Review: Blowback Podcast Exhumes the Seeds of the Afghan Conflict
Hosts Noah Kulwin and Brendan James explain how proxy war fighters can become America's enemies.
The podcast Blowback, originally just about the Iraq War, has expanded to cover U.S. foreign policy misadventures from the Korean War to the Bay of Pigs to support for the Afghan mujahedin. Last summer's season on Afghanistan returned the podcast, hosted by Noah Kulwin and Brendan James, to its roots: reminding Americans of how yesterday's proxy becomes today's enemy, a switcheroo that has worked repeatedly because of Americans' short memories and shorter attention spans.
Before it was memory-holed, the CIA's support for Islamist rebels in Afghanistan received loud public support in Washington and Hollywood. Kulwin and James pull out damning receipts, from Rambo III to 60 Minutes specials. And until 9/11, our leaders had very little regret for the monsters they had unleashed. Even when the old mujahedin were chased out by the more fanatical Taliban in the 1990s, the U.S. State Department tried to strike deals with the new regime.
Blowback's fifth season, set to drop this summer, will focus on the U.S. intervention in Cambodia, the forgotten yet even more murderously disastrous stepchild of the Vietnam War. If Kulwin and James examine the U.S. foreign policy scene of today, they'll doubtless find embarrassing stories to present in future seasons.