and European for them matter, political scene who want to deny that reality and that that, by the way, that reality does not justify racism or hate or vilence or denying people are constitutional rights. I mean, that's that's an idiocy in and of itself, But you must accept that is true, or my god, how do we talk about this stuff? I was sure as hell is going to bring this

up during our interview with her. I mean, it's a well known story. But when she says, I have my firm my feet firmly on the ground, Yeah, you get gang raped by a bunch of crazies in a square in Egypt, you would have a pretty solid idea of what you know humanity is all about. She's riding no unicorns over no rainbows. Yeah, well that was good stuff. That was fun. Yeah, I just I wish I this is me. This is a problem with me that when I talked to somebody like that, I feel like I've

messed up my life somehow. Because God, to have the experiences she's had around the world, she would have been that top tier of percentage of people who really know what humanity is, has seen it. I've read about a lot of it, but I ain't seen it up close.

You know. I almost brought up one place I had been, but then I thought, no, that's gonna sound like I'm trying to sound like, well wait a minute, because but I shouldn't be self conscious, because that's never mind with it, Because I mean, she's and I say this lovingly, and I love Laura's intellect, So I'm in love with her intellect. When she was talking about being with the various people in Siberia. It sounded just like j Peterman from the

Seinfeld name. There I was squatting with them. But yeah, the breadth of her travel and how she stays in one place and and and mind melds with the humans there, I think, is so the partners so important and so powerful. And I was going to bring this up, but then I started to think, is my goal here to like make her cry? What are my Barbara Walters here now?

Or um? But the to me, the hardest part would be, um just meeting the regular people and you get to know them a little bit, and there you know their lives sucking are going to continue to suck by, you know, just just that's just the way it is. And you'd think for them, for that guy, her and those two kids, the tectonic plates of civilization and these major political movements don't freaking mean anything. They're just trying to keep their kids alive and survive. And you know that would be

the tough stuff anyway, owing to boys. So uh yeah, So that's Laura Logan were talking to Next time for our long form podcast, I believe we've got who's the Mike Rodgers, former chairman the guy that played the Incredible Hulk. Isn't that who we have? So look for to that for our next long form podcast, The Armstrong and Getty Show.