Conversations about conflict on an angry planet. Created, produced, and hosted by Matthew Gault and Jason Fields
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A special production of Angry Planet and David Axe explores how a group of scruffy contractors pioneered the use of drones during the Vietnam War. Axe’s book, Drone War Vietnam , is out now. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
The facts on the ground are undeniable. The U.S. is out, the Taliban is back in. The end was ugly and there were plenty of ugly spots along the way. Since we’re all doing what ifs, here’s ours: what would the off-ramp have looked like, and did we ever at least have our turn signal on? Joining us today is a guy who was in the room. Former diplomat Frank Ruggiero dealt directly with the Taliban, as well as managing U.S relations with Afghanistan and Pakistan between 2010 and 2012. Hillary Clinton ...
Space… Is it still the final frontier? And does anyone really care about it anymore, aside from a few billionaires and maybe a millionaire or two? Does NASA have any mojo left? And are any of us alive now going to see a landing on Mars? These are all questions dear to my heart, so we have Christian Davenport who covers space for the Washington Post and is the author of the Space Barons on the show today. Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our ...
Afghanistan. If you’re listening to this show you’ve probably been following the news. Despite what the Pentagon or White House will tell you, the evacuation isn’t going great. There is a dichotomy between what officials tell us and what’s actually happening that—in the age of mass communication—seems … insulting. That dichotomy and how it affected America’s view of Afghanistan is at the heart of the new book— The Afghanistan Papers . Craig Whitlock, its author, is here with us today. Whitlock i...
Conquerors and nations have been trying to rebuild Afghanistan in their own image for thousands of years. The U.S. is just the latest to fail. The Soviet Union also failed, with a little push from the United States. But they learned their lesson in only 10 years, from 1979-1989. Mark Galeotti joins us today to talk about the lessons the U.S. probably should have learned from the USSR. He’s Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and has literally written the book - no...
America is leaving Afghanistan. President Joe Biden has set a September 11th withdrawal date and things are continuing apace. As America packs up its gear and goes home it’s leaving behind something far more valuable than MRAPs and M16s—people. For two decades individual Afghans have stepped up to help the United States and as it leaves the battlefield, some of these interpreters are being left behind. With us today is former Marine Sergeant, Afghanistan War veteran, and Purple Heart recipient M...
Are we living in a declining empire in need of renewal? Maybe. But one thing to keep in mind? Romans thought the same thing centuries before the great empire fell. So what’s up with the fascination with the decline and fall of Rome? And what lessons does it have for US politics? To help us answer that question, we’ve got Edward J. Watts. He’s a professor of history at UC San Diego and the author of a new book, The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome . Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Informati...
Life in Haiti has rarely been easy. It’s the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Corruption is rampant. And it’s been invaded more than once since independence, including by the United States. It’s little wonder that the half-Island nation has suffered repression and political turmoil And, on July 7, it’s president, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated. To help us understand the current situation -- and a bit of the history as well -- I’m joined by Francois Pierre-Louis of Queens College in Ne...
When I was a kid I learned about the Alamo. It’s 1836. Houston said to Travis, fortify the Alamo. Volunteers came from across the continent to fight and die for the dream of a free and independent Texas. Like the Ballad said, One hundred and eighty five holding back five thousand. In the southern part of Texas, near the town of San Antone, like a statue on his pinto rides a cowboy all alone. And he sees the cattle grazing where a century before Santa Anna’s guns were blazing and the cannon...
Afghanistan, the site of America’s longest war, is changing. The Taliban is gaining ground in the North while peace talks stall. The U.S. continues its withdrawal and the Afghan military is left to pick up the pieces. Here to help us understand what’s going on is Ali M. Latifi. Latifi is an Afghan journalist living in Kabul. His work has appeared in Al Jazeera, Business Insider, and NBC News. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege . Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for mor...
It doesn’t take high technology to kill someone. Simple chemicals propel pieces of lead out of steel tubes. Other simple chemicals are placed in larger vessels and are triggered by the weight of a vehicle or even a human body. Some are even set off by strings attached to fuses. Not one computer involved. But the weapons of warfare do evolve - some into trillion dollar monsters that gobble up whole defense budgets and can destroy life on earth with the turn of a key. And new weapons are always on...
So far, in the political battles at the heart of our democracy, they have been AWOL. Just as they should be. The military is an expressly non-political institution, even if they do report to an elected commander-in-chief. But with political divisions deepening, could that change? Eliott Ackerman took on just that issue in a recent column for the New York Times. Ackerman is a combat veteran, journalist and author. And he’s here to talk to us today. Ackermans’ article is here: https://www.nytimes....
Over the past few months the world watched as the conflict between Israel and Palestine flared up. I’m not interested in litigating the facts of that conflict in this opening and you’ve likely already decided where you stand on the conflict. For some, it’s complicated. For others, the very idea that someone would call it complicated is an insult. Here to help us untangle some of what’s happened and to discuss the future of Palestine is Joey Ayoub. Joey is a writer, scholar, and podcaster who gre...
For the last two decades, America has been possessed with a Global War on Terror. The threat of militant Islam has funded the security state and given the Pentagon an overarching goal. But that threat feels increasingly distant and a new specter is haunting America—that of white nationalism. Both groups are complicated, varied, and prone to in-fighting. Both groups rely on apocalyptic visions of the future to drive home their message. Both groups are waging war against the United States. With us...
When you hear the word Sparta, there’s an immediate association with war and the military. Of the Greek City States, it’s the one most associated with battle. Spartan men were expected to be warriors and their society was geared almost entirely toward training for war. For generations, military leaders have drawn inspiration from Sparta. Much of the romance around Sparta centers Around the battle of Thermopylae in 480 BCE, where the Persian Empire crushed a small and ill-equipped collection of e...
There’s a maxim that says “No two countries that both have a McDonald’s have ever fought a war against each other.” This so-called Golden Arches theory enjoyed a brief moment of prominence in the 1990s, got shaky after 9/11, and has been out-right assaulted by pundits and political theorists in the past ten years. It died it’s final death in October when McDonald’s Azerbaijan took public sides in the fight between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Here to walk us through the Golden Arches Theory and ...
In the summer of 2020, violent riots broke out across America between ordinary citizens and police. These riots led to groups finding ways to develop their own security forces to deal with violence from police, opposition groups, and other antagonists on the ground. Here to help us understand what’s going on is Nikki West. West is a local Seattle photojournalist who was previously on the show talking about the Chapel Hill Autonomous Zone. She’s documented the push and pull between protestors and...
Literally recorded as missiles hit and news broke. Guest: Noga Tarnopolsky, a reporter on Israel and Palestine. Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict. https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribe You can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes , Stitcher , Google Play or follow our RSS directly . Our website is angryplanetpod.com . You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook....
Russia and Ukraine have been fighting ever since Little Green Men invaded Crimea in 2014. That wasn’t enough for Russia. The former evil empire then aided separatist enclaves inside the rest of Ukraine. The Ukrainian military was unprepared, the world mostly sat back and watched, and an ugly stalemate ensued. If a stalemate includes tanks firing at each other. Recently, Russia massed troops on Ukraine’s border as rhetoric ratcheted up. To help us understand what exactly is going on, we have Mich...
“From mud, through blood, to the green fields beyond.” The tank was meant to push through entrenched enemy lines and put an end to the stale-mate of trench warfare during The Great War. It created a whole new kind of combat. It was high risk, high reward, as men in armored units trundled across the world. With us today is comics writer Garth Ennis. Ennis is the diabolical mind behind Sara , Hitman , War Stories , The Boys , and Preacher . He’s here today talking about his new collection of war s...
The Taliban - we all know them, few of us love them, and it looks like they’re going to rule Afghanistan - again. So, what was it like the first time the Islamic militants took over, in 1996? Today, we have two journalists who were in Afghanistan in the 90s. Scott Neuman was working for United Press International and wrote from the scene. Alan Chin is a photographer who went to Afghanistan to take pictures for The New York Times. I’ve known them both for more than 20 years. Angry Planet ha...
When Islamic State’s capital, Raqqa, finally fell in late 2017, America wasn’t really paying close attention. We’d had nearly a year of turmoil here at home, and, in many ways, Islamic State was old news. And if we weren’t paying that much attention to the fight, we paid even less attention to the fighters. So, today we’ll tell the story of the Kurdish men and women who led the Syrian Democratic Forces. To take us through it, we have Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, who’s just published Daughters of Kobani...
Guns, guns, guns. America loves them and their use is enshrined in the second amendment. It’s such a big deal here that an entire culture has grown around it. From the outside looking in, gun culture can seem...surreal and fetishistic. The truth is more complicated. The overwhelming majority of American gun owners are responsible and are not taking photos of themselves aiming a loaded weapon at their own dick. Yes, that’s a thing. Here to talk to us about the second amendment and gun culture is ...
Billions of people eat fish every day and as the global population has exploded, so too have human efforts to catch more and more fish. As more people take to the high seas looking for protein, very human problems have followed them. We’re fighting over fish. Here to walk us through this is someone actively working on the problem in Washington D.C. Captain Kate Higgins-Bloom is the Strategic Foresight Director for the U.S. Coast Guard. Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get...
Syria’s Bashar Al Assad had no such hesitancy. Thousands of people died. The U.S. threatened to strike Syria, but Russia suggested striking a deal instead. It was weird. To talk us through the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons throughout the country’s civil war is Joby Warrick of the Washington Post. Warrick is the winner of an improbable two Pulitzer Prizes, including one for his book on ISIS, Black Flags . His new book, Red Line: The Unraveling of Syria and America's Race to Destroy the M...
What do mid-century funnyman Tom Lehrer, nuclear Armageddon, and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action have in common? They’re all features of the excellent podcast The Deal —a show all about the Iran nuclear deal. As its host once said, he’s not here to fix problems. He’s just here to narrate the collapse. Well, that narrator is here with us today. Dr. Jeffrey Lewis is an expert on all things nuclear, the host of The Deal , and Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Project at the Middlebu...
Ah international waters. A quiet place to do some crimes or have crimes done to you. Welcome to Angry Ocean, a series we’re doing that examines the underreported topic of conflict on the high seas. This is part one - Outlaw Ocean . With us today is Ian Urbina. Urbina is an investigative reporter and the director of The Outlaw Ocean Project , a non-profit journalism organization based in Washington, D.C., that focuses on reporting about environmental and human rights crimes at sea. https://www.th...
It’s a weird time for the US military. Endless small-scale wars. Veterans joining the riots at the capital. Right-wing extremism in the ranks. Tens of thousands of troops refusing the COVID-19 vaccine. So, time for a status check. To help us understand what’s going on, we have Meghann Myers who is the Pentagon Bureau Chief for Military Times. Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict. h...
It’s been a long time since the sun set on the British Empire and many institutions in British society have changed a great deal. In some ways, the British Army is the exception - a living linkage between imperial great power status and the current post-colonial European nation. In other ways, like the US military, the British Army has been comprehensively transformed by the long campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11. The way the British Army has altered - and also failed to react -...
We live in a world shaped by the Iraq War. No, not that Iraq War. No, not that one either. We’re talking about the Iran-Iraq war. Just after Iran’s Islamic Revolution, it fought an eight year war with Iraq. The details of that war are incredible, and in the west, little known. Children cleared minefields, Iraq used chemical weapons, drones flew through the air, and helicopters engaged in dog fights with jets. And the consequences of that war shaped the region and the world. The effects are still...
