Tag: Waleed Aly

Bookmarked Was US failure in Afghanistan inevitable? (ABC Radio National)

The chaos of the American’s leaving and the associated logistical and humanitarian catastrophe that is now unfolding at Kabul airport, have produced two seemingly incommensurable conclusions:

  1. This proves that despite twenty years of “nation building”, international support, military training, and the expenditure of around US$2.3 trillion, the Afghan government was never going to be able to survive on its own. If the departure of US soldiers and diplomats was inevitably going to precipitate the collapse of the Afghan government, why stay?
  2. This proves that a tolerably small US presence in Afghanistan was enough to provide political and social stability (to say nothing of protection for women, girls, and vulnerable minorities), keep the Taliban “at bay”, and permit the Afghan government to find its feet. If the departure of US soldiers and diplomats was going to precipitate the collapse of the Afghan government, why not stay — at least for a little longer?

The fact that both conclusions can claim a degree of truth, and yet seem mutually exclusive, points to a deeper contradiction at the heart of the involvement of the United States and its allies in the affairs of the non-Western world.

If there is one thing that I learnt from the conversation between Stephen Wertheim, Scott Stephens and Waleed Aly and the Taliban’s retaking of Afghanistan it is that nothing is ever as simple as we might desire. Werheim sums up the situation with three problems:

The United States still faces two major problems in Afghanistan. The first is how to rescue vulnerable Afghans who wish to leave their country and settle in the United States or elsewhere. The second is how to drive a wedge between Afghanistan’s new government and al-Qaeda so as to prevent terrorist attacks on the United States. These are significant challenges, but they do not diminish the decision to withdraw.

For Americans, a third challenge may prove most important of all: coming to terms with defeat instead of indulging the fantasy that somehow, in some way, an unwinnable war could have been won.

As a Vietnamese refugee, Viet Thanh Nguyen makes the connection with the fall of Saigon in 1975, while Robin Wright wonders if it will serve as a ‘bookend for the era of U.S. global power’, an end of an era?

The fall of Kabul may serve as a bookend for the era of U.S. global power. In the nineteen-forties, the United States launched the Great Rescue to help liberate Western Europe from the powerful Nazi war machine. It then used its vast land, sea, and air power to defeat the formidable Japanese empire in East Asia. Eighty years later, the U.S. is engaged in what historians may someday call a Great Retreat from a ragtag militia that has no air power or significant armor and artillery, in one of the poorest countries in the world.

I cannot be helped but be reminded of the Old Italian Man speaking with Nately in Catch-22:

The old man laughed indulgently, holding in check a deeper, more explosive delight. His goading remained gentle. “Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed. All great countries are destroyed. Why not yours? How much longer do you really think your own country will last? Forever? Keep in mind that the earth itself is destined to be destroyed by the sun in twenty-five million years or so.”

Nately squirmed uncomfortably. “Well, forever is a long time, I guess.”

Listened Is “opinion” doing more harm than good? from ABC Radio National

Opinion writing plays a disproportionate role in our media eco-system: it drives online traffic, fuels emotion, feeds the forces of polarisation, and promotes an incapacity to understand one another. But is there a different way to think about opinion?

Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens speak with Ross Douthat about opinion writing. They wonder in a world of polarisation what purpose the opinion piece serves.

But if opinion pieces now appeal primarily to the “tribes of the already convinced”, are they in fact doing more harm than good in these polarized times? Or is there a different way to think about opinion — a way which acknowledges the peculiar moral vocation that inheres to the task? Can opinion pieces provide a kind of “gestalt switch”, shifting one’s perception such that we can see aspects of reality otherwise?

This has me rethinking a piece I wrote a few years ago: Tribes are Good, But Do They Really Evolve the Conversation? However, I also wonder if this highlights the downside of blogs as a medium?
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Listened The Minefield from abc.net.au

In a world marked by wicked social problems, The Minefield helps you negotiate the ethical dilemmas, contradictory claims and unacknowledged complicities of modern life.

Started listening to Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens’ podcast on ‘wicked’ problems. I am always taken by Waleed Aly’s perspective on the world. I feel that the length of this medium allows more nuance than something like The Project.
Listened Should we attempt to escape from “politics”? from ABC Radio National

“Politics” is, it seems, inescapable. Christos Tsiolkas joins Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens to discuss whether we should preserve ways — in literature, in art, in comedy, in sport — to escape the limits of political conflict.

An interesting conversation about the challenges of discussing politics. I was really interested in Christos Tsiolkas distinction between the idea and the author when talking about Uwe Telkamp’s The Tower. This reminds me of John Naughton’s discussion of Simone Beauvoir:

As Gornick implies, the passage of time, and posthumous revelations, has taken the shine off the image of Beauvoir and her accomplice in literary celebrity, Jean-Paul Sartre. Subsequent biographies have revealed that they both sometimes behaved abominably towards other people. I guess it leaves those of us who, as impressionable students, were dazzled by them, looking naive. So what? Everybody was young and foolish once. And whatever one thinks about its author with the 20/20 vision of hindsight, The Second Sex was a genuinely pathbreaking book.

Listened Waleed Aly’s songs we should talk about from ABC Radio

Waleed Aly is the smartest guy in the room. Whether hosting The Project, writing editorials for major newspapers, or completing his PhD, it feels there’s nothing he’s not good at, and the Australian public agrees; he won the Gold Logie in 2016. We’re used to seeing Waleed dissect and make sense of the news every day, but sometimes you get a glimpse into his musical heart and you can see that it beats so strong. When I finally got Waleed to Take 5 I gave him the theme “Songs We Should Talk About”, a play on the title of his wonderful segment from The Project. Unsurprisingly, Waleed put a lot of thought into his songs… He sent me three separate lists of five songs (not to be changed in any way, but all telling a different story). The one we went with gifted such a rich conversation. Waleed is someone who can completely dissect a song cerebrally but also show how his connection to it changes given the emotion, and the time he’s hearing it. This conversation is something else. From Lily Allen to Public Enemy to Pink Floyd, this will make you believe in the broad and beautiful power of song.

Lily Allen – ‘Smile’

Public Enemy – ‘911 Is a Joke’

Queen – ‘The March of the Black Queen’

Billy Joel – ‘Allentown’

Pink Floyd – ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’

Waleed Aly shares five songs we should talk about with Zan Rowe. Deep and eclectic as ever. I cannot believe how many projects he is a part of and had no idea of his musical roots associated with Robot Child.