(theme music playing) GRAHAM: Good evening and welcome to P&P Live.

I'm Brad Graham, the co-owner of Politics and Prose, along with my wife, Lissa Muscatine.

We have a very informative program for you today, featuring Jessica Donati and her powerful new book, "Eagle Down".

Nearly two decades have passed since U.S. forces first moved into Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

It's become America's longest war.

And as Jessica writes in the preface of her book, "most Americans pay little attention to it anymore."

But for Jessica, who lived in Afghanistan for more than four years and reported on it, first for "Reuters", and then for "The Wall Street Journal", the war has been a central focus.

The book's title echoes another work, "Black Hawk Down", also about a fraught military mission, this one, America's disastrous military campaign in Somalia in 1983.

So it's particularly fitting that Jessica will be in conversation this evening with the author of "Black Hawk Down", Mark Bowden.

On behalf of Politics and Prose, I'd like to welcome Jessica Donati and Mark Bowden.

BOWDEN: Well, thanks for that introduction, Brad.

I'm, uh, pleased to have this opportunity to talk to Jessica whose book I admired and whose reporting is amazing.

What got you started on writing this book?

DONATI: What was, to me, really frustrating when I was in Afghanistan was there was a significant part of the war that I felt that we were not adequately covering when we would see, uh, cities or villages, uh, fold to the Taliban or in danger.

Uh, we heard about U.S. Special Forces operations, which were basically providing the necessary support to Afghans to win the cities back.

And it was very difficult to cover it because the U.S. military would not give you access, when you spoke to the administration, they talked about training missions and it was all couched in these words of soldiers being advisors.

And it was very difficult to vividly tell that side of the story.

And, um, as I would spend longer in the country, I came to know a few of those people and it began to seem possible to me to be able to actually write a book that would comprehensively tell that part of the story that we had missed.

BOWDEN: You tell the stories of a number of American Special Forces, soldiers in detail, including accounts from their families, from their wives.

I know from personal experience that that sort of access is not easy to get.

Can you give us a sense of like, for instance, with Major Hutchinson and Tina, how did you get close enough to them to get them to cooperate to this extent?

DONATI: Uh, I mean, I think that it was just, uh, a sort of step-by-step process.

Um, I heard of, uh, uh, Hutchinson's name, uh, long before I got to speak to him through the grapevine in Kabul.

Um, and I got somebody to give me his email address and, uh, I knew he was, and I was really fascinated by his story because we had heard so much from everybody else involved in that incident but we didn't know anything about him.

Um, and, uh, when I came across him, it was actually looking for a different story, um, which he ended up doing for "The Journal".

It was a page one story, uh, about, uh, Green Beret who had deployed in 2001 and, uh, had not returned home.

He'd been in the country for more than 15 years as a contractor.

He had gone, uh, pretty, pretty negative, I guess you could say.

He was working with an old warlord buddy who he had worked with back in the day, uh, to, um, raise a militia, to fight Islamic State.

And he was hoping to convince Special Forces to, um, sponsor this militia or provide covert backing, um, in, uh, the East, because the U.S. wasn't officially allowed to do overt defensive operations.

And, um, this whole malicious game went very awry when the militia, uh, found, um, clashed with a bunch of local Islamic state fighters, put their heads on sticks and paraded them by the side of the street.

Uh, so that's got him into lots of trouble.

Um, and, uh, the, uh, Special Forces, uh, um, officer who he had been talking with about the scheme was Hutchinson.

So, um, when I reached out to him saying, hi, um, you know, I heard this story about you potentially sponsoring a militia, that's decapitated all these people and put their heads on sticks, would you like to comment?

Um, and you know, it would be better to ask him why he decided to speak, but, um, I think he felt that it would be better to, uh, take control of that story and not let it spin out of control the way that the hospital story had.

And, um, he, he gave me his side and I think it was very helpful to get a good idea of, of what had happened and the support that the U.S. military had given to this militia was nowhere near what the militia claimed to have received, even though they had emails, they had, they had interactive, but they had not been, uh, supported by him.

Um, and so that pretty much saved the story.

And I think it was really going back, getting to know more of these soldiers.

I think I went back to him a long time later and said, you know, I would like to tell your story as part of a book, you know, would you consider it if there were other people involved?

And he said, yes.

And then I asked him to speak to his wife and because I wanted, I wanted to know how she had handled it.

And I think being, uh, being a female journalist makes you especially sensitive to that side and perhaps that also helps.

And he said, I'm sure she won't want to talk to you.

Uh, and then he came back and said, actually, she said, it's okay.

Um, and so that's how it started.

BOWDEN: Well, his story, um, Hutchinson "Hutch", is at the center of your book.

And, you know, the, to me the most compelling or dramatic event in, in your book is the tragic United States air attack on the Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in Kunduz where scores of, of doctors and nurses and patients were killed in an inadvertent airstrike that Hutch himself had ordered.

And that begins, well you told the story for him where, where that story goes.

DONATI: Right.

I mean, for him to him, it was, um, the start of, of, I guess, of a nightmare because he didn't know how it would play out.

It looked for a while that the, um, that there were people in the military who wanted, um, you know, somebody specifically to be for, for some heads to roll.

Uh, and so it looked like it could be his for a while, even though, as I think it's clear from the book, there were a lot of people that made decisions that put him in that place with limited information, uh, and it was a case of a lot of things going wrong.

Um, and in the, I mean, yeah, that's, um, I think he sort of came the full circle, uh, when he went back to Afghanistan and he sort of was brought back because he had spent a lot of time there.

It was his fourth deployment.

Um, he was very attached to the country, uh, and he really cared about the fate of his people.

He had seen a lot of suffering there.

He had, he had been part of it.

And so I think for him, it was a chance to, um, re, restore that, um, in a way.

But of course, when I met him, um, that we didn't know yet that he was going to go back, it just seemed like his career was over.

Um, that was an unexpected turn.

BOWDEN: And did you know Jessica, when you first started talking to him that he had been at the center of this incident and was investigated or basically, um, initially held responsible for it?

DONATI: I mean, I knew I knew of him and I knew that there was, there were rumors going around that the camp, uh, in Kabul, between people, with contractors and people who sort of tend to drift in and out and spent a lot of you spend a lot of time.

There, there were rumors that this young officer who was very promising, very widely respected.

Everyone saw him as a, as a sort of good experienced Green Beret who knew what he was doing and who was being unjustly punished for a mistake that wasn't necessarily his fault.

Um, and so that was, that was what I had originally heard about him.

But we didn't really speak about, uh, the incident, um, until a lot later because the main focus was to talk to him about, uh, this militia, uh, decapitation incident.

Um, yeah, so... BOWDEN: You know, I find, you know, I've written myself, um, about some of these ongoing conflicts around the world, and one of the remarkable things about it.

And I think it's relatively new is that decisions that soldiers like Hutch, um, are asked to make in the heat of a firefight, um, if they lead to, particularly if they lead to a disaster are exhaustedly analyzed and second guessed and a mistake, you know, can ruin a career or even lead to a court martial.

What effect do you think this, this have has on, on soldiers who are asked to do these jobs?

DONATI: I think that is one of the reasons that, um, I was able to speak to so many, um, so many of these soldiers who generally are very reticent to talk to journalists, uh, for very good reasons.

Um, I think that there was a sense that the policy, uh, sort of unfairly punished the people that were on the ground.

And as, as you see from all of the stories, the soldiers have been deployed as firefighters to deal with a problem that the Afghan army is not able to hold the country together.

It's not able to hold on to villages and cities.

And so to prevent the appearance of collapse, which would draw the kind of headlines that all administrations want to avoid, they end up bringing in these guys, but often their guidance is very unclear.

They're saying, okay, you're not in combat, but you're going to be dropping into the middle of a village that's entirely Taliban controlled on a mission to capture a commander.

And these are that you have to be this many meters away.

And this is the reason you know, this is, these are the criteria that you need to call in an airstrike.

And it ends up, they end up doing these operations with all this kind of bureaucratic, um, sort of rules that have been thought up in Washington, but don't make any sense at all when you're actually out there.

And then when things do go wrong, um, as you see from the operations in Marjah, or even later on when the soldiers is sent in to rest, to stay in Ghazni in 2018 at the last minute.

And, um, and they end up being unprepared and in very much the same way.

And these are because the policy doesn't necessarily fit, fit the situation on the ground.

And, um, because it's not talked about, and this is one of the things, reasons that I believe that it was important to do this book, was because there's no accountability, no one ever discusses publicly the way these operations go and whether they're working, because what they do do is keep the news out of the headlines.

And, uh, as long as this kind of band-aid continues to work, there's no need to discuss it and revisit the policies and decide, you know, is it really worth sending, um, these guys out there to do this?

Is it really stabilizing Afghanistan?

Is it really, is it really helping with counter terrorism objective?

Is it not potentially turning Afghans more against the Americans because of the way that these operations do turn out?

Because if you do get into trouble, you can end up dropping a lot of bombs and killing a lot of civilians.

And that's not something that goes down well with the local population.

BOWDEN: Right, do you find Jessica that the, um, capability that these special ops units have to conduct kind of low-scale warfare has enabled American political leaders to use military power in various places around the world without attracting the kind of public attention that, um, that military deployments usually do, um, which leads to professional soldiers risking their lives, in some cases being killed, and fighting in actions that, uh, for the most part, the public is not even aware that are going on?

DONATI: Right, I mean, this is, this is one of the problems.

And I think that's one of the reasons as well that I wanted to explore how it was for the families, because these ended up being very tight-knit communities, um, because nobody shares, um, shares the experience.

And even though there is a strong argument in the special operations community for keeping things covert, uh, to me, it seems that there's a time and a place for that kind of secrecy.

And when you are waging a war in Afghanistan, or say Iraq or Syria, where it's kind of more of a conventional war in the, in terms of objectives, I think that the public deserves to have a discussion about what the U.S. is doing, um, as well, as well as the soldiers and that they should have a sense when they go back home, that the best of the community knows what they've been fighting for and supports it, or doesn't support it, but that they're a part of it and they aren't just sort of an isolated wing of the government that's going out and doing these things and which nobody else understands.

BOWDEN: One of the things that I really admire in your book is you move from incredible detail in reporting on the military action taking place and the extraordinary fighting and risks that soldiers are taking to the White House, to the policy makers who are making these big decisions.

And there's this, there's this great scene toward the end of your book between H.R.

McMaster, who was then Trump's national security advisor and Laura Miller, who is the State Department officer coordinating peace talks with the Taliban.

And she had shown some skepticism.

Uh, she rolled her eyes I think you said.

Um, when McMaster started describing, uh, the importance of a renewed military push to rank concessions from the Taliban, and when she made a face, McMaster says, "What, you don't believe in winning?"

So I wondered, what would winning look like in Afghanistan?

DONATI: Right?

I mean, this is the, this is the question.

And, uh, as a journalist, when I was there, I found, uh, people then, and the longer that I was there, people would ask me and often diplomats would ask me because they were just arrived in, on, you know, one year tour or something they would ask, you know, what do you think?

And for me, it was very difficult to say, uh, what would, what, what is the solution in Afghanistan?

What would be a good result?

Um, because the way that things are, it seems clear that the U.S., um, the U.S. effort is not one that seems at least, especially at the time, seemed to be leading towards any kind of solution.

Um, on the other hand, pulling out at that point would almost certainly cause a kind of collapsed civil war, something perhaps even worse than in the 1990s.

And having spent a lot of time there and having a lot of Afghan friends who are very westernized because they grew up under the influence of American values, um, their, way of life and a way of life that has also become organic in, in places like Kabul and major cities, uh, it would be lost and it's really hard to advocate for that.

So I find, find it really, really difficult to say, uh, what would be the, what would be the way forward?

One thing that I was surprised, uh, to see towards the, during the Trump administration was this renewed effort on peace.

When, uh, when Trump finally got rid of McMaster and he managed to install the peace envoy who apparently the White House always wanted to be there.

And they actually managed to get genuine talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban going.

There was a lot of skepticism around the talks and there's huge challenges, but it is an enormous step relative to where they were back in 2017.

When Trump inherited the war, there was no prospect of peace.

There was no prospect of an end.

There was no direction other than the, at the Afghans were needing more and more military support from the U.S.

Uh, I think that going forward, there is more of an argument for keeping U.S. troops there to keep the support, the peace process, if it's possible to keep the U.S. troops without causing the Taliban to walk away.

I mean, it's complex, but there is more of a direction now than there was at the time.

BOWDEN: When... were you worried Jessica, when you wrote this book that no, nobody would care?

DONATI: I mean, I'm still worried about that because it's, uh, it's, it's nice to have got feedback from a lot of, um, soldiers and veterans, uh, people saying, you know, thank you for telling this story and for, I guess, uh, making a record of something that would otherwise probably not have been documented.

Um, but it is when I look on news websites, um, American media, you can, you nevermind European media.

Um, you know, the news is very domestic, especially with the Trump administration, a lot of it was focused on sort of huge sort of ups and downs of, of what Trump was saying, his Twitter.

And so foreign news really fell into the background and, uh, Afghanistan is, is ever more on the back burner, there's media leaving there.

Um, there is less interest, there's fatigue because it's been going on for so long.

Um, and, uh, I just hope that the book helps start some discussion about what, what have we, what is the U.S. really doing there?

And what does it hope to achieve before it decides to commit more lives, more solid, more soldiers' lives to it.

BOWDEN: So can you give us an idea, Jessica, of, um, how you, how long it took you to report this book and how you went about it?

I know you told me you just had a baby, what, five months ago.

So you were pregnant through, I guess the latter part of, you know, finishing the book.

Well you tell us what, how, how did you go about doing this?

DONATI: I mean, it was, uh, it was, it was a slow process.

Um, I never, uh, I mean, it was, it was slow partly because I had my day job at "The Wall Street Journal", like got a three month period of leave to work on the book.

And I used that to travel to Afghanistan last year and reacquaint myself catch up on where things were, where the tide was.

Um, but, uh, most of it was done in my sort of spare time.

So evenings, weekends, um, much to my husband's displeasure.

Uh, and, uh, it took a long time.

Uh, it, it took really three years of research and he would talk to one person and you would say, anyone else, you know, who do you think I should talk to?

And one person would lead you to another and you would sort of build it out that way.

Um, and, um, and, and it was a slow process.

And, uh, I think as well.

When I started, I didn't know how far I would get.

And, um, the book took shape as, as I was writing it, which I think is perhaps a flaw in the book that is not as structured as I perhaps would have made it, had I set out to write it with all of the information that I had at the end.

Um, but I think that's also probably the nature of writing a book, although, um, this is my first one.

BOWDEN: So, you know, I was actually particularly impressed going back to the tragic attack on the hospital in Kunduz that you were able to interview doctors who were there during that attack and told you vividly of their experiences, where did you find them and, uh, how eager were they to talk to you about what happened?

DONATI: I mean, I found, I found their names through, uh, statements that MSF had put out.

So the time, um, I remember I remember covering it, um, when I was there, I was just transitioning from "Reuters" to "The Journal" and I had just left Afghanistan.

Kunduz had just fallen.

I was with "Reuters", I was speaking to the hospital every day because they were the source of, for what was going on in Kunduz after it fell.

And I had just left Afghanistan.

I woke up in the morning and, um, one of my Afghan, uh, contacts had sent me a text message saying the hospital's been destroyed and I couldn't believe it.

And I looked on the news and there was nothing there about the destroyed hospital.

Um, and it was, it was a big shock and uh MSF had gradually over time, put out these statements and I wanted an Afghan doctor, um, and also, um, Evangeline's story stood out to me, uh, and, um, I reached out to them and once they had permission from MSF, they agreed to speak.

Um, and I met, uh, Dr. Nasim when I was in Kabul.

And, um, it was, it was very helpful to, to interview him in person.

I never got the chance to meet Evangeline, unfortunately.

We did everything, um, remotely.

She was traveling around in all sorts of places, Syria and Africa.

Um, so there.

BOWDEN: Yeah, and you know how they feel about the way that the adjudication of, of the various investigations and you tell the story of Major Hutchinson and the Trump tribulations, you know, he went through, um, how, how did these people who were victims of the attack feel about the way this has been, um, resolved?

DONATI: I think that they feel that it hasn't been resolved.

Um, I think there are a lot of unanswered questions about how things went wrong that night, that I hope to answer when I set out researching the book, um, I wasn't able to get to the bottom of everything.

Um, one of the things that stood out to me was the information that the Afghan commanders had two targets for that night.

And, um, it's impossible to find out.

At least I wasn't able to find out what the second target really was.

Um, there were a set of coordinates that were written on a board and they were erased, um, I think in the heat of a battle with the Afghans, uh, you know, asking the Americans to blow things up 20 times a day, this one, uh, strike didn't stand out because nobody knew what it was.

It was just one of many, many airstrikes that they had called in, or that had been delivered to support them at the time.

Uh, so if that information is known, I wasn't able to get to it.

And I think MSF have questions about that.

I think that the investigation, when it was released, it was heavily redacted.

Um, and so while it does provide us some of the transcripts, it doesn't provide us with anything.

Um, when I spoke to the, um, MSF hospital director (inaudible) about it, uh, he said that, you know, he had to put his mind at peace after a certain point and just resigned himself to the fact that he wouldn't know until enough time had passed that the U.S. would declassify those files.

And he said, if I don't know, my children will know.

And that's all that, um, that can be said about it.

Um, I think that the Afghan commanders perhaps might have, uh, might have more information if they want to give it out at the time, the Afghan government said that the hospital had been bombed on purpose.

Uh, that was the initial statement that caused so much confusion at the beginning because the Afghans were saying that the, uh, governor and various, uh, interior ministry people were saying, well, the hospital had Taliban and the Taliban were using it as a command center.

So we had to bomb it.

Uh, you know, and I, I suspect, and I think a lot of other journalists who were there at the time suspect that the Afghans may have given a description of the hospital deliberately because they wanted it to be targeted.

They had long hated that hospital.

They had raided it, um, because it treated Taliban as well as everybody else.

Um, but that I wasn't able to answer definitively.

BOWDEN: Yeah.

So there's a, I think an overall sense of frustration in the book.

Um, and my sense in reading it was that we aren't really getting anywhere.

Um, we're not really making any substantial progress toward a definable end point is, do you feel that way, did I read that correctly?

DONATI: When I set out to write the book, and that was partly what, um, drove me to work on it for so long.

Um, over the years, um, there was, I mean, one of the conversations that stood out to me when I was embedded with Afghan commanders in Kunduz, they were working with an American team of Green Berets.

And that was sort of our way of getting some sort of access to the Green Berets sort of around the back, basically going through the Afghans.

One of the American soldiers that I talked to there said that he thought that the reason that they kept the wars going, because it was that they wanted to have Special Forces that were baffle ready.

And that's somewhere in Washington people wanted soldiers to have a real war to practice in for the big war.

Uh, you know, which sounds like a crazy conspiracy if you're sitting here, but if you're in Kunduz and you know, you just fought to save the city again, after it fell in exactly the same circumstances a year later, and you have the same problems, you didn't have vehicles, you didn't have a map, you know, you can understand why somebody might reach that, might reach that conclusion.

Um, as I said earlier, I think now that there is a genuine, uh, peace talk, peace process started in genuine in the sense that both sides recognize that it is a peace process of some sort, they recognize each other.

Uh, it is open it's being, they'd been talking on and off since September.

I think that offers a glimmer of hope, which, uh, which didn't exist before that, however unlikely it is to deliver any sort of respite in violence in the near term, there is some hope which, um, which gives me a little bit of hope, but maybe it's just naive from a distance it's easier to be optimistic.

BOWDEN: All right.

I think, uh, Jessica, I'll start to give you some of the questions that I've been getting here on the Q&A line.

We have one, and I don't know whether this is directed at me or at you, but I'll let you handle it.

It's from, uh, Barnett Rubin.

He says, I'm a little shocked to hear you discuss or dismiss accountability for the killing of civilians, as quote, "throwing the book" end quote, at it.

Someone has to be held accountable for war crimes.

Who should it be?

DONATI: Uh-huh, I mean, I, yeah, I don't know if that's the question for me who should be held accountable?

I think that, uh, it is, it is difficult for me to sit here and say, who should be held accountable, but there should have been in terms of the MSF bombing, a more open public, uh, look at what decisions were made along the line.

I think that when I sort of set out to investigate that when I was writing my book, it was difficult to say along the line who was to blame because so many people had been involved along the way in the decisions that had led to this terrible mistake.

You had policymakers in Washington who were coming up with very unrealistic, um, policies and rules that were then being pushed down on the battlefield.

And I think that, um, you know, general Campbell, he was confronting his own challenges.

He was trying to, uh, push back against these rules and have things fit more, fit better, the situation on the battlefield, and he's trapped between one thing and the other.

And so you have this, um, I guess, system of, of, uh, of problems.

Um, if somebody is, is to judge, that needs to be something that's discussed in the open, uh, and, uh, maybe a congressional hearing that really examined the role that every single person had in it would have made more sense than a heavily redacted DOD investigation that laid the blame, mostly on the people at the bottom, because the soldiers that were reprimanded or relieved of command in the initial investigation where soldiers like Hutch, they're very easy to blame because they, they don't have a voice really speaking to the public, they're not allowed to interface with the public.

They don't get a chance to defend their case.

And, uh, there's no discussion of, of the people above them who put them there in that frame.

BOWDEN: Another of our listeners asks if, uh, do you think that the United States and the Afghan government could actually reach a power-sharing agreement with the Taliban that the Taliban would honor?

DONATI: Somebody who knows the Taliban much better than I do would be better equipped to deal with that.

Think a lot of the signaling from the Taliban has been that they see the peace process as a military victory.

They're finally achieving, uh, what has been the driving objective for the past 20 years, which is get the American forces out.

And once the Americans are out, it'll be very easy for them to topple the puppet Afghan government and, uh, and, and win in Kabul.

Um, and so I think that, uh, in the, in the immediate term, there's very little chance that there's going to be any kind of power-sharing agreement.

Uh, the challenge that the Biden administration faces right now is how to continue to support the peace process without pushing the Taliban out of it.

If the, the U.S. is due to leave by May, if they decide that they're going to try to extend, they have to get the Taliban's buy-in because the Taliban might say, well, you guys are scrapping the main point of the deal.

Therefore, we're just going back to the battlefield and we can forget about it all.

And then you've lost the peace process.

And then you're back into forever wars status for however long, uh, right.

But if you leave, you're pretty much giving up on the peace process anyway, this is a very tricky situation, which unfortunately resulted from having a flawed deal that was arranged, uh, probably too quickly because of pressure to get things done by the end of the administration, because Trump was impatient and potentially would have pulled the plug anyway.

Um, yeah.

BOWDEN: It's a real dilemma, isn't it for, for the United States, because nobody wants to the sort of, open-ended infinite war to go on an Afghanistan.

But when you begin as a political leader, as a president saying, well, we're going to withdraw by next year.

It sort of makes it hard to bargain with the Taliban.

If they know they can just wait for another six months or a year, and you're going to, you're going to be gone.

I don't know what the answer is to that.

DONATI: I mean, one of the things that I saw when I, when I first went to Afghanistan and it was 20, 2012, I moved there in 2013 and the U.S. was always leaving that's almost 10 years ago now.

And, uh, the U.S. was drawing down 2014.

Uh, the Obama administration said the war is over a training mission by 2016, we're going down to zero, embassy only presence.

That's where we were in 2014.

And so you can also understand the counter argument that there are a lot of Afghans that believe that America is never really going to leave, because they've been saying they're going to leave for a very long time, and yet they haven't left.

And that is another thing that, that, that risks, uh, pushing the Taliban away because they may get to May and say, well, we believed you, but now we think you're insincere, uh, because there's a sincerity problem on the other side and the trust problem on the other side.

BOWDEN: So here's another question from our, our listeners.

Is it fair to say that the United States is winning the Afghan war in the sense that the large majority of the population is living under the more benign Afghan government rather than the tyrannical Taliban and that the Afghan soil is no longer being used to plot terrorist attacks on American territory?

Maybe we're not making progress, but we're not losing either.

DONATI: It is basically a hurting stalemate, um, for, for all sides.

Uh, the Afghan side, whether it's Afghans and Taliban, they're the side that's losing.

They're the ones that are suffering thousands and thousands of casualties every year.

Um, whether the Afghan government is so much better than the Taliban in some places.

I think that the local population, uh, in more rural areas might tell you otherwise that they do go to the Taliban for justice because the Taliban justice's swift, it's decisive, they don't ask for bribes.

I spoke, I would often speak to Afghan families who had had their problems resolved by Taliban because the Afghan government would just let these cases over property and that sort of thing drag out for a long time, um, Afghan sort of loose Afghan militias, loosely, uh, sponsored by the government, uh, probably just as bad as, uh, as Taliban.

So I think it's difficult to sort of cast one in the good light on one in the bad light.

I mean, obviously as, as a westerner and as a woman, um, the Taliban's, uh, Taliban approach to women too, I mean, my idea was obviously in line up with Western ones.

Um, but a lot of Afghans, and this is one of the problems is there is a myth that the Taliban arrived in Afghanistan and cast the country into this sort of darkness and put, put women inside.

And that was true in major cities, but for women in rural areas, um, Pashtun tribal code kept them indoors anyway.

I mean, that's where many of the Taliban's practices came from.

So, so it's not that clear cut.

BOWDEN: I know that president Obama had an expression, um, just called "mowing the grass," which is, he used that expression to me and we can't really change the situation.

We don't want to abandon it.

Um, so can't we just sort of maintain a kind of, you know, a maintenance level involvement.

Uh, do you think that's really where, where we are, as a country?

DONATI: I think that's where I think that's where it is.

Um, I mean, part of the press, the peace process suggests that there's more of a design now.

Um, but I mean, I spoke to, uh, soldiers that were out there that uses the same expression that you want to keep the grass mowed, that if you can't do, you don't have total freedom of operations, you're letting the grass grow.

Um, and then you end up having to deal with the, an increasing number of snakes under it.

And so there was a lot of my metaphors about grass cutting and, uh, I mean the peace process does offer hope that there is a direction that there is an end game.

Uh, you know, it might take five, 10 years, uh, and, um, it may not work, but while the peace process is ongoing, I think there's still hope for an end game.

BOWDEN: Another one of our listeners has a question, the Pakistan government, military, and intelligence supports the Taliban.

Would the Taliban insurgency collapse without that support?

DONATI: I'm not an expert on Pakistan or the Taliban.

Uh, and so, uh, so I, I think that this it's well-documented that the support is, um, is significant, uh, whether it would, uh, cause the end of the Taliban insurgency, I doubt that, um, the same way if the U.S. was to leave, uh, the idea that the Taliban would just come in and take over Kabul is also untrue.

There's a lot of, uh, of Afghans that would fight for the order as it is, whether without U.S. backing a significant number, which is why if the U.S. did leave, you wouldn't see the Taliban come back to power.

I would more likely expect, uh, to see sort of protracted civil war between probably equally matched sides.

BOWDEN: Here's another one of our listeners.

How did most U.S. soldiers view the local population?

Can you recount of any such interesting anecdotes that come to mind?

DONATI: I think it's difficult.

Uh, I think that, uh, I mean, one of the, one of the soldiers in particular, um, he, he had the idea and one of the reasons he was disillusioned and ended up leaving the military, even having worked so hard to join the Special Forces, because it is such an elite group.

It takes years of dedication and a level of fitness and everything.

Um, he felt that the, uh, Taliban that they were fighting were very much sort of farmers paid to pick up the gun and he didn't see them as sort of this sort of evil other, um, and I think that they viewed them, that he viewed them as people.

Obviously you have a broad range of how people view the enemy and I think if you are in the frame of mind where you're going out and somebody else is trying to kill you, you probably don't have the best, uh, view of that person.

And as a, as a westerner, uh, it is coming in, it's difficult to distinguish, you know, an Afghan from the Taliban because they're all Afghans.

And so that kind of distinction, I think, blend leaks into the relationship there's distrust, especially with the insider attacks, which has become such a problem from when I started in, when I started going there in 2012, there was a contributed to a huge proportion of the U.S. deaths.

And so I think unfortunately that contributed to a lot of distrust amongst Americans in general, uh, over there deployed with good reason, felt that they couldn't entirely trust their Afghan partners.

Um, on the other hand, the Green Berets who worked closely alongside commanders would develop very close and respectful relationships with the commanders that they did work alongside.

And they regretted the fact that there was limited interaction, uh, in later years because of the measures that were introduced because of the way things have been done.

They didn't go out and spend, you know, weeks in the villages together sharing, um, rooms and food.

And, and they, I think they look back fondly on the relationships that they did build with Afghans then.

So there's a wide, a wide spectrum, really.

BOWDEN: Um, another one of our audience questions is it strikes me these Afghan centric questions are a little too narrow in focus.

Isn't the real question here is the new American way of war something we as a country should be pursuing?

And if not, how do we go about lifting the veil of secrecy and engendering buy-in from the broader public?

DONATI: I think that's the, sort of the aim of the, of the book really, uh, is to get more of this reporting out there.

Uh, the media is still the way that information generally is conveyed to the public.

I think that it would be beneficial if the U.S. military opened up access to journalists and did give them a chance to report on what they're really doing.

Uh, you know, if you have special operations involved in this critical efforts to prevent, uh, Afghanistan from collapsing, you know, let reporters go and embed, let them write what they're going to write.

You'll get positive, negative things, depending on how the event goes, depending on the reporter's own perspectives, the paper or whatever, but there should be more transparency as things stand.

Um, you can't get that.

Uh, I was, I mean, even requesting, uh, transcripts, uh, from missions that I had gathered a lot of information about while I was reporting it, wasn't possible to get that kind of documentation.

They wouldn't, um, they wouldn't release it.

And so I think the first step towards discussing it is to making it a little bit more transparent.

BOWDEN: Question for both of us.

Uh, do you both see any parallels to Somalia post-1991 civil war and Afghanistan today?

DONATI: I'm not as Somalia expert.

That's a question that, that I, that I can't answer, but I'm sure you can Mark.

BOWDEN: Well, there are similarities.

It seems to me in that, uh, very few Americans were aware of what the Task Force Ranger, what the special ops mission in Mogadishu was.

So when 18 American soldiers were killed and there was a horrific firefight in the streets of that city, it took everyone including the president of the United States by surprise.

So in that sense, you know, from an American military perspective, we hear about Afghanistan today, uh, when something goes wrong, when some American soldiers are killed, but for the most part, and this is accepting your reporting in your book, um, and, and, and some other reporters from other newspapers who were covering Afghanistan, religiously, most Americans are not that aware of the kind of things that you write about in "Eagle Down".

I mean, these pitch battles that are being fought in Kunduz and elsewhere, uh, which are the real deal, you know, for those who were fighting and dying, um, take place in the shadows.

And so it isn't really until in a, an event like, you know, the battle of Mogadishu or in your book that the various incidents that you described, where there's loss of life, that, um, that this comes to the attention of the public, and it gets, uh, some political traction.

That's the comparison that I see at any rate.

Do you think another one of our questions is, do you think the United States can accomplish anything at current troop levels?

DONATI: I've asked that question to, uh, senior, um, current former administration officials.

What can the U.S. accomplished with the level that they have?

Um, I think it's an open question from what I saw.

Um, they, they were, they the, it, depending on the composition of the force, uh, you know, if these 2,500 are all sort of special operations soldiers involved in these kinds of critical missions, uh, I would expect that they can, uh, continue to support the Afghans to some extent that obviously won't be the same extent.

Um, if the, if it depends on how the peace talks go, if peace talks collapse, and the Taliban resume attacking, um, major cities, Afghan, uh, the Afghan forces U.S. forces with the same ferocity that they did prior to the peace deal, I think that you might see more situations like the ones covered in the book where things go wrong because they're poorly resourced because they're overstretched.

Um, I think this is going to be a risk, uh, whether they can, one question that I had was would it be possible to continue to support the Afghan government military without actually being there?

Because some people argue that you could fight the war from Qatar or somewhere else and just send in people, by air and drop them in for short missions.

And, um, the impression that I got was that that wouldn't be possible because Qatar is too far away.

BOWDEN: One of our other listeners asks, um, how interested do you think the Afghan government is in making a deal?

Are they doing aren't they doing everything they can to keep the United States there forever?

DONATI: I think that, I mean, one of the, one of the, uh, important things about the Afghan government side is that it's not just, it's not just sort of a narrow group of people in the Afghan government.

It does represent a wide range of interests, uh, perhaps not as wide as it could be, but it is, it is a group of people.

And I think that, um, in this group, there are going to be people who obviously don't want to give up the status quo because if the government, um, the government stands to lose what it has, which is a, you know, 100% of the power.

I think that there are a lot of people that are tired of the war and would be willing to give and make concessions.

I think what nobody knows is how much is the Afghan government side willing to concede, and how much is the Taliban willing to concede?

These are unanswered questions that are hopefully going to be addressed during the course of the process, but because nobody knows if the concess, concessions will be enough to meet in the middle, nobody knows how it's going to go, but it, it doesn't look that great.

BOWDEN: Here's another one of our questions.

The soldiers in the book seem to have trusted you with their stories and with access to their families.

As you got to know them, did your view of them become more nuanced and holistic viewing them less as mythical snake eaters and more as, as deep humans?

DONATI: As I got to know more, uh, more of these soldiers, obviously, um, I was less surprised by the kind of people that I met.

Um, obviously many, many people, many of the guys that go into the Green Berets, they are quite cerebral because of that's the kind of, that's the nature of what they do.

They are supposed to go in and work with local forces.

They are supposed to be culturally sensitive, um, by nature of how the Special Forces have been involved in Afghanistan from the beginning.

Um, they went in and they worked alongside warlords, I mean, you've probably seen the movie um 30... "12 Strong", right?

Um, where they go in and there's just a few of those guys and they basically help the Afghans achieve what they want to do, I think by that.

But just by definition, they are people that are more sort of thinkers rather than sort of knuckle draggers.

I think, uh, for me maybe meeting Hutch was one of the first guys that I got to know well and because of what he had done, um, I think that it was, uh, it was striking how much he really cared about, uh, Afghans, the fate of the Afghan people, how, uh, how fondly he remembered the times that he had spent in early deployments living alongside Afghan villagers.

Um, there's a little bit about it in the first chapter.

He really believed in, uh, in what he had, what he had done.

And, and I think that was, uh, was, was an important message for me.

BOWDEN: I think one of the things that is sort of moving about Hutch's story is that here's a young man who has, you know, really devoted himself to the military, to his mission, to the career, apparently very sincere, very smart, very dedicated, and trying to do the right thing.

And, you know, the, the organization, the Army really crushes him, uh, at a certain point.

Um, you know, he apparently never lost faith.

Maybe he did, uh, that, that would turn out differently.

Do you think he, he really ever got to a point where he was just felt betrayed by the institution?

DONATI: He never said as much to me.

Um, I suspect that I think that one of the, one of the things as well about soldiers who do their line of work, um, it is difficult.

You lose a lot of close friends year after year because the military is so heavily relies on, on your group of people to do it.

And I think that that's why you do see, um, high rates of, uh, of, of, I guess, mental health issues, people who, who leave to avoid them or people who struggled to live with what they have done and what they have experienced.

And I think that one of the things about Hutch at least from as much as I got to know him was that he was a survivor.

And he was somebody who was able to sort of clear in a headed way, um, process the things that he had been through, remove himself a little bit.

He had faith that he was a good person and that he had done his best.

And I think that he was able to hold on to that.

He was lucky to have a supportive family network, which not all soldiers can count on.

And I think that probably contributed as well, and he has a very strong family.

Um, and so I think he's a survivor and he probably never let himself, this is speculation on my part.

I don't know if he's, if he's tuned in, but, um, I think that that was how he survived.

He had to believe that it was going to be okay.

BOWDEN: One of our other listeners asks, have you witnessed any U.S. military leadership or soldiers openly admit that the war has been lost?

It seems like psychologically, it would be very difficult to carry on with your job that way.

DONATI: This was the question that I would ask because obviously it's soldiers that were deployed there, or we would go on embeds.

They would, everyone would see the same thing.

You know, it was a band-aid solution.

Um, but that was part of the survival mentality that you're in there to do a job you're in there to, uh, for the timeframe that you're there, you're there to try and make people's lives better around you.

Um, and that's what you focus on.

You don't look too much at the bigger picture.

I think that the soldiers that did spend too much time looking at the bigger picture, then eventually ended up leaving.

BOWDEN: One of our listeners asks that how did the whole experience in Afghanistan change you?

DONATI: I think that it's made me very grateful to, uh, to have the opportunities that I do have.

Um, one of the, the struggles that you have, I mean that you have as a foreign correspondent, there, you work with a lot of Afghans who don't have the option of just leaving.

You might end up being, you know, very upset by the experiences that you have, but you can always choose to leave.

And then you can come back to the U.S. or wherever you're from and go to Starbucks and not worry about, uh, being blown up.

You don't worry about your kids going to school and not coming home, or your husband going to work, not coming back.

Um, and so it made me very grateful to, to be able to choose that kind of life, which a lot of people don't have.

BOWDEN: Yeah.

Hutch wrote a response to the question, that, to my question about how he felt through all of this, he writes, "the institution," the Army, "is still ultimately people.

I never lost faith in people, even if a handful might not have believed my position, the Army is full of great people and so is Afghanistan."

Are you still reporting at the "Wall Street Journal"?

DONATI: I'm on, but I'm actually still on maternity leave.

Um, "The Journal" has a very progressive approach to maternity leave.

So I've got some another couple of months off, and then I think I'm going to go back to my, uh, job on the national security team.

BOWDEN: Has this experience of writing a book convinced you want to keep writing books?

DONATI: Probably not as many as you have written... BOWDEN: I'm a lot older than you are, too.

DONATI: Yeah.

Uh, not immediately.

I mean, I guess if there another, um, another subject that I believe in as strongly, um, perhaps yes.

BOWDEN: I always found, you know, when I was writing for newspapers that I never had enough time or space to tell the story that I thought was out there, so I fell into writing books because of that.

I just, I couldn't do what I wanted to do in the, you know, the limitations of that, but I know many, many great, great journalists who never felt that and have continued to do great work in the, in journals and in newspapers.

DONATI: I feel that way, but then I also feel that way about the book, you know, when you have so much information and so many perspectives, and then you come 'round to writing the book and you end up being in the same problem that you have when you're writing a news story that you want to tell every detail, and you can only choose a small fraction of everything that then goes into the book.

So you're presented with the same problem again.

BOWDEN: Not me, I just write bigger books.

I've really enjoyed meeting you.

I've never met you before.

Uh, I'm delighted to have had the opportunity to read your book and to ask you questions about it and good luck in your continued reporting.

And I'll look for your byline.

DONATI: Thank you very much.

BOWDEN: Brad?

GRAHAM: Great moderating, Mark.

And Jessica, I'm so glad you didn't let your worries about whether anyone would care keep you from writing the book and documenting just what U.S. troops have been doing in Afghanistan in recent years and what they still hope to achieve there.

From all of us here at Politics and Prose, stay well and well-read.

NARRATOR: Books by tonight's authors are available at Politics and Prose bookstore locations or online at politics-prose.com (music plays through credits)