Aug 31, 2026 · 49 min · 12 segments
On October 7, 2001, a US Air Force B-2 *Spirit* crossed into Afghan airspace as part of the opening campaign of Operation Enduring Freedom. Nearly twenty years later, a C-17 *Globemaster* carrying the…
Vincent AielloGuestLance LewisGuestTucker HamiltonHost
And here to help us do that is Fighter Pilot podcast friend Lance Lewis, call sign Boyle, a retired US Marine Corps F/A-18 Hornet pilot with a PhD in war studies.
To set the stage and understand why America's longest war unfolded the way it did, we need to start with terrain.
It sits at the crossroads of Central Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East, landlocked, surrounded by Iran to the west, Pakistan to the south and east, and the former Soviet republics to the north.
Roughly the size of Texas, but Texas with the Hindu Kush mountain range cutting across it, and these are peaks above 20,000 feet, passes that become impassable for months at a time, and valleys that have served as natural fortresses for a millennia.
You can take a city, but you can't take a country where the mountains are part of the resistance themselves.
The population is multiethnic, Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, among others, which are organized tribally, fiercely independent, and deeply suspicious of outside authority.
It's a feature that has outlasted every single occupying force in recorded human history.
Outside powers have repeatedly entered Afghanistan believing they could reshape it.
The 19th century version of trying to occupy terrain and the diverse people in Afghanistan was called the Great Game, the imperial competition between the United Kingdom and Russia for influence across Central Asia, and Afghanistan was part of the chessboard.
Britain fought three Anglo-Afghan Wars between 1839 and 1919, and they won most of the military engagements, but they never won the country.
The first Anglo-Afghan War ended with the near total destruction of a British column retreating from Kabul in 1842.
16,000 soldiers and camp followers and one man, a Dr. William Brydon, famously made it back to Jalalabad.
The Afghans didn't defeat the British Empire, however, they humiliated it, and that lesson wasn't learned, and it never has been.
Afghanistan emerged from the Anglo-Afghan War as independent but hardly stable.
Throughout the 20th century, it remained a monarchy balancing between East and West until a communist coup in 1978 plunged the country into turmoil.
And here to help us do that is Fighter Pilot podcast friend Lance Lewis, call sign Boyle, a retired US Marine Corps F/A-18 Hornet pilot with a PhD in war studies.
To set the stage and understand why America's longest war unfolded the way it did, we need to start with terrain.
It sits at the crossroads of Central Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East, landlocked, surrounded by Iran to the west, Pakistan to the south and east, and the former Soviet republics to the north.
Roughly the size of Texas, but Texas with the Hindu Kush mountain range cutting across it, and these are peaks above 20,000 feet, passes that become impassable for months at a time, and valleys that have served as natural fortresses for a millennia.
You can take a city, but you can't take a country where the mountains are part of the resistance themselves.
The population is multiethnic, Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, among others, which are organized tribally, fiercely independent, and deeply suspicious of outside authority.
It's a feature that has outlasted every single occupying force in recorded human history.
Outside powers have repeatedly entered Afghanistan believing they could reshape it.
The 19th century version of trying to occupy terrain and the diverse people in Afghanistan was called the Great Game, the imperial competition between the United Kingdom and Russia for influence across Central Asia, and Afghanistan was part of the chessboard.
Britain fought three Anglo-Afghan Wars between 1839 and 1919, and they won most of the military engagements, but they never won the country.
The first Anglo-Afghan War ended with the near total destruction of a British column retreating from Kabul in 1842.
16,000 soldiers and camp followers and one man, a Dr. William Brydon, famously made it back to Jalalabad.
The Afghans didn't defeat the British Empire, however, they humiliated it, and that lesson wasn't learned, and it never has been.
Afghanistan emerged from the Anglo-Afghan War as independent but hardly stable.
Throughout the 20th century, it remained a monarchy balancing between East and West until a communist coup in 1978 plunged the country into turmoil.
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