In this special episode of The Political Animals, host Jonathan Cole dons his cap as a former intelligence analyst to discuss the sobering lessons from the Afghanistan debacle. Jonathan worked at the Australian Signals Directorate 2007–2010 and as a Senior Terrorism Analyst at the Office of National Intelligence 2010–2014. His patch included terrorism across the whole of South Asia. Jonathan talks about the failure of the Afghanistan intervention and the wisdom and morality of military interventions per se from a realist perspective. He also shares his experience of visiting Kabul in 2011 and other trips to the region.